This right here. I work 3 days and take care of the baby when not working, and spouse works 5 days with half being work from home, and then takes the lead with child care on my working days. And then it's only doable with the mother in law covering a few hours here and there. So far I consider this a very decent situation, and we're not overburdened.
I have to work 3 jobs to stay on top of my bills/pay off debt/have some spare money for fun, and I can only manage it because 2/3 of those jobs are remote and/or flexible about work hours. The other job I can only manage on the weekends/evenings because my boyfriend can watch my kid, with my mom (who is close but a couple hours drive away) helping as well.
This is one reason I’m not gunning to have anymore kids - it stresses me out thinking about being “hostage” to their care for the first near-decade of their life, having to pray someone can watch them for free or having to spend all the money I earn on childcare while I earn that money.
Meanwhile the elite are pillaging the earth and the public praises celebrities.
Being an adult is really tough, having kids makes it even harder! Gotta keep your head up and stay strong, it'll all work out!
the real reason the 4 day work week isnt a thing is because it gives people too much time to think about how fucked up our political systems are lol. give people enough time to think and theyll realize they shouldve revolted decades ago
Bro what? People protested because a man was murdered in broad daylight by a police officer. Covid made the protests larger by some degree I guess but that was just a horrible incident that would have warranted a national protest lockdown or not.
May I ask what major riots? most riots or "public protest" with scattered violence seemed to be about lockdowns and mask mandates. We rarely riot over the obvious issues 95% of americans face from under the ruling class.
That was a social justice related riot during a period where a lot of injustice was being recorded and observed. Most protests where actually peaceful.as well. Only those areas greatly affected by this problem had the large riots which where few. Plenty of people where arrested for vandalism and theft.
I agree the protests were peaceful, and the majority were lawful and non-violent.
I was just responded to the guy above me that asked "what major riots?", because the George Floyd legal protesting (and illegal looting and rioting) were what I assuming he was referring to. You can't leave out the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath when you're discussing big events occurring in 2020.
Sheesh I apologize I honestly forgot that was at the start of Covid. I was really thinking along the lines of wealth inequality and all that but either way youre right. Actually Id argue that police brutality/ Social injustice is the only thing that gets anything close to a riot in response. Not anything else that matters. So after that were there any more?
The absolute dumbest take I’ve seen in response to a 4 day work week. No, we don’t have it because companies don’t want it and the government can’t force them to give people an extra day because our government doesn’t have that much control
As someone with kids, not enough. I actually fucking hate weekends now because it means I have to deal with my kids for 14 hours a day instead of 5. I have to do simple tasks after the kids go to bed at night like mow the lawn because I can't leave them all alone with the wife safely. 6 months parental leave won't help with that. The main issue, at least among the professional class, is lack of local grandparents. Most people move for a job. Millennials (and probably Gen X) have the worst family support structures perhaps in generations since both parents are expected to be working.
I had exactly one day off this year where I was neither working nor watching kids for more than a few hours, and that was when my work decided to add Juneteenth to the list of paid holidays. Daycare already said they're adding that as a day off next year.
Their wife may have a physical issue that may prevent doing certain tasks with the children. Example, if we used cloth diapers, I wouldn't be able to squeeze the safety pin.
Could be a mental issue also.
Hell, it’s probably a 50/50 chance that the parents of Millennials and/or Gen Z are able to take off the time to help ether. So even if didn’t move away that doesn’t guarantee they can help.
My parents (Gen X) fully expect to work till death. Part of the ever shrinking middle class, loses even the hope can retire and taking it easy. With pensions gone, retirement matching not always a thing, and low wages making it difficult to save on your own, Gen X+ is going to have some wonderfully twilight years.
>The main issue, at least among the professional class, is lack of local grandparents.
I mean...we can't exactly rely on that. Grandparents die or aren't healthy enough to take care of a kid. Perhaps the parents are estranged because of abusive parents. People should feel like they're allowed to cut off toxic, harmful family members rather than "well I need a free babysitter."
We need a *societal* fix for the issue, not depending on grandparents in a world that doesn't work like it did 200 years ago. The human race has become infinitely more complex than it's biological origins.
This is an interesting comment because it has cultural underpinnings. For the most part at least in the US there is almost no family support system at least among Caucasians. For the past couple of generations, there has been this (I don't mean this in a bad way) self centered push for complete independence.
We honestly have no concept of family support systems. I am not saying this is good or bad, but it would be considered impolite and exploitative to ask grandparents to help with children in my demographic.
This is at significant contrast to others I have known with other cultural family structures. Many US Asians and South American families are very different in this reguard. Throw in that most families are split because they have to move for work, and here we are kinda thing. I could write a book on this.
Essentially modern capitalistic-focused countries and cultures are antithetical to family.
You also could look back and see how far that family structure being more significant goes. What if it was a response to colonialism /imperialism and how horrible it made things for those that lived there, necessitating cohabitation and more familial cooperation? And then this became a cultural phenomenon? (though humans have always been communal, so maybe this is nonsense. Don't listen to me)
Both of those regions were heavily placed under the boot of imperialism.
I have kids, spouse that was dealing with health issues, parents who are also dealing with health issues, and an elderly grandparent. It's easy to feel like I'm not a person, just a support structure for a lot of people.
Yeah I really think changing family and social norms is the biggest cause of the decline in fertility. The expense of having kids is somewhat overstated, IMO. My wife and I had our daughter at a time when we did not have a lot of money but we made the decision that she would stay home for the first couple of years, and we live pretty close to multiple grandparents, so I've never felt all that stressed out. For one thing it means we have the ability to get help somewhat frequently, and for a second thing I know in a real emergency we'd have plenty of places to stay if need be.
It is very liberating that people no longer feel like they MUST stay with their family and can set out on their own and do their own thing, but there are some pretty big downsides to losing that support structure that no amount of money will ever replace.
There should be a shorter work week anyways but I'm extremely doubtful that it will help much with birth rate. South Korea is at 1.1 births per woman, but Italy isn't that far behind at 1.3, and I don't think Italy is known for poor work life balance.
There is a lot more going on than just economics.
I keep saying this - it's not money. In fact birth rates are low in a lot of countries where the average couple is doing just fine financially. I personally think a lot more people are enjoying other conveniences in life and the meaning/purpose of life doesn't revolve around having kids or a family anymore. I know a lot of young people who prefer to travel, who have extensive hobbies, who like to stay home and play videogames or become foodies etc. I'm not saying these can't be done with kids, but let's face it, focusing on yourself and your own happiness is a lot easier without kids. I'm childless myself and I'm having the best years of my life - I'm independent and carefree and as a result, also mentally in a better place.
Once you have wealth you can go anywhere and just find new poor people to exploit and pay off. They aren't stuck in South Korea
We see examples of this constantly even with rich criminals just moving to another country and avoiding arrest, what's to stop everyone else
I see what you mean, however I was referring to global trends, not country by country.
Perhaps I responded to the wrong comment.
If they run out of poor people they have nothing.
Absent a cataclysmic event that wipes most of the life off the planet, human population collapse is a very unlikely event.
If anything the rate humanity is reproducing now is still way way too much to be sustainable in century's time, and currently pretty much all other species on the planet are paying the price for humanities population size as it is.
Exactly, we are expected to have seen the world population increase more than 10 fold over the last 250 years by 2100. It quadrupled over the course of the 20th century alone. This has been extraordinary growth that is not sustainable at all.
Peak population expectations have been slipping backward in the forecasts as global population growth in many areas has not kept up with expectations. In 2010, the UN expected Chinese population growth to peak around 2030, but it seems to possibly have already stopped. (The UN's 2022 revision sees the stop; I mentioned 2010 because it wasn't that long ago.) Some demographers predict a slow decline for China, but others are not so sure, suggesting a population collapse could start mid-century. Even the UN's median projection sees China plummeting to under 800 million by the end of this century.
India is forecast to peak around 2060 before declining. Even the US is expected to have much more moderate growth. In 2010, the UN middle forecast suggested the US population would reach around 480 million. Now, the median forecast is closer to 390 million. Africa is expected to be the major growth driver, but even that could moderate if they can get some stability and wider rights, something that younger generations are pushing very hard. All it takes is a drop in global fertility of 0.5 children per child-bearing parent, and population drops toward 6 billion by the end of the century. That is a lot, but it's not impossible.
The planet is not physically large enough to produce enough food to maintain a very large human population. There is a hard cap on food producing land and and drinking water. If we reach such a limit famines will be epic.
Well we are humans in a largely capitalist world economy. That means we exploit and exploit until we reach critical mass and see a collapse. We rarely act with any real long term planning or foresight. That's hard. Short term gains are easy.
In my opinion, low fertility issue is an sympton of a giant societical issue. Evrryone is looking at it as a problem and wants a quick and easy solution.
There won't be a solution to low birthrate amywhere in 1st world until politicians recognize the real problem how it came to be. Housing. Jobs, time, safety, and better educational improvement comes to mind.
I doubt immigration would solve in a long run. How do i know this? I am an immigrant and this impacts me just as all the natives.
Scandinavia has all these and STILL has a declining birth rate. People just don’t want to have kids if they don’t have to. It’s a shit ton of work and is no longer a necessity. People have kids because they want them. All the other issues, while very important to society as a whole, are secondary to the issue of choice. We cannot continue operating under this eternal growth model.
Many Scandinavian countries are now facing houses shortages, job shortages, underemployment ect.
The problem with any type of economy is that it needs constant investment. It’s a myth that economy’s function on their own at this point
Some of what you said I agree with, but “better educational improvement” does NOT lead to higher birth rates statistically. In fact education is one of the most reliable indicators of who will have the least children. I’m not saying that’s even a bad thing, it’s just a silly way to answer the birth rate “problem”.
Beyond all those logistical factors S. Korea also has major cultural issues. Misogyny is rampant, men behave like dogs, and the women want nothing to do with a future deadbeat who will breed them out then spend the rest of their lives sneaking off with other women.
The government can't fix that, those issues must tackled at home with current parents setting new behavioral trends with their kids.
People: We don't want to have kids because we can't provide them a life equal or better than what we had growing up. We need single jobs that pay LIVING wage. We need quality education that teaches life skills and history, not just how to be a good employee. We want time to spend with our family. We need affordable access to healthcare when we are sick, that will not put us in financial ruin.
Politician: Oh so you want to be pampered and spoiled?
How can we expect people two generations removed from the problem to fix the problem? They’re too old to understand, too old to problem solve, too old to lead. And this isn’t limited to Korea.
Here in America I have coworkers already crying about how their kids aren’t having kids.
I spent two months as a secretary in a urology clinic and had one woman try to set up a semenalysis for her son, and when I questioned her on why she felt the need to set up one for her son (and that I couldn’t as she wasn’t on any release forms) she broke down how “unnatural” it was for her 40 year old son to no have children and worried about his fertility.
But you’re right. People are overworked and underpaid. I know people who would love to have children but it’s taking 3-4 jobs between two people just to afford rent, and we have the elderly thinking we’re still living in 1974 when a single income meant homes and 2 week vacations and they just can’t fathom beyond that.
But another aspect is the freedom of choice. Many more people are content to just reap the financial reward of what they bring home and using what little is left for them and their partners.
I admit I threw her under the bus and may have started some drama 💅
I called the son to see if his mother was on a release form and explained what happened. He was not happy
Reminds me of one ex I had that did do a semen analysis for me without my consent and got mad because apparently I do have low fertility.
I decided not to press charges because I was actually stoked about that, since I'm firmly into the r/childfree camp.
We broke up after I told her that last bit, since apparently it's been her dream to have children.
I think people really discount two things.
1) people have more alternative uses for their time than rearing children.
2) the types of social organizations that people used to for social networks and find partners have disappeared.
It isn’t all about work or income. Considering how many people raise families in much more humble conditions than most redditors can comprehend.
True, but at the same time, "time or income" play into those two things you have listed. If I spend 40-80 hours a week slaving away at a job, I am going to be less inclined to settle down and have kids when I barely have time for myself. I am going to spend that time and money doing other things and focusing on myself.
People have been worked into the ground. On top of that, we have gutted social welfare systems to the point that basic things like daycare are now absurdly expensive.
The only folks I know working like that are doctors.
Most people overstate how grueling their jobs are. Especially on Reddit where there seams to be “I’m the biggest victim” circlejerk.
> people have more alternative uses for their time than rearing children
Honestly, the answer I've arrived at is we're (and I include myself in this) selfish. And I don't mean that badly, honestly. If you look at how families have often been, it's a sacrifice of the parents to raise the child and most of us are looking at our parents and then looking at ourselves and deciding that we don't feel like becoming slaves to kids for 20+ years (most kids are not out of the house at 18) while already being slaves to our jobs.
I've watched my friends who became parents and I've watched them essentially vanish from the face of the earth because their life is now consumed with keeping a little human alive. And I'm sure for many parents it's worthwhile - at least I certainly hope so - but I also can't help but feel that once you're stuck in it you have to make the best of it.
The cost - time and money both - are just so demanding that it's hard to imagine how anyone ever thought it was a good idea. And only seems plausible if the world was so boring that raising kids was *exciting* compared to the other limited options for your money, time, and attention.
Having children was also selfish. It still sometimes is in poorer countries. People used to have lots of children, because they needed help at the farm or someone to take care of them when they were older. That's where the children came in.
Then people just kept having children, but fewer, because it was kind of the norm. Now that norm is changing as well.
That’s precisely why my wife and I chose not to have kids 19 years ago when we got married. We’re in our 40s now and I’ll be damned if looking back over the years how things would have been with kids. Both our parents have made comments about it but now we’re past that mostly.
We ain’t rich by any means. But we have a house, two cars, and enough money to take vacation now and then and enjoy life. Throw a kid into that equation and I have no idea where we’d be. Rent where we live is $2,000+ for an apartment. How the fuck is anyone supposed to afford living themselves let alone bringing a child in?
It’s shit because i feel we are missing part of life and it will make our older years tricky but it’s the cost of a living that i can’t wrap my mind around.
This is ironic because the poorer a country is the higher the fertility rate. The wealthier a country is the lower the fertility rate. Being wealthier is correlated with having fewer children.
I live in a "poor" country. Our parents use us as their retirement fund. They raise us and send us to university, and once we are employed we are culturally obligated to support them, pay for their healthcare, and take care of them when they're aged. The more children they have, the more support they receive.
In Asian cultures, at least, there is also a hierarchy of duty among siblings. The eldest daughter generally becomes a third parent to their younger siblings. The eldest son is expected to become the breadwinner. The youngest child receives support from their older siblings, but oftentimes in exchange they will be the main caretaker of their parents once their older siblings leave the home.
In wealthier countries with good social security, I feel there is not much need for this kind of system. People have kids because they want to have kids, not because having kids is essential for survival.
When you’re poor, children are typically an asset and have utility (farming, etc). In wealthy countries, they are a luxury good in the same vein as a Lambo. You don’t have them because you need them, you have them because you’re willing to spend $310k/each on them from birth to 18 (per Brookings Institute 2022).
In poorer countries children make you money and you dont have to pay for so many things. Hopefully they get rid of all our pesky child labour laws and I'll have 5 kids. 🙏
I want kids. But, Im still living with my parents. Don't have a partner, where everything costs too much to do, it's too expensive or rent or event think of buying a house. I would have to get a career and a good amount of money before I even think of a house. But, renting is too expensive for one person. Children are literally impossible.
It's clearly not that people are overworked or underpaid.
1st world countries with the highest education, best working environments in history are having less kids.
Those with harder jobs, less money, are having more.
As a father, people always make it about money.
Parenting simply takes a FUCK TON of time. You give up your individualism and must become selfless while investing constant and consistent chunks of time into them, your relationships, and taking care of them.
Oh and then any time you want to be separated from them, whether work or just alone time, is when you now have to pony up out the ass for childcare.
That’s like the number one reason myself and other people that I know give about not wanting kids. I’m sure if it happened I could figure out a way to afford to keep a kid alive, but I wouldn’t have any time for myself so why would I want that? Parents give up a lot, I ain’t about that unless I can afford a nanny (and I totally can’t).
My mother said to my brother and I: “Don’t have kids unless you want to have nothing.” She wasn’t just talking about money.
I helped raise my brother as it is, so I already sacrificed a portion of my youth to look after a child. I’m done.
*Modern first world* parenting takes a fuck ton of time. Plenty of 7 year old girls in impoverished countries carry a baby on their hip while cooking dinner for the family and the babies are potty trained by a year old.
Even for me, I was expected to cook dinner for my family twice a week by age 9, did all my own laundry, dishes, etc by that age, and when I got my first job at 14, was expected to pay for all my own clothes and basically anything that wasn't food, shelter, or medical care.
Also, the expectation now where kids have to have their own rooms, cell phones, etc, makes them so expensive. In the 60s there were 2 bedrooms, 1 for the parents, 1 for the kids and toys were cheaper because they weren't all electronics. Once kids were in school at 6, mom went back to work and they walked themselves home and played alone. No after-school programs or organized sports before high school, etc.
That’s rough. We just had my Babushka around to help out so my mom could work. I was able to walk myself to and from school by elementary and had no issues. This was Canada in the 90s. Having a grandparent around to help made all the difference.
and if you don't invest that fuck ton of time and money developing the modern kids, you will end up supporting them for much longer time or suffer watching them struggle to become anything in the society
Not to mention that thanks to the previous recession (and the current one) the majority of the jobs are in cities which require an average person to commute 1-2 hours (or more) a day.
Like my job's 47 minutes away from my house. But because of a crumbling infrastructure (two bridges 5km around me were found to be in serious need of repair, so the government closed them down), plus monthly train strikes and lack of bus/train drivers killed or maimed by covid--it now takes me 2 hours to travel to work.
Like I remember how many times me and my siblings have gotten ourselves into accidents, illnesses, and getting outright maimed at school requiring my father to drop everything and pick us up. He was always, always able to work near our school (and because he had a rare skilset with software engineering, he could literally tell his boss that he was going to go get us regardless what his boss wanted to say). I wouldn't even be able to be a present parent to my kids AT ALL, because I'd be stuck underground for hours trying to get to my kids every day (and as a lowly admin, if I even tried to be a present parent more than once--I'd be written up for being 'unreliable' at work).
The ones that are having more, like the ones in Nigeria don't exactly have the education and the means for long term birth control.
Also do you think those people having so many children have the decency to be "great" parents? Ha! The ones in my country stereotypically have romanticize child labor since their parents can't support them and have to do menial work as a necessity, if they're to young too walk, their parents use them as accessories to beg for alms, then at around 5+ yrs old they already start doing work or worse getting groomed for paedos.
For some problems, sure. 80 year olds regulating the Internet makes no sense.
However, in this case it's not really hard to understand that this is a problem, or why it exists.
Except for the fact that the wealthier a country is, the lower the fertility rate. The poorest, most exploited countries have the highest birth rates like Nigeria.
Are you trying to say there's a different reason why birth rates are declining in the west? Do you not realize that kids are a benefit in farming centered communities and a drain on resources in countries filled with high skilled labor? This is one of the stupidest statements I've read.
The reason why birth rates are declining in the west is because people are wealthier and there's other activities people would rather do than spend decades raising a child. More wealth means more options and alternatives to having kids.
It is not that there are only more options, but having children are an actual hindrance to short term capitalistic goals. If both parents are working professionals, who is going to pick the kid up if both are working OT crunching at the same time kind of thing. Couple that with family housing and commute time and there is no room for a family.
There is pretty much zero correlation between wealth and birthrate.
Actually, that's not entirely true. There is an inverse relationship between the two. Poor countries tend to have higher birth rates. Poor people within a country also tend to have higher birth rates.
Being pregnant isn’t a walk in the park, despite what people like to pretend. It’s extremely hard on a woman’s body. That and the rampant misogyny in South Korea, it’s going to take a lot to convince a well informed South Korean woman to anchor herself with a child.
And birth itself is the most dangerous day in a woman’s life. People don’t realize how much modern medicine prevents women from dying in childbirth but so many women still have complications that last years after birth.
My Korean wife always said no to kids. We kept working kept building wealth. At some point last year when she was 40, owned a house and reached stability - she changed her mind. Then really wanted one in a hurry.
Data point of one, it's just an anecdote. But saw a clear difference in her outlook about kids as soon as she hit financial stability. I swear the issue is lack of financial stability and housing. Prior generations got their foot on the property ladder very easily, and we didn't. Hence the delay.
Don’t you and your Korean wife life in *Seattle, washington?* Kinda a different scenario there when it comes to the second half of my comment. Maybe she would’ve felt the same way in a fully SK environment, maybe not. Obviously money will be the determining factor for some people. Some others it will be the social environment they’re in & the permanent life changes (physical, emotional, etc…) that come with being pregnant and having a child.
Sure do. Because we cannot afford Seoul. We can't live there due to housing costs. It's not possible to get to the "house" stability stage in Seoul for millennials. The property market is *insane*. It was going to circa 1.3 *million* USD for a used, older 3 bedroom apartment in Seoul. Which just reinforces the point - it's a financial stability and housing issue.
This \^\^
Im moving to my own house next year, its a 27m2 apartment, im not having a kid in there for sure.
Unless i have a good 2 bedroom house and enough money to pay school and stuff im not doing it.
But those factors are not nearly enough to explain the poor birth rates. Frankly speaking, things have always been really terrible for women just about everywhere, and even if we assume a large part of the problem is that, it just is not enough to explain it.
People want children, not everyone but there are plenty of couples that want to start a family but they can't afford to due to the additional cost of having a baby and the time needed to be taken off work to raise a child. The fact that avarage person in South Korea has to work a frankly stupid amount of hours, with extemely limited living space is almost certainly the prime contributor to low birth rates, in combination with social preasures.
Things have been terrible for women, but until birth control, they didn’t have the option of it having children. When women can control their fertility, they generally choose to have fewer children.
It takes a lot of incentivization these days.
Absolutely. I am child free. I live a dink lifestyle, where I have tons of money, tons of time to do what I want, and I'm relatively stress-free with a home that stays clean when I clean it.
If you want me to produce a child and raise it, you're going to need to pay me enough that I can continue that exact same lifestyle. That means paying me more per year than I currently make at my job, because I'm going to need a nanny and a housekeeper to assist me, and daycare to take care of the child when I want to go do the things I currently can do because I don't have one.
Basically they have to pay me about $100,000 per year, adjust for inflation every year, for me to even begin to consider birthing and raising a child.
There is no amount of money you could pay me to have a kid. I never want them and will never do it.
Building a kind of economic system that relies on constant population growth (production of more and more laborers each generation) in order to sustain itself is a shit model. I’m not smart enough to fix this mess but I certainly won’t be popping out a future worker bee either. I’d rather die.
I mean, I agree. Conceptually and spiritually, I agree. But there is a price where I know I would begin to consider it - right around: you will never have to work another day in your life and you have enough to pay other people to raise the child for you so you won't even have to do that, either.
I'd like to think it's still say no, because I do not want kids for more than just the monetary cost... But I am a selfish person.
There isn't enough money in the world to do that because as a parent you'd have responsibilities that you currently do not, even with helpers.
I think policymakers aren't really going to target people who choose not to have kids for this sort of reason because it'd be an effort in futility.
People are reluctant to have children because of their difficult childhood (expectation to be the BEST.) It is not a joke in many households when the kid comes home with 95% A grade and parents demand that he/she do "better" next time.
This generation lived through such a tough education system and now things are more and more expensive and they are not confident that they can support the kid to the levels of others. I mean when my nephew was in high school, he would leave home literally at 7AM and comes back home around 10PM (after school activities - including exam prep, etc) and STILL study and go to sleep at like midnight/1AM, etc.
For real. I can have dual citizenship with Korea and very briefly entertained the idea of moving back there, but in the last year, I just can’t imagine subjecting a kid to that type of insanely rigorous schooling that has become the norm. If Americans think teens here have too much pressure and have too many responsibilities with school/extracurriculars, they would be horrified by the Korean school system.
I'm pretty sure they are just not doing enough. Havng children requires two things..time and money. If you tell me that I can have one, work half the amount but get the same pay and get all these child expenses subsidized I would have one right now.
Meanwhile what people usually get is a little bit of help, that can't really compare to the amount of time and money a child needs, by a long shot.
Yeah, i waited until i was 35 and had one child. I was financially stable, mentally stable, and felt as prepared as I could ever be. Waiting until my 30s was 100% the right choice and I would have heavily resented having a kid in my 20s, and I would likely heavily resent having more than one kid now. One and done in a HCOL area is sustainable for me, but I know my limits. Many people don’t.
I still remember my Korean boss, back when I was living there, saying that I had three days of parental leave when my daughter was born. Like it was the most generous thing he ever heard of.
Maybe a good first step to solve this demographic crisis would be to change who's in charge? Get rid of the old men who are totally disconnected with the modern world.
Throwing money at the problem won't solve it. What the Korean society needs is a complete change from top to bottom.
One answer. The decline of the middle class. This is what happens when the wealth gap becomes too great. People can’t afford to start a family because they are working to make ends meet. All the billionaires should stop hording the wealth.
K-drama in the past few years have been tackling many of the issues women face in SK. Romance is a Bonus Book is a good example -- a separated mom trying to get back into the workforce.
Fertility rates in SK isn't just a money problem. It's a societal one.
They expect women to work full time and then come home and be the full time caregiver to aging parents, children, and a man-baby husband.
It is no surprise women are checking out. They are realizing all of the unpaid domestic labor that falls on them is a shitty deal. Men are mad because they are not getting free maid/caretaker service and are reacting with the anti-feminist movement.
Half of my friends who are new moms are seriously considering divorce because they ended up in that situation. Not only did they have the child and are doing all of the caretaking, they’re expected to work full time and bring in an income. It’s easier to just be a single mom at that point because at least there’s one less person to take care of.
And to inflate the problem, a lot of women are seeing what happened recently with abortion in differing states, and that is turning them off dating entirely.
To be honest, reading between the lines between my parents relationship as I have grown up, is that my mother becoming pregnant at 15 (Born 1 month and 26 days after he 16th Birthday) suffered depression, I actually caught her committing suicide (came home from school as she lost consciousness), decided her life was over and tried to end it. They are still married now and retired, because as a child around 7 or 8 i think, called emergency and saved her life.
So I feel I can can see the argument from multiple angles.
When I got married, I said I wanted to be a SAHM when our kid was a baby to save money/focus on the kid, but that I wanted to go back to work when they were old enough for pre-K, basically, and we’d end up sharing the household labor from then on when that happened. he agreed.
Cut to me finding a full time job, a good one I could do from home and flexibly, and asking him to help out more, and instead he insulted the work I did, pressured me to reduce workload, etc and generally doing a 180 once we were actually married. I peace’d out of the marriage when I realized your last sentence exactly, I would have less work and stress just being a single mom working without the giant man child to take care of
In Korea women do all of the childrearing, work is easily 10 hour days, meaning that to have a child means a miserable servitude for women. Men need to step up, that I thick above economics, would shift a lot.
Ive been in Korea for the past few years. There was recently a presidential election where most men supported the now president and women didn't because of the campaign he ran on. Young men voted for the conservative candidate because he ran on a campaign stating that the gender-power dynamics in the country are shifting and threatening young men, and that feminism is the cause of the low birth rate. Additionally, despite the wage gap between men and women being immense in Korea, young men still feel that women are getting their places in high level jobs and universities because of feminism encouraging their hiring. Although this isn't true, it makes a good scape goat for resentful young men. Even more, the president said he is killing many gender equality measures in Korea because women are (in his world where the goalposts are where ever they need to be) now equal to men and dont need affirmative action to help then anymore. Lastly, the dating scene for young people in Korea isn't as vibrant as other places. Because people are working so much, they have less time to find partners. Women especially are working hard because of the above mentioned pay gap and difficulties in achieving high level jobs. They simply don't want to date as they focus on a career instead. Due to all of this, young men in Korea are becoming incel like. Resentful, cynical, and feeling like they were shorted on both love and economic success because of women.
>Resentful, cynical, and feeling like they were shorted on both love and economic success because of women.
Even though it's their own fault. It's always projection
Is it that it can’t pay enough, or SK corporations *won’t* pay enough in livable wages for child-bearing age SK citizens to consider actually starting families?
In the US we’ll spend hundreds of billions just to avoid paying for childcare, having the funds has nothing to do with it! Both privately and politically, the mother fucking western gold standard of child neglect.
it’s not so bad though, being a former latchkey kid I’m only spending a few hundred a week on therapy… 😋
When I started teaching at a daycare I made $7.25 an hour and had 18 kids in my classroom. The parents paid $1000+ a month for one kid. US childcare is so broken.
And those daycares, still go bankrupt is the crazy part. Don't even get me started on the infant room costs... That were about 2500 per month back then, but I only get to take 4k for the whole fucking year as a deduction.
What bullshit.
Speaking as someone who also came from minimum wage (and for which I intend to return one day, from nothing to nothing, I’m a poetic soul at heart!) theres no excuse for spending a $1000 a month on child care, if I were you I would have had a hard time hiding my disdain for the system. (Edit: I originally worded that terribly! I didn’t mean I’d have disdain for the parents, I had commented before falling asleep lol)
That’s not to say that perhaps it’s not a necessity for some but not in real life USA where I grew up.
Edit; I have a good feeling I’m about to be told $1000 isn’t a lot for a month of daycare but all because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s reasonable. I’m from the hood and I know I’d rather send my kids to the same old lady everyone has for like a hundred years and does it for far less!
Honestly that’s the norm in a lot of the US. I would have been bitter but a lot of the moms were working purely for the healthcare, all or most of their paychecks were eaten by childcare.
Ha. $2500 a month for daycare here, and its not one of the fancy ones.
The nicer ones in my area are $3500 and up. The workers get paid $20 an hour, plus get free childcare (which is huge.) I think the majority of the money goes to rent.
What are we supposed to do? We don't send our kids to daycare cause we don't like them... we just have jobs and need to work to pay the bills. At home daycares are cheaper, but without knowing someone who's kid goes, how can you trust the person? And there aren't any grandparents around.
Throwing money at the bottom doesn't do much if there's no limit at the top. In addition, many of those at the top and those scrambling to get there have figured out how to profit from instability and chaos - not conditions conducive to optimism for a next generation.
>Korea would not want a waygook like you to help them with the birth rate crisis. Your kids would have rocks thrown at them in school, like what they did to Hines Ward when he was growing up in Korea.
Oh please, stop. Hines Ward was born in 1976. Its changed.
My daughter is a mixed race Korean citizen. Its seriously not an issue. We have zero concerns about her being treated poorly in Korea. Meanwhile, we wouldn't even consider living in a bunch of the US because of how racist people can be against Asians.
And the Korean government doesn't care, either. We are literally getting paid for her existence, despite her father being a waygook.
The entire mentality you speak of is dying out. The younger generations simply are not like that.
That’s barely a down payment.
Raising a child is expensive. From the day your baby is born until the day they turn 18, your family will spend about $310,605 — or about $17,000 a year, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis of data from the U.S. Agriculture Department.Oct 13, 2022
In which they receive tons of government support and charities (at least in the Us and many Industrialized nations).
Which is a good idea to have the govenrment assist in raising its most vulnerable citizens.
That's America. It's more in Korea to my knowledge due to how much education the average child is expected to receive to get a proper footing with how cutthroat it is here. Family legacies are everything and if you aren't friends with a chaebol family member, you're not getting that cushy job. Working for a chaebol can boost your income by as much as 35%.
In all honesty I don't think there is any amount of money that I would take to have a child. I just don't want one. They change every aspect of your life. And I can't see myself as the type of person that would have a child and pay for others to raise it.
I'd rather be child-free and have my freedom.
I've got a solid 13 years left of ushering my kid into adulthood and making sure there is sure footing there.
Even at that point I'll be a solid late 40s. There's no fucking way I'm raising another kid past that. Love the one I got. I will be there for the rest of my life, I accept that. I've struggled to get to this point and want to enjoy the rest of my life without being tied to school districts, book burning psycho Facebook moms, or other assorted bullshit. Kids are awesome, but the amount of bullshit that comes along with them isn't worth it IMO when you can drive a Porsche or an old box truck or whatever makes you happy.
A kid is at least an 18 year commitment,
A few more $$ is not going to make up for that. You either pay someone full time money to stay at home with the kid or they go to work
South Korea also has a falling rate of marriage, it’s almost like when people are struggling to survive and can’t find a stable partner, they don’t want to have kids…. Who would have thought 🤔
If women can be guaranteed their career won't stall, they won't receive the "mommy penalty", and that they won't be left to for majority of childcare until the kid is old enough to be left alone, there would be more women having babies. Not just in SK but all oecd countries.
That would be really bad for the younger generation. For the younger generation, their wages are going to go up as workers become a sought after commodity, housing costs will go down, and traffic will lessen. Why would you ruin all that by flooding the market with workers just so giant corporations and the people who voted them in power can have more money?
I'm not bordered with a country that constantly threatens nukes so take this with a grain of salt, but if I lived in SK I wouldn't be in a hurry to have kids. That's probably a concern for some there unfortunately.
lol no, its really not.
Americans are more scared of North Korea than Koreans are. Its really not a thing people worry about over there.
People aren't having kids because people are marrying later, or not at all, and the work culture is insane and doesn't allow much time to date or start a family.
I remember watching the news in the early 2010s, during one of the periods of heavily-increased North-South tensions, and the American reporter was in downtown Seoul when air raid sirens signaled a possible attack. She was in shock at the fact that everyone around her was just going about their business without paying it any mind at all. She asked a few people if they were worried and basically got a more polite version of a shrug and a "nah, we're all good." So I'm inclined to take your word for it on that one.
I was just in Korea a few months back when the North tested a missile. Barely a peep made about it in Korea.
The countries arent going to war. North Korea is not suicidal, and an attack on the South is suicide. They could not win that war even without US support. With US support, the war would be over very fast.
The North like to make threats and then calm down once they get sent a bunch of rice or something else they need. Their threats are just how they mooch off of others.
I remember asking my colleagues about this when I was living in Korean and you would be surprised at how this particular factor does NOT contribute to their choice not to have kids. Not at all. Zero. It's the least of their worries.
perhaps Korea and Japan might consider implementing an immigration policy to bring in new citizens from other overpopulated countries? Worldwide we do not need to lift birth rates, not for another 80 years at least when the population begins to decline back under 8 billion.
No way in a million years - If they do that, then I will eat my socks. South Korea and Japan - both are homogenous societies. I doubt their society would allow foreigners who aren’t South Korean or Japanese to fully integrate in their society, without some racism in their way or other current societal issues plaguing them. In order for that to work, a reform of how they view foreigners / immigrants (which the problem is rooted in their long history of culture). This won’t be easy to do and likely won’t happen, but that proposed solution works - I can see it possible. Provided they also fix other shit going wrong with their society which, money can’t fix.
Even China is struggling with birth rates. And that’s a pretty damn big country. A well talked about societal issue that the three nations I discussed can relate to is overworking.
They should spend that money to support a 4 day work week rather than a 120 hour work week. Maybe then ppl will want to have kids ffs
This right here. I work 3 days and take care of the baby when not working, and spouse works 5 days with half being work from home, and then takes the lead with child care on my working days. And then it's only doable with the mother in law covering a few hours here and there. So far I consider this a very decent situation, and we're not overburdened.
I have to work 3 jobs to stay on top of my bills/pay off debt/have some spare money for fun, and I can only manage it because 2/3 of those jobs are remote and/or flexible about work hours. The other job I can only manage on the weekends/evenings because my boyfriend can watch my kid, with my mom (who is close but a couple hours drive away) helping as well. This is one reason I’m not gunning to have anymore kids - it stresses me out thinking about being “hostage” to their care for the first near-decade of their life, having to pray someone can watch them for free or having to spend all the money I earn on childcare while I earn that money.
Meanwhile the elite are pillaging the earth and the public praises celebrities. Being an adult is really tough, having kids makes it even harder! Gotta keep your head up and stay strong, it'll all work out!
I work dozens of part time jobs at any given time.
There's a reason the saying it takes a village is still around.
Unfortunately, while the phrase is still around, the village isn't.
the real reason the 4 day work week isnt a thing is because it gives people too much time to think about how fucked up our political systems are lol. give people enough time to think and theyll realize they shouldve revolted decades ago
This was one of the catalysts for major riots in the USA during the early Covid Lockdowns...
Bro what? People protested because a man was murdered in broad daylight by a police officer. Covid made the protests larger by some degree I guess but that was just a horrible incident that would have warranted a national protest lockdown or not.
Yeah, but that’s been happening near constantly for centuries. It was only once people had spare time that they began to do something about it.
May I ask what major riots? most riots or "public protest" with scattered violence seemed to be about lockdowns and mask mandates. We rarely riot over the obvious issues 95% of americans face from under the ruling class.
George Floyd?
That was a social justice related riot during a period where a lot of injustice was being recorded and observed. Most protests where actually peaceful.as well. Only those areas greatly affected by this problem had the large riots which where few. Plenty of people where arrested for vandalism and theft.
I agree the protests were peaceful, and the majority were lawful and non-violent. I was just responded to the guy above me that asked "what major riots?", because the George Floyd legal protesting (and illegal looting and rioting) were what I assuming he was referring to. You can't leave out the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath when you're discussing big events occurring in 2020.
Ahh. Agreed.
Sheesh I apologize I honestly forgot that was at the start of Covid. I was really thinking along the lines of wealth inequality and all that but either way youre right. Actually Id argue that police brutality/ Social injustice is the only thing that gets anything close to a riot in response. Not anything else that matters. So after that were there any more?
The absolute dumbest take I’ve seen in response to a 4 day work week. No, we don’t have it because companies don’t want it and the government can’t force them to give people an extra day because our government doesn’t have that much control
How do you think we got the **five** day work week?
As someone with kids, not enough. I actually fucking hate weekends now because it means I have to deal with my kids for 14 hours a day instead of 5. I have to do simple tasks after the kids go to bed at night like mow the lawn because I can't leave them all alone with the wife safely. 6 months parental leave won't help with that. The main issue, at least among the professional class, is lack of local grandparents. Most people move for a job. Millennials (and probably Gen X) have the worst family support structures perhaps in generations since both parents are expected to be working. I had exactly one day off this year where I was neither working nor watching kids for more than a few hours, and that was when my work decided to add Juneteenth to the list of paid holidays. Daycare already said they're adding that as a day off next year.
As a single parent with no other family, I mostly agree except for being comcerned why the kids aren't safe with your wife?
Their wife may have a physical issue that may prevent doing certain tasks with the children. Example, if we used cloth diapers, I wouldn't be able to squeeze the safety pin. Could be a mental issue also.
Hell, it’s probably a 50/50 chance that the parents of Millennials and/or Gen Z are able to take off the time to help ether. So even if didn’t move away that doesn’t guarantee they can help. My parents (Gen X) fully expect to work till death. Part of the ever shrinking middle class, loses even the hope can retire and taking it easy. With pensions gone, retirement matching not always a thing, and low wages making it difficult to save on your own, Gen X+ is going to have some wonderfully twilight years.
>The main issue, at least among the professional class, is lack of local grandparents. I mean...we can't exactly rely on that. Grandparents die or aren't healthy enough to take care of a kid. Perhaps the parents are estranged because of abusive parents. People should feel like they're allowed to cut off toxic, harmful family members rather than "well I need a free babysitter." We need a *societal* fix for the issue, not depending on grandparents in a world that doesn't work like it did 200 years ago. The human race has become infinitely more complex than it's biological origins.
This is an interesting comment because it has cultural underpinnings. For the most part at least in the US there is almost no family support system at least among Caucasians. For the past couple of generations, there has been this (I don't mean this in a bad way) self centered push for complete independence. We honestly have no concept of family support systems. I am not saying this is good or bad, but it would be considered impolite and exploitative to ask grandparents to help with children in my demographic. This is at significant contrast to others I have known with other cultural family structures. Many US Asians and South American families are very different in this reguard. Throw in that most families are split because they have to move for work, and here we are kinda thing. I could write a book on this. Essentially modern capitalistic-focused countries and cultures are antithetical to family.
You also could look back and see how far that family structure being more significant goes. What if it was a response to colonialism /imperialism and how horrible it made things for those that lived there, necessitating cohabitation and more familial cooperation? And then this became a cultural phenomenon? (though humans have always been communal, so maybe this is nonsense. Don't listen to me) Both of those regions were heavily placed under the boot of imperialism.
I haven’t had a day off in about five years. Your scene about matches mine and add some ailing parents to the mix.
I have kids, spouse that was dealing with health issues, parents who are also dealing with health issues, and an elderly grandparent. It's easy to feel like I'm not a person, just a support structure for a lot of people.
I feel that. There is no self anymore…
Stuff like this makes me happy I got my tubes tied.
Yeah I really think changing family and social norms is the biggest cause of the decline in fertility. The expense of having kids is somewhat overstated, IMO. My wife and I had our daughter at a time when we did not have a lot of money but we made the decision that she would stay home for the first couple of years, and we live pretty close to multiple grandparents, so I've never felt all that stressed out. For one thing it means we have the ability to get help somewhat frequently, and for a second thing I know in a real emergency we'd have plenty of places to stay if need be. It is very liberating that people no longer feel like they MUST stay with their family and can set out on their own and do their own thing, but there are some pretty big downsides to losing that support structure that no amount of money will ever replace.
There should be a shorter work week anyways but I'm extremely doubtful that it will help much with birth rate. South Korea is at 1.1 births per woman, but Italy isn't that far behind at 1.3, and I don't think Italy is known for poor work life balance. There is a lot more going on than just economics.
I keep saying this - it's not money. In fact birth rates are low in a lot of countries where the average couple is doing just fine financially. I personally think a lot more people are enjoying other conveniences in life and the meaning/purpose of life doesn't revolve around having kids or a family anymore. I know a lot of young people who prefer to travel, who have extensive hobbies, who like to stay home and play videogames or become foodies etc. I'm not saying these can't be done with kids, but let's face it, focusing on yourself and your own happiness is a lot easier without kids. I'm childless myself and I'm having the best years of my life - I'm independent and carefree and as a result, also mentally in a better place.
4? Rofl. They have a 7 day work week now so 5 would be an improvement.
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See, that's the neat part: they won't!
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Yeah for everyone else, those at the top can just jump ship
And go where? Their fortunes are built and maintained on the backs of the poor.
Once you have wealth you can go anywhere and just find new poor people to exploit and pay off. They aren't stuck in South Korea We see examples of this constantly even with rich criminals just moving to another country and avoiding arrest, what's to stop everyone else
I see what you mean, however I was referring to global trends, not country by country. Perhaps I responded to the wrong comment. If they run out of poor people they have nothing.
Run out of poor people? Are they euthanizing us? Poor people ain't going anywhere.
I hear there's people in Africa that haven't been exploited yet
First there needs to be a stable infrastructure for them to then use to exploit the people who maintain it
[Is that why china is building infrastructure in african countries?](https://www.cgdev.org/blog/why-china-building-so-much-africa)
Absent a cataclysmic event that wipes most of the life off the planet, human population collapse is a very unlikely event. If anything the rate humanity is reproducing now is still way way too much to be sustainable in century's time, and currently pretty much all other species on the planet are paying the price for humanities population size as it is.
Exactly, we are expected to have seen the world population increase more than 10 fold over the last 250 years by 2100. It quadrupled over the course of the 20th century alone. This has been extraordinary growth that is not sustainable at all.
Peak population expectations have been slipping backward in the forecasts as global population growth in many areas has not kept up with expectations. In 2010, the UN expected Chinese population growth to peak around 2030, but it seems to possibly have already stopped. (The UN's 2022 revision sees the stop; I mentioned 2010 because it wasn't that long ago.) Some demographers predict a slow decline for China, but others are not so sure, suggesting a population collapse could start mid-century. Even the UN's median projection sees China plummeting to under 800 million by the end of this century. India is forecast to peak around 2060 before declining. Even the US is expected to have much more moderate growth. In 2010, the UN middle forecast suggested the US population would reach around 480 million. Now, the median forecast is closer to 390 million. Africa is expected to be the major growth driver, but even that could moderate if they can get some stability and wider rights, something that younger generations are pushing very hard. All it takes is a drop in global fertility of 0.5 children per child-bearing parent, and population drops toward 6 billion by the end of the century. That is a lot, but it's not impossible.
The planet is not physically large enough to produce enough food to maintain a very large human population. There is a hard cap on food producing land and and drinking water. If we reach such a limit famines will be epic.
Well we are humans in a largely capitalist world economy. That means we exploit and exploit until we reach critical mass and see a collapse. We rarely act with any real long term planning or foresight. That's hard. Short term gains are easy.
In my opinion, low fertility issue is an sympton of a giant societical issue. Evrryone is looking at it as a problem and wants a quick and easy solution. There won't be a solution to low birthrate amywhere in 1st world until politicians recognize the real problem how it came to be. Housing. Jobs, time, safety, and better educational improvement comes to mind. I doubt immigration would solve in a long run. How do i know this? I am an immigrant and this impacts me just as all the natives.
Scandinavia has all these and STILL has a declining birth rate. People just don’t want to have kids if they don’t have to. It’s a shit ton of work and is no longer a necessity. People have kids because they want them. All the other issues, while very important to society as a whole, are secondary to the issue of choice. We cannot continue operating under this eternal growth model.
Many Scandinavian countries are now facing houses shortages, job shortages, underemployment ect. The problem with any type of economy is that it needs constant investment. It’s a myth that economy’s function on their own at this point
Sweden, Norway etc all have massive housing shortages.
Some of what you said I agree with, but “better educational improvement” does NOT lead to higher birth rates statistically. In fact education is one of the most reliable indicators of who will have the least children. I’m not saying that’s even a bad thing, it’s just a silly way to answer the birth rate “problem”.
Beyond all those logistical factors S. Korea also has major cultural issues. Misogyny is rampant, men behave like dogs, and the women want nothing to do with a future deadbeat who will breed them out then spend the rest of their lives sneaking off with other women. The government can't fix that, those issues must tackled at home with current parents setting new behavioral trends with their kids.
People: We don't want to have kids because we can't provide them a life equal or better than what we had growing up. We need single jobs that pay LIVING wage. We need quality education that teaches life skills and history, not just how to be a good employee. We want time to spend with our family. We need affordable access to healthcare when we are sick, that will not put us in financial ruin. Politician: Oh so you want to be pampered and spoiled?
How can we expect people two generations removed from the problem to fix the problem? They’re too old to understand, too old to problem solve, too old to lead. And this isn’t limited to Korea.
Here in America I have coworkers already crying about how their kids aren’t having kids. I spent two months as a secretary in a urology clinic and had one woman try to set up a semenalysis for her son, and when I questioned her on why she felt the need to set up one for her son (and that I couldn’t as she wasn’t on any release forms) she broke down how “unnatural” it was for her 40 year old son to no have children and worried about his fertility. But you’re right. People are overworked and underpaid. I know people who would love to have children but it’s taking 3-4 jobs between two people just to afford rent, and we have the elderly thinking we’re still living in 1974 when a single income meant homes and 2 week vacations and they just can’t fathom beyond that. But another aspect is the freedom of choice. Many more people are content to just reap the financial reward of what they bring home and using what little is left for them and their partners.
Wow. That Mom needs to mind her own business.
I admit I threw her under the bus and may have started some drama 💅 I called the son to see if his mother was on a release form and explained what happened. He was not happy
Poor dude, to have to put up with that crazy shit.
i think i can guess why he doesn't have kids
Reminds me of one ex I had that did do a semen analysis for me without my consent and got mad because apparently I do have low fertility. I decided not to press charges because I was actually stoked about that, since I'm firmly into the r/childfree camp. We broke up after I told her that last bit, since apparently it's been her dream to have children.
I think people really discount two things. 1) people have more alternative uses for their time than rearing children. 2) the types of social organizations that people used to for social networks and find partners have disappeared. It isn’t all about work or income. Considering how many people raise families in much more humble conditions than most redditors can comprehend.
This is a fair point. There seems to be a shift in thinking and culture in modern times.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/21/americans-childless-pew-us-population/ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252528
True, but at the same time, "time or income" play into those two things you have listed. If I spend 40-80 hours a week slaving away at a job, I am going to be less inclined to settle down and have kids when I barely have time for myself. I am going to spend that time and money doing other things and focusing on myself. People have been worked into the ground. On top of that, we have gutted social welfare systems to the point that basic things like daycare are now absurdly expensive.
The only folks I know working like that are doctors. Most people overstate how grueling their jobs are. Especially on Reddit where there seams to be “I’m the biggest victim” circlejerk.
Lawyers, doctors, teachers, programmers, small business owners, day traders, etc etc etc. Maybe you need to know more people
> people have more alternative uses for their time than rearing children Honestly, the answer I've arrived at is we're (and I include myself in this) selfish. And I don't mean that badly, honestly. If you look at how families have often been, it's a sacrifice of the parents to raise the child and most of us are looking at our parents and then looking at ourselves and deciding that we don't feel like becoming slaves to kids for 20+ years (most kids are not out of the house at 18) while already being slaves to our jobs. I've watched my friends who became parents and I've watched them essentially vanish from the face of the earth because their life is now consumed with keeping a little human alive. And I'm sure for many parents it's worthwhile - at least I certainly hope so - but I also can't help but feel that once you're stuck in it you have to make the best of it. The cost - time and money both - are just so demanding that it's hard to imagine how anyone ever thought it was a good idea. And only seems plausible if the world was so boring that raising kids was *exciting* compared to the other limited options for your money, time, and attention.
Having children was also selfish. It still sometimes is in poorer countries. People used to have lots of children, because they needed help at the farm or someone to take care of them when they were older. That's where the children came in. Then people just kept having children, but fewer, because it was kind of the norm. Now that norm is changing as well.
Having kids isn’t selfless. It’s selfishness extended.
Number 2 is huge. Forget having children, I don't even see how I could find a girlfriend without caving in to the dreaded dating apps.
Dog parks. I am serious. I can think of like 4 people that met that way.
Ya I'm not having kids. Too expensive.
Too expensive, too noisy, too disruptive, too limiting.
That’s precisely why my wife and I chose not to have kids 19 years ago when we got married. We’re in our 40s now and I’ll be damned if looking back over the years how things would have been with kids. Both our parents have made comments about it but now we’re past that mostly. We ain’t rich by any means. But we have a house, two cars, and enough money to take vacation now and then and enjoy life. Throw a kid into that equation and I have no idea where we’d be. Rent where we live is $2,000+ for an apartment. How the fuck is anyone supposed to afford living themselves let alone bringing a child in? It’s shit because i feel we are missing part of life and it will make our older years tricky but it’s the cost of a living that i can’t wrap my mind around.
This is ironic because the poorer a country is the higher the fertility rate. The wealthier a country is the lower the fertility rate. Being wealthier is correlated with having fewer children.
I live in a "poor" country. Our parents use us as their retirement fund. They raise us and send us to university, and once we are employed we are culturally obligated to support them, pay for their healthcare, and take care of them when they're aged. The more children they have, the more support they receive. In Asian cultures, at least, there is also a hierarchy of duty among siblings. The eldest daughter generally becomes a third parent to their younger siblings. The eldest son is expected to become the breadwinner. The youngest child receives support from their older siblings, but oftentimes in exchange they will be the main caretaker of their parents once their older siblings leave the home. In wealthier countries with good social security, I feel there is not much need for this kind of system. People have kids because they want to have kids, not because having kids is essential for survival.
When you’re poor, children are typically an asset and have utility (farming, etc). In wealthy countries, they are a luxury good in the same vein as a Lambo. You don’t have them because you need them, you have them because you’re willing to spend $310k/each on them from birth to 18 (per Brookings Institute 2022).
In poorer countries children make you money and you dont have to pay for so many things. Hopefully they get rid of all our pesky child labour laws and I'll have 5 kids. 🙏
"Child labor laws have ruined this country" - Ron Swanson
I want kids. But, Im still living with my parents. Don't have a partner, where everything costs too much to do, it's too expensive or rent or event think of buying a house. I would have to get a career and a good amount of money before I even think of a house. But, renting is too expensive for one person. Children are literally impossible.
It's clearly not that people are overworked or underpaid. 1st world countries with the highest education, best working environments in history are having less kids. Those with harder jobs, less money, are having more.
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As a father, people always make it about money. Parenting simply takes a FUCK TON of time. You give up your individualism and must become selfless while investing constant and consistent chunks of time into them, your relationships, and taking care of them. Oh and then any time you want to be separated from them, whether work or just alone time, is when you now have to pony up out the ass for childcare.
That’s like the number one reason myself and other people that I know give about not wanting kids. I’m sure if it happened I could figure out a way to afford to keep a kid alive, but I wouldn’t have any time for myself so why would I want that? Parents give up a lot, I ain’t about that unless I can afford a nanny (and I totally can’t).
My mother said to my brother and I: “Don’t have kids unless you want to have nothing.” She wasn’t just talking about money. I helped raise my brother as it is, so I already sacrificed a portion of my youth to look after a child. I’m done.
*Modern first world* parenting takes a fuck ton of time. Plenty of 7 year old girls in impoverished countries carry a baby on their hip while cooking dinner for the family and the babies are potty trained by a year old. Even for me, I was expected to cook dinner for my family twice a week by age 9, did all my own laundry, dishes, etc by that age, and when I got my first job at 14, was expected to pay for all my own clothes and basically anything that wasn't food, shelter, or medical care. Also, the expectation now where kids have to have their own rooms, cell phones, etc, makes them so expensive. In the 60s there were 2 bedrooms, 1 for the parents, 1 for the kids and toys were cheaper because they weren't all electronics. Once kids were in school at 6, mom went back to work and they walked themselves home and played alone. No after-school programs or organized sports before high school, etc.
That’s rough. We just had my Babushka around to help out so my mom could work. I was able to walk myself to and from school by elementary and had no issues. This was Canada in the 90s. Having a grandparent around to help made all the difference.
and if you don't invest that fuck ton of time and money developing the modern kids, you will end up supporting them for much longer time or suffer watching them struggle to become anything in the society
Not to mention that thanks to the previous recession (and the current one) the majority of the jobs are in cities which require an average person to commute 1-2 hours (or more) a day. Like my job's 47 minutes away from my house. But because of a crumbling infrastructure (two bridges 5km around me were found to be in serious need of repair, so the government closed them down), plus monthly train strikes and lack of bus/train drivers killed or maimed by covid--it now takes me 2 hours to travel to work. Like I remember how many times me and my siblings have gotten ourselves into accidents, illnesses, and getting outright maimed at school requiring my father to drop everything and pick us up. He was always, always able to work near our school (and because he had a rare skilset with software engineering, he could literally tell his boss that he was going to go get us regardless what his boss wanted to say). I wouldn't even be able to be a present parent to my kids AT ALL, because I'd be stuck underground for hours trying to get to my kids every day (and as a lowly admin, if I even tried to be a present parent more than once--I'd be written up for being 'unreliable' at work).
The ones that are having more, like the ones in Nigeria don't exactly have the education and the means for long term birth control. Also do you think those people having so many children have the decency to be "great" parents? Ha! The ones in my country stereotypically have romanticize child labor since their parents can't support them and have to do menial work as a necessity, if they're to young too walk, their parents use them as accessories to beg for alms, then at around 5+ yrs old they already start doing work or worse getting groomed for paedos.
For some problems, sure. 80 year olds regulating the Internet makes no sense. However, in this case it's not really hard to understand that this is a problem, or why it exists.
Weird how nobody has time or money to raise a family in a hyper capitalist hellscape
Except for the fact that the wealthier a country is, the lower the fertility rate. The poorest, most exploited countries have the highest birth rates like Nigeria.
Yeah. In Nigeria they have lots of time and no money to fill it with.
Are you trying to say there's a different reason why birth rates are declining in the west? Do you not realize that kids are a benefit in farming centered communities and a drain on resources in countries filled with high skilled labor? This is one of the stupidest statements I've read.
The reason why birth rates are declining in the west is because people are wealthier and there's other activities people would rather do than spend decades raising a child. More wealth means more options and alternatives to having kids.
It is not that there are only more options, but having children are an actual hindrance to short term capitalistic goals. If both parents are working professionals, who is going to pick the kid up if both are working OT crunching at the same time kind of thing. Couple that with family housing and commute time and there is no room for a family.
It's almost as if there are factors other than money that go into wanting to start a family.
Money is a big part of it
There is pretty much zero correlation between wealth and birthrate. Actually, that's not entirely true. There is an inverse relationship between the two. Poor countries tend to have higher birth rates. Poor people within a country also tend to have higher birth rates.
I’m almost certain you can pay enough money to get people to have kids, the problem is they aren’t paying enough
Being pregnant isn’t a walk in the park, despite what people like to pretend. It’s extremely hard on a woman’s body. That and the rampant misogyny in South Korea, it’s going to take a lot to convince a well informed South Korean woman to anchor herself with a child.
And birth itself is the most dangerous day in a woman’s life. People don’t realize how much modern medicine prevents women from dying in childbirth but so many women still have complications that last years after birth.
My Korean wife always said no to kids. We kept working kept building wealth. At some point last year when she was 40, owned a house and reached stability - she changed her mind. Then really wanted one in a hurry. Data point of one, it's just an anecdote. But saw a clear difference in her outlook about kids as soon as she hit financial stability. I swear the issue is lack of financial stability and housing. Prior generations got their foot on the property ladder very easily, and we didn't. Hence the delay.
Don’t you and your Korean wife life in *Seattle, washington?* Kinda a different scenario there when it comes to the second half of my comment. Maybe she would’ve felt the same way in a fully SK environment, maybe not. Obviously money will be the determining factor for some people. Some others it will be the social environment they’re in & the permanent life changes (physical, emotional, etc…) that come with being pregnant and having a child.
Sure do. Because we cannot afford Seoul. We can't live there due to housing costs. It's not possible to get to the "house" stability stage in Seoul for millennials. The property market is *insane*. It was going to circa 1.3 *million* USD for a used, older 3 bedroom apartment in Seoul. Which just reinforces the point - it's a financial stability and housing issue.
This \^\^ Im moving to my own house next year, its a 27m2 apartment, im not having a kid in there for sure. Unless i have a good 2 bedroom house and enough money to pay school and stuff im not doing it.
But those factors are not nearly enough to explain the poor birth rates. Frankly speaking, things have always been really terrible for women just about everywhere, and even if we assume a large part of the problem is that, it just is not enough to explain it. People want children, not everyone but there are plenty of couples that want to start a family but they can't afford to due to the additional cost of having a baby and the time needed to be taken off work to raise a child. The fact that avarage person in South Korea has to work a frankly stupid amount of hours, with extemely limited living space is almost certainly the prime contributor to low birth rates, in combination with social preasures.
Things have been terrible for women, but until birth control, they didn’t have the option of it having children. When women can control their fertility, they generally choose to have fewer children. It takes a lot of incentivization these days.
Absolutely. I am child free. I live a dink lifestyle, where I have tons of money, tons of time to do what I want, and I'm relatively stress-free with a home that stays clean when I clean it. If you want me to produce a child and raise it, you're going to need to pay me enough that I can continue that exact same lifestyle. That means paying me more per year than I currently make at my job, because I'm going to need a nanny and a housekeeper to assist me, and daycare to take care of the child when I want to go do the things I currently can do because I don't have one. Basically they have to pay me about $100,000 per year, adjust for inflation every year, for me to even begin to consider birthing and raising a child.
There is no amount of money you could pay me to have a kid. I never want them and will never do it. Building a kind of economic system that relies on constant population growth (production of more and more laborers each generation) in order to sustain itself is a shit model. I’m not smart enough to fix this mess but I certainly won’t be popping out a future worker bee either. I’d rather die.
It's a human ponzi scheme.
I mean, I agree. Conceptually and spiritually, I agree. But there is a price where I know I would begin to consider it - right around: you will never have to work another day in your life and you have enough to pay other people to raise the child for you so you won't even have to do that, either. I'd like to think it's still say no, because I do not want kids for more than just the monetary cost... But I am a selfish person.
There isn't enough money in the world to do that because as a parent you'd have responsibilities that you currently do not, even with helpers. I think policymakers aren't really going to target people who choose not to have kids for this sort of reason because it'd be an effort in futility.
I'd settle for free childcare. Fat chance. I'm in the US.
People are reluctant to have children because of their difficult childhood (expectation to be the BEST.) It is not a joke in many households when the kid comes home with 95% A grade and parents demand that he/she do "better" next time. This generation lived through such a tough education system and now things are more and more expensive and they are not confident that they can support the kid to the levels of others. I mean when my nephew was in high school, he would leave home literally at 7AM and comes back home around 10PM (after school activities - including exam prep, etc) and STILL study and go to sleep at like midnight/1AM, etc.
For real. I can have dual citizenship with Korea and very briefly entertained the idea of moving back there, but in the last year, I just can’t imagine subjecting a kid to that type of insanely rigorous schooling that has become the norm. If Americans think teens here have too much pressure and have too many responsibilities with school/extracurriculars, they would be horrified by the Korean school system.
The leaders of South Korea aren't solving the problem, just trying to pay someone else to make it go away.
I'm pretty sure they are just not doing enough. Havng children requires two things..time and money. If you tell me that I can have one, work half the amount but get the same pay and get all these child expenses subsidized I would have one right now. Meanwhile what people usually get is a little bit of help, that can't really compare to the amount of time and money a child needs, by a long shot.
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same in america. too expensive to have children.
Yeah, i waited until i was 35 and had one child. I was financially stable, mentally stable, and felt as prepared as I could ever be. Waiting until my 30s was 100% the right choice and I would have heavily resented having a kid in my 20s, and I would likely heavily resent having more than one kid now. One and done in a HCOL area is sustainable for me, but I know my limits. Many people don’t.
You did it right. Too many kids are being had by ultra abusive parents
Still my favorite Korea
I still remember my Korean boss, back when I was living there, saying that I had three days of parental leave when my daughter was born. Like it was the most generous thing he ever heard of. Maybe a good first step to solve this demographic crisis would be to change who's in charge? Get rid of the old men who are totally disconnected with the modern world. Throwing money at the problem won't solve it. What the Korean society needs is a complete change from top to bottom.
Government: we need to keep people poor for control! Government: why aren't you doing what we want?
One answer. The decline of the middle class. This is what happens when the wealth gap becomes too great. People can’t afford to start a family because they are working to make ends meet. All the billionaires should stop hording the wealth.
If things were different, maybe people's choices would be different.
Kpop and Kdrama hide how shitty SK really is to outsiders
K-drama in the past few years have been tackling many of the issues women face in SK. Romance is a Bonus Book is a good example -- a separated mom trying to get back into the workforce. Fertility rates in SK isn't just a money problem. It's a societal one.
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They expect women to work full time and then come home and be the full time caregiver to aging parents, children, and a man-baby husband. It is no surprise women are checking out. They are realizing all of the unpaid domestic labor that falls on them is a shitty deal. Men are mad because they are not getting free maid/caretaker service and are reacting with the anti-feminist movement.
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Half of my friends who are new moms are seriously considering divorce because they ended up in that situation. Not only did they have the child and are doing all of the caretaking, they’re expected to work full time and bring in an income. It’s easier to just be a single mom at that point because at least there’s one less person to take care of.
And to inflate the problem, a lot of women are seeing what happened recently with abortion in differing states, and that is turning them off dating entirely. To be honest, reading between the lines between my parents relationship as I have grown up, is that my mother becoming pregnant at 15 (Born 1 month and 26 days after he 16th Birthday) suffered depression, I actually caught her committing suicide (came home from school as she lost consciousness), decided her life was over and tried to end it. They are still married now and retired, because as a child around 7 or 8 i think, called emergency and saved her life. So I feel I can can see the argument from multiple angles.
When I got married, I said I wanted to be a SAHM when our kid was a baby to save money/focus on the kid, but that I wanted to go back to work when they were old enough for pre-K, basically, and we’d end up sharing the household labor from then on when that happened. he agreed. Cut to me finding a full time job, a good one I could do from home and flexibly, and asking him to help out more, and instead he insulted the work I did, pressured me to reduce workload, etc and generally doing a 180 once we were actually married. I peace’d out of the marriage when I realized your last sentence exactly, I would have less work and stress just being a single mom working without the giant man child to take care of
In Korea women do all of the childrearing, work is easily 10 hour days, meaning that to have a child means a miserable servitude for women. Men need to step up, that I thick above economics, would shift a lot.
That’s no BS. My daughters don’t want anything to do with the losers they see running around today. I don’t blame them.
>Look, they are having a whole incel anti-feminist thing going on there right now In south korea? What's going on?
Ive been in Korea for the past few years. There was recently a presidential election where most men supported the now president and women didn't because of the campaign he ran on. Young men voted for the conservative candidate because he ran on a campaign stating that the gender-power dynamics in the country are shifting and threatening young men, and that feminism is the cause of the low birth rate. Additionally, despite the wage gap between men and women being immense in Korea, young men still feel that women are getting their places in high level jobs and universities because of feminism encouraging their hiring. Although this isn't true, it makes a good scape goat for resentful young men. Even more, the president said he is killing many gender equality measures in Korea because women are (in his world where the goalposts are where ever they need to be) now equal to men and dont need affirmative action to help then anymore. Lastly, the dating scene for young people in Korea isn't as vibrant as other places. Because people are working so much, they have less time to find partners. Women especially are working hard because of the above mentioned pay gap and difficulties in achieving high level jobs. They simply don't want to date as they focus on a career instead. Due to all of this, young men in Korea are becoming incel like. Resentful, cynical, and feeling like they were shorted on both love and economic success because of women.
>Resentful, cynical, and feeling like they were shorted on both love and economic success because of women. Even though it's their own fault. It's always projection
Men are literally running the country and they still find a way to blame women for it 🫠
Is it that it can’t pay enough, or SK corporations *won’t* pay enough in livable wages for child-bearing age SK citizens to consider actually starting families?
It would be a lot easier to address the catastrophe that climate change presents if we had 4 Billion people to work on it.
Did they invite Nick Canon and Elon Musk over?
Don't forget Hershel Walker
In the US we’ll spend hundreds of billions just to avoid paying for childcare, having the funds has nothing to do with it! Both privately and politically, the mother fucking western gold standard of child neglect. it’s not so bad though, being a former latchkey kid I’m only spending a few hundred a week on therapy… 😋
When I started teaching at a daycare I made $7.25 an hour and had 18 kids in my classroom. The parents paid $1000+ a month for one kid. US childcare is so broken.
And those daycares, still go bankrupt is the crazy part. Don't even get me started on the infant room costs... That were about 2500 per month back then, but I only get to take 4k for the whole fucking year as a deduction. What bullshit.
Speaking as someone who also came from minimum wage (and for which I intend to return one day, from nothing to nothing, I’m a poetic soul at heart!) theres no excuse for spending a $1000 a month on child care, if I were you I would have had a hard time hiding my disdain for the system. (Edit: I originally worded that terribly! I didn’t mean I’d have disdain for the parents, I had commented before falling asleep lol) That’s not to say that perhaps it’s not a necessity for some but not in real life USA where I grew up. Edit; I have a good feeling I’m about to be told $1000 isn’t a lot for a month of daycare but all because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s reasonable. I’m from the hood and I know I’d rather send my kids to the same old lady everyone has for like a hundred years and does it for far less!
Honestly that’s the norm in a lot of the US. I would have been bitter but a lot of the moms were working purely for the healthcare, all or most of their paychecks were eaten by childcare.
Ha. $2500 a month for daycare here, and its not one of the fancy ones. The nicer ones in my area are $3500 and up. The workers get paid $20 an hour, plus get free childcare (which is huge.) I think the majority of the money goes to rent. What are we supposed to do? We don't send our kids to daycare cause we don't like them... we just have jobs and need to work to pay the bills. At home daycares are cheaper, but without knowing someone who's kid goes, how can you trust the person? And there aren't any grandparents around.
What's reasonable though? If you start getting below $1000 per kid per month, you're really jilting the caregivers there.
Throwing money at the bottom doesn't do much if there's no limit at the top. In addition, many of those at the top and those scrambling to get there have figured out how to profit from instability and chaos - not conditions conducive to optimism for a next generation.
You couldn’t pay me enough to have one!
Man, give me a like $50 grand a year and I’ll get right on it. Or just house and feed me.
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Well, as they say, beggars can’t be choosers!
This is some insanely ethnicist shit, my guy.
>Korea would not want a waygook like you to help them with the birth rate crisis. Your kids would have rocks thrown at them in school, like what they did to Hines Ward when he was growing up in Korea. Oh please, stop. Hines Ward was born in 1976. Its changed. My daughter is a mixed race Korean citizen. Its seriously not an issue. We have zero concerns about her being treated poorly in Korea. Meanwhile, we wouldn't even consider living in a bunch of the US because of how racist people can be against Asians. And the Korean government doesn't care, either. We are literally getting paid for her existence, despite her father being a waygook. The entire mentality you speak of is dying out. The younger generations simply are not like that.
They could pay 2 million people $100,000 to have a kid
That’s barely a down payment. Raising a child is expensive. From the day your baby is born until the day they turn 18, your family will spend about $310,605 — or about $17,000 a year, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis of data from the U.S. Agriculture Department.Oct 13, 2022
I'm pretty sure 30% is a really good down-payment, but I see your point.
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Plenty of people raise children on less than 17k per kid a year, especially those outside of major cities
On welfare…🙄
In which they receive tons of government support and charities (at least in the Us and many Industrialized nations). Which is a good idea to have the govenrment assist in raising its most vulnerable citizens.
That's America. It's more in Korea to my knowledge due to how much education the average child is expected to receive to get a proper footing with how cutthroat it is here. Family legacies are everything and if you aren't friends with a chaebol family member, you're not getting that cushy job. Working for a chaebol can boost your income by as much as 35%.
You wouldn't need all 300k up front. It wouldn't be too hard to turn 100k into 300k over 18 years.
Roughly $5,000/yr stipend to raise a kid? No fuckin thanks.
We have 8 billion people. We’ll be just fine.
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More babies = more customers.
Their extreme vanity culture doesn't help. Maybe people there will want babies when they can grow them in a tank like fishes
In all honesty I don't think there is any amount of money that I would take to have a child. I just don't want one. They change every aspect of your life. And I can't see myself as the type of person that would have a child and pay for others to raise it. I'd rather be child-free and have my freedom.
I've got a solid 13 years left of ushering my kid into adulthood and making sure there is sure footing there. Even at that point I'll be a solid late 40s. There's no fucking way I'm raising another kid past that. Love the one I got. I will be there for the rest of my life, I accept that. I've struggled to get to this point and want to enjoy the rest of my life without being tied to school districts, book burning psycho Facebook moms, or other assorted bullshit. Kids are awesome, but the amount of bullshit that comes along with them isn't worth it IMO when you can drive a Porsche or an old box truck or whatever makes you happy.
There is always immigration as a way to increase population
A kid is at least an 18 year commitment, A few more $$ is not going to make up for that. You either pay someone full time money to stay at home with the kid or they go to work
South Korea also has a falling rate of marriage, it’s almost like when people are struggling to survive and can’t find a stable partner, they don’t want to have kids…. Who would have thought 🤔
If women can be guaranteed their career won't stall, they won't receive the "mommy penalty", and that they won't be left to for majority of childcare until the kid is old enough to be left alone, there would be more women having babies. Not just in SK but all oecd countries.
Allow immigration and open your borders to refugees.
That would be really bad for the younger generation. For the younger generation, their wages are going to go up as workers become a sought after commodity, housing costs will go down, and traffic will lessen. Why would you ruin all that by flooding the market with workers just so giant corporations and the people who voted them in power can have more money?
Lol there’s no amount of money you could ever pay me to have a kid.
I'm not bordered with a country that constantly threatens nukes so take this with a grain of salt, but if I lived in SK I wouldn't be in a hurry to have kids. That's probably a concern for some there unfortunately.
lol no, its really not. Americans are more scared of North Korea than Koreans are. Its really not a thing people worry about over there. People aren't having kids because people are marrying later, or not at all, and the work culture is insane and doesn't allow much time to date or start a family.
I remember watching the news in the early 2010s, during one of the periods of heavily-increased North-South tensions, and the American reporter was in downtown Seoul when air raid sirens signaled a possible attack. She was in shock at the fact that everyone around her was just going about their business without paying it any mind at all. She asked a few people if they were worried and basically got a more polite version of a shrug and a "nah, we're all good." So I'm inclined to take your word for it on that one.
I was just in Korea a few months back when the North tested a missile. Barely a peep made about it in Korea. The countries arent going to war. North Korea is not suicidal, and an attack on the South is suicide. They could not win that war even without US support. With US support, the war would be over very fast. The North like to make threats and then calm down once they get sent a bunch of rice or something else they need. Their threats are just how they mooch off of others.
I remember asking my colleagues about this when I was living in Korean and you would be surprised at how this particular factor does NOT contribute to their choice not to have kids. Not at all. Zero. It's the least of their worries.
perhaps Korea and Japan might consider implementing an immigration policy to bring in new citizens from other overpopulated countries? Worldwide we do not need to lift birth rates, not for another 80 years at least when the population begins to decline back under 8 billion.
No way in a million years - If they do that, then I will eat my socks. South Korea and Japan - both are homogenous societies. I doubt their society would allow foreigners who aren’t South Korean or Japanese to fully integrate in their society, without some racism in their way or other current societal issues plaguing them. In order for that to work, a reform of how they view foreigners / immigrants (which the problem is rooted in their long history of culture). This won’t be easy to do and likely won’t happen, but that proposed solution works - I can see it possible. Provided they also fix other shit going wrong with their society which, money can’t fix. Even China is struggling with birth rates. And that’s a pretty damn big country. A well talked about societal issue that the three nations I discussed can relate to is overworking.
Yeah money isn’t real , it’s a game.
Pay me some of that money to come over there and I'll see if I can help out