I get that this is a catchy one liner but it always felt like reactionary bullshit. In fact I don’t think you need to psychologically damage people a lot at all for them to not want kids.
Personally I just straight up don’t want to, it isn’t about the money, it isn’t (at least not exclusively) about climate change, it just does not interest me at all.
I mean isn’t it just as reactionary to suppose people “just don’t want to do it”, I.e. that there is some non-material factor influencing human behaviour?
How is saying individuals have preferences about living their life reactionary? The reactionary part here is psychoanalyzing people that don’t want kids and trying to fix it, maybe just leave them be? There are a lot of people that would like to have kids in better material conditions and will explicitly tell you that in pretty much those words, why not just take people at their word when they say they don’t want kids?
If you did the same kind of psychoanalyzing to queer people and try to adjust their material conditions so they stop being queer you’d be called out for it but this is somehow fine.
No, I’m saying that nothing “just is”, and it’s not wrong to not want kids, but there are reasons behind not wanting kids, whether or not someone is readily able to see them is another thing entirely.
I think a lot of it is a result of density and perceived population size. If you’re used to seeing a lot of people around you in a small area, you’re not going to have the same desire to make more, maybe because it feels close to carrying capacity, or just doesn’t seem necessary.
Another factor is desire for uniqueness. The more people that are out there, the less certain you can be of having a special, meaningful life that’s not just a rerun of everyone else’s, and the more you feel like you’re in competition with the rest of everyone.
And then there’s just some people that don’t particularly gravitate towards parenthood, and in today’s age there isn’t the same social pressure bending people to have kids against what their will would otherwise be. And fewer accidental pregnancies, and more to do with your own life than just replicate more lives.
All these factors point to a human population that will decrease maybe rather rapidly in the second half of the 21st century. And this will continue until we fix the problems and reach an equilibrium, or face whatever the alternative prospect holds.
All these factors point to a human population that will decrease maybe rather rapidly in the second half of the 21st century. And this will continue until we fix the problems and reach an equilibrium, or face whatever the alternative prospect holds.
Maybe this is fine actually? Why should the human population increase indefinitely? I think a healthy, well governed world society could work with 1, 2, 5 or 10 billion people alive, the only reason governments want more kids today is because the global market economy is a ponzi scheme that can’t survive without an ever increasing pool of workers.
Yes, that was the assumption. Maybe if they fall too sharply it will cause problems, but a prolonged TFR of 1.5-1.8 is nothing to be concerned about.
We had enough people 100 years ago or 200 years ago or even 500 years ago, it’s not like you could have looked at the world back then and decided that it really needed 4x as many humans in it.
There’s a difference between having continuity as a species and pursuing exponential growth as a species, though the immediate physical and localized means are the same.
I think its that in an individualist schema children are a cost not a benefit. Obvs they have a sentimental value once you’ve had them but your life will be significantly more stressful, expensive and overwhelming and you get no reward besides hopefully liking the child (which not all parents do). You could save the effort and have someone you like around by making a friend.
In a world where children were reared socially and where their surplus labour was enjoyed socially we’d again be individually incentivised to have more children. But when the (material) costs of reproduction are a burden on individuals and nuclear families and the (material) rewards are primarily siphoned by the parasite class, it is a bad deal and the amazing thing is the desire is strong enough despite that that as many people have kids as do.
psychologically damaging mammals to the point where they dont wanna have kids is quite an achievement
and people say the soft sciences don’t matter…
I get that this is a catchy one liner but it always felt like reactionary bullshit. In fact I don’t think you need to psychologically damage people a lot at all for them to not want kids.
Personally I just straight up don’t want to, it isn’t about the money, it isn’t (at least not exclusively) about climate change, it just does not interest me at all.
I mean isn’t it just as reactionary to suppose people “just don’t want to do it”, I.e. that there is some non-material factor influencing human behaviour?
How is saying individuals have preferences about living their life reactionary? The reactionary part here is psychoanalyzing people that don’t want kids and trying to fix it, maybe just leave them be? There are a lot of people that would like to have kids in better material conditions and will explicitly tell you that in pretty much those words, why not just take people at their word when they say they don’t want kids?
If you did the same kind of psychoanalyzing to queer people and try to adjust their material conditions so they stop being queer you’d be called out for it but this is somehow fine.
No, I’m saying that nothing “just is”, and it’s not wrong to not want kids, but there are reasons behind not wanting kids, whether or not someone is readily able to see them is another thing entirely.
Sure, there are also reasons for why some people don’t like the taste of beer, doesn’t mean we have to hem and haw about it endlessly.
We are just animals, and having children should be more desired.
I think a lot of it is a result of density and perceived population size. If you’re used to seeing a lot of people around you in a small area, you’re not going to have the same desire to make more, maybe because it feels close to carrying capacity, or just doesn’t seem necessary.
Another factor is desire for uniqueness. The more people that are out there, the less certain you can be of having a special, meaningful life that’s not just a rerun of everyone else’s, and the more you feel like you’re in competition with the rest of everyone.
And then there’s just some people that don’t particularly gravitate towards parenthood, and in today’s age there isn’t the same social pressure bending people to have kids against what their will would otherwise be. And fewer accidental pregnancies, and more to do with your own life than just replicate more lives.
All these factors point to a human population that will decrease maybe rather rapidly in the second half of the 21st century. And this will continue until we fix the problems and reach an equilibrium, or face whatever the alternative prospect holds.
Maybe this is fine actually? Why should the human population increase indefinitely? I think a healthy, well governed world society could work with 1, 2, 5 or 10 billion people alive, the only reason governments want more kids today is because the global market economy is a ponzi scheme that can’t survive without an ever increasing pool of workers.
Yes, that was the assumption. Maybe if they fall too sharply it will cause problems, but a prolonged TFR of 1.5-1.8 is nothing to be concerned about.
We had enough people 100 years ago or 200 years ago or even 500 years ago, it’s not like you could have looked at the world back then and decided that it really needed 4x as many humans in it.
There’s a difference between having continuity as a species and pursuing exponential growth as a species, though the immediate physical and localized means are the same.
I think its that in an individualist schema children are a cost not a benefit. Obvs they have a sentimental value once you’ve had them but your life will be significantly more stressful, expensive and overwhelming and you get no reward besides hopefully liking the child (which not all parents do). You could save the effort and have someone you like around by making a friend.
In a world where children were reared socially and where their surplus labour was enjoyed socially we’d again be individually incentivised to have more children. But when the (material) costs of reproduction are a burden on individuals and nuclear families and the (material) rewards are primarily siphoned by the parasite class, it is a bad deal and the amazing thing is the desire is strong enough despite that that as many people have kids as do.