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Like Ms. McKay, a growing number of U.S. adults say they are unlikely to raise children, according to a study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center. When the survey was conducted in 2023, 47 percent of those younger than 50 without children said they were unlikely ever to have children, an increase of 10 percentage points since 2018.
When asked why kids were not in their future, 57 percent said they simply didn’t want to have them. Women were more likely to respond this way than men (64 percent vs. 50 percent). Further reasons included the desire to focus on other things, like their career or interests; concerns about the state of the world; worries about the costs involved in raising a child; concerns about the environment, including climate change; and not having found the right partner.
I really can’t comprehend how someone can look at the state of things and think it is appropriate to subject another person to the rat-ass future that’s coming. That’s before you even consider the expense of raising children, which is also prohibitive.
They don’t “look”… Those are the ones that want kids. Those who weight the pros and cons, most likely reach the conclusion that having kids is not feasible.
Not having kids is the only way some of them are gonna be able to afford to live, and less people 30 years from now means they might even be able to afford a place to live if they can retire.
There’s always fearmongering when populations god down, but historically it’s the only time periods normal people can claw back some wealth from the 0.1%
Which is why the wealthy always freak the fuck out. They do t care about people, they care about labor supply, and the more people the cheaper labor.
There is the real issue of how a society will support its aged population with significantly less young people working than in the past. It requires changes to regulations and taxation and many nations arent ready to accept that and instead somehow expect the smaller number of young people to just pick up the slack and accept they won’t get to retire when they age.
Or we could just tax the wealthy…
Yes, i mentioned it requires changes to taxation. A lot of the wealthy are the older so they won’t vote in a way that helps young people, they vote in a way to preserve their wealth, even if it means poor social services for people the same age as them but “poor”.
Just look at Japan. They’re screwed.
Nobody can afford kids with all of the corporate price gouging and wage theft. no shit we’re not having more kids.
Some of us even say, “fuck no.”
And for a non-zero number of those, it’s because no fuck.
Speak for yourself
40 years of a recession will do that to a society. An entire generation fucked.
But there’s no problem with the economy*
*According to metrics that ignore working class savings, inflation, and prices for basic goods and services like groceries and housing increasing faster than inflation.
And jobs are so stable, and give great benefits.
Jobs are so great, many people are working 2 or 3 jobs now! /s
Unbounded growth isn’t progress, it’s a disease.
Literally Cancer’s modus operandi
I think previous generations felt they had no choice. And even ITT those who chose to have kids are still smitten with this idea that life has no meaning without kids. Which was historically a coping mechanism for those previous generations who needed a way to deal with not having a choice.
Having kids seems awful 99.999% of the time. Life has a lot to offer without giving your entire existence over to children, despite the popular belief otherwise
Societal pressure to have children is a huge factor for sure. I’ve heard from previous generations in my family that during the baby boom era, rumors would circulate in their community if you didn’t have enough children, like “something must be wrong with the Johnsons down the street because they only ever had two kids” (and this was in upper-middle class WASP America).
Obviously this attitude continues today in certain communities (Mormons, small rural towns, etc), but it’s no longer as prevalent.
And someone with your mindset should not have kids. So, good on you for making that choice. Previous generations knew they had a choice, but they were pressured because having a family was part of “the American Dream”.
I am an older millennial and have a child. Sure, it’s hard work and I sacrifice to give them things they need or want but I wouldn’t change it. His outlook on life, focus on being a good person, and how he views the world at 10 is all amazing. It’s these kids that see through the BS and try and be better that are our future and hope for changing things.
Plus, like it or not, they are the ones that will take care of you when you’re old and suffering and they’re the ones that kind of keep the world running when we’re too old. I guess you can always purchase a gun and off yourself though but to me, that seems horrible rather than saying goodbye and going a lot more peacefully.
I have two kids. 7 and 3. Parenting is the hardest thing you will ever do.
To raise a child with the correct moral characteristic takes time and input from many people. The saying “it takes a village to raise a child” is spot on.
I’m not unaccomplished, by any means, but I genuinely felt like I wasted my life before having a kid. We had our first at 36 and we’re about to start trying for a 2nd at 38.
Which is to say, while it’s hard, it’s one of the only things worth doing in life. IMO, obviously.
(For the record, in our 20s we were the “no thanks” crowd, I changed in my 30s and my wife took an extra 6 years to come around)
Edit: lol love the downvotes for this benign comment. Lemmy is a dumpsterfire.
I decided at 30 to have kids. I wouldn’t say I wasted my life before kids, I just wasn’t ready yet. I still feel under prepared. I say that children is the hardest thing you will ever do, and I think that’s the source of downvotes I’m getting. I’m not saying that there are not other things in life that are hard. If you choose not to have kids, you can still have hard things in your life.
However, if you do choose to have kids, that will be the hardest thing you do. Emotionally and physically hard. You lose any sort of regenerative sleep for 5 years. Fitness routine? Bye bye. Energy? Out the window. Oh, you enjoyed the relationship with your spouse? HAH! And then you take the emotional stuff into it, like mourning the loss of the human baby you grew to love and falling in love with the toddler the baby became. And then the cycle repeats again and again until one day they don’t come back. It’s a 20 year relationship that ends with a partial breakup.
You lose any sort of regenerative sleep for 5 years. Fitness routine? Bye bye. Energy? Out the window.
Oh shit, do I have kids?
You might want to ask your doctor.
My kids are similar ages and I think non-parents assume we are insulting them we we state how difficult parenting is. It’s an objective fact that having kids is hard, they make every activity at least twice as difficult.
For example. I had to travel for work recently. 12 hours of travelling total, including 4 hours in traffic. Because the kids weren’t there, it was really easy.
Another example. My MS in engineering feels like it was nothing compared to the work I’ve put in for the almost 8 years our first has been alive.
Which seems like I’m making fun of people without kids for thinking normal life is easy. Nope, my perception is warped and everyone has their own perception of life’s difficulties.
I’m gay and married. No kids, don’t want them. I have nieces and nephews I can borrow for the day and then give them back.
Cool man. Not even close to the same thing.
That’s what he’s saying.
Further reasons included…not having found the right partner.
I think this reason doesn’t get enough attention. I am childless, and there are a lot of complex reasons why that is, but I think I would have been much more likely to try to have kids if I had been able to find a woman I really wanted to have kids with. Of all the women I’ve been with, only one was someone I would want to have kids with, but she couldn’t have kids.
I taught my 3 year old to say 'No, thanks", and it’s so cute. He’s so polite and I love him so much 🥹
If I could buy a house where I live I could consider one. But that won’t be for a long time or I move and start over
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It’s not only about “not being able to afford them”. Plenty of people in the world “cannot afford” kids and have 7 of them.
It’s the mix of being educated and understanding that it’s not a great idea to have kids, plus the means of being able to prevent or stop pregnancy. Also a cultural shift that allowed us to think by ourself and not feeling forced to have kids.
But the machine need human lubricant to keep working for its owners so they are going to take that from us to ensure we keep making them workers to exploit.
We are already seeing how anti-pregnancy methods are being attacked. And soon they will take away this new culture to bring back the old hivemind culture. And of course the education. There is already a trend on how bad it is for everyone to have a college degree.
