
U.S. Birthrates Fall to Record Low - jseliger
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-birthrates-fall-to-record-low-11589947260
======
iandanforth
Curious how many people share this opinion, but I think this is extremely good
news. I would love to see birth rates drop below replenishment across the
globe. We simply don't need billions of humans. We have done, and continue to
do major damage to our environment and historically a tiny minority has
benefited from the labor of the majority. The people who benefit most from an
increasing population are those who exploit people to increase their quality
of life in clean sanctuaries while distancing themselves from the effort and
waste required to maintain those lifestyles.

~~~
WhompingWindows
In this case, it's a good thing, because the birthrates declined most for
women 24 and younger. Creating another person is one of the most carbon-
intensive actions anyone can do, you're literally spawning a lifetime of
energy use. Best to do that when you're SURE they will have all the resources
they need to be a productive and helpful member of society...not when you're
16 and can't care for them properly.

I do think there is value to having a balanced aged pyramid, however. We don't
want a China or Japan situation, where there are far too many old people,
which would crush the younger members of society under the burden of caring.
The one way to counteract that would be immigration, which has been a hot-
button issue and is not a given or perfect remedy for population pyramids.

~~~
ZitchDog
You could also be spawning the person who solves the problem of climate
change.

~~~
js8
I heard this argument many times. Has anyone ever actually done that? IMHO
it's just a generational procrastination.

~~~
nl
Well consider Jean-Joseph Pasteur and Jeanne-Etiennette Roqui for example.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Rebuttal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery)

~~~
nl
Sure, but all those simultaneous discoverers have parents too.

------
folkhack
Anecdotal: Many folks in my social circles are just less willing to accept the
real responsibility of raising a child. We're all late-20-somethings/early
30-somethings and I have the conversation _all_ the time with people who want
to wait until things like careers are established, until they have a chance to
seriously travel a bit, and most commonly they just want to enjoy a
relationship without the stress of kids. Kids are an insanely huge
responsibility, and to parent right _all_ of your life priorities change
completely.

Also, with religious stresses being almost non-existent in the groups I run in
I feel like people aren't jumping into legally-binding marriages which causes
the baby thing to be pushed down the road until they find someone they want to
forge a lifelong relationship with. I think it's a super good thing when
people take their time to find the right relationship for them!

All-in-all I've noticed a _big_ generational gap in thinking on this one
because all I hear from tons of older relatives is "sooo when you guys getting
married?" ...or even pushing for children before the fact. It feels unnatural
and downright weird to field those questions and it's neigh impossible to
explain "we're just taking our time to enjoy this thing and not rushing into
huge commitments with marriage or kids..."

We're just taking our time trying to do the right thing for us really... I
just wish people would stop calling us selfish for that.

~~~
nathanaldensr
It's terrifying to me that selfishness and self-centeredness has apparently
taken over that generation of young people. Our society and culture are doomed
if this doesn't change.

~~~
syedkarim
Isn't the act of having children just as selfish--or more selfish? I don't
know of any parents (I have four children) who had kids to advance the human
race. Most of the reasons for having kids--that I have heard--are related to
the personal satisfaction of raising children, having a family, and not being
alone when old. Not having kids is _less_ selfish than having kids, as the
non-parent is not adding any additional stress to society or the environment.

~~~
folkhack
Absolutely - and I'll make the argument that by rushing into something that
I'm not ready for financially/emotionally that I would be doing the kid and
world a huge disservice.

------
tlear
It is pretty amazing that we are witnessing hard natural selection in action.
Think of it like a disease that kills 50% of population. Those that have
immunity get to pass their genes, rest die out. Sort of like pressure from
smallpox.

I am really curious how this will get resolved. Just collapse of current
society with the values we have, some selection of properties like “need” to
have kids imprinted even harder then it is now?

Humans 100 years from now will be quite different to us it seems.

I am also quite amazed at all the kids hate. In addition to all other awesome
things they allow you to relive your childhood, chance to have an incredibly
close friend, you can teach them what you know, do some incredible things
together. Etc. Kids are not expensive unless you make them so. They can help
you with stuff too you know..(that is if you raise them to be decent people
and not just spend days staring at the iPad so they don’t bother you)

~~~
lotsofpulp
The most expensive part of a kid is stretching yourself to your limits to get
them into the most expensive neighborhoods (I.e. best schools) possible.

And the unfortunate thing is the data shows that this is the best move for
people to make, as the peers you are surrounded are the biggest determinant of
your future success (see opportunity atlas). Which is why people stretch
themselves to the max with 30 year mortgages. It’s inevitable in a society
with ever widening wealth/income gaps.

~~~
agensaequivocum
If you are putting off having a child on account of money you are doing life
wrong. Plenty of large families have non-software incomes and do just fine.
They may not be able to eat out but it's a sacrifice worth making.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I think most people would agree that having children while homeless is a bad
idea. Where that line is is a personal choice. I wouldn’t want kids unless I
could reasonably guarantee they’d be in a decent school district with some
chance to move up the socioeconomic ladder. But thats just my opinion.

~~~
ideals
Pretty big group of people who fit between software engineer and living in a
tent in SF.

------
cwperkins
A look at the charts tells a different story IMO.

> Birthrates fell or held steady for women of all ages except those in their
> early 40s. Teenagers saw the sharpest drop, with a 5% decline in their
> birthrate. Since peaking in 1991, the teen birthrate has fallen 73%.

Seems to me like people are waiting longer these days. We may be in a lull at
the moment, but I'd expect this to pick back up barring any adverse economic
conditions.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
If you push out the whole distribution of child births, some of those would-be
child births will not happen. Female fertility falls rapidly after 35[1]. It's
not something you can simply delay across the population and expect to get the
same total reproduction rate. People will have fewer kids than they otherwise
would have.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quant...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility#Quantification_of_effect)

------
gumby
We had 8 years of happy marriage before having a kid, which resulted in
decades of a different kind of happy marriage. I’m glad we waited and glad we
became parents.

What’s not frequently discussed is how many people are unhappy having become
parents. It worked out great for us but one thing I learnt was how many other
parents regret that choice. There’s an understandable taboo on discussing it
(you have the responsibility, and you don’t want the kids, who had no choice
in the matter, to feel unwanted) but a result of the taboo is that people feel
pressured into shifting their life in a way they regret.

One reason why I think it worked for us is _because_ we waited.

------
bfrog
The US more or less hates kids and parents. You want more kids? Our society
needs to reduce health care and childcare costs while socially making the
"village" more of a socially accepted setup. I have 3 generations in my house
with other family nearby. I can't imagine doing it any other way. The current
job environment is you should be moving to where the jobs are. Why do people
need to move to sit on a computer all day is beyond me.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
Respectfully, I think reducing childcare costs is in direct tension with
returning to an expectation that grandparents share some of the child rearing
responsibilities.

Hopefully an expansion of remote work can improve this situation.

~~~
bfrog
Childcare costs could be somewhat indirectly related to grandparents having to
retire later or not at all.

------
brenden2
The Ponzi scheme that is the economy is not going to work unless there are
lots of new entrants. We either need a) lots of births or b) lots of
immigration.

I don't know about other people, but the idea of trying to have a child is
unfathomable to me because I am very, very far away from being (economically)
in a place where I feel comfortable breeding. As someone who doesn't fit the
mold society wants me to be (i.e., a real contrarian but not in the hip cool
SV way), there's simply no way I can participate in the one thing that being
human is really about: procreation.

PS[edit]: Idiocracy is a great film and everyone should watch it.

~~~
ikeboy
Why does the economy require new entrants?

~~~
brenden2
Where do you think the growth comes from? More people at the bottom push up
everyone at the top.

~~~
notduncansmith
Not “everyone”. Imagine the economy like a tank of water, and each person a
single molecule of H20, and proximity to the top of the tank represents
relative wealth. So all the water molecules are constantly shifting a bit, but
mostly stay in place unless something shakes up the tank.

If you sprinkle water on the top, those molecules stay mostly at the top: rich
parents’ kids mostly stay rich. If you feed water in through a pump at the
bottom, most of those molecules will stay at the bottom: poor parents’ kids
usually stay poor.

In general, the closer you are to the top or bottom, the more likely you are
to stay there. Adding from the bottom pushes the people at the top even
higher, yes; but those in between the bottom and top mostly just shift around
as the middle gets wider.

~~~
brenden2
It's more like a pyramid, where the people at the top of the pyramid go
farther up the more people you add to the bottom. The size of the whole
pyramid increases over time, and some people might move up or down a few
levels, but the majority of people will spend their whole lives near the
bottom.

------
save_ferris
I decided against kids a couple of years ago and I’m so glad I did. I just
couldn’t see myself raising kids the way I wanted to and being able to keep my
career and quality of life. And I see so many new parents just being ground
down by it all, and that was before the pandemic.

Without independent wealth, I just don’t see how people do it without making
some incredible sacrifices.

~~~
WhompingWindows
They DO make incredible sacrifices: losing sleep, losing free time, everything
gets messy and slobbery, kids are very expensive, they can get into trouble
and worry you...on and on.

Then again, parents see the trade-offs. They'll have someone to take care of
them later, to pay some of that forward to society, plus parents are often the
kind of people who love babies/kids and take joy and pleasure in the process.

It totally makes the best sense to let every person decide if these trade-offs
are worth it...but I do think we should support parents financially, as having
a balanced age pyramid is an important thing for a society.

~~~
save_ferris
> but I do think we should support parents financially,

I completely agree, but the cynic in me just doesn't see a scenario where this
is politically feasible in the US.

~~~
rhexs
Just to be clear, America absolutely does support parents financially to an
enormous degree. Hint: it’s not the middle class we’re supporting.

------
keiferski
I know this is a sci-fi scenario, but: don't overpopulation problems evaporate
once space travel and colonization really kick off? In fact, at that point, it
would seem that more people = better, at least if 'explore the universe' is
something you think civilization should do.

This scenario seems doable/likely within a few hundred years. Less if space
travel becomes more than a niche thing.

~~~
orev
Space travel and colonization is so far off from a realistic option that you
might as well be talking about Captain Marvel swooping in and saving the
planet. The physics simply don’t allow it to happen (short of some truly major
breakthrough like warp drive/time travel). And we don’t have hundreds or
thousands of years to wait for things like that — the current trends point to
a few decades at best to solve these problems.

Also, colonization creates more people. The current ones stay where they are,
while only a few adventurers move to the new place, and then have kids there.
Most people are not going to give up a lifetime’s worth of building a life
somewhere, at least not in the numbers needed to impact total population.

~~~
keiferski
I don't know, that seems a bit pessimistic. Right now, space travel is a tiny
fraction of global economic activity. What if that increased 10x, 100x, or
1,000x?

Submarines and self-contained vessels might be a good metaphor/approach, as
compared to a full-blown colony. It doesn't seem implausible that we could
have millions of self-contained spaceships, each carrying hundreds of people,
within ~200 years, assuming that serious percentages of GDP are put toward it.

~~~
ben_w
We could, but hundreds of millions is a small fraction of our population and
200 years is too long if it’s an important part of the solution.

Also, cislunar space is much easier than colonising the planets, which is in
turn orders of magnitude easier than colonising other star systems — even if
you can find enough people to do it, which is hard because why would Joe or
Jane Average want to go to a deep space colony where ping-time is measured in
years at best, or dozens of geological epochs at worst?

------
mtalantikite
I'd also emphasize the financial stresses of raising a child. Young people
have huge financial burdens from college, live in extremely expensive cities,
and the idea of adding a child into that life seems ridiculous.

Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.

~~~
nl
> Plus we have too many people in the world as it is.

Just pointing out there is no real evidence this is the case.

Many people use vastly less resources than the average American, and even at
high standards of living this remains true.

We are able to feed all the people in the world easily, with current (or less)
environmental impact (just look at the waste we produce).

It's choices, not carrying capacity that leads to environmental issues.

~~~
lm28469
You can't really live like a sub saharan person if you're in the US. Just
sitting in an air conditioned office for a week probably makes you use more
energy than the average guy in Sudan use in a year.

~~~
nl
And yet the company deciding to keep aircon at 21C instead if 25Cis made up of
people and shareholders all who can change that decision.

Plenty of green buildings are carbon neutral or negative.

~~~
lm28469
I've seen coworkers manually cranking the heat up to 25C in the middle of
winter, people just don't give a shit.

I live in berlin, you literally don't need heating if your building has any
kind of insulation, you can just wear a sweater and be ok. But no, they even
heat the damn stair cases no one uses because we have elevators.

~~~
nl
I think you are making my point for me?

It's literally people's choices causing this. Not some inherent carrying
capacity.

------
ruminasean
I suspect 9 months from the lockdown months will see a surge in births....

~~~
raldi
Not for any couples that already have a kid.

~~~
bitlax
This is snark that will be upvoted but not borne out by statistics.

------
alexpotato
I'm 39 and have three kids aged 4, 2 and 1 month old.

I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length
overview of the emotional pros and cons of having children:
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-
parenthood/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/)

I like to think about it as kids are +1,000,000 points and -900,000 points at
the same time. The average is probably a slight positive but the highs are
extremely high and the lows are also pretty low. This TED talk goes into this
in more detail and is also great about giving honest views of being a parent:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_talk_parenting_taboos)

To make a development analogy: think of a time when you spent a huge effort
trying to solve a bug in a code base you really care about. Finding that bug
was incredibly frustrating and made you question why you even got into
programming. Then, you find the answer and you watch your program work again
and be better than it was before. This rollercoaster of emotions with a net
positive outcome parallels very closely with having children.

------
nine_zeros
I thought the reasons would be obvious. The cost of living has inflated very
rapidly in the last 8 years whereas disposable income has gone down because of
high rent, debt payments and stagnant real incomes.

What are they proposing? Millenials stay in school longer than ever, take on
massive debts early on, pay ever increasing rent, train themselves up to a
skilled worker for a livable wage, get a massive mortgage and THEN go
sacrifice more by having a kid (whose education costs will be off the roof)?

What a cruel joke!

------
mlthoughts2018
I really want to have kids, but I don’t feel financially capable of it. I have
a very good, stable job with a high developer salary and costs of raising a
child are just way, way, way too high to consider it.

I would at minimum need to be certain I have enough money to

\- own a nice, safe home we cannot easily be evicted / removed from (eg due to
landlord preferences), within a short commute from my workplace and any school
/ child care locations we need.

\- have a personal savings rate that will allow me to fully pay for some child
care options, school, and eventually college, and give my child some lump sum
for an emergency fund when they move out on their own.

\- have remaining savings rate to still achieve some of my personal goals that
I’m unwilling to sacrifice over child care, like traveling / vacationing,
continued education, and supporting my elderly parents when needed.

I cannot see a way to do this without earning probably upwards of $500k/year,
so having children is just financially untenable for me.

If home prices near major tech centers went down, or my salary went up, then
I’d love to. But as labor share of wealth stagnates and urban real estate is
increasingly priced out for average families, it’s just impossible.

------
thawaway1837
No one I know wants to have a child.

The primary reason? It’s super expensive. And people my age entered the
workforce right before the Great Recession, which hammered their wages and
they lost years of salary growth, followed by not even a decade later, a
pandemic, which will do worse.

While raising a child continues to get more expensive.

------
merricksb
[https://archive.md/Mkn7f](https://archive.md/Mkn7f)

------
twoquestions
I'll try to put this in a nonjudgemental way, and after a few revisions I'm
still not happy with the tone of this comment. Sorry about that.

I find it really tough to harmonize the ideas that: 1) If you can't sell your
labor to provide for yourself, you deserve to die. 2) You should have kids,
and not only cost yourself $100,000 at least, and increase competition for
resources.

The cynic in me thinks people want to see others fail so they can feel better
about themselves, and more people competing for labor and capital decreasing
the demand for labor will increase the number of people who society will deem
unworthy of existence. By the odds, any random kid isn't going to change the
world, they're just going to be another mouth to feed, and more than likely
going to make things somewhat worse for everyone else. This is a blood-soaked
all-against-all kill-and-die world, and what is a kid other than another knife
pointed at you?

As far as I can tell, this seems about as rational as being proud to put out
your own eyes with a red-hot grapefruit spoon.

As far as the "Kids give your life meaning" idea goes, giving one's parents
meaning is a lot to put on a baby who can't even lift their own head, or
anyone else for that matter. We're told all our lives that we're on our own,
that anyone who needs anything from anyone else is weak and doesn't deserve
existence (which is both morally wrong and incorrect). At the same time, it's
supposedly okay to force a child to emotionally support you? That doesn't make
any sense.

I can at least comprehend the racist argument, that it's one's responsibility
to have kids to outcompete outsiders. I disagree with it for _numerous_
reasons, but I can at least fit that idea in my head. Maybe that's a reason
having kids squicks me out so much, is the only comprehensible argument to me
I find repulsive and I've only heard it out of repulsive people.

Is the desire to have kids _completely_ ruled by biological/hormonal factors,
or a fear of ostracism for not "doing one's duty"? A lot of people I know and
respect are good parents and don't regret having kids, but can't articulate
why they did, so I'm not under the impression that parents are all cruel,
broken assholes (though in my hometown there were _numerous_ examples of
this).

What is it about parenthood that isn't a curse on yourself and everyone else?

~~~
zxcmx
People don't exist without parents. The parts which are not a curse are just
the joys (and struggles) of existence.

The part which is not a curse is _you_.

In a perfect world the ideal people to answer this question would be your
parents, but I don't want to presume. We get the families we get, it's just
part of the deal.

------
treespace88
Society acts like having kids is a luxury good, and not a vital resource.

You can certainly argue that we need to have fewer kids, but to expect parents
to fully bear the responsibility of raising them alone drives down the
potential of the next generation.

------
corey_moncure
Meanwhile, "site developers" are in a mad rush to tear down miles and miles of
virgin forest and construct new cookie cutter houses they expect to sell for
$300,000 each, in my city. This, in the midst of the worst unemployment crisis
we've seen since the dust bowl.

~~~
sjg007
There's some reasons for this... existing housing stock is old so requires
renovation or maybe not available. People want also want bigger houses and
maybe a little more land. So because you have the land people will use it. In
places with land use restrictions or simply places that are out of room you
see infilling and renovations. Schools play a big role and a lot of families
want to move into neighborhoods with families in them.

------
ycombonator
Just look at the number of pets being adopted by Millennials.

------
ianai
Deciding to not have a kid seems like a functional downvote on the surrounding
community and circumstances after the per capita growth levels off.

------
trabant00
About the discussions for/against having children: quit justifying your
choice. Most of the time the reason you think made you choose is not the real
one and any argument can be countered easily, it only opens your choice to
discussion even more.

Especially justifying not having children with the state of economy, politics
or social issues does not stand up to scrutiny if you look back in history.

On the other hand simply and unemotionally stating "I don't want children
(right now)" is as unbeatable as they come.

~~~
ausbah
this is probably the most confusing comment I've seen in this thread

the reasons people have for or for not having kids aren't real reasons
because...history? or they're "easily countered"? some examples would be nice
to provide context to these statements

~~~
trabant00
The reasons people _give_ for/against having kids are just stories they tell
themselves. We want to seem rational and we feel the need to have a rational
reason for our choices.

"Economy is bad right now" and everything like this: historically the
conditions to have children have been a lot worse. History meaning more than
50 years.

Above is only one example of how you can open your choice to being countered
when this decision is just a personal thing that should not be up for debate
imho.

I explained poorly, the intention was just to help mostly young people have a
more solid stand especially against peer/family pressure.

------
QuantumGood
[http://archive.md/Mkn7f](http://archive.md/Mkn7f)

------
RickJWagner
Let's give it about a half a year, then look again.

All this coronavirus togetherness has potential to move the needle.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/Mkn7f](https://archive.md/Mkn7f)

------
game_the0ry
Millenial here, born in mid-80s. Have seen or experienced:

> dot-com boom / bust (junior high)

> 9/11 (high school)

> War on Terror (college)

> student loans (probably for the rest of my life)

> the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the lasting economic /
> career effects that never goes away when you go through that (right when I
> graduated college)

> the divisive culture wars between old / young, rich / poor, establishment /
> anti-establishment, etc

> Trump as president

> Covid-19

> narcissistic boomer parents

> narcissistic boomers in all levels and areas of institutional leadership
> whose baseline modus operandi is incompetence, corruption, and greed

> and a lot more that stresses me out

From my perspective, the world is back-sliding - everything feels like its
getting worse, not better. Economic data backs this - real wages are level
while cost of living is increasing.

And you wonder why we are putting have having children?

It's because we _do not_ know what economic optimism and financial security
feel like.

------
kindly_fo
Less people = less problems

------
m0zg
Raising to record high in about 7 months.

------
LordAtlas
Anyone have a non-paywall link?

~~~
hiram112
I've been able to read WSJ links with the Bypass Paywall plugin, Firefox, and
UBlock Origin.

* [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox)

------
jimbob45
We already know how to solve this: via tax incentivization to breed. Everyone
even remotely familiar with history knows about the baby boom and knows that
came about because of financial incentives from the GI Bill. Seems like the
government would rather have the cheap unorganized labor of immigrants rather
than do the right thing.

------
throwaway55554
Wait until January 2021.

But on a serious note, even though my SO and I are doing very well
economically (both engineers), it's still weighs heavy the thought of having a
child with how expendable engineers are these days.

~~~
swebs
>with how expendable engineers are these days

I have never heard anyone say that. What kind of engineers are you? There
should be demand everywhere.

~~~
throwaway55554
I mean expendable in the sense that as an employee you can just be thrown away
if the market dips. Sure, you can maybe find more work, but you probably would
have to uproot (not everyone lives in SV) and that's not easy with kids. My
parents did that and it sucked; 8 different schools from elementary to high
school.

------
meddlepal
Kids aren't worth the headache (queue the parents telling me how their kid is
the greatest thing that ever happened to them).

I'd rather allocate the saved 500K-1million dollars it costs to raise a kid
and use it for myself.

~~~
glitchc
I thought much the same for the longest time... until we had one by accident.

Rearing a child grounds you in a way you cannot imagine at this moment.
Looking back, I realize not having a kid was just me trying to avoid making
any hard choices in life.

Now, when I interact with colleagues who don't have kids, I see a certain
shallowness of perspective that, in retrospect, I myself was guilty of. None
of them ever really grew up.

~~~
bagacrap
that's not condescending at all

~~~
glitchc
I'm sorry if it sounds condescending. It really is the truth. When it comes to
a child, it's only after experiencing both sides that one can truly decide
which is better.

~~~
UEMayChange
It doesn't sound condescending, it is condescending. It can't be that hard for
you to see that there are other ways of broadening one's perspective than
having a kid.

~~~
glitchc
Having traveled the world by now, experiencing different cultures, cuisines
and work environments, there's really no analog to the experience of rearing a
child. It broadens your perspective in a different manner, unlike the other
ones. You are probably tired of having everyone with kids say the same thing
to you again and again, in different ways. I get it. But you have to admit,
there must be some fire to all that smoke.

I do agree with the other posters though: If kids are not of interest, it is
better, on average, not to have one. The world is full of unwanted children.
Just recognize that there is a consequence attached to not having this
experience. As in other things, there's no free lunch.

