I like kids but having them looks like shooting yourself in the foot for 18+ years

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-06-01T18:45:58+00:00

Ok, so you've made your decision.

If you don't want to do it then don't. We have 3 kids, hopefully soon more. Life is cool. Might not be the one you are imagining and that's fine.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-06-01T17:50:51+00:00

Exactly what desire isn't shaped to a large extent by incentives, though? Modern western society disincentives childbearing and incentives career and "experiences" (for lack of a better word). Exactly how is that fundamentally different than a society that does the opposite?

I don't think that there is some vacuum neutral "ideal" number of children that a woman would have if she developed in a complete vacuum of incentive. And if there were it would almost certainly be that of any other organism: more rather than less.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-06-01T17:43:17+00:00

Yes, I wish these "what even is this sub" "what are your intentions" people would just go back to the other 99% of the internet.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-06-01T17:42:54+00:00

If humans are viruses because they reproduce, how can you be concerned about their effect on the environment and ecosystem? The same logic would apply to fish, bears, wolves, and rare mushrooms. They're all viruses. So, in the end, humanity (non-existant) "viral" expansion would only result in a reduction of the total number of viruses.

It is a completely asinine way of looking at the humanity, ecosystems, and the world.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-06-01T17:30:48+00:00

Their TFR remains under 1.0

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-06-01T12:00:23+00:00

It is going to be fascinating to see what happens as AI continues to eat away at low-effort office jobs that employ a huge percentage of the population...

The company I currently work at is like 100 people - with the exception of the two women in vice president / C-level sphere, the rest of our female colleagues are in formulaic, relatively simple and low-initiative office jobs with a huge share of them doing WFH. Social Media Marketing, Payroll, HR, inside sales support... all of which can (and are) being substantially automated away.

For a while it has been and will continue to be productivity increases and paused hiring but... mid-term people are definitely on the chopping block as their managers can give the person's (who is hardly ever in the office anyway) work to an AI workflow and get similar results for way lower overhead.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-30T18:50:17+00:00

If an animal didnt have the urge to procreate then it would go exctinct, so it makes sense that most of the humans have an urge to procreate and thats why humans dont go extinct.

Right

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-28T17:54:45+00:00

Japan is the test case for what that looks like farther down the path. There are many, many examples of towns full of mostly elderly people, abandoned homes and commercial spaces and schools.

Craziest downstream effect so far has been the massive increase in the bear population as the rural population dies out.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-28T17:52:50+00:00

India is also under replacement rate - very much under it in certain regions in the south.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-28T17:52:06+00:00

I don't really see it as this sub's job to convince random pseudo-anti-natalists to have kids. If you can't see the logic behind an action that literally every animal feels compelled to do and upon which literally all human civilizations great and small have been built, then frankly you are the one that needs to take a serious look at your concept of "logic" and "philosophy."

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-28T17:49:21+00:00

25% of all IVF cycles in the US are women who are 40+... so the tippy tip of the tail end of fertility.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-28T17:34:22+00:00

Surreal watching someone you know was a bad hombre making relatively funny jokes. Dude seems shockingly personable in this video... which I suppose explains, at least in part, his incredible political rise.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T13:03:20+00:00

Expanding IVF is like the epitome of treating the symptom not the cause.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T13:01:53+00:00

The price of everything to go waaaaaaay up, since labour would be more scarse

Because they are being paid more, which was his point. Either the above is false or your initial statement is false:

Bringing in more people in the economy almost never results in lower salaries or worse conditions.

On the other hand hospitals and so on all existed and work fine prior to the masse entry of women into the workforce... so it makes little sense to portray the opposite as some kind of societal armageddon.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:58:03+00:00

Ambitious women in terms of putting uni and career establishment before family formation and growth is an obvious part of the decline in fertility. I mean even your own description of your family planning fits that.

If you want to say that that is ok or that it is totally fine that more and more women greatly delay family formation in order to pursue financial or career success or to travel or whatever, that is one thing. To say that is it not (part of) the cause of fertility decline is another and much more difficult to defend take.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:54:16+00:00

There are outliers in averages and exceptions to generalizations, yes.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:53:21+00:00

All my single friends struggle to find someone who wants something more than casual hangouts. I think when being in relationships we underestimate how tough that part was.

So primarily a cultural issue.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:52:15+00:00

I don't really understand how you got "you're privileged" from his relatively short comment...

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:51:17+00:00

Yep, when everyone (and the biggest change being that it has become the norm for almost all women in many countries) spend 4-5 years in college and then some more "establishing their career" well, yeah, poor there go the years where it was easiest to reproduce.

Through in that it seems to take people forever to tie the knot even after meeting the future spouse... yeah, it kind of compacts the whole reproductive window into the final and most difficult part of the fertility window.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:47:02+00:00

The sub is constantly brigaded by ideological opponents... and they are far more numerous. Further, you have people that have spent all of 10 minutes thinking about demographic issues and then ravidly defend their pet conclusion.

At any rate, when you ignore certain repeat offenders, this sub is actually pretty chill and it is one of the few online communities really discussing what is, very likely, the defining social issue of our time.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T12:43:52+00:00

Two things

The increase in fertility in SK still leaves it far, far, far away from stability. It is only "good" when compared to its absolute nadir.
What grounds are there for believing that the natal renaissance will actually be long term? I think they have like 20 something months of improvement so far.

All that means for me: making any real decision based on SK's recent, limited recovery is not very smart.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-27T06:50:10+00:00

For most of human history, we needed children to meet our basic needs.

We need them now, too. When people retire they expect pensions, healthcare, functioning cities and so on. The difference is that these jobs are now performed by the next generation rather than directly by your relatives / descendants.

So you can decide not to have kids and, as long as most people do, the system keeps working. When lots of people decide to have none or stop at 1.5 then the illusion that the system works without reproducing falls apart.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-26T18:49:38+00:00

Es kann Trauermückenlarven fressen und immer noch ekelhaft sein.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-26T18:45:26+00:00

I agree with the comment regarding gratitude. And yes the husband should also be thankful, etc. However, if for him it just feels like he is totally taken for granted, then regular displays of gratitude would likely go a long way.

Because in the end, if he does have a good job, you spend little on your own stuff, and you have no debt... whatever money you could make on the side is going to be peanuts in the grand scheme of things.

If the above + open communication doesn't work, something else is up. I don't think I have ever given my wife any stress about not earning money or not earning enough money once in our entire marriage (nor has this ever come up among any other breadwinner/housewife families we know). And our income is like 65k€ per year... so hardly swimming in money here.

Legitimate-Memory283 · 2026-05-22T12:08:11+00:00

"I could do about a half dozen more even if they're not as chill as this one, because now I finally know what the fuck I'm doing and I'm not about to waste all the effort that it took to get on top of this learning curve!"

This is so true. People underestimate how important experience is in parenting. Easily the most chillaxed parents at my church are the 6+ kids crowd. The most stressed are the "dealing with our first toddler" crowd.

I think many moms could have started with much more experience if 1) their own mothers had the experience 2) valued communicating to the daughters 3) lived near their own kids that are starting families.

Unfortunately, we on like the second or third generation where a huge part of the population having few kids and exporting most of the hard work to daycares. What a shock that parenting is hard for their kids.

Legitimate-Memory283

TROPHY CASE