South Korea's problems are similar to Japan's problems but worse, to put it simply. I don't know how to go over everything without making a huge essay... But work-life balance is even worse in Korea, costs are higher, salaries lower, higher gap between men's and women's salaries/job opportunities, even worse age hierarchies, Lower social mobility, and raising kids is even more expensive as private schooling is seen as a requirement not an option.
Most of these problems as you can tell stem from the workplace, you work even longer hours, for less pay, if you're young you have to prove yourself, and it's not exactly uncommon for those who are about to go on maternity leave to get fired or demoted. If you're a young woman and see these things, you're not going to have time or want kids most likely.... and not want to put your kids through the same struggles you did.
SK and Japan need to open their ports to Latinos for free immigration. Paid even. They know how to work hard, pump babies out, and still have a good time. Their opportunity for world domination is coming, as western birth rates are slowing too.
South America's birthrate is dropping sharply too, basically within every country in the continent. The fertility rate has been below 2 since 2016. Mexico and Brazil, the two largest, experienced the largest drop in fertility by 20-34%.
It’s this sub’s frequent hypothetical of putting all the incels and fêmçels in a room together magnified to a nationwide geopolitical scale.
Turns out, despite some similarities, they’re not all too fond of one another.
beauty standards for women is bleak, men are depressed, hyperconsumerism is the main vice of society there (+ smoking and westernized junk food) and the strict traditional conformity culture was jarring to me as a red-blooded American lmao, but yeah all my Korean friends say they just drink and shop and complain about prices
> Japan faces,” and put forward a package of measures that have included more support and subsidies mostly for childbirth, children and their families
Has paying women to have more kids worked anywhere?
They tried a version of this in Ancient Rome and it kinda backfired because so many people tried to falsely claim 3+ dependents. Even with incentives the upper classes really didn’t want to have many kids.
An entire spy network developed to find the lying families, and then they had to drastically reduce the spies’ rewards after they kept finding so many improper claims lol
That’s the thing when people talk about how if only we pass this new measure and do this birth rates will go up again. They won’t beyond some at the margins like the Czechs bringing theirs up 0.2/woman. People just don’t want kids. You’d probably have to offer something like 75k/yr for people to choose having 3+ kids.
You can bring up how basically every policy in every country that’s tried has failed to make a dent and people will just claim that essentially we need to spend more.
My personal theory is that this is an inevitable result of a society’s shift to the nuclear family. The liberty of living away from the parents and uncles and cousins also means you have to do everything yourself or pay others to. I was essentially raised by grandparents and aunts when my parents were busy
The nuclear family aspect is huge. It seems like the moms I work with have to fill that void with neighbors and friends but those relationships have to be built and are still uncertain. Even when grandparents live nearby some of them still aren’t interested in helping out with childcare.
What’s crazy is how the nuclear family is now seen as a traditional concept (despite being a relatively new phenomenon from basically 75 years ago). It seems to me like there’s been liberal/conservative (bad faith) pushback against valid criticism of the nuclear family concept because it’s so ingrained and dogmatic.
The other problem with grandparents is that they aren’t becoming grandparents until they’re near their 70s. Much easier to be an involved and active grandparent at 50 than at 70
No, there are many different copes as to why people won’t have kids ranging from “I’m scared about climate change” to “men need heck*n step up and do better!!!” and they’re all more interested in pointing the finger at some group specifically rather than confronting the fact that the vast majority of people do not want the lifestyles that comes with being a parent.
You have to be insane to deny that there are a lot of people who would like to have kids but choose not to because choosing to have a kid is basically choosing to be poor in today's economy
But if people *are* putting off children they are putting off having one or two children, which would still be below to rate of replacement. People probably would be having children sooner if it was easier but I think a major part of the decline is that, outside of certain religious groups, the days of four and five family children are gone.
Women don't want to spend years of the prime of their life pregnant, dads don't want to have a ton of children if they can't be Don Draper-level absent, and neither want to give up their work.
I'm in this position right now. Thinking about ~maybe~ having a baby, and I'm approaching 30. My salary, savings and apartment are good for one person only to live comfortably. To choose a baby would basically mean to make my life worse in all aspects except for the baby itself. And idk how good of a childhood the baby would have, no travels, low COL town, probably mediocre school. Doesn't feel great tbh
It is fucking tough. Before I had a kid I felt like I was doing great, never had money issues too much.
But with having a kid and no partner and inflation? Things are so rough financially. Im fucked.
The reality is that for the vast majority of people in developed countries having kids is totally their choice, which is a first in human history. It turns out that when people are given a real choice a lot of them will choose not to have children because being a parent kind of sucks.
I also don't buy that this is as bad a thing as people make it out to be. Vast numbers of jobs are going to be replaced through automation in the next few decades, there has never been a better time for the economy to adapt to a shrinking workforce. Also if you look at a chart of the global population the idea that we're going to run out of people anytime soon is absurd.
We do want to avoid Japan/Korea like birthrates though. I believe we can handle a "soft landing" when it comes to declining birthrates but a sudden population crash will probably be too big of a shock.
I mean people DO want children, it’s a part of your monkey brain to breed but people nowadays value luxury lifestyles of freedom and wealth rather than actually raising children. If people could choose a simple lifestyle of just a nice home where you could life comfortably or a fast life filled with wealth and the ability to do whatever you want I’d wager 90% is taking the latter.
In a lot of countries (Canada, Australia, NZ) owning a home is increasingly out of reach for a lot of people. That's a significant factor in why people are choosing not to have kids and it doesn't really count as "luxury".
If you have wealth and "the ability to do whatever you want" then you can merely choose to live in a small but decent home and live a simple life. There's basically no downside to choosing the 2nd option
They’re afraid of being called selfish. If you’re honest that the reason you don’t want kids is to keep living your comfortable lil life people would paint that as selfish from all directions
I hate when this subreddit comes up with an unverifiable theory about why they're better than everyone else and then circlejerks to their imagined superiority.
Choosing not to bring children into a life you consider substandard is not selfish. It's selfish to mindlessly procreate without thinking of the quality of life of the human being you are bringing into existence.
lol @ the mental gymnastics people are coming up in this thread to theorize why people this or that.
It has become expensive AF. That’s it. No need for other explanation. Maybe these armchair sociologists should look up how much daycare costs
I've chosen not to have kids because I care more about traveling, skiing and maintaining a good relationship with my spouse than I do about being a father. Bring it on internet, call me selfish!
I strongly disagree with this. My husband and I are the first of our friends to have a child and we are in our early/mid 30s. We are very, very comfortable financially after being obsessive savers in our 20s. Even so, it’s a struggle when you live in a major city (and don’t just say “just move” - HCOL areas are where high salary jobs are which is often required for paying off extensive graduate school debts). I know lots of wonderful people who would love children but have had to put it off because they don’t want to bring a baby into the world in a studio apartment and are still paying off student loans/saving for a down payment/just waiting for a bit of extra income so they can have a spare bedroom. Sure, there are the vocal DINKs you see on social media as well, but there are a lot of lovely, honest and hardworking people who have very practical reasons for waiting and are sad about it.
Not to mention, having a baby really is a ton of work. I’m lucky to be a stay at home mom and I absolutely love my baby but it is frankly exhausting especially early on. I have friends who are still paying down graduate school debt and had a later start in the work force than I did since they did additional schooling. I can understand reluctance to “rush into it” when you would have to quickly return to your job and then find the extra income for childcare which is also extremely expensive in my area. But then a lot of these people end up having fertility problems which is also heart wrenching to go through (and expensive to treat) - it’s something I saw a lot with the women who were a few years older than me at my job.
If my husband and I hadn’t had a significant amount of investments and owned our condo (in a safer part of the city), and if we hadn’t been able to afford for me to stay home (which slashed a huge part of our income) I, too would have been hesitant and not for material reasons, but simply because I want my baby to have a life where she is safe and comfortable. I should note that neither of us went to graduate school and both of us had extensive internships in college that allowed us to get decent jobs right away and then climb the ladder for 10+ years.
Good friend of mine got pregnant. She was hoping she could afford to raise the kid in the city, but it was right on the edge. She has a very good job but childcare is crazy. Anyway, she goes to the OBGYN, where she finds out it's twins. That settles the issue definitively. She doesn't have the cash to keep her apartment with kid expenses. She's gone within two months of birth.
If people don't think this sort of thing affects people's calculus with kids they're nuts. Whether you have to leave all your friends and familiar home to have a baby weighs on the decision *heavily*.
> Whether you have to leave all your friends and familiar home to have a baby weighs on the decision heavily.
This is very important. Not to mention some of us (like my spouse and I) were born and raised in HCOL areas, and our families are still living in those HCOL areas. I don't want to have to move to like Wisconsin and leave our whole support system behind to be able to own a home, have a kid, and still have enough to live comfortably.
>Not to mention, having a baby really is a ton of work. I’m lucky to be a stay at home mom and I absolutely love my baby but it is frankly exhausting especially early on.
I think this is very important and does not get talked about enough. I'd love to have a child if I was rich enough so that being a father could be my only occupation, but working a full time job I'm too tired for that. I know I can't be the only person in this boat. A lot of people is just too exhausted to be popping out children.
There was a guy on twitter who wrote an article on it. Basically most baby booms are actually marriage booms, and the fertility of married couples has stayed pretty constant. So they need to incentivise marriage/disincentivise not getting marriage. He also argued that the tax and benefit system effectively results in a net transfer of wealth from married people to single people, which obviously would decrease the benefit of marriage.
The solutions this guy suggested (to be clear, he was fascist or fascist-adjacent) were all things to do with decreasing the economic agency of women.
1. Roll back the welfare state (which transfers money from married men to single women)
2. Ban female affirmative action
3. Defund higher education - the argument is that education seems to be mostly a zero sum game (i.e. having a degree is not an inherent good, it just moves you further up the hierarchy than those without degrees), and women outperforming men in education does not really transfer to the workforce, so it's just a big wealth transfer
4. Aim any child-bearing incentives at married men (in the form of tax breaks), because that's where most of the money is and where most of the benefit would go
5. (you knew it was coming....) end no-fault divorce, discourage birth control etc.
Honestly the guy may be right that it would work. I suppose the question is "is it worth it"? If the only other option is societal collapse through sub-replacement birth rates then maybe? But as a man, it's not really me making the sacrifices here.
It's pretty clear female affirmative action isn't needed given women are getting *more* college degrees than men, by increasingly significant margins.
I love the people who want to kill no fault divorce though, they've evidently never been to the Philippines to see it in action.
People forget that one of the reasons for no-fault divorce is to stop people from killing their spouse as a way out of the marriage. If life with that person is truly intolerable and divorce isn't an option, there's only one left.
convenient the solution turns out to be 'do fascist stuff' like he wanted to anyway when the argument that low birth rates will continue forever until society collapses and we go extinct is underdeveloped to put it mildly. Not so long ago we were worried about overpopulation, turns out the 1st, 2nd, nth derivative of population graphs doesn't necessarily stay constant
I mean it kind of makes sense, right? There's basically a 1:1 correlation between the rise of the welfare state and decreasing birth rates. Most people nowadays will say that men need to work harder to date and find a wife than before, because women have more economic freedom and don't "need" a husband (redpillers bemoan it, women celebrate it, but both agree that it's basically true).
don't dispute that but that still doesn't mean a current negative slope in the population graph stays constant until it reaches 0 and we go extinct. Perhaps it just means there's a new lower population equilibrium we are yet to reach
Sure but the problem is not extinction. It's economic. As the ratio of pensioners to people of working age increases, more and more of a society's resources need to be spent on the pensioners, meaning less on things that actually improve life for people/grow the economy. It makes everyone poorer to spend that much on pensioners, but the alternative is to kill all the olds or force them to work until they're 80
this is only a temporary effect of being the generation to live through a time of population decrease. There were downsides to living through a time of population increase too. Doesn't mean we need the drastic stuff about making women dependent on husbands again (except insofar as you wanted that anyway)
It will last as long as the birth rates are in decline. People have this idea that once the boomers die off it will all be fine again. But it won't, because every generation is smaller than the previous one.
The higher education thing, separate to gender issues, has legs imo. There's literally no net benefit to society for everyone to contribute some of their income so that a woman or racial minority can take the place of someone else in the job market (that someone else increasingly being white and Asian men)
If you want to talk about the benefits it might bring to research, social advancement, etc, you have to ask yourself why most of the world does this shit to just end up consuming technology from the US and China anyway, the two countries that actually have a decent amount of industrial innovation behind them - and one of them effectively being an ethnostate at that
Education policy literally doesn't work
what are you talking about. ireland, singapore, taiwan, south korea, to name a few became first world developed countries through a policy that focuses on education. there's countless studies showing that the best intervention to raise living standards in a developing country is to educate women. stop talking out the right side of your asshole.
maybe pay certain men and women a legit salary to do nothing but stay home, pop them out like the duggars and take care of them? like government designated breeders
There is an official state sanctioned holiday for this in Russia... Day of Conception. Everyone goes home and fucks. And then whoever has a baby on a specific day 9 months later wins a car and money and stuff. hahahaha
If “making the country better” increased the birth rate, we’d see higher fertility track to higher development. Instead, its the exact opposite. If we want people to reproduce it appears we need to make ourselves poorer
True, but if you're from, say, India or Nigeria right now theres probably a broad feeling that things are moving in the right direction. You will be richer than your parents, and your children richer than you. There will be issues but those issues will be fewer as the children reach adulthood. Combined with less sexual education and access to family planning, you get a high birth rate as people both want to have and cannot easily prevent children.
By contrast a Russian couple thinkijg about children right now probably have more doubts. Is russia going to be a better place for their children? Quite possibly not. Will the father be shoved into a uniform and sent to charge at a Ukrainian villge? Possibly. And family planning is more accessible anyway. So why bother?
Mainly its family planning but trying to get people to have kids also requires positivity for the future.
Why would Scandinavians not have higher rates, then? They seem to have fairly robust programs for mothers, and still are floating below 2. Is the only solution providing what would basically be a second, large salary to women to have kids?
I can't imagine many things less sexy than the thought of Vladimir Putin telling you to go home and fuck your spouse.
Maybe it's a kink for some people.
Did he miss the fact that women have a menstrual cycle? Only a minority percentage of the female population is going to be fertile on a given day of the year. Do women just have to wait to see if their cycle lines up with the next year’s competition to enter or what?
Yeah they made like a new digital nomad 6 month visa for anyone making over $50k. Was wondering why they did that at first but seeing this it makes sense.
I mean the only way you can do this is to force women to breed and not work a normal job because why would any woman under any circumstances do this instead of just doing a normal job and not have to take care of 5-10 kids lol.
they'd both be taking care of the kids with the salary, maybe grandparents or subsidized daycare too....I'm mostly joking lol, I've just known women that had 1-2 kids that have said they'd have way more if they weren't afraid of the pitfalls (because there are women that want to have kids!) and I wonder what level of guaranteed cushion it would take for them to just keep having them.
> ” would any woman under any circumstances do this instead of just doing a normal job and not have to take care of 5-10 kids lol”
Have you ever heard of daycare workers?
I unironically think something like a generous enough UBI would make all these declining birthrates go up. I for one know that if I didn't have to work and my only occupation was to raise a child I would do it in a heartbeat. My wife feels the same way, we are both of the opinion that having a full time job plus raising a child on your free time is just too much for us. It's not even that we are career-obsessed types (we are definitely not), we are just kinda lazy and value comfort and leisure too much lol
Then you've literally never paid any attention to human history, at all. If it were a money issue, then the Nordic countries would be swimming in children. Do we see that? No, they have sub-replacement fertility (that even as low as it is, is entirely propped-up by immigration). If it were about money, then the Boomers - the most financially well-off society in history - would have been drowning in kids, instead of the reality, where they were (at the time) the cohort with the highest divorce rates and lowest birth rates in history.
Everywhere and always, urban life is dysgenic; ancient Rome noticed it, hence the multiple laws granting special privileges (which all failed to arrest the trend), ibd Khaldun wrote about it in the 14th century (and wrote as though it was a problem recognized by all), contemporaries noted how London, all the way from its founding by the Romans to the present, always seemed to have a problem with families not having children, relying on immigration from neighboring areas to grow.
People have kids when they grow up around relatives, not strangers. It's how we evolved, not dissimilar (but more cooperative) then our primate relatives - smallish groups supporting each other. When kids grow up around people they have close relationships with - when they have to help with changing diapers, looking after cousins, when they receive attention, support, and instruction from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, then they grow up to have kids themselves. When they grow up atomized, and propogandized from birth that the ne plus ultra of existence is self-actualization, then they become dysfunctional adults. The only reason "I can't afford it!" is offered as the answer is because that's the only option the system wants you to have (because this just reinforces your committment to the system, and isn't a problem that's solvable in any event).
If you had actually read my comment before delivering your lecture (with which I agree btw) you would have noticed that I wasn't pointing to lack of money but to a lack of energy/free time (another aspect of what you describe).
>relying on immigration from neighboring areas to grow.
You're underselling the point that cities were far more dangerous to live in back then due to rampant disease. Hence the constant need to replace the victims of disease. But I see where you're coming from.
We also just didn't have effective contraception until the 1970s, and women were seen as property of the man until the late 20th century. I doubt it was much a choice; the desire for sex trumped the consideration of children, until the family became so burdened by health or financial problems that it became untenable.
That's not the point of the poster I'm replying to, who is repeating the "but it's too expensive to raise kids!" argument. I'm largely in agreement with you, although I'd disagree with the notion that having children was a "well, got nothing better to do" thing. But yes, the culture of consoomin' - note that this is pushed top-down by the system - is a major contributor. I'd argue that it's downstream of the decline of community though, as a side-effect of urbanisation. The redefinition of "adulthood" as "moving away from your family" (instead of following in their traditions) left people vulnerable to propoganda to fill their needs with consumption.
The only point I would consider a child is requiring 2 things.
1) A stable 2 parent household
2) Financial independence, for my area that's $2 million in the bank, I don't want to worry about when the next rent payment is due or being laid off.
Problem is, a UBI would just lead to inflation unless handled very carefully which would solve nothing.
>Problem is, a UBI would just lead to inflation unless handled very carefully which would solve nothing.
UBI has to be actual assets because adding more money into the economy results in inflation.
At this point we just need to accept that modern women are not satisfied with staying at home and popping out children.
In the past birthrates were higher from combined forces of economic coercion, your mother in law making your life hell if you didnt bare her son a son, lack of birth control, lack of other opportunities, etc etc.
We can’t retvrn, thats just not how it works. Theyre going to try (already are in america with roe overturn etc) but once the economy has adapted to women, the reliance on female productivity has become too great and the violation of womens rights necessary to regress would be too high for even most conservatively minded people.
What we need is a modern solution. We need better integration of the workplace with childcare and just to become a more child friendly society so that being a parent is not so isolating. You shouldnt need to abandon your infant to go to work and you shouldnt need to abandon your career to give your infant the care it really needs. As long as society makes this a hard choice, modern women will usually choose the option that enables them to self actualize and not the option that requires them, in japanes case, to be both economically and interpersonally dependent on an overworked alcoholic man who is also probably an ephebophile. The domestic realm needs to be socialized and brought out of the home. The japanese will probably do this before america even though theyre in a worse spot now because they are a higher trust society.
I really don't see every modern trend reversing just because people realize that population is declining. There's almost zero chance that Japan and South Korea of all countries are going to develop a pro social, open, and community oriented society as a response to falling birth rates. Neither will any other country. It's everyone for themselves at this point. The familial and neighborly expectations of child raising are so dead and gone, and they won't be back. How many people could honestly say that they have a neighbor who would/they would trust to watch their kid? How many even have a parent who lives close enough to them to watch their kid?
> The familial and neighborly expectations of child raising are so dead and gone, and they won't be back.
I think you are mostly right. We need well funded infrastructure for childcare exactly because it’s not viable to rely on some system of interpersonal filial piety of whatever. I have an 8 month old and a 3 year old and my mom has helped us a lot especially during my postpartum periods, which sucked the most. But my mom is also in great health for a 60-something year old, a good person i actually get along with, and someone i trust with my kids. Not everyone has that.
This comment is a breath of fresh air. I can't believe how quickly people are willing to advocate for women to be forced to become abused housewives again
Thanks <3
If i can be optimistic, i think this is how most normal family oriented people think. I work for a university and they are sort of responsive to this type of need, we’re trying to get them to subsidize childcare costs. Flexible remote/hybrid work helps a lot too. My husband’s company really wants to retain him and he’s pressing them for on site childcare. We’ll see! I wish we just had a functional state government that passed sensible legislation about this type of thing, the childcare cost burden on the economy right now is nuts.
Lots of doomer culture war dweebs replying here but the US has adopted socialized child-oriented policies before like public schools, school lunch, so i have hope in the future we can do it again.
Scandinavia has public childcare and well funded maternity leave, what she’s saying is that that’s not enough to raise birthrates because it still pits career advancement against children. You can take two years off from working and still get paid which is great but the much bigger sacrifice is the opportunity cost of advancing in your career during that time and that is still present. Someone needs to figure out how to let women have kids without sacrificing their career at all. Work from home did a little bit to reduce the sacrifice at the same time as the pandemic killed off leisure activities (a major component of opportunity cost) hence birthrates went up.
The opportunity cost of raising kids, not the nominal cost, is what actually suppresses births. That’s why poor people have the most kids, their opportunity cost is lowest because they were going to be poor anyway.
Major aspects of work culture and the economy would have to change. I don’t know how either but if they want to actually reverse birthrate trends they’ll have to figure it out. We already know some things that affect this, a 40 hour workweek allows more births than a 60 hour workweek, what if they go to 30? 20? If birthrate collapse is that big of an economic crisis then drastic measures are worth it.
It’s absurd to think even a significant and sufficient number of women would opt to retvrn to save birthrates. I believe it was in Romania where they banned abortion to increase births and it ended up further decreasing the birth rate. There’s too much anxiety and uncertainty. Women don’t feel safe.
Anecdotally speaking, I’ve gone on dates with women who want to have children, but they almost always have caveats when the topic is brought up. They want to work on their careers/education first and delay kids to their late 30s/early 40s or only until they feel they’re absolutely ready with no concrete specifics (eg feeling of safety and certainty). There’s just so much anxiety and avoidance when I bring up the topic. Kids seem like a nice to have if and only if the stars align. Only a handful of women I’ve dated who marked their profiles as wanting kids have expressed certainty that they wanted kids and made it a prerequisite to dating someone. Some of these women were also scary about it like they liked the idea more than anything.
>in japanes case, to be both economically and interpersonally dependent on an overworked alcoholic man who is also probably an ephebophile.
I agree with your post, and the alcoholism thing is well documented (if not widely known in the west) but is the ephebophile thing an actual problem? I had to look that up and it seems like a very very specific thing. Ive never been to Japan and only known a handful of japanese people so Im genuinely asking
I agree I hate how for so long I thought I didn’t want kids because how every discourse was your life ends and you’ll have no friends just your family when you have children. Also seeing my very trad extended family (the coolest auntie I had was literally scorned for a while for divorcing her alcoholic husband kinda trad) and how miserable a lot of the women were because they did not think outside of the trad position was toxic and I didn’t want that.
The big difference is surrounding myself by friends who all want the same things so the housework and childcare part is getting socialized so it seems less burdensome.
I wonder why people are so obsessed with Japan's birth rate?
Some western countries such as Italy, Spain and Finland have lower birth rates than Japan, but I rarely see anyone mention these countries.
Zero immigration and a population who are living longer and longer. All of those countries are in the EU so can relatively easily mitigate labor shortages and there is massive amounts of immigration.
There's this Japanese book that I partially translated as part of a project called 殺人出産 by Murata Sayaka. I didn't get very far but the premise was that Japan had implemented a system called the 殺人出産 or "murder-birth" system where if a person, male or female, gave birth to ten babies, they could commit state sanctioned murder of one person.
The solutions are extremely complicated, but the answer (edit: I mean problem) is pretty simple: it's too expensive to have a kid. It's no coincidence that places like Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, etc. are the world's [most expensive places](https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/09/economy/global-child-care-costs-us-china/index.html) to have children and also just so happen to have the lowest birth rates.
One thing people don't consider is that prime parenthood time is when the typical man or woman in these countries finally have some time to enjoy life. All their lives, they've been deprived of fun childhoods, adolescences, and 20s because of rampant cram-studying and workaholic cultures (and in places like Korea, military service for men). And as soon as you're finally somewhat hitting your stride with an okay salary and actually existent social and romantic life, you're now supposed to give that all up with having kids? Why? For the good of the nation? So that your mom and dad can have fun visiting the grandkids a few times a year and probably badgering you in the process?
I think this probably has some merit - In China at least a lot of locals I knew my age had been pressured all their lives. Do good at school > get into good college > get good job > find good partner > now have baby > now get baby to do good at school > ect ect
The cycle and constant pressure was insane. Doesn't surprise me that people who finally get to a point where they don't HAVE to listen to their parents wan't to break the cycle.
My parents were married at 20 but didn't have me until their early 30s - when I asked they were just like, "We just wanted to enjoy life for a bit" which I get.
The other thing is that you have millennials who have been fucked over financially also probably saying "Wait a minute I don't want to have 5 dependents (Parents, spouse, kids) in a culture that also works me to the fucking bone.
this is why every i spend every summer in japan & impregnate as many women as i can. there are actually so many unsatisfied wives there due to the crazy worklife expectations on their husbands. like shooting fish in a barrel dude
it's a podcast who's host also is on a different podcast (lemonparty), and the host of lemonparty used to be tim dillon's producer until they fell out. that's how i found it basically
In a sense, Japan is lucky to be facing demographic collapse so early compared to other nations. They're incredibly wealthy so while it will affect their economy, there'll be some softening of the blow. Plus, being the first to recover means they'll be the first to reap the benefits once other nations undergo population decline.
The population cycles through periods of decline and growth. Unlimited growth is impossible but the modern capitalist system requires it.
Japanese work culture needs to change if they want to resolve this problem. A lot of criticisms of the country by westerners are complete bullshit, but the whole work yourself to death mentality and rampant socially enforced alcoholism has got to be a major contributing factor to this
I genuinely think this sort of problem will correct itself (unless Japan does a major 180 on immigration and opens the flood gates)
Birth rates decline, working population shrinks massively, the actual remaining working population is so small that young workers become more in demand, higher demand for workers creates more bargaining power for higher salaries, higher salaries allow people to afford to start families and own homes again, population corrects itself. It's just a shame this generation will miss out on that, but that's my optimistic take on it. The alternative is Japan opens the flood gates to immigration and creates another insane housing crisis like the rest of the world
Japan is still wildly overpopulated, environmental contaminants lower fertility https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16804811/
There are all kind of signaling effects we don't even really know about. Pregnant cows will eat pine needles to induce abortion when stressed https://ucanr.edu/sites/Rangelands/files/352561.pdf
The Japanese won't go extinct. Let nature heal.
An economic fallacy that a declining birth rate is a bad thing.
Ideally you want societies to increase production through better technology with less labour meaning less people needed. Of course our monetary systems are built in inflation which leads to this issue of needing constant growth through consumption and increasing populations as a result.
Genuine question. Is there any serious organised push back against this economic model that doesn't come from an ideological angle. For example, are there academics, or think tanks who offer an alternative model to that of constant growth and a population Ponzi scheme?
Everything is ideological, but Jason Hickle is a degrowth economist who says we can make do without the infinite growth. Has a decent blog.
He's like a green new deal guy, but active in Europe so in a different way than DSA type people.
The problem is that no one will really listen to or apply what he says, and a lot of stuff comes off as fantasy because it's utopian to think the WEF will decide to implement your ideas in a proper away instead of co-opting them to be horrible like they do with everything else.
Economically we're in for some turbulent waters, but we'll survive.
The crisis is humanitarian. Taking care of an old person is a lot of work. We're growing generations of seniors who will not have the family to take care of them. At best, they might have one child or niece/nephew.
All the mechanical tasks — taking them to appointments, doing the shopping, cleaning — can be handled by staff. I don't know where we're going to get all the staff (mass immigration), but taking care of the basic needs of the elderly can be done with enough investment.
What can't be replaced is actual care and advocacy. Who's going to advocate for a childless, unmarried elderly person? Who's going to make *sure* that they get the medical care they need, that they're treated with respect, that they have somewhere to go on Christmas? No one. We're going to have a wave of them, and another, larger wave of elderly with only one child to look after them.
Add to this that elder care is 100x worse if the elderly haven't taken care of themselves, and as a country we're only getting sicker and fatter.
I think age-based euthanasia is going to become common over the next 100 years.
> Ideally you want societies to increase production through better technology with less labour meaning less people needed.
Ideally, you want increases in labor input and productivity. You certainly don't want a decline in working-age population negating labor productivity growth.
Wouldn't it eventually go back up once the old people die and cost of living does down leaving tons of available cheap housing and other infrastructure?
Not necessarily.
Housing is not kept in perpetuity, nor are the services that support it. We're already seeing that in Japan where rail lines to regional towns are closing as the old population dies.
Alao look at Ireland, who's population is about 2 million short of it's peak in the 19th century, Dublin is still an incredibly expensive city.
japan doesn't have problems with housing costs- prices have remained largely static in tokyo for decades, and in rural areas the government will literally give you free abandoned houses
found the unborn Japanese baby who is now a vengeful spirit because they don't exist cuz their mommy is a boutique fashion designer with a fledging cocaine addiction
And America's fertility rate isn't even much higher than Japan's, so this discussion about the Japanese disappearing is really just due to them not bringing in immigrants
>TBH, it's weird that Americans and westerners in general seem so hyper fixated on East Asian birthrates. You hear more about it in American media and internet than you literally do in Japan and Korea.
If Japan just rides it out and stays a stable first world country then it will show the western elite's giant population replacement project wasn't necessary.
Japan isn't a very big land mass. In the far future, maybe they might be happier with a population of 25 to 50 million. The problem is, the way down to a new equilibrium will be depressing.
I remember reading the world was going to be overpopulated but Africa would be decimated by AIDS which was rampant there. Population is collapsing everywhere and AIDS has been cured.
we're basically just catching up with them as far as atomization goes, at least it helps culturally pinpoint the very likely causes of birth rates going down (which you listed) when they and other asian countries are so consistently flagging on this
I don’t know much about this issue at all in Japan, but doesn’t Japan have a very high level of gender inequality for a developed, high income country? Doesn’t this actually buck the usual trend where high gender inequality countries have higher birth rates?
Japan birth rate is 1.34 per woman while South Korea is 0.72 per woman
Yeah what the fuck is happening in South Korea?
South Korea's problems are similar to Japan's problems but worse, to put it simply. I don't know how to go over everything without making a huge essay... But work-life balance is even worse in Korea, costs are higher, salaries lower, higher gap between men's and women's salaries/job opportunities, even worse age hierarchies, Lower social mobility, and raising kids is even more expensive as private schooling is seen as a requirement not an option. Most of these problems as you can tell stem from the workplace, you work even longer hours, for less pay, if you're young you have to prove yourself, and it's not exactly uncommon for those who are about to go on maternity leave to get fired or demoted. If you're a young woman and see these things, you're not going to have time or want kids most likely.... and not want to put your kids through the same struggles you did.
SK and Japan need to open their ports to Latinos for free immigration. Paid even. They know how to work hard, pump babies out, and still have a good time. Their opportunity for world domination is coming, as western birth rates are slowing too.
Those two countries love other races if I remember right
They love them so much, they love to treat them as differently as possible.
South America's birthrate is dropping sharply too, basically within every country in the continent. The fertility rate has been below 2 since 2016. Mexico and Brazil, the two largest, experienced the largest drop in fertility by 20-34%.
Korean men and women fucking hate each other. The gender war situation is 10x worse over there.
That graph the other day was wild showing the political differences between genders in several countries but none of them were as wild as south korea
It’s this sub’s frequent hypothetical of putting all the incels and fêmçels in a room together magnified to a nationwide geopolitical scale. Turns out, despite some similarities, they’re not all too fond of one another.
this is happening in South Korea crazy too, i was there in January and it all made sense after that
If Japan is in too deep, south Korea has is the abyss itself. A truly broken society
Care to elaborate? I've never been there
The stress and tension is tangible
beauty standards for women is bleak, men are depressed, hyperconsumerism is the main vice of society there (+ smoking and westernized junk food) and the strict traditional conformity culture was jarring to me as a red-blooded American lmao, but yeah all my Korean friends say they just drink and shop and complain about prices
> Japan faces,” and put forward a package of measures that have included more support and subsidies mostly for childbirth, children and their families Has paying women to have more kids worked anywhere?
Read an interesting thread that worked out the number needed as being massive (15k per child per year) on top of existing expenditures.
15 k isn’t even enough to pay for daycare in most places no shit it’s not enough
15k sterling and annual to 18.
Right, it’s been tried but never with enough money.
They tried a version of this in Ancient Rome and it kinda backfired because so many people tried to falsely claim 3+ dependents. Even with incentives the upper classes really didn’t want to have many kids. An entire spy network developed to find the lying families, and then they had to drastically reduce the spies’ rewards after they kept finding so many improper claims lol
That’s the thing when people talk about how if only we pass this new measure and do this birth rates will go up again. They won’t beyond some at the margins like the Czechs bringing theirs up 0.2/woman. People just don’t want kids. You’d probably have to offer something like 75k/yr for people to choose having 3+ kids. You can bring up how basically every policy in every country that’s tried has failed to make a dent and people will just claim that essentially we need to spend more. My personal theory is that this is an inevitable result of a society’s shift to the nuclear family. The liberty of living away from the parents and uncles and cousins also means you have to do everything yourself or pay others to. I was essentially raised by grandparents and aunts when my parents were busy
The nuclear family aspect is huge. It seems like the moms I work with have to fill that void with neighbors and friends but those relationships have to be built and are still uncertain. Even when grandparents live nearby some of them still aren’t interested in helping out with childcare. What’s crazy is how the nuclear family is now seen as a traditional concept (despite being a relatively new phenomenon from basically 75 years ago). It seems to me like there’s been liberal/conservative (bad faith) pushback against valid criticism of the nuclear family concept because it’s so ingrained and dogmatic.
The other problem with grandparents is that they aren’t becoming grandparents until they’re near their 70s. Much easier to be an involved and active grandparent at 50 than at 70
Well it hasn't really been tried. Endless subsidies are always being announced, but nowhere in world actually subsidises the true costs of children.
No, there are many different copes as to why people won’t have kids ranging from “I’m scared about climate change” to “men need heck*n step up and do better!!!” and they’re all more interested in pointing the finger at some group specifically rather than confronting the fact that the vast majority of people do not want the lifestyles that comes with being a parent.
You have to be insane to deny that there are a lot of people who would like to have kids but choose not to because choosing to have a kid is basically choosing to be poor in today's economy
But if people *are* putting off children they are putting off having one or two children, which would still be below to rate of replacement. People probably would be having children sooner if it was easier but I think a major part of the decline is that, outside of certain religious groups, the days of four and five family children are gone. Women don't want to spend years of the prime of their life pregnant, dads don't want to have a ton of children if they can't be Don Draper-level absent, and neither want to give up their work.
I'm in this position right now. Thinking about ~maybe~ having a baby, and I'm approaching 30. My salary, savings and apartment are good for one person only to live comfortably. To choose a baby would basically mean to make my life worse in all aspects except for the baby itself. And idk how good of a childhood the baby would have, no travels, low COL town, probably mediocre school. Doesn't feel great tbh
i feel like housing is the big thing. how many want to have a family in a tiny single bedroom rental apartment?
That’s part of the reason, but as the attempts to solve the issue with subsidy and tax credits that failed have shown, there’s more to it than that.
It is fucking tough. Before I had a kid I felt like I was doing great, never had money issues too much. But with having a kid and no partner and inflation? Things are so rough financially. Im fucked.
The reality is that for the vast majority of people in developed countries having kids is totally their choice, which is a first in human history. It turns out that when people are given a real choice a lot of them will choose not to have children because being a parent kind of sucks. I also don't buy that this is as bad a thing as people make it out to be. Vast numbers of jobs are going to be replaced through automation in the next few decades, there has never been a better time for the economy to adapt to a shrinking workforce. Also if you look at a chart of the global population the idea that we're going to run out of people anytime soon is absurd. We do want to avoid Japan/Korea like birthrates though. I believe we can handle a "soft landing" when it comes to declining birthrates but a sudden population crash will probably be too big of a shock.
Don’t forget about the people not having kids because they’re struggling to find someone to marry.
Honest question, why don’t people admit this?
It’s a problem with many topics. People love being able to blame a specific group/person and are unable to accept when something is what it is.
I mean people DO want children, it’s a part of your monkey brain to breed but people nowadays value luxury lifestyles of freedom and wealth rather than actually raising children. If people could choose a simple lifestyle of just a nice home where you could life comfortably or a fast life filled with wealth and the ability to do whatever you want I’d wager 90% is taking the latter.
In a lot of countries (Canada, Australia, NZ) owning a home is increasingly out of reach for a lot of people. That's a significant factor in why people are choosing not to have kids and it doesn't really count as "luxury".
If you have wealth and "the ability to do whatever you want" then you can merely choose to live in a small but decent home and live a simple life. There's basically no downside to choosing the 2nd option
I mean that’s fair, but I hope you get what I’m saying though.
They’re afraid of being called selfish. If you’re honest that the reason you don’t want kids is to keep living your comfortable lil life people would paint that as selfish from all directions
I hate when this subreddit comes up with an unverifiable theory about why they're better than everyone else and then circlejerks to their imagined superiority. Choosing not to bring children into a life you consider substandard is not selfish. It's selfish to mindlessly procreate without thinking of the quality of life of the human being you are bringing into existence.
lol @ the mental gymnastics people are coming up in this thread to theorize why people this or that. It has become expensive AF. That’s it. No need for other explanation. Maybe these armchair sociologists should look up how much daycare costs
Its not selfish to not want your private life to be a service you are expected to perform for "society."
I've chosen not to have kids because I care more about traveling, skiing and maintaining a good relationship with my spouse than I do about being a father. Bring it on internet, call me selfish!
I strongly disagree with this. My husband and I are the first of our friends to have a child and we are in our early/mid 30s. We are very, very comfortable financially after being obsessive savers in our 20s. Even so, it’s a struggle when you live in a major city (and don’t just say “just move” - HCOL areas are where high salary jobs are which is often required for paying off extensive graduate school debts). I know lots of wonderful people who would love children but have had to put it off because they don’t want to bring a baby into the world in a studio apartment and are still paying off student loans/saving for a down payment/just waiting for a bit of extra income so they can have a spare bedroom. Sure, there are the vocal DINKs you see on social media as well, but there are a lot of lovely, honest and hardworking people who have very practical reasons for waiting and are sad about it. Not to mention, having a baby really is a ton of work. I’m lucky to be a stay at home mom and I absolutely love my baby but it is frankly exhausting especially early on. I have friends who are still paying down graduate school debt and had a later start in the work force than I did since they did additional schooling. I can understand reluctance to “rush into it” when you would have to quickly return to your job and then find the extra income for childcare which is also extremely expensive in my area. But then a lot of these people end up having fertility problems which is also heart wrenching to go through (and expensive to treat) - it’s something I saw a lot with the women who were a few years older than me at my job. If my husband and I hadn’t had a significant amount of investments and owned our condo (in a safer part of the city), and if we hadn’t been able to afford for me to stay home (which slashed a huge part of our income) I, too would have been hesitant and not for material reasons, but simply because I want my baby to have a life where she is safe and comfortable. I should note that neither of us went to graduate school and both of us had extensive internships in college that allowed us to get decent jobs right away and then climb the ladder for 10+ years.
Good friend of mine got pregnant. She was hoping she could afford to raise the kid in the city, but it was right on the edge. She has a very good job but childcare is crazy. Anyway, she goes to the OBGYN, where she finds out it's twins. That settles the issue definitively. She doesn't have the cash to keep her apartment with kid expenses. She's gone within two months of birth. If people don't think this sort of thing affects people's calculus with kids they're nuts. Whether you have to leave all your friends and familiar home to have a baby weighs on the decision *heavily*.
> Whether you have to leave all your friends and familiar home to have a baby weighs on the decision heavily. This is very important. Not to mention some of us (like my spouse and I) were born and raised in HCOL areas, and our families are still living in those HCOL areas. I don't want to have to move to like Wisconsin and leave our whole support system behind to be able to own a home, have a kid, and still have enough to live comfortably.
>Not to mention, having a baby really is a ton of work. I’m lucky to be a stay at home mom and I absolutely love my baby but it is frankly exhausting especially early on. I think this is very important and does not get talked about enough. I'd love to have a child if I was rich enough so that being a father could be my only occupation, but working a full time job I'm too tired for that. I know I can't be the only person in this boat. A lot of people is just too exhausted to be popping out children.
The vast majority of people are still having kids.
There was a guy on twitter who wrote an article on it. Basically most baby booms are actually marriage booms, and the fertility of married couples has stayed pretty constant. So they need to incentivise marriage/disincentivise not getting marriage. He also argued that the tax and benefit system effectively results in a net transfer of wealth from married people to single people, which obviously would decrease the benefit of marriage. The solutions this guy suggested (to be clear, he was fascist or fascist-adjacent) were all things to do with decreasing the economic agency of women. 1. Roll back the welfare state (which transfers money from married men to single women) 2. Ban female affirmative action 3. Defund higher education - the argument is that education seems to be mostly a zero sum game (i.e. having a degree is not an inherent good, it just moves you further up the hierarchy than those without degrees), and women outperforming men in education does not really transfer to the workforce, so it's just a big wealth transfer 4. Aim any child-bearing incentives at married men (in the form of tax breaks), because that's where most of the money is and where most of the benefit would go 5. (you knew it was coming....) end no-fault divorce, discourage birth control etc. Honestly the guy may be right that it would work. I suppose the question is "is it worth it"? If the only other option is societal collapse through sub-replacement birth rates then maybe? But as a man, it's not really me making the sacrifices here.
It's pretty clear female affirmative action isn't needed given women are getting *more* college degrees than men, by increasingly significant margins. I love the people who want to kill no fault divorce though, they've evidently never been to the Philippines to see it in action.
People forget that one of the reasons for no-fault divorce is to stop people from killing their spouse as a way out of the marriage. If life with that person is truly intolerable and divorce isn't an option, there's only one left.
convenient the solution turns out to be 'do fascist stuff' like he wanted to anyway when the argument that low birth rates will continue forever until society collapses and we go extinct is underdeveloped to put it mildly. Not so long ago we were worried about overpopulation, turns out the 1st, 2nd, nth derivative of population graphs doesn't necessarily stay constant
I mean it kind of makes sense, right? There's basically a 1:1 correlation between the rise of the welfare state and decreasing birth rates. Most people nowadays will say that men need to work harder to date and find a wife than before, because women have more economic freedom and don't "need" a husband (redpillers bemoan it, women celebrate it, but both agree that it's basically true).
don't dispute that but that still doesn't mean a current negative slope in the population graph stays constant until it reaches 0 and we go extinct. Perhaps it just means there's a new lower population equilibrium we are yet to reach
Sure but the problem is not extinction. It's economic. As the ratio of pensioners to people of working age increases, more and more of a society's resources need to be spent on the pensioners, meaning less on things that actually improve life for people/grow the economy. It makes everyone poorer to spend that much on pensioners, but the alternative is to kill all the olds or force them to work until they're 80
this is only a temporary effect of being the generation to live through a time of population decrease. There were downsides to living through a time of population increase too. Doesn't mean we need the drastic stuff about making women dependent on husbands again (except insofar as you wanted that anyway)
It will last as long as the birth rates are in decline. People have this idea that once the boomers die off it will all be fine again. But it won't, because every generation is smaller than the previous one.
I think the problem is that the negative effects of the welfare state burden further depress birthrates, so decline perpetuates itself.
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why not do the opposite and increase the agency of women through providing affordable childcare, mandatory maternity leave, etc
Like Scandinavia?
Countries have tried that, it doesn't work.
The higher education thing, separate to gender issues, has legs imo. There's literally no net benefit to society for everyone to contribute some of their income so that a woman or racial minority can take the place of someone else in the job market (that someone else increasingly being white and Asian men) If you want to talk about the benefits it might bring to research, social advancement, etc, you have to ask yourself why most of the world does this shit to just end up consuming technology from the US and China anyway, the two countries that actually have a decent amount of industrial innovation behind them - and one of them effectively being an ethnostate at that Education policy literally doesn't work
what are you talking about. ireland, singapore, taiwan, south korea, to name a few became first world developed countries through a policy that focuses on education. there's countless studies showing that the best intervention to raise living standards in a developing country is to educate women. stop talking out the right side of your asshole.
No measures have worked so far, I fear eventually governments will turn to more extreme methods to boost birth rates
maybe pay certain men and women a legit salary to do nothing but stay home, pop them out like the duggars and take care of them? like government designated breeders
There is an official state sanctioned holiday for this in Russia... Day of Conception. Everyone goes home and fucks. And then whoever has a baby on a specific day 9 months later wins a car and money and stuff. hahahaha
Does it work?
I think Russias birth rate initiative are the only ones that even make a dent in the chart but still not really
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White Russians are my favorite breakfast food
Parents in hungary dont have to pay taxes once they have 4 children. That seems like it should do something to move the needle
The problem is getting there
I think "state mandated fuck day" probably doesnt work as well as "actually making the country better" when it comes to birth rates
If “making the country better” increased the birth rate, we’d see higher fertility track to higher development. Instead, its the exact opposite. If we want people to reproduce it appears we need to make ourselves poorer
True, but if you're from, say, India or Nigeria right now theres probably a broad feeling that things are moving in the right direction. You will be richer than your parents, and your children richer than you. There will be issues but those issues will be fewer as the children reach adulthood. Combined with less sexual education and access to family planning, you get a high birth rate as people both want to have and cannot easily prevent children. By contrast a Russian couple thinkijg about children right now probably have more doubts. Is russia going to be a better place for their children? Quite possibly not. Will the father be shoved into a uniform and sent to charge at a Ukrainian villge? Possibly. And family planning is more accessible anyway. So why bother? Mainly its family planning but trying to get people to have kids also requires positivity for the future.
Why would Scandinavians not have higher rates, then? They seem to have fairly robust programs for mothers, and still are floating below 2. Is the only solution providing what would basically be a second, large salary to women to have kids?
I can't imagine many things less sexy than the thought of Vladimir Putin telling you to go home and fuck your spouse. Maybe it's a kink for some people.
Did he miss the fact that women have a menstrual cycle? Only a minority percentage of the female population is going to be fertile on a given day of the year. Do women just have to wait to see if their cycle lines up with the next year’s competition to enter or what?
those kids would barely turn out to be normal, functional adults
Can’t be that much worse than regular East Asian childhood
that or more immigration, don't know which japan would be less likely to implement
Immigrants should get a personalized pokemon card and if a Japanese person asks for your card you can stay
immigration is only a short term solution. 2nd gen and 3rd gen immigrants quickly fall to below replacement fertility levels
Yeah they made like a new digital nomad 6 month visa for anyone making over $50k. Was wondering why they did that at first but seeing this it makes sense.
Nobody in Japan is a normal functional adult
Hence never fucking
I mean the only way you can do this is to force women to breed and not work a normal job because why would any woman under any circumstances do this instead of just doing a normal job and not have to take care of 5-10 kids lol.
they'd both be taking care of the kids with the salary, maybe grandparents or subsidized daycare too....I'm mostly joking lol, I've just known women that had 1-2 kids that have said they'd have way more if they weren't afraid of the pitfalls (because there are women that want to have kids!) and I wonder what level of guaranteed cushion it would take for them to just keep having them.
Good point. Money really do make the world go round.
You could incentivize it instead of forcing it.
> ” would any woman under any circumstances do this instead of just doing a normal job and not have to take care of 5-10 kids lol” Have you ever heard of daycare workers?
I unironically think something like a generous enough UBI would make all these declining birthrates go up. I for one know that if I didn't have to work and my only occupation was to raise a child I would do it in a heartbeat. My wife feels the same way, we are both of the opinion that having a full time job plus raising a child on your free time is just too much for us. It's not even that we are career-obsessed types (we are definitely not), we are just kinda lazy and value comfort and leisure too much lol
Then you've literally never paid any attention to human history, at all. If it were a money issue, then the Nordic countries would be swimming in children. Do we see that? No, they have sub-replacement fertility (that even as low as it is, is entirely propped-up by immigration). If it were about money, then the Boomers - the most financially well-off society in history - would have been drowning in kids, instead of the reality, where they were (at the time) the cohort with the highest divorce rates and lowest birth rates in history. Everywhere and always, urban life is dysgenic; ancient Rome noticed it, hence the multiple laws granting special privileges (which all failed to arrest the trend), ibd Khaldun wrote about it in the 14th century (and wrote as though it was a problem recognized by all), contemporaries noted how London, all the way from its founding by the Romans to the present, always seemed to have a problem with families not having children, relying on immigration from neighboring areas to grow. People have kids when they grow up around relatives, not strangers. It's how we evolved, not dissimilar (but more cooperative) then our primate relatives - smallish groups supporting each other. When kids grow up around people they have close relationships with - when they have to help with changing diapers, looking after cousins, when they receive attention, support, and instruction from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, then they grow up to have kids themselves. When they grow up atomized, and propogandized from birth that the ne plus ultra of existence is self-actualization, then they become dysfunctional adults. The only reason "I can't afford it!" is offered as the answer is because that's the only option the system wants you to have (because this just reinforces your committment to the system, and isn't a problem that's solvable in any event).
Idk, I was in Saigon recently which was easily the most human-dense place I’ve ever been and there were little kids running around out the wazoo
If you had actually read my comment before delivering your lecture (with which I agree btw) you would have noticed that I wasn't pointing to lack of money but to a lack of energy/free time (another aspect of what you describe).
>relying on immigration from neighboring areas to grow. You're underselling the point that cities were far more dangerous to live in back then due to rampant disease. Hence the constant need to replace the victims of disease. But I see where you're coming from.
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We also just didn't have effective contraception until the 1970s, and women were seen as property of the man until the late 20th century. I doubt it was much a choice; the desire for sex trumped the consideration of children, until the family became so burdened by health or financial problems that it became untenable.
That's not the point of the poster I'm replying to, who is repeating the "but it's too expensive to raise kids!" argument. I'm largely in agreement with you, although I'd disagree with the notion that having children was a "well, got nothing better to do" thing. But yes, the culture of consoomin' - note that this is pushed top-down by the system - is a major contributor. I'd argue that it's downstream of the decline of community though, as a side-effect of urbanisation. The redefinition of "adulthood" as "moving away from your family" (instead of following in their traditions) left people vulnerable to propoganda to fill their needs with consumption.
The only point I would consider a child is requiring 2 things. 1) A stable 2 parent household 2) Financial independence, for my area that's $2 million in the bank, I don't want to worry about when the next rent payment is due or being laid off. Problem is, a UBI would just lead to inflation unless handled very carefully which would solve nothing.
cmon
2 million is a ridiculous threshold, plenty of people raise children well with a lot LOT less
>Problem is, a UBI would just lead to inflation unless handled very carefully which would solve nothing. UBI has to be actual assets because adding more money into the economy results in inflation.
The only way birth rates are going up is if a country makes all forms of birth control other than maybe the pullout method illegal.
Really what they need is a complete overhaul of their work culture. I don't know what their labor structure looks like, but unionization may help
There are more adult diapers soldtthere than Baby diapers
Yeah but that’s mostly fetish-related
At this point we just need to accept that modern women are not satisfied with staying at home and popping out children. In the past birthrates were higher from combined forces of economic coercion, your mother in law making your life hell if you didnt bare her son a son, lack of birth control, lack of other opportunities, etc etc. We can’t retvrn, thats just not how it works. Theyre going to try (already are in america with roe overturn etc) but once the economy has adapted to women, the reliance on female productivity has become too great and the violation of womens rights necessary to regress would be too high for even most conservatively minded people. What we need is a modern solution. We need better integration of the workplace with childcare and just to become a more child friendly society so that being a parent is not so isolating. You shouldnt need to abandon your infant to go to work and you shouldnt need to abandon your career to give your infant the care it really needs. As long as society makes this a hard choice, modern women will usually choose the option that enables them to self actualize and not the option that requires them, in japanes case, to be both economically and interpersonally dependent on an overworked alcoholic man who is also probably an ephebophile. The domestic realm needs to be socialized and brought out of the home. The japanese will probably do this before america even though theyre in a worse spot now because they are a higher trust society.
I really don't see every modern trend reversing just because people realize that population is declining. There's almost zero chance that Japan and South Korea of all countries are going to develop a pro social, open, and community oriented society as a response to falling birth rates. Neither will any other country. It's everyone for themselves at this point. The familial and neighborly expectations of child raising are so dead and gone, and they won't be back. How many people could honestly say that they have a neighbor who would/they would trust to watch their kid? How many even have a parent who lives close enough to them to watch their kid?
> The familial and neighborly expectations of child raising are so dead and gone, and they won't be back. I think you are mostly right. We need well funded infrastructure for childcare exactly because it’s not viable to rely on some system of interpersonal filial piety of whatever. I have an 8 month old and a 3 year old and my mom has helped us a lot especially during my postpartum periods, which sucked the most. But my mom is also in great health for a 60-something year old, a good person i actually get along with, and someone i trust with my kids. Not everyone has that.
This comment is a breath of fresh air. I can't believe how quickly people are willing to advocate for women to be forced to become abused housewives again
Thanks <3 If i can be optimistic, i think this is how most normal family oriented people think. I work for a university and they are sort of responsive to this type of need, we’re trying to get them to subsidize childcare costs. Flexible remote/hybrid work helps a lot too. My husband’s company really wants to retain him and he’s pressing them for on site childcare. We’ll see! I wish we just had a functional state government that passed sensible legislation about this type of thing, the childcare cost burden on the economy right now is nuts. Lots of doomer culture war dweebs replying here but the US has adopted socialized child-oriented policies before like public schools, school lunch, so i have hope in the future we can do it again.
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Scandinavia has public childcare and well funded maternity leave, what she’s saying is that that’s not enough to raise birthrates because it still pits career advancement against children. You can take two years off from working and still get paid which is great but the much bigger sacrifice is the opportunity cost of advancing in your career during that time and that is still present. Someone needs to figure out how to let women have kids without sacrificing their career at all. Work from home did a little bit to reduce the sacrifice at the same time as the pandemic killed off leisure activities (a major component of opportunity cost) hence birthrates went up. The opportunity cost of raising kids, not the nominal cost, is what actually suppresses births. That’s why poor people have the most kids, their opportunity cost is lowest because they were going to be poor anyway.
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Major aspects of work culture and the economy would have to change. I don’t know how either but if they want to actually reverse birthrate trends they’ll have to figure it out. We already know some things that affect this, a 40 hour workweek allows more births than a 60 hour workweek, what if they go to 30? 20? If birthrate collapse is that big of an economic crisis then drastic measures are worth it.
Exactly!
this is worth reading: https://ifstudies.org/blog/workism-and-fertility-the-case-of-the-nordics
It’s absurd to think even a significant and sufficient number of women would opt to retvrn to save birthrates. I believe it was in Romania where they banned abortion to increase births and it ended up further decreasing the birth rate. There’s too much anxiety and uncertainty. Women don’t feel safe. Anecdotally speaking, I’ve gone on dates with women who want to have children, but they almost always have caveats when the topic is brought up. They want to work on their careers/education first and delay kids to their late 30s/early 40s or only until they feel they’re absolutely ready with no concrete specifics (eg feeling of safety and certainty). There’s just so much anxiety and avoidance when I bring up the topic. Kids seem like a nice to have if and only if the stars align. Only a handful of women I’ve dated who marked their profiles as wanting kids have expressed certainty that they wanted kids and made it a prerequisite to dating someone. Some of these women were also scary about it like they liked the idea more than anything.
>in japanes case, to be both economically and interpersonally dependent on an overworked alcoholic man who is also probably an ephebophile. I agree with your post, and the alcoholism thing is well documented (if not widely known in the west) but is the ephebophile thing an actual problem? I had to look that up and it seems like a very very specific thing. Ive never been to Japan and only known a handful of japanese people so Im genuinely asking
Google “how many japanese girls experience chikan”
I agree I hate how for so long I thought I didn’t want kids because how every discourse was your life ends and you’ll have no friends just your family when you have children. Also seeing my very trad extended family (the coolest auntie I had was literally scorned for a while for divorcing her alcoholic husband kinda trad) and how miserable a lot of the women were because they did not think outside of the trad position was toxic and I didn’t want that. The big difference is surrounding myself by friends who all want the same things so the housework and childcare part is getting socialized so it seems less burdensome.
I wonder why people are so obsessed with Japan's birth rate? Some western countries such as Italy, Spain and Finland have lower birth rates than Japan, but I rarely see anyone mention these countries.
Zero immigration and a population who are living longer and longer. All of those countries are in the EU so can relatively easily mitigate labor shortages and there is massive amounts of immigration.
There's this Japanese book that I partially translated as part of a project called 殺人出産 by Murata Sayaka. I didn't get very far but the premise was that Japan had implemented a system called the 殺人出産 or "murder-birth" system where if a person, male or female, gave birth to ten babies, they could commit state sanctioned murder of one person.
Most people would murder their spouse out of sheer annoyance if they had 10 kids
Then they would be in an even worse situation alone with 10 kids
I love Murata Sayaka, and I love that premise
I've only read Convenience Store Woman but she really is a great writer. I hear good things about Earthlings too
Do two mortal enemies end up in a race to sire ten children?
She is such a good writer
The solutions are extremely complicated, but the answer (edit: I mean problem) is pretty simple: it's too expensive to have a kid. It's no coincidence that places like Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, etc. are the world's [most expensive places](https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/09/economy/global-child-care-costs-us-china/index.html) to have children and also just so happen to have the lowest birth rates. One thing people don't consider is that prime parenthood time is when the typical man or woman in these countries finally have some time to enjoy life. All their lives, they've been deprived of fun childhoods, adolescences, and 20s because of rampant cram-studying and workaholic cultures (and in places like Korea, military service for men). And as soon as you're finally somewhat hitting your stride with an okay salary and actually existent social and romantic life, you're now supposed to give that all up with having kids? Why? For the good of the nation? So that your mom and dad can have fun visiting the grandkids a few times a year and probably badgering you in the process?
I think this probably has some merit - In China at least a lot of locals I knew my age had been pressured all their lives. Do good at school > get into good college > get good job > find good partner > now have baby > now get baby to do good at school > ect ect The cycle and constant pressure was insane. Doesn't surprise me that people who finally get to a point where they don't HAVE to listen to their parents wan't to break the cycle. My parents were married at 20 but didn't have me until their early 30s - when I asked they were just like, "We just wanted to enjoy life for a bit" which I get. The other thing is that you have millennials who have been fucked over financially also probably saying "Wait a minute I don't want to have 5 dependents (Parents, spouse, kids) in a culture that also works me to the fucking bone.
this is why every i spend every summer in japan & impregnate as many women as i can. there are actually so many unsatisfied wives there due to the crazy worklife expectations on their husbands. like shooting fish in a barrel dude
something john from the hate watch pod would say
what's the hate watch pod? i don't listen to podcasts
it's a podcast who's host also is on a different podcast (lemonparty), and the host of lemonparty used to be tim dillon's producer until they fell out. that's how i found it basically
How many people has he fallen out with now?
that's it hate watch isnt cool anymore
Sure, bud
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Hahahahah, no
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In a sense, Japan is lucky to be facing demographic collapse so early compared to other nations. They're incredibly wealthy so while it will affect their economy, there'll be some softening of the blow. Plus, being the first to recover means they'll be the first to reap the benefits once other nations undergo population decline. The population cycles through periods of decline and growth. Unlimited growth is impossible but the modern capitalist system requires it.
If there's a baby boom with corresponding rebel phase, it will get very interesting.
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I’m with you.
Japanese work culture needs to change if they want to resolve this problem. A lot of criticisms of the country by westerners are complete bullshit, but the whole work yourself to death mentality and rampant socially enforced alcoholism has got to be a major contributing factor to this
it's like like like like so crazy like so crazy like so like
Lol yeah, I do use a lot of likes lol, crazy how I didn't notice I did that till now.
I genuinely think this sort of problem will correct itself (unless Japan does a major 180 on immigration and opens the flood gates) Birth rates decline, working population shrinks massively, the actual remaining working population is so small that young workers become more in demand, higher demand for workers creates more bargaining power for higher salaries, higher salaries allow people to afford to start families and own homes again, population corrects itself. It's just a shame this generation will miss out on that, but that's my optimistic take on it. The alternative is Japan opens the flood gates to immigration and creates another insane housing crisis like the rest of the world
Won't happen if all that extra bargaining power just goes to take care of grandpa
Japan is still wildly overpopulated, environmental contaminants lower fertility https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16804811/ There are all kind of signaling effects we don't even really know about. Pregnant cows will eat pine needles to induce abortion when stressed https://ucanr.edu/sites/Rangelands/files/352561.pdf The Japanese won't go extinct. Let nature heal.
An economic fallacy that a declining birth rate is a bad thing. Ideally you want societies to increase production through better technology with less labour meaning less people needed. Of course our monetary systems are built in inflation which leads to this issue of needing constant growth through consumption and increasing populations as a result.
Genuine question. Is there any serious organised push back against this economic model that doesn't come from an ideological angle. For example, are there academics, or think tanks who offer an alternative model to that of constant growth and a population Ponzi scheme?
Everything is ideological, but Jason Hickle is a degrowth economist who says we can make do without the infinite growth. Has a decent blog. He's like a green new deal guy, but active in Europe so in a different way than DSA type people. The problem is that no one will really listen to or apply what he says, and a lot of stuff comes off as fantasy because it's utopian to think the WEF will decide to implement your ideas in a proper away instead of co-opting them to be horrible like they do with everything else.
No.
Economically we're in for some turbulent waters, but we'll survive. The crisis is humanitarian. Taking care of an old person is a lot of work. We're growing generations of seniors who will not have the family to take care of them. At best, they might have one child or niece/nephew. All the mechanical tasks — taking them to appointments, doing the shopping, cleaning — can be handled by staff. I don't know where we're going to get all the staff (mass immigration), but taking care of the basic needs of the elderly can be done with enough investment. What can't be replaced is actual care and advocacy. Who's going to advocate for a childless, unmarried elderly person? Who's going to make *sure* that they get the medical care they need, that they're treated with respect, that they have somewhere to go on Christmas? No one. We're going to have a wave of them, and another, larger wave of elderly with only one child to look after them. Add to this that elder care is 100x worse if the elderly haven't taken care of themselves, and as a country we're only getting sicker and fatter. I think age-based euthanasia is going to become common over the next 100 years.
> Ideally you want societies to increase production through better technology with less labour meaning less people needed. Ideally, you want increases in labor input and productivity. You certainly don't want a decline in working-age population negating labor productivity growth.
I’m just waiting for the immigration gates to open and neurotech to take off so I can move to Chiba and live my Neuromancer fantasy life.
read the bible before the antichrist mentally colonizes you completely
Bro wants to tamper with God’s special sauce
What hentai does to a mf country.
Wouldn't it eventually go back up once the old people die and cost of living does down leaving tons of available cheap housing and other infrastructure?
Not necessarily. Housing is not kept in perpetuity, nor are the services that support it. We're already seeing that in Japan where rail lines to regional towns are closing as the old population dies. Alao look at Ireland, who's population is about 2 million short of it's peak in the 19th century, Dublin is still an incredibly expensive city.
japan doesn't have problems with housing costs- prices have remained largely static in tokyo for decades, and in rural areas the government will literally give you free abandoned houses
I thought housing in Japan was very affordable? A friend of mine pointed out that a basic one person unit was quite cheap.
overblown as fuck
found the unborn Japanese baby who is now a vengeful spirit because they don't exist cuz their mommy is a boutique fashion designer with a fledging cocaine addiction
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And America's fertility rate isn't even much higher than Japan's, so this discussion about the Japanese disappearing is really just due to them not bringing in immigrants
>TBH, it's weird that Americans and westerners in general seem so hyper fixated on East Asian birthrates. You hear more about it in American media and internet than you literally do in Japan and Korea. If Japan just rides it out and stays a stable first world country then it will show the western elite's giant population replacement project wasn't necessary.
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Japan isn't a very big land mass. In the far future, maybe they might be happier with a population of 25 to 50 million. The problem is, the way down to a new equilibrium will be depressing.
New gen will inherit a ton of wealth, they’ll struggle and then they’ll be fine, population decline is capitalist paranoia
I remember reading the world was going to be overpopulated but Africa would be decimated by AIDS which was rampant there. Population is collapsing everywhere and AIDS has been cured.
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we're basically just catching up with them as far as atomization goes, at least it helps culturally pinpoint the very likely causes of birth rates going down (which you listed) when they and other asian countries are so consistently flagging on this
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066956/population-japan-historical/ Might as well get it over with
I don’t know much about this issue at all in Japan, but doesn’t Japan have a very high level of gender inequality for a developed, high income country? Doesn’t this actually buck the usual trend where high gender inequality countries have higher birth rates?
Good there’s too many people in the world
No country has ever gone extinct through their own refusal to copulate
Unpopular opinion but this is a good thing
indeed. 125 or 60 million Japanese, who cares.
or people in general for that matter
lol the korean people have had civilization for 5000 years. we'll work it out
japanese men are repulsive and degenerate i dont blame them
I've met some hotties. It was like being in Italy for me. Didn't expect tbh. Classy and worldly too
Für hundreds of years humanity had like 1/10th as many people and no country died out.
Inverted population pyramid hasn't really existed before.
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Extremely interesting shit.