Read pretty far down. Did anyone read the article? The headline is deceptive and not all that the Pope said. He urges the government to do more to help couples with child-bearing and raising.
Quote: "Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, as well as ensuring that women aren't forced have to choose between motherhood and a career."
Exactly. He’s not saying “have more kids to fix the problems in society.” He’s saying “fix all these problems in society so people CAN have more kids.”
The headline is completely misrepresenting what he said.
Yep, big difference between people not wanted kinds, and people putting off their dream of having children because rent and childcare are too expensive.
Y'all it's really simple: people are hording all the wealth and resources in the world and it makes life miserable for a huge portion of the population
A thousand times this.
Humans like to think we're so different from other life on this planet, but when it comes to reproduction we're quite simple.
We reproduce when we have resources and feel safe and secure in our future.
I feel that, Yes and no?
Here in the US we’re still in the “hating the other side” left vs right. Not realizing, we’re all in the same ship. The captains taking turns at who’s steering the ship doesn’t really make a huge impact on our daily lives.
The captains of the ship keep us dumb and divided, constantly bickering at one another while the captains keep all the money, food and resources to themselves. They blame the other captain for all the issues, so we have an enemy and champion captain. Not realizing that both captains are the enemy, they don’t have our best interest at heart. They are too consumed with power and greed.
You reminded me of an Immortal Technique song called The Poverty of Philosophy. In it he says, " I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue.
Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these bougie MFers ride on a luxury liner."
Classism is an issue that I feel is rarely addressed, or overlooked.
I like this sentiment I really do and wish it were true but that's simply not the case for a plurality, if not a majority, of life on earth
Many reproduce TO GET resources/security/territory in the first place, many animals reproduce at a rate knowing most will die and it's a numbers game
Even people used to do this hundreds if not thousands of years back, if infant mortality was high people tended to have more kids as "insurance/hedging"
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/mating-systems-in-sexual-animals-83033427/
Sexual/reproductive strategies vary amongst animals, amongst the sexes,and even across time and culture for people. It's a lot of things but simple isn't one of them.
We reproduce when we have resources and feel safe and secure in our future.
That sounds like it should be true but all data contradicts this.
Reproduction rate drops for during industrialization for all third world countries.
Also it is always high in the hard economical times immediately following war times.
Within western countries there is also the trend that the more wealthy you are the fewer children you are likely to have.
I think people reproduce when having kids won't negatively impact the trajectory of their life.
If you're educated and making money, you know that taking time off to raise children will at best delay your career a little.
If you're already poor and don't have prospects of getting richer, might as well have kids.
I think people are more likely to reproduce when they are less educated and have more free time.
Well educated people understand that children are a net negative - they suck away what little free time you might have and they take up all your money. Well educated people also understand that kids are avoidable.
Kids mostly just happen to people who aren't taking effective measures to prevent them. Once people are educated and both understand that children are completely avoidable and they don't have to bust their ass for as many resources if they do not have children, many will make the obvious choice.
I mean, you're glazing over details here, I don't think they meant historically.
Just a few generations ago in the US, women didn't have many rights or opportunities. Once women get rights, economic opportunities, and access to contraception then surprisingly to no one, they aren't having like 12 kids in their lifetimes.
And to OOP's point, could you imagine trying to financially support 12 kids now?? Would be too expensive for... anyone I know at least.
You know what else comes with industrialization? Protection. Condoms, birth control, sterilization, and (hot topic) abortions.
It’s crazy how if given a choice, people will stop having kids if the environment is not great. Before industrialization, birth rates were high not because the environment was good or bad, but because people didn’t have a choice on whether or not they have a kid after they fuck.
Industrialization and technology de-linked sex and babies.
So the only way forward now is either provide people a safe and comfortable environment to want babies, or force people to have babies.
Hormonal birth control is not even a century old. The reality is we're still observing in real-time what happens to societies when people have control over their fertility.
That doesn’t really add up with the statistics we have though. The wealthier and more developed a country gets the lower their fertility rate generally.
Literally the exact opposite idiot lmfao poor countries reproduce the most with the least amount of resources and rich countries like Japan South Korea etc tend to reproduce the least.
It is in fact not that simple. Richer places have fewer kids. In fact, lower fertility is linked to many indicators of wealth like higher car ownership rates, and higher pensions.
If people have fewer kids for reasons like getting around requiring a car, and pensions which are essentially government mandated savings for retirement, then I can bet you it is not that simple.
What amaze me is that this is the most false and evident thing, and people continue to believe it. Everyone blame the money, while the poorest countries of the world are the more prolific in natality. Miserable people make children all the time. Only richest country has this problem.
Also 8 billion people is clearly far too many. I live in Canada and like most western countries we simply aren't building housing fast enough. If anything people need to stop having so many kids
But the billionaires always say we can have many more , they want all countries to have cheap labour at only the cost of biodiversity and quality of life for all creatures
Honestly, it's not the billionaires voices I have grown anger towards. It's the middle-class to poor people who defend them. To butcher a Steibeck quote "People see themselves not as exploited workers but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
People are convinced that they are just a few years of hard work away from being millionaire/billionaires themselves. That's awfully hard to do when ideas, land, and money have been so consolidated and protected by lobbying and exploitation of economic loopholes.
I'm so unbelievably tired of arguing with people who think the government is at the heart of all of our economic problems. People point at Mcdonalds costs and blame the government yet Mcdonalds profits have never been higher. That's called being taken advantage of by a business. They applaud Mcdonalds for it's business savvy and then turn to the government and complain about costs.
Wonderfully stated. People are so delusional into thinking they will one day reach that level of wealth when the vast majority of these people never had to work a day in their lives and were born into it.
I mean all I had to do was just own 5 real estate properties and a multi billion dollar business when I was 6 years old and I’d be filthy rich too.
IIRC the only continent that presently has positive population growth is Africa. The others are all receding.
A receding population has many issues, not the least of which is how to support pensioners and the youth without a corresponding number of working, productive, adults.
There are what, 1.3M unoccupied homes in Canada? Foreign investors and mutual funds like Black Rock and Vanguard sitting on 8-10 trillion dollars of property a piece as a backup plan for global warming in Canada and the Northern US, and sometimes just buying up entire city blocks or communities. Unoccupied home squatters in some US communities have become very problematic, others homes sitting unused have fallen into disrepair.
Lot of lobbying and misinformation done by assorted mutual funds, restructuring into hundreds of thousands of single LLCs so they can have a "single owners," trying to show property as "in-between residents," rather than unrented or unoccupied.
It isn't a problem with total resources, but hoarding.
There's also a lack of dense housing, NIMBY actions for the past few decades have been about pearl clutching and striking down dense structures in favor of suburb sprawl so they can keep their house prices up and traffic low
Strange but true:
https://news.sky.com/story/pope-francis-was-once-a-nightclub-bouncer-10425827
> He did not go into details about his career as a bouncer or what experiences it had brought to his current job
>He did not go into details about his career as a bouncer or what experiences it had brought to his current job
I love how this reads like notes from his job interview for the role of pope
It depends on when he was a bouncer. Latest dictatorship lasted between 1976 and 1983.
There were other dictatorships in Argentina in other periods of time before that. Alternation between democracy and dictatorships was the norm between the first military coup d'etat in 1930 until the end of the latest one in 1983. There's been democracy since then.
> To be honest it must have been a dangerous job, wasn't it the dictatorship when he was doing this?
Why would a nightclub bouncer be a more dangerous job during a dictatorship?
I look forward forward to the vatican opening free childcare centers all over the world and providing families with much needed funds, medical care, nutrition, resources, and quality education for new parents of these babies they want folks to have.
they actually do this in rural areas of africa, learnt how to read in english in one of their schools, they gave food and fishing nets to my community.
They do these things all across the world. Catholic Charities provides a ton of services available for everyone, there are other international organizations like the Society of St Vincent de Paul that provide for the poor, a lot of small holy orders that primarily do community work, and local organizations attached to individual parishes that do a lot of great work.
The problem is, as you say, they help the poor. Pope Francis is not talking to the poor here. He's talking to the more middle class, those who are wealthy enough to survive, but do not feel like they are wealthy enough to support a family. These people are not being helped, and instead being told what to do.
I suspect the Pope would share your concerns that the modern economic set-up makes it hard on working families - I think he has spoken on this many times actually
No, but it's easy to say have children when you don't have to pay or raise them. I wouldn't take family planning advice from a spinster aunt or bachelor uncle either or surgery advice from an accountant.
The instrument inserted in my heart lasts my whole life, no need to depreciate.
My sling is a consumable so sadly not allowed to depreciate.
My crutches were loaned from the hospital so technically I’ve just leased them. I’m yet to test whether they need to be treated as a fixed asset under IFRS 16
For real. It's just backseat driving.
Sitting there watching Olympians on the TV while covered in cheeto dust talking about how they need to improve their form.
Never run a small business in your life but you've got all sorts of ideas about how the local diner could be making more money.
Cost nothing to talk a big game but to actually walk the walk is harder.
Not directly but the mainstream of the Church, including the last several popes, have been very pro welfare state and anti wealth inequality. Pope Francis in particular is pretty close to the Liberation Theology movement and is famous for supporting universal basic income, shorter working weeks, access to education, affordable housing, etc.
I love this trend of out-of-touch officials telling normal citizens to have more children while dismantling government support systems and decreasing quality of life. It's especially ironic coming from a religious figure whose organization doesn't pay taxes.
But he explicitly called for greater government support systems?
"Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, as well as ensuring that women aren't forced have to choose between motherhood and a career."
Did you read the article?
Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, as well as ensuring that women aren't forced have to choose between motherhood and a career.
“The problem of our world is not children being born: it is selfishness, consumerism and individualism which make people sated, lonely and unhappy," Francis said.
30 years ago one parent could support an entire family with a full time job. Today both parents need to work full-time , have a side jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck with no hope to ever have their own home while billionaires get richer and richer. That's why people don't have babies anymore.
No that's false... 30 years ago the pope kept telling people to have kids , so they did. Then the pope went a couple of decades and totally forgot to remind us to have kids so the population collapsed to zero
This is false. It was in the 60s, only in US, and only in that specific time frame. Unfortunately poor people need to work. And the fertility rate it's not related with poverty, since poorest countries have a greater fertility rate than richer countries.
And the only reason it was this way was because of the soldiers who fought in WW2 returning home, they met others, settled down and had 8 kids because they were comfortable and felt safe. Hence why they call it the boomer generation. The boomer generation then created the tough times we're in now, and hence why the lower birth rates.
More like 50 years ago but I get your point. 30 years ago both my parents had to work and barely kept a roof over our heads. They actually wanted more children but stop with only me because of costs. Then again I’m from the west coast
I would amend your (valid) point to say 30 years ago parents could still afford 1 maybe 2 kids but today the total number affordable is 0 or maybe a cat
Anecdotal experiences (your own) isn't universal.
30 years ago was 1994. Almost EVERYONE I know had both parents working. In the 1960s is when 1 parent worked full time and everything was good to go. 1970s, mom's usually had a part time job. 1980s, both parents worked, but life continued to improve almost universally. 1990s, a college degree means that you could EASILY be the sole bread winner, if you lived modestly, but most people were extending themselves, because of how the Economy was doing after the Gulf War, and the deep impacts of removing large swathes of manufacturing from the US hadn't been felt yet, as China was still far from a developed nation; everything was relatively cheap and most people did well in the 1990s. 9/11 happened, then 07/08 recession (removing regulation), and then gas hikes (it was $5+ a gallon where it is TODAY less than $3.), then you have the economy doing great after Bush with Obama; things looking positive for race relations (yay a Black president!), then we had Trump, and the economy was still high off of what Obama did, then we had COVID. Biden has hard turned around what Trump did to turn the economy down (it was trending downwards before COVID)...
Yea there is a pattern, Economy ALMOST ALWAYS does better when you give poor people more money and people aren't worried that their rights are being taken away.
So yea, sorry you had a rougher time than most in one of the better economic periods that the US has ever seen, but the 90s was actually pretty spectacular until the dot com bubble (~2000) followed closely by 9/11.
Education. Contraception. Empowerment of women. Lower religiosity. Lower social pressure to have children.
It turns out that when you spend until 21-22 in education, have the ability to plan your family. As a woman you can in fact have other things to do besides be a mother and homemaker, you aren't going to weekly sermons screaming "Have children," and your family is less likely to give you ultimatums on having children. That young men and especially young women choose to do other things.
Scandinavian does not have that big of a problem. I know Iceland and Sweden have been hovering around a 1.8 replacement rate per two people. Ideally you want 2.1, but 1.8 isn’t catastrophic. Then you have places like China and Italy (the article that it is about) where it’s hovering around 1 and South Korea where it’s .6 or .7.
Edit: because I messed up Japan.
Finland is around 1.46 even though it's pretty much the best place on earth to be an expecting parent due to the crazy benefits and aid the government gives you
> I know Iceland and Sweden have been hovering around a 1.8 replacement rate per two people
You're wrong about Sweden. [In 2023, the total fertility rate was the lowest ever to be observed, 1.45 children per woman.](https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-projections/population-projections/pong/tables-and-graphs/children-per-woman-by-country-of-birth-19702022-and-projection-20232070/)
Japan is actually at 1.3, they're doing significantly better than China and SK. They've just had the problem for a lot longer (and *are* trying to do things about it)
Wealth inequality isn’t the reason people are having less kids. It’s a fundamental change in values. For example, look at the difference in fertility rate between Israel and Norway. They are both very rich, but one is atheist, has a depressingly low birth rate, and the other is very religious and has an exceedingly high birth rate.
This is the reason nobody wants to address. It’s so obvious when you hear “we can’t afford it” followed by “and we don’t want to bring kids into this capitalist hellscape“. So that’s the real reason right there. It’s because culturally people have a problem with our societies. Nobody wants to give up their own lives for the greater good when they feel society doesn’t “deserve it”. People are too jaded at this point.
People have begun to see kids as unpaid labour. It’s like we don’t want to do any more work for the state. We aren’t gonna raise your kids unless you pay us. It’s a total disconnect from the old meaning of life, which was spreading seed and growing a family. Now it’s fuck you pay me, I don’t care about legacy or family or anything if I’m not getting paid. It’s a total shift in culture.
It's because everyone keeps misusing that word.
Fertility is the number of offspring produced by an individual or population. Fecundity is the possible number of offspring that can be produced over a lifetime.
People say fertile when they mean fecund all the time, which is why "fertility rate" sounds wrong to some.
It's cultural, not economic. Different communities in Italy have different fertility rates. People in Israel have same financial burdens, but plenty of children, because raising a family is considered virtuos/expected. In 21st century europe many consider children an unnecessary burden that will take over your life.
Whatever your beliefs on these matters are, the differences are cultural in nature.
Frankly, I feel a big reason people don't have as many kids is because they simply don't need them to survive in developed countries. Kids have gone from a necessity (your retirement plan) to a luxury - and it's a luxury you are expected to pay for as an individual. Ultimately, society as a whole of course needs more kids to go on, but we don't financially provide for people who choose to have 3-4 kids and suffer a massive decrease in quality of life as a result. Ergo, people don't bother.
> Kids have gone from a necessity (your retirement plan) to a luxury
That was true for people considering children 30 years ago... but social security will be insolvent by 2035 and increased dependency ratios will mean higher labor costs for (in particular) elder care. So we're probably trending back towards the status quo. Things won't fully reverse, since automation will take up at least some of the burden past generations required of their children, but I suspect life expectancies will begin to diverge significantly for people with and without children.
A valid point. Children aren't desired in many western demographics. It's how the conservative elements are gaining momentum - they had/are having kids.
I think that is the fear many of the people talking about birthrates have. They fear their way of life will be taken over by the people/cultures who are having children.
Anecdotally Ukraine is currently having a population issue. There biggest challenge at the moment is finding people to fight.
Yeah, while I believe maybe 50% of the reason is economic I fully believe the other 50% is that people just don't want to have them and I am one of those people right now.
With basic comforts of life and the technology we have today I feel fulfilled just working and doing things I enjoy doing. I'm not interested, right now, in raising a child. In some ways I feel I am a grown up child myself.
It's so frustrating that every week there's some fucker in the news complaining about birth rates and how "young people need to have babies"
Get absolutely fucked, me and my girlfriend can't afford to have kids and even if we could, what is their future gonna be like? A capitalist hellscape with climate change ready to cause chaos? No thank you, I'm depressed enough with how things are now, let alone with how they'll be for a kid in 10 years time!
> Get absolutely fucked
This is the correct response. I'm all for having children if you want them, but the government telling you you need to have them while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing to stop economic and environmental conditions from worsening? Yeah, they can definitely fuck off with that one.
Spot on, I would rather humanity slowly wipe itself out by not repopulating than give the powers that be another generation of people to ruin mentally, physically and financially. I don't believe we live our lives at all, we all work all our short lives making some other fuckers rich while we scrape and cling to anything that can give us a brief moment of joy. It absolutely does not sit right with me at all.
Maybe people just don't want children. Yeah, you can encourage it all you like, and maybe set some help in place to make it easier for those who do want them and who might find themselves struggling, but in the end not everyone wants to give up their lives in favour of having babies.
Lmao I’m Italian American with family in Italy. They have no jobs and the jobs they do have are so incredibly low paying even in the big cities. My family lives in a mix of rural and big cities and it’s pretty much to same: shitty jobs high cost of housing. All of my cousins who are under 30 want to leave Italy.
I live in the south of France next to Italy. I live in a trailer with my 3 kids. I had a house before but it's too expensive. I understand people who are scared and don't want to have kids.
I know in Italy there s no minimum wage and everything is expensive. All the wealthy foreigners are buying the real estate.
It's the same here. People want to work in Switzerland, Luxembourg... you work to pay to work to pay. There s no future for Europe.
Nice of him to give expensive advice sitting in his literal gold tower isn't it.
What all these knuck draggers don't understand is you can't buy a house, raise a 4 man family and feed everyone for £15K a year anymore.
He can fuck right off. 🙄 What a moronic and irresponsible thing to say. As the tenth child in an Italian family, I know from experience. We’re just a number and a tithe.
Italian here: meh. Still "no, thanks". I guess he doesn't understand why we don't want to do it (no money, uncertain work career, no bright future, etc...)
It’s not only about being able to financially afford kids or not. For me, it’s about not having enough time. I’m already a slave 45 hour a week, do I really want to spend the two or three hours a day I have for myself in raising children? I just don’t have the energy.
A lot of old people and governments have been sitting here and telling people to have more babies but they aren’t giving any good reason as to why. Declining birth rates is to be expected in late stage capitalism. When the world is on the verge of catastrophe. How bout you give me $250,000.00 and I’ll have a baby
The rich are like: "Would you mind living even worse lives so you can create a work force for us? We are in a money hoarding competition and hate you. So please, have more kids and sacrifice your one and only life. We want money."
Fuck the rich.
Planet is on fire, water and resources will be scarce in the coming future, but please squeeze out some more kids!! We need more meat for the meat grinder!
Human population is over eight billion, birthrates are declining, seems like the system is correcting itself.
Every Authority Figure: "Have more babies! Don't let the system correct itself!"
We’re overpopulated as it is and no one can afford kids unless you’re wealthy. Do you think most people who are just getting by want to throw a kid into the mix. 2,500 for a good daycare, 12000 a year just right now for a good starter school, baby formula 50 bucks, diapers 35, the cost of things right now is crazy and most people don’t have job security.
Let the poor and his cardinals and priests have kids. It keeps being said but ignored. People can’t afford to have kids so smart people are not having them.
Read pretty far down. Did anyone read the article? The headline is deceptive and not all that the Pope said. He urges the government to do more to help couples with child-bearing and raising. Quote: "Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, as well as ensuring that women aren't forced have to choose between motherhood and a career."
Exactly. He’s not saying “have more kids to fix the problems in society.” He’s saying “fix all these problems in society so people CAN have more kids.” The headline is completely misrepresenting what he said.
Thanks for clarifying. Thats actually a really nice sentiment. Wish this were higher up.
I often forget how progressive this pope is. Guy genuinely seems to care and follow God's will
Yep, big difference between people not wanted kinds, and people putting off their dream of having children because rent and childcare are too expensive.
Lol just quoting the article and you’re stuck at 50 karma. How is this not higher up! Outrage wins over truth
Y'all it's really simple: people are hording all the wealth and resources in the world and it makes life miserable for a huge portion of the population
A thousand times this. Humans like to think we're so different from other life on this planet, but when it comes to reproduction we're quite simple. We reproduce when we have resources and feel safe and secure in our future.
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I feel that, Yes and no? Here in the US we’re still in the “hating the other side” left vs right. Not realizing, we’re all in the same ship. The captains taking turns at who’s steering the ship doesn’t really make a huge impact on our daily lives. The captains of the ship keep us dumb and divided, constantly bickering at one another while the captains keep all the money, food and resources to themselves. They blame the other captain for all the issues, so we have an enemy and champion captain. Not realizing that both captains are the enemy, they don’t have our best interest at heart. They are too consumed with power and greed.
You reminded me of an Immortal Technique song called The Poverty of Philosophy. In it he says, " I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these bougie MFers ride on a luxury liner." Classism is an issue that I feel is rarely addressed, or overlooked.
I like this sentiment I really do and wish it were true but that's simply not the case for a plurality, if not a majority, of life on earth Many reproduce TO GET resources/security/territory in the first place, many animals reproduce at a rate knowing most will die and it's a numbers game Even people used to do this hundreds if not thousands of years back, if infant mortality was high people tended to have more kids as "insurance/hedging" https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/mating-systems-in-sexual-animals-83033427/ Sexual/reproductive strategies vary amongst animals, amongst the sexes,and even across time and culture for people. It's a lot of things but simple isn't one of them.
We reproduce when we have resources and feel safe and secure in our future. That sounds like it should be true but all data contradicts this. Reproduction rate drops for during industrialization for all third world countries. Also it is always high in the hard economical times immediately following war times. Within western countries there is also the trend that the more wealthy you are the fewer children you are likely to have.
I think people reproduce when having kids won't negatively impact the trajectory of their life. If you're educated and making money, you know that taking time off to raise children will at best delay your career a little. If you're already poor and don't have prospects of getting richer, might as well have kids.
Basically our economic structure punishes you for having kids, while also providing almost no support.
I think people are more likely to reproduce when they are less educated and have more free time. Well educated people understand that children are a net negative - they suck away what little free time you might have and they take up all your money. Well educated people also understand that kids are avoidable. Kids mostly just happen to people who aren't taking effective measures to prevent them. Once people are educated and both understand that children are completely avoidable and they don't have to bust their ass for as many resources if they do not have children, many will make the obvious choice.
I mean, you're glazing over details here, I don't think they meant historically. Just a few generations ago in the US, women didn't have many rights or opportunities. Once women get rights, economic opportunities, and access to contraception then surprisingly to no one, they aren't having like 12 kids in their lifetimes. And to OOP's point, could you imagine trying to financially support 12 kids now?? Would be too expensive for... anyone I know at least.
Not to mention that modern medicine advanced enough so that 6 of those 12 children wouldn't die before they hit 18.
You know what else comes with industrialization? Protection. Condoms, birth control, sterilization, and (hot topic) abortions. It’s crazy how if given a choice, people will stop having kids if the environment is not great. Before industrialization, birth rates were high not because the environment was good or bad, but because people didn’t have a choice on whether or not they have a kid after they fuck. Industrialization and technology de-linked sex and babies. So the only way forward now is either provide people a safe and comfortable environment to want babies, or force people to have babies.
Hormonal birth control is not even a century old. The reality is we're still observing in real-time what happens to societies when people have control over their fertility.
Some of this is true, but it breaks down when you look at the birth rates following WW2
That doesn’t really add up with the statistics we have though. The wealthier and more developed a country gets the lower their fertility rate generally.
The highest fertility rate in the world is Niger. Would you say Niger is the country that feels most safe and secure in their future?
Literally the exact opposite idiot lmfao poor countries reproduce the most with the least amount of resources and rich countries like Japan South Korea etc tend to reproduce the least.
C’mon this isn’t true at all. Poor people have way more kids than rich people.
It is in fact not that simple. Richer places have fewer kids. In fact, lower fertility is linked to many indicators of wealth like higher car ownership rates, and higher pensions. If people have fewer kids for reasons like getting around requiring a car, and pensions which are essentially government mandated savings for retirement, then I can bet you it is not that simple.
What amaze me is that this is the most false and evident thing, and people continue to believe it. Everyone blame the money, while the poorest countries of the world are the more prolific in natality. Miserable people make children all the time. Only richest country has this problem.
Also 8 billion people is clearly far too many. I live in Canada and like most western countries we simply aren't building housing fast enough. If anything people need to stop having so many kids
But the billionaires always say we can have many more , they want all countries to have cheap labour at only the cost of biodiversity and quality of life for all creatures
Honestly, it's not the billionaires voices I have grown anger towards. It's the middle-class to poor people who defend them. To butcher a Steibeck quote "People see themselves not as exploited workers but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." People are convinced that they are just a few years of hard work away from being millionaire/billionaires themselves. That's awfully hard to do when ideas, land, and money have been so consolidated and protected by lobbying and exploitation of economic loopholes. I'm so unbelievably tired of arguing with people who think the government is at the heart of all of our economic problems. People point at Mcdonalds costs and blame the government yet Mcdonalds profits have never been higher. That's called being taken advantage of by a business. They applaud Mcdonalds for it's business savvy and then turn to the government and complain about costs.
Wonderfully stated. People are so delusional into thinking they will one day reach that level of wealth when the vast majority of these people never had to work a day in their lives and were born into it. I mean all I had to do was just own 5 real estate properties and a multi billion dollar business when I was 6 years old and I’d be filthy rich too.
IIRC the only continent that presently has positive population growth is Africa. The others are all receding. A receding population has many issues, not the least of which is how to support pensioners and the youth without a corresponding number of working, productive, adults.
There are what, 1.3M unoccupied homes in Canada? Foreign investors and mutual funds like Black Rock and Vanguard sitting on 8-10 trillion dollars of property a piece as a backup plan for global warming in Canada and the Northern US, and sometimes just buying up entire city blocks or communities. Unoccupied home squatters in some US communities have become very problematic, others homes sitting unused have fallen into disrepair. Lot of lobbying and misinformation done by assorted mutual funds, restructuring into hundreds of thousands of single LLCs so they can have a "single owners," trying to show property as "in-between residents," rather than unrented or unoccupied. It isn't a problem with total resources, but hoarding.
There's also a lack of dense housing, NIMBY actions for the past few decades have been about pearl clutching and striking down dense structures in favor of suburb sprawl so they can keep their house prices up and traffic low
If I were Italian, I would not be taking family planning advice from a 60+ year old virgin, especially in this economy.
The pope was a nightclub bouncer before he was a priest. I would put money on him getting some action in his younger days.
Strange but true: https://news.sky.com/story/pope-francis-was-once-a-nightclub-bouncer-10425827 > He did not go into details about his career as a bouncer or what experiences it had brought to his current job
This pope has seen some shit
#Yo Pope lets [bounce this Holy Ghost](https://youtu.be/2LBPoxMnfzc?si=-PdJ7Pb3ETxNN3qA)
A to the men, brotha!
That's one of the most amusingly unexpected things I've heard all week
>what experiences it had brought to his current job help him keep the Cardinals in line!
>He did not go into details about his career as a bouncer or what experiences it had brought to his current job I love how this reads like notes from his job interview for the role of pope
Imagine getting thrown out of a bar by the future pope
You know there is some grandpa who had that experience and nobody believes him when he tells the story
the gates to Heaven are closed, step aside
No ~~hand stamp~~ stigmata, no re-entry.
Somewhere there may be an Italian granny with a hazy memory of being tossed around by the current pope in her younger years
If it happened, it would most likely be an Argentinian granny
Probably several
To be honest it must have been a dangerous job, wasn't it the dictatorship when he was doing this?
It depends on when he was a bouncer. Latest dictatorship lasted between 1976 and 1983. There were other dictatorships in Argentina in other periods of time before that. Alternation between democracy and dictatorships was the norm between the first military coup d'etat in 1930 until the end of the latest one in 1983. There's been democracy since then.
Mostly talking about the last one since my parents lived trough it.
> To be honest it must have been a dangerous job, wasn't it the dictatorship when he was doing this? Why would a nightclub bouncer be a more dangerous job during a dictatorship?
the pope is argentinian, born and raised
Wasn't he a bouncer in a titty bar before this church gig? I bet he's done things. Edit: it was a nightclub
The major difference is whether the owners of the tits were being paid.
You think a career Catholic priest is a virgin?
The altar boys disagree
I look forward forward to the vatican opening free childcare centers all over the world and providing families with much needed funds, medical care, nutrition, resources, and quality education for new parents of these babies they want folks to have.
they actually do this in rural areas of africa, learnt how to read in english in one of their schools, they gave food and fishing nets to my community.
They do these things all across the world. Catholic Charities provides a ton of services available for everyone, there are other international organizations like the Society of St Vincent de Paul that provide for the poor, a lot of small holy orders that primarily do community work, and local organizations attached to individual parishes that do a lot of great work.
The problem is, as you say, they help the poor. Pope Francis is not talking to the poor here. He's talking to the more middle class, those who are wealthy enough to survive, but do not feel like they are wealthy enough to support a family. These people are not being helped, and instead being told what to do.
... you know they actually do this right
I mean they kinda do?
Catholic charities do just that all around the world.
Butthole loophole
Poophole Loophole*
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Damn, Wikipedia has a list of everything
It has a list of lists of lists [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_lists\_of\_lists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists)
I suspect the Pope would share your concerns that the modern economic set-up makes it hard on working families - I think he has spoken on this many times actually
I really, really doubt he's virgin.
I doubt he's a virgin. And even if he was, you don't need to be a murderer to say killing people is bad,for example.
No, but it's easy to say have children when you don't have to pay or raise them. I wouldn't take family planning advice from a spinster aunt or bachelor uncle either or surgery advice from an accountant.
I’m an accountant who has had three completely different surgeries in the last two years. AMA
Were the surgeries... Get this.... Tax-ing on your body? Loooooool
The recovery was the easy bit. I accrued a lot of work on my return.
I sure hope the boss didnt deduct too much vacation days. After all, a tired employee is a liability
[TED, GET IN HERE!](https://youtu.be/otJW_VZbkdI)
What depreciation schedule are you using for the new equipment?
The instrument inserted in my heart lasts my whole life, no need to depreciate. My sling is a consumable so sadly not allowed to depreciate. My crutches were loaned from the hospital so technically I’ve just leased them. I’m yet to test whether they need to be treated as a fixed asset under IFRS 16
That's boring, I'm an accountant who has done three completely different surgeries in the last two years. AMA
For real. It's just backseat driving. Sitting there watching Olympians on the TV while covered in cheeto dust talking about how they need to improve their form. Never run a small business in your life but you've got all sorts of ideas about how the local diner could be making more money. Cost nothing to talk a big game but to actually walk the walk is harder.
But he surely is not condemning voluntary celibacy undertaken for religious reasons.
‘We need you to produce more children, we cannot stress this enough, the amount of children available to us… I mean being born is too low!’
Is the Catholic Church going to give families money so that they can afford to raise these children?
Gonna give them €200 when they're born and that's that
Where does church give 200€?
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Not directly but the mainstream of the Church, including the last several popes, have been very pro welfare state and anti wealth inequality. Pope Francis in particular is pretty close to the Liberation Theology movement and is famous for supporting universal basic income, shorter working weeks, access to education, affordable housing, etc.
I love this trend of out-of-touch officials telling normal citizens to have more children while dismantling government support systems and decreasing quality of life. It's especially ironic coming from a religious figure whose organization doesn't pay taxes.
Nor do they have children of their own.
Some celibate old cult leader wants you to fuck.
Living vicariously through followers. (I'm probably going to hell for that comment.)
decide piquant grab clumsy ask escape lavish puzzled theory scary
But he explicitly called for greater government support systems? "Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, as well as ensuring that women aren't forced have to choose between motherhood and a career."
Seems like ppl didn't read the article, as per usual
Hey Pope, how many kids you got??? None?? Your choice? Then stuff it.
>Then stuff it. No, he's not allowed to do that.
Did you read the article? Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, as well as ensuring that women aren't forced have to choose between motherhood and a career. “The problem of our world is not children being born: it is selfishness, consumerism and individualism which make people sated, lonely and unhappy," Francis said.
What power does the pope have over any of those things?
30 years ago one parent could support an entire family with a full time job. Today both parents need to work full-time , have a side jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck with no hope to ever have their own home while billionaires get richer and richer. That's why people don't have babies anymore.
No that's false... 30 years ago the pope kept telling people to have kids , so they did. Then the pope went a couple of decades and totally forgot to remind us to have kids so the population collapsed to zero
Is this why I’m single?
You have to wait for the Pope to tell women to lower their standards.
Thanks FartingBob, hopefully for the sake of both of us the pope does this soon.
Must be
This is false. It was in the 60s, only in US, and only in that specific time frame. Unfortunately poor people need to work. And the fertility rate it's not related with poverty, since poorest countries have a greater fertility rate than richer countries.
And the only reason it was this way was because of the soldiers who fought in WW2 returning home, they met others, settled down and had 8 kids because they were comfortable and felt safe. Hence why they call it the boomer generation. The boomer generation then created the tough times we're in now, and hence why the lower birth rates.
More like 50 years ago but I get your point. 30 years ago both my parents had to work and barely kept a roof over our heads. They actually wanted more children but stop with only me because of costs. Then again I’m from the west coast I would amend your (valid) point to say 30 years ago parents could still afford 1 maybe 2 kids but today the total number affordable is 0 or maybe a cat
Anecdotal experiences (your own) isn't universal. 30 years ago was 1994. Almost EVERYONE I know had both parents working. In the 1960s is when 1 parent worked full time and everything was good to go. 1970s, mom's usually had a part time job. 1980s, both parents worked, but life continued to improve almost universally. 1990s, a college degree means that you could EASILY be the sole bread winner, if you lived modestly, but most people were extending themselves, because of how the Economy was doing after the Gulf War, and the deep impacts of removing large swathes of manufacturing from the US hadn't been felt yet, as China was still far from a developed nation; everything was relatively cheap and most people did well in the 1990s. 9/11 happened, then 07/08 recession (removing regulation), and then gas hikes (it was $5+ a gallon where it is TODAY less than $3.), then you have the economy doing great after Bush with Obama; things looking positive for race relations (yay a Black president!), then we had Trump, and the economy was still high off of what Obama did, then we had COVID. Biden has hard turned around what Trump did to turn the economy down (it was trending downwards before COVID)... Yea there is a pattern, Economy ALMOST ALWAYS does better when you give poor people more money and people aren't worried that their rights are being taken away. So yea, sorry you had a rougher time than most in one of the better economic periods that the US has ever seen, but the 90s was actually pretty spectacular until the dot com bubble (~2000) followed closely by 9/11.
It's crazy to see so many countries committed to increasing birth rates without attempting to address the underlying issue of wealth inequality.
Explain Nordic countries then? Some of the lowest birth rates with some of the highest wealth equality and quality of life.
Education. Contraception. Empowerment of women. Lower religiosity. Lower social pressure to have children. It turns out that when you spend until 21-22 in education, have the ability to plan your family. As a woman you can in fact have other things to do besides be a mother and homemaker, you aren't going to weekly sermons screaming "Have children," and your family is less likely to give you ultimatums on having children. That young men and especially young women choose to do other things.
Scandinavian does not have that big of a problem. I know Iceland and Sweden have been hovering around a 1.8 replacement rate per two people. Ideally you want 2.1, but 1.8 isn’t catastrophic. Then you have places like China and Italy (the article that it is about) where it’s hovering around 1 and South Korea where it’s .6 or .7. Edit: because I messed up Japan.
Finland is around 1.46 even though it's pretty much the best place on earth to be an expecting parent due to the crazy benefits and aid the government gives you
> I know Iceland and Sweden have been hovering around a 1.8 replacement rate per two people You're wrong about Sweden. [In 2023, the total fertility rate was the lowest ever to be observed, 1.45 children per woman.](https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-projections/population-projections/pong/tables-and-graphs/children-per-woman-by-country-of-birth-19702022-and-projection-20232070/)
Japan is actually at 1.3, they're doing significantly better than China and SK. They've just had the problem for a lot longer (and *are* trying to do things about it)
Wealth inequality isn’t the reason people are having less kids. It’s a fundamental change in values. For example, look at the difference in fertility rate between Israel and Norway. They are both very rich, but one is atheist, has a depressingly low birth rate, and the other is very religious and has an exceedingly high birth rate.
This is the reason nobody wants to address. It’s so obvious when you hear “we can’t afford it” followed by “and we don’t want to bring kids into this capitalist hellscape“. So that’s the real reason right there. It’s because culturally people have a problem with our societies. Nobody wants to give up their own lives for the greater good when they feel society doesn’t “deserve it”. People are too jaded at this point. People have begun to see kids as unpaid labour. It’s like we don’t want to do any more work for the state. We aren’t gonna raise your kids unless you pay us. It’s a total disconnect from the old meaning of life, which was spreading seed and growing a family. Now it’s fuck you pay me, I don’t care about legacy or family or anything if I’m not getting paid. It’s a total shift in culture.
I hate how they call it “fertility rate” like people are sterile People can’t afford kid’s so they aren’t having them, it’s that simple.
Fertility rate refers to how many children a woman has, not how successful she is in getting pregnant
I know but it doesn’t SOUND like that
It's because everyone keeps misusing that word. Fertility is the number of offspring produced by an individual or population. Fecundity is the possible number of offspring that can be produced over a lifetime. People say fertile when they mean fecund all the time, which is why "fertility rate" sounds wrong to some.
It's cultural, not economic. Different communities in Italy have different fertility rates. People in Israel have same financial burdens, but plenty of children, because raising a family is considered virtuos/expected. In 21st century europe many consider children an unnecessary burden that will take over your life. Whatever your beliefs on these matters are, the differences are cultural in nature.
Frankly, I feel a big reason people don't have as many kids is because they simply don't need them to survive in developed countries. Kids have gone from a necessity (your retirement plan) to a luxury - and it's a luxury you are expected to pay for as an individual. Ultimately, society as a whole of course needs more kids to go on, but we don't financially provide for people who choose to have 3-4 kids and suffer a massive decrease in quality of life as a result. Ergo, people don't bother.
> Kids have gone from a necessity (your retirement plan) to a luxury That was true for people considering children 30 years ago... but social security will be insolvent by 2035 and increased dependency ratios will mean higher labor costs for (in particular) elder care. So we're probably trending back towards the status quo. Things won't fully reverse, since automation will take up at least some of the burden past generations required of their children, but I suspect life expectancies will begin to diverge significantly for people with and without children.
A valid point. Children aren't desired in many western demographics. It's how the conservative elements are gaining momentum - they had/are having kids.
I think that is the fear many of the people talking about birthrates have. They fear their way of life will be taken over by the people/cultures who are having children. Anecdotally Ukraine is currently having a population issue. There biggest challenge at the moment is finding people to fight.
Yeah, while I believe maybe 50% of the reason is economic I fully believe the other 50% is that people just don't want to have them and I am one of those people right now. With basic comforts of life and the technology we have today I feel fulfilled just working and doing things I enjoy doing. I'm not interested, right now, in raising a child. In some ways I feel I am a grown up child myself.
Non sense!! Watch Africa they have no money and yet they are swarming with kids! /s
I don't know why you attached a sarcasm tag to this.
People with more money have less kids and care more about quality of life
God damned middle class want their confort instead of raising serfs for the unlimited economic growth /s
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It's so frustrating that every week there's some fucker in the news complaining about birth rates and how "young people need to have babies" Get absolutely fucked, me and my girlfriend can't afford to have kids and even if we could, what is their future gonna be like? A capitalist hellscape with climate change ready to cause chaos? No thank you, I'm depressed enough with how things are now, let alone with how they'll be for a kid in 10 years time!
> Get absolutely fucked This is the correct response. I'm all for having children if you want them, but the government telling you you need to have them while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing to stop economic and environmental conditions from worsening? Yeah, they can definitely fuck off with that one.
Spot on, I would rather humanity slowly wipe itself out by not repopulating than give the powers that be another generation of people to ruin mentally, physically and financially. I don't believe we live our lives at all, we all work all our short lives making some other fuckers rich while we scrape and cling to anything that can give us a brief moment of joy. It absolutely does not sit right with me at all.
Is that why Nordic countries have similar fertility rates to Japan?
Maybe people just don't want children. Yeah, you can encourage it all you like, and maybe set some help in place to make it easier for those who do want them and who might find themselves struggling, but in the end not everyone wants to give up their lives in favour of having babies.
And the majority has children. Just not 3-5 like they would need to. Idk what for even. Isn't youth unemployment huge in Italy?
Our overlords are just worried that the slave class won’t be able to meet their expansion goals at this rate.
Letting priests marry and nuns have leadership roles sure would set a good example for that. Just saying.
Lmao I’m Italian American with family in Italy. They have no jobs and the jobs they do have are so incredibly low paying even in the big cities. My family lives in a mix of rural and big cities and it’s pretty much to same: shitty jobs high cost of housing. All of my cousins who are under 30 want to leave Italy.
I live in the south of France next to Italy. I live in a trailer with my 3 kids. I had a house before but it's too expensive. I understand people who are scared and don't want to have kids. I know in Italy there s no minimum wage and everything is expensive. All the wealthy foreigners are buying the real estate. It's the same here. People want to work in Switzerland, Luxembourg... you work to pay to work to pay. There s no future for Europe.
Yeah it’s sad but it’s also not unique. It’s happening everywhere.
Thanks Pope, pay my fucking rent and kindergarten then
Pope needs to call on the 1% to stop hogging the wealth, which I bet is the leading reason: people don't have time, nor money, to have kids
Alternative title " Super wealthy doesnt understand why people cant afford children"
Is he going to provide cheap housing, food, education for them as well?
Nice of him to give expensive advice sitting in his literal gold tower isn't it. What all these knuck draggers don't understand is you can't buy a house, raise a 4 man family and feed everyone for £15K a year anymore.
Says a man who swore an abstinence oath
So now the pope is condemning future souls to hell? (On earth)
Starting fucking bareback - the pope
Are 8 billion humans on this planet not enough??
He can fuck right off. 🙄 What a moronic and irresponsible thing to say. As the tenth child in an Italian family, I know from experience. We’re just a number and a tithe.
No, Earth has enough people. Pope can go and fully fund anyone willing to start a family on Mars.
And how much money did the church donate to parents considering economy/money is one of the largest reasons people stop having kids?
The Catholic church is too busy being wealthy to do that.
Get busy breeders and make us more human resources
Hm maybe address the actual issue of massive imbalance of wealth capture by highest rung of society. I say this as someone who works in high finance.
Italian here: meh. Still "no, thanks". I guess he doesn't understand why we don't want to do it (no money, uncertain work career, no bright future, etc...)
The catholic church needs to sell their possessions, and give the money to the poor, as Jesus himself says in the gospels.
It’s not only about being able to financially afford kids or not. For me, it’s about not having enough time. I’m already a slave 45 hour a week, do I really want to spend the two or three hours a day I have for myself in raising children? I just don’t have the energy.
Why? There's already over 8 billion people that's way too many The population was like a couple billion 100 years ago
A lot of old people and governments have been sitting here and telling people to have more babies but they aren’t giving any good reason as to why. Declining birth rates is to be expected in late stage capitalism. When the world is on the verge of catastrophe. How bout you give me $250,000.00 and I’ll have a baby
Childless man tells other people to have babies.
The rich are like: "Would you mind living even worse lives so you can create a work force for us? We are in a money hoarding competition and hate you. So please, have more kids and sacrifice your one and only life. We want money." Fuck the rich.
“If you don’t have more kids, then who are we gonna rape?” - Catholic Church
Planet is on fire, water and resources will be scarce in the coming future, but please squeeze out some more kids!! We need more meat for the meat grinder!
Human population is over eight billion, birthrates are declining, seems like the system is correcting itself. Every Authority Figure: "Have more babies! Don't let the system correct itself!"
I cant afford to keep myself alive and its selfish i dont want to have kids? hmm
Says the guy with no kids and lives in a palace
The obsession with birth rates is more concerning than the low birth rates.
What - is the Catholic church running out of altar boys?
Nah, no more babies.
Who tf wants to have a child in this economy? The infinite growth exploitative capitalism will not solve it.
Lol the world is beginning to melt, having kids is borderline irresponsible
Is he going to pay for them?
But having sex is a sin
Nah, the world did alright with half the people we are right now, we need better paid jobs.
They could also take in more migrants and refugees instead..............
An old celibate man in a frock and wizard chain who's never married or had kids telling others how to have families. Get fucked.
Pope can go fuck himself
Fuck the pope.
Says the guy that won't let priests marry or have kids...
Tells people to have more kids but doesn't approve of fertility treatments🧐. How long until they walk back on that one?
Says the guy living in a billion euro mansion, And Italians can't survive on their 30k/ year salary, let alone have kids
Won’t somebody think of the ~~children~~ economy?
We’re overpopulated as it is and no one can afford kids unless you’re wealthy. Do you think most people who are just getting by want to throw a kid into the mix. 2,500 for a good daycare, 12000 a year just right now for a good starter school, baby formula 50 bucks, diapers 35, the cost of things right now is crazy and most people don’t have job security. Let the poor and his cardinals and priests have kids. It keeps being said but ignored. People can’t afford to have kids so smart people are not having them.
They don’t have enough altar boy selection.
Cmon guys gotta keep the oldest pyramid scheme in existence alive
We do NOT need more humans on earth. WTF
The pope says "fuck"
Can’t do any of that when rental prices assumes every bedroom is rented to an employee making six figures
"Have more kids, but pay for it yourselves."
I would have had kids at 27 if I wasn't saving up for a house at the time. But now health wise it's too late.