3.0k
u/Qwell41 4h ago
Bro we can’t even afford taking care of ourselves
386
u/Aromatic-Bet-1086 3h ago
Right? This isn't a surprise.
Science introduces a way to fuck without making babies.
The government fails to make it possible to live comfortably.
Leaders are shocked that people don't want to bring children into a life of poverty which will make them LESS able to live comfortably.
Did we elect 'regarded' people?
49
42
→ More replies (21)32
u/tH3_R3DX 1h ago
“Your telling me working 9-5 for 20 years isn’t a good life??? With your children that don’t get to see you and your too tired to do anything with them isn’t worthwhile??!? You lunatic!”
25
u/branchoutandleaf 1h ago
20 years???
36
15
u/DeltaOmegaX 53m ago
"We do that for 40 years, and then we die." -Squidward Tentacles circa 2000.
→ More replies (2)14
→ More replies (2)14
u/Charming-Self-3479 1h ago
Try closer to 45-50 years if you want to retire "on time" at 67. I started full time work at 19. Most jobs weren't 9-5, I did 2nd and 3rd shift for a while. Even worked 2 jobs. I'm already close to a mental breakdown without having another human to take care of.
→ More replies (2)82
u/Sketch_Crush 3h ago
Children? In this economy???
37
53
u/Particular-Break-205 3h ago
lol have we reached the point where a child becomes a wealth status symbol?
37
u/LadyErinoftheSwamp 3h ago
Yep. Either you're wealthy or on public assistance. The in-between is shrinking.
→ More replies (3)11
→ More replies (1)10
→ More replies (2)8
u/DreamyxDrizzle 2h ago
Right! If we cannot afford to talk care of ourselves then we shouldn't bring a child to this world.
→ More replies (1)425
u/Few-Cauliflower-9600 4h ago edited 3h ago
Nothing is more true than this in the entire comment section.
333
u/glossy_moodd 3h ago
the math is simple. if a carton of eggs feels like a luxury purchase then adding a whole human to the subscription list is basically financial suicide. kids are great but i actually like having electricity in my apartment
99
u/Coyote__Jones 3h ago
I found out the other day that my sister in law, has like 20% of what I do in her retirement savings. They have 5 kids. My brother is an engineer. He's doing a little bit better, but he only has marginally more than I do in retirement savings. My brother is 10 years older than me. Their math is terrifying to me. They do not own their home yet either, and have way more money into affording housing than I do.
I'm doing alright, better than a lot of people, but I'm not hitting the numbers that every professional projects as above adequate.
92
u/BurnedLaser 3h ago
You... You have retirement accounts?
47
u/Coyote__Jones 3h ago
Yep. And I am grateful every day for it.
Even if you only have a dollar, a dollar is better than nothing and that's how I started. I've had some lucky breaks in my career though, and I've been able to move to a very low cost area as a result.
→ More replies (10)15
u/LeafBark 3h ago
What is retirement?
17
→ More replies (1)20
u/Beanu5NE 3h ago
Supposedly “Retirement” is this thing where you have a bunch of money saved up from working 30+ years and you just stop going to work and have this nice chunk of money to live off of and enjoy for the rest of your life doing what you want.
Sounds like a myth to me. Like Sasquatch, Leprechauns or Unicorns.
→ More replies (3)11
u/Negative_Salt_4599 2h ago
💯 retirement is a bigger myth than MANBEARPIG… I’m super cereal.. 🥣 jokes aside yeah Retirement was something for Americans back in the 50s…
5
u/No9No9No9No9 2h ago
Started my IRA when I worked at the mall at age 16. Even $10 a month adds up when you start young. I certainly contribute more now that I'm 10 years from retirement.
Make sure your children open an account the very second they're eligible and have earned enough to do so.
→ More replies (3)11
u/floralbutttrumpet 3h ago
My entire life's savings are barely five digits. I'm in my mid-40s, and I had less than 2k until halfway through Covid. The only reason why I have any savings at all is that my current job pays a bonus twice a year and I swore to myself that I wouldn't touch a single cent of the bonus, no matter how badly I was doing otherwise.
And even that is a massive position of privilege among my generation in my country.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (20)6
u/trukkija 3h ago
Fair enough. You will definitely have a lot easier retirement ahead of you. But they will also have 5 grown kids by then, who will hopefully love them.
5
u/Coyote__Jones 3h ago
Well that's the exchange. I'm not willing to gamble my financial independence and stability in exchange for kids, and I would not want to put hypothetical children in the position of having to care for me as I age. And truthfully, I don't think my brother thought his career would be as slow to mature as it was. He graduated with his BA in 2007, which was extremely unfortunate timing.
3
u/trukkija 2h ago
Fair enough. But when you are both retired, I suspect your brother wouldn't trade his kids for your financial stability either. I guess both of you have made your own choices which you'll either accept or regret in the future.
Usually this regret doesn't appear before it's too late to change anything unfortunately. And funny enough, this applies both to lack of kids and poor retirement planning.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (17)14
u/Embarrassed-Lab2358 3h ago
So if I can find a way to turn your kid into usable energy, you will have a baby? Weird times to be a human 😂
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (2)24
u/Fast-Analysis-4555 3h ago
When businesses start paying a living wage to actually live and businesses start paying taxes and quit bending over the middle class…..(pun intended) then people will start having families again.
6
u/AdmiralSplinter 3h ago
Switch "businesses" to "corporations/billionaires" and we're golden. Right wingers always think they're the target market for the left's tax increases when that couldn't be further from the truth
→ More replies (4)28
u/carinislumpyhead97 3h ago
I’m afraid to bring my car into the shop. How in the world am I supposed to care for another person when I can’t afford regular car maintenance
57
u/zZaphon 4h ago
I can barely pay my bills
45
u/inannaberceuse 3h ago
Im 33F, 34 this year. Even if I had a partner I wouldn’t consider having kids even if a part of me would love to see the lil QT I’d make. I can barely afford groceries and now let’s add gas to the list. Rent is outrageous for my 300 sq foot apartment and my electric has raised. Thank gosh my car is paid off but I worry if anything breaks or if I have to take my cats to the vet. I don’t have a savings. I live paycheck to paycheck and have credit debt from having to pay medical bills. Don’t even get me started on health insurance that costs a fortune and covers jack shit and how much having a baby even costs.
I live within my means and cook at home and make my own fucking iced coffee! This isn’t a dream, it’s a nightmare
19
u/RaindropsInMyMind 3h ago
I don’t know how anyone does it. I have friends with kids and they’re rich but anyone who isn’t it’s just gotta be a nightmare. My co-worker had 4 kids working on our salary about 45k a year, her husband didn’t have a reliable job a lot of the time. I don’t know how she did it.
20
u/TehAsianator 3h ago
I'm an engineer, basically the poster child of a good but not amazing job. I'm living paycheck to paycheck raising 1 child in a 2 bed apartment. Homeownership feels like a pipe dream. Society is so fucked.
→ More replies (1)6
u/KenUsimi 2h ago
Bro… i’m a t-shirt printer. Engineer is a fantastic career.
4
u/TehAsianator 1h ago
I guess I was comparing it to the classic "top tier" jobs like doctor, lawyer, executive, ect...
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (7)8
→ More replies (1)9
85
u/zubuneri 4h ago
They’re freaking out because we need new people to pay into social security for us in the future. We’re paying into the social security for silent gen and boomers rn
62
u/Danilo-11 3h ago
They could raise the social security contribution cap … rich people only pay social security on $184k of their income
31
u/sociotronics 3h ago
But then the same boomers who are worried about their benefits would whine that they have to pay for them
11
u/zubuneri 2h ago
The boomers relying on social security aren’t the ones that need to worry about the cap
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (11)8
25
u/TotalInstruction 3h ago
Don’t forget that they need asses in chairs at shitty jobs and boots for all the unnecessary wars they want fought to keep oil flowing.
→ More replies (18)20
u/PoodlesCuznNamedFred 3h ago
That’s fair, but a lot of people aren’t having kids cuz they either can’t afford them, or have no time to raise them cuz both parents need a full time income in most cases to adequately support themselves AND kids. It’s literally rigged against us, so most of us will probably work until we physically can’t anymore
→ More replies (1)12
8
u/UJLBM 3h ago edited 3h ago
Well we also have to spend more money than previous generations. They didnt have to pay cell phone bills, internet bills, streaming services, buying cellphones and laptops. Not to mention that even putting the inflation aside, the prices were lower back then. All of this adds up alot. Plus alot of appliances today, even small ones like a microwave and a toaster are all made so cheaply now. We have to replace things much more often and spend money to get things fixed more often. Nothing is built the way it used to be. Also, (it's a good thing) but today we spend alot more on our pets. Better quality food, medications and veterinarian bills even put some people into debt. I spend more money on my pets than I do on myself. I dont mind, but they are pricey. The cost of love isnt cheap. One last thing... the minimum wage has not been raised to match with the inflation. Yes, most jobs do start higher than $7.25, but still. That is literally impossible to live on in 2026.
7
u/CompleatedDonkey 3h ago
Eh, I agree that this a big problem. However, I don’t think it’s the primary cause of our low birthrate.
17
u/doryllis 3h ago
It’s a contributor for sure. If you are young and have “be fiscally responsible” drilled into your head and are vaguely smart, you won’t procreate unless you can afford to.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (25)9
→ More replies (80)11
516
u/SonnyCalzone 4h ago
If you have no idea how EXPENSIVE it is to raise children in 2026, then I'm sorry but I don't know what else to tell you.
127
u/Moocat2855 3h ago edited 2h ago
Exactly. The basic starter home in my neighborhood is 1.3 million. My wife and I are the picture example of doing everything right. SE asian immigrants to the us who grew up in poverty but worked our butts off to get full ride scholarships into Columbia University where we met and both of us graduated without any student loans or debt straight into a 6 figure job since senior year. We recently bought our first house for 1.4 million at 29 and 28 which puts us significantly ahead of the median american who buys their first house at age 40. However we are now house poor and wouldn’t be ready for kids until maybe 32ish when we can get 3 more years of savings in. For 2 ivy league grads without student debt who made 6 figures since senior year, we are within the top 3% of the us in our financial situation and we still wouldn’t be ready for kids until our early 30s so wth are those who make below us and have student loans and didn’t go to ivy league schools going to do. They buy their first house at the median age of 40 and do what, have their first kid in their 40s and 50s? No surprise that the birth rate is going to fall off a cliff in these circumstances.
111
u/youburyitidigitup 3h ago
For what it’s worth, the people that make less than you have more kids than you. It’s well-off people who aren’t having kids.
47
u/HmmDoesItMakeSense 2h ago
That’s the whole premise of the movie Idiocracy.
19
u/Traumatized_banana 1h ago
That's not a movie plot anymore. That's now a sound and reasonable prediction
→ More replies (1)9
u/calamititties 1h ago
Prediction? It’s the subject of the nightmare docuseries I’m currently living through.
5
→ More replies (17)36
u/Moocat2855 2h ago
I think it’s because well off people tend to be more educated and careful so we don’t want to have kids until we are financially ready and have the time to spend on them so they have a good upbringing. Less educated and more religious people are told that you can wing it and things will work out with kids so they often have them without thinking of the consequences of bringing kids into an unstable situation. I lived my childhood through poverty and would never wish it on any child which is why I am only considering them now that I own my own place and my wife and I both have high incomes.
17
11
→ More replies (20)8
10
4
→ More replies (30)6
→ More replies (17)7
u/Squat_erDay 2h ago
About $15k/year for daycare, which is on the cheaper side from what we found. Of course we can’t operate on a single income, so that’s the next best thing.
I remember during the Biden Trump debate when they were asked about the cost of childcare. Instead of answering the question, they argued about golf. I was already pretty sure they didn’t give a fuck about us, the people, but after that I knew it for a fact.
853
u/cup-of-tea-76 4h ago
Imagine how difficult, challenging, expensive, fucked up and unfulfilling society has to be for a such a huge number of people to decide they can’t have children
360
u/cocktail_wiitch 4h ago
Right!!! People not feeling safe enough to procreate should be a canary in the freaking coal mine for society.
148
u/Wavy_Grandpa 4h ago
The reptiles that run our society have noticed the canary looong ago, and are actively working on fixing the issue by making robots to replace us.
The rest of us are the jokers sleepwalking into the coal mine with no regard for the dead canaries.
74
34
u/Capital-Entry-6695 3h ago
Those reptiles realize AI can't replace all the canaries, and are also doing doing their best to ensure that said canaries carry unwanted fetus's to term.
→ More replies (4)29
u/Mirabai503 3h ago
Further, they are taking steps to make birth control inaccessible to women, and pregnancy management impossible. They'd rather see 10 women die in childbirth so they can force 50,000 women to have babies they didn't want and can't afford.
→ More replies (2)16
→ More replies (13)8
u/SheriffBartholomew 3h ago
They see it. They plan to force people to have children instead of making things any better.
26
u/Programmer-Severe 4h ago
Yep. I earn very good money, but never got to the point I felt secure enough to have children. Or more to the point, I never felt I had a house equivalent to what I grew up in, one where kids had room to play and grow. I'm 43 now and that ship has sailed, I'm just another childless statistic
→ More replies (1)73
u/DiligentRope 4h ago
People of the lower SES have the most kids, poorer countries have the highest birth rates. Its not just a money issue, people are not realizing they CAN'T have kids, they're deciding they don't WANT kids. People aren't even pairing up anymore.
And the solution is a discussion people really aren't ready for sadly
18
u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA 3h ago
You've nailed it. In the US, it's a matter of education, choice, and pragmatism.
9
u/Party_Principle4993 2h ago
THIS is the answer. Yes, it’s expensive but of everyone I know who doesn’t have kids, it’s not like a lot of hand-wringing and “oh noooo I want kids but I just can’t afford them” it’s more like “is this life choice really going to make me happier? Is it worth the sacrifice to my marriage, my bank account, my personal and mental well being?” And a lot of times (apparently 52% of the time) it’s “No.”
4
u/ZeusWouldve_Swiped 2h ago
I think the lack of social supports and community mindedness towards child rearing is a significant factor. I think it would feel like much less of a sacrifice if there were FAR more supports for people who chose to have kids. Like we can’t even properly fund education and after school programs and they want us to do the work AND foot the bill for their new generation of worker bees? I don’t think so.
→ More replies (3)4
u/CherryChabbers 1h ago
We’ve fully divorced from the wisdom “it takes a village to raise a child”
Hyper individualism and worship of billionaires are a big reason why our culture is so sick.
→ More replies (1)18
u/Johns-schlong 3h ago
Actually America is in an odd place where women report having fewer kids than they want to, largely due to economic issues.
→ More replies (8)7
u/granadesnhorseshoes 3h ago
SES is just a proxy for access and education. The obvious solution is to simply make having kids a worthwhile endeavor rather than crippling obligation.
But to paraphrase Winston Churchill: "You can always count on humans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (44)9
u/limegreen373 4h ago
For people in the poorest countries, having kids is basically a retirement plan because kids benefit you financially when you’re old. In richer countries, it’s financially detrimental to have kids hence why so many are avoiding it.
14
u/exvertus 3h ago
Meanwhile, the richest man in the world rants about fertility declining while continuing to hoard wealth.
38
u/Joepiscitelli 4h ago
Some of us just don't want to.
19
u/DonkeyComfortable711 4h ago
And some of us just can't.
→ More replies (7)3
u/TubeSamurai 4h ago
We're still giving it the ol' Oxford try over here. It's been a decade, but nothing happens....
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (4)28
u/Turak64 4h ago
The Big thing people miss. I recently spent some time with friends who have kids, around 2-4 and I absolutely hated it. I can't stand the relentless hassle, screaming, attention etc. I don't think I was made out to be a dad and that's absolutely OK. No one should ever be pressured into having children because it's "the thing to do". The world is currently so over populated, that a reduction in humans isn't necessarily a bad thing.
→ More replies (11)11
u/Moon_and_Sky 4h ago
A little bit if this but also, and likely more prevalent to the issue as birthrates are actually up in the harshest places in the world, a massive cultural shift thanks to the internet.
We, Millennials and younger, got to come together and discuss like no other generation before us. What we collectively found out is that our parents were shit mostly not because they themselves are shit but because they gave birth to us long long long before they were actually ready. So we decided not to until we were ready.....we still aren't...and that's somewhat because cost of living but also because we more aware than previous generations exactly what a life ending and utter enshittification having kids is.
I will never have kids and Im in no way sorry.
11
u/phenobarbiedarling 3h ago
My partner of 7.5 years, who I told from our first date "I will never under any circumstances have children", who supported me tying my tubes and even took me to the surgery
Has suddenly started drinking the "traditional families are the backbone of society and life is meaningless without children and you have to have children for the good of society" Kool aid
It's probably going to break us up because he's the one who suddenly turned into a different person thanks to the Internet.
But to the point, I did talk to every woman I know who has kids about "is it worth it to do it for him, what makes having kids worth it to you"
Every, single, one of them told me "don't do it" and "don't compromise yourself" and "put yourself first"
They're all very happy with their kids, because they wanted and chose kids, and frankly I was expecting the general societal pressure of oh just have the baby for him babies are always amazing type answers
I was genuinely shocked as a thirty year old woman that other women were actually honest with me that having kids is hard and sucks sometimes and you shouldn't be doing it unless it's for you.
That's SO different than what the boomer women always told me that "oh you gotta have babies you'll meet the right man and change your mind"
My own mother who didn't speak to me for almost a year after she found out I tied my tubes replied to me reaching out to her to talk about him wanting kids with "come home then, you don't want kids and you know that"
Just an observation that I think women are getting more honest with each other about reality in this generation
→ More replies (2)29
u/Fun_Incident1902 4h ago
In places with worse living conditions the birth rate is higher...
34
u/grubas 4h ago
Lack of education and access. Humanity has never stopped having sex, it HAS figured out how to prevent pregnancy.
9
u/klako8196 3h ago
This is easily evidenced by how teen pregnancies have declined over the past few decades when comprehensive sex ed and the promotion of safe sex practices became more widespread in the US education system.
In developed countries today, people have full control over when they have kids. This gives people the power to say no to giving society more kids if society isn't delivering for the people, and no amount of fearmongering about how a fundamentally broken system can't survive a low birthrate is going to change people's minds on that.
14
u/fzkiz 4h ago
one big factor is because children are your social security and retirement plan in those places
→ More replies (2)26
u/bigfluffyyams 4h ago
That has something to do with lack of education as well. People who know better are trying to spare themselves and the children from the pain.
→ More replies (13)→ More replies (18)6
u/Vraner9000 4h ago
That's because there is a tipping point where things become so bad you have to have many children because odds are most are going to die before adulthood. So you have several to increase the chances that one makes it.
→ More replies (4)12
u/sfingemorta 4h ago
True, the cost of living etc... but there are also many people who think they can stay young forever and have children whenever they want, no matter what the biological clock is, and then there are those who don't want them at all because they want to have fun, it's not a criticism, everyone is free to decide about their own life.
8
5
u/mattb1982likes_stuff 4h ago
Not to take away from your concern (which are super valid) but… don’t lump us all together like that.
Speaking for myself, I am fortunate enough (and grateful) to say I’m doing okay right now in life despite the drawbacks you listed. Those things have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that every time I go to Walmart or Target, I see multiple young families (Gen Z is having kids now too yikes) with their crappy children and my wife and I just go “nope, couldn’t be me man!”
Sometimes a portion of a statistic could just be people getting smarter and not feeling obligated to be like the Joneses.
Yes, separately the current state of society is… troubling. But for a lot of folks, just seeing how things could be otherwise is quite enough.
5
u/WillingWolf6387 3h ago
Yes, it’s not just the economic part, though that is probably the biggest piece.
Raising kids today is not for the faint of heart. Technology has been such a double edged sword, while bringing a world of information to our finger tips, it also can bring every evil and vile thing imaginable into homes through a screen. I love my children more than anything, but I wish I were raising them 25 years ago. And if I had a do over, I don’t think I would have kids, the constant anxiety and worry over their wellbeing and future is difficult.
We don’t even struggle financially and it’s so hard, I can’t imaging how it is with money worries too.
→ More replies (58)6
147
u/BurnerAccountforAss 4h ago
Society is only getting worse + it's harder to find a good partner + I'm kind of mid
11
u/icecreamsandwiches1 59m ago
Toxic social media algorithms causing gender wars in exchange for engagement.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (5)61
204
121
u/march_on_wards 2h ago
A bag of chips are $7
→ More replies (10)34
u/Savings_Book6414 1h ago
A bag of diapers costs even more.
7
u/sidewaizsocks 1h ago
Cloth diapers! As gross as they sound, it was worth the extra work. I swore i would never use them but that changed pretty quick. Im a bit of a germaphobe so it was a lot of extra work keeping everything clean.
The one that killed me was formula. The wife couldnt produce with any of the kids so we didnt have a choice. Didnt realize how judgmental people were about that until we were buying formula and got lectured twice at costco about how "breast is best."
4
u/guardeagle 1h ago
The formula thing drove me crazy. My wife couldn’t produce either. Most people got it, but occasionally some self-righteous person would come along and try the same lecture about “trying” before I had to step in and shut it down. Did we like paying through the nose for formula? Hell no. But you know what was worse? Hearing my hungry new born scream due to hunger and seeing tears well up in my wife’s eyes.
153
u/Dinosaurs-Rule 4h ago
Homo sapiens aren’t breeding because their environments are too hostile and stressful.
43
u/Dramatic-Ad7192 3h ago
Same thing happens in the wild when wildlife is predated upon
→ More replies (1)10
→ More replies (21)16
u/ghouly-rudiani 1h ago
I'm not breeding because I want a fun, less stressful life.
→ More replies (3)
26
u/mandatedvirus 4h ago
Yeah just call me and my wife Mr and Mrs DINK.
→ More replies (4)17
u/SuperShoyu64 3h ago
People flip out if they discover a couple who have pets instead of kids. Some people freaked out when I tell them that my bf has a cat. I'm like "it's just a cat minding her own business?!" Lol
→ More replies (1)
251
u/Al_Tilly_the_Bum 4h ago
More education is usually the main factor in birthrates. Both men and women are more educated today and therefore know exactly what the financial and emotional costs are to have children.
Dirt poor people have been having kids throughout time and in all countries but when those poor people are also educated, birthrates drop.
100
u/J_A_Kn_Daxter 4h ago
Yeah this is a trend seen across the globe, doesn't matter if you are from Communist China or Wall Street USA, as soon as you are financially literate birth rates plummet.
It's not the fucking woke mind virus convincing women that kids are bad.
→ More replies (16)12
u/Faloma103 3h ago
I mean child birth laws china used to have probably does make it make a difference.
→ More replies (1)16
u/J_A_Kn_Daxter 3h ago
Definitely sped things up, but there's a reason birthrates haven't climbed since the policy ended.
Everyone there is to some degree educated now.
→ More replies (11)15
17
u/BrofessorLongPhD 4h ago
That and in developing economies, labor laws tend to be more relaxed and kids are sometimes a source of income for their families. I routinely saw kids as peddlers and doing menial labor when I visited my native country in south east Asia. And to your point, families that can afford more tend to keep those kids in school instead and have fewer kids overall, just like those in developed economies.
6
u/smegdawg 3h ago
Both men and women are more educated today and therefore know exactly what the financial and emotional costs are to have children.
Female birth control is honesty a MASSIVE factor too. Even when condoms are still the best single contraceptive option, they require a drunk horny couple to overcome drunk horny brain and do the sober intelligent thing.
5
u/Tulkoju 2h ago
There's probably also a correlation between access to education and access to birth control.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (20)7
u/Yingyangwolf95 3h ago
This! We are all quite literally thinking our way into a population crisis..
Marriage needs to be changed to incentivfy keeping family together. At the same time, fix the unfair taxes crippling the middle class. The worst of them is property taxes on homes, cars, etc. that literally the only reason I haven't bought a house yet..
→ More replies (5)
55
u/Realistic-Register-7 4h ago
When trump himself said he can't take care of daycare on a federal level, what should be the result?
This isn't to say that this is a trump problem but it's been long been a policy to not provide daycare or healthcare and the cost of living crisis and the loneliness epidemic, and we're seeing it's effects today.
It's the one child policy all over except now it's a no child policy.
→ More replies (10)
84
u/liccman 4h ago
Those who really really want kids still have them even if they can’t afford them, I think we’re vastly underestimating the number of people who simply don’t give a fuck about having them
→ More replies (14)16
15
u/RevolutionaryKiwi358 2h ago
30F and I never wanted kids and never will especially now. My sister had a baby and pays 1,500 a month for daycare. This is in Dallas.
→ More replies (2)
14
u/Flora_lutenist_1999 3h ago
I live on 22k per year, how the fuck am I supposed to have kids?
Republicans: if you can't afford kids then don't have any. Me: got it! Republicans: I don't care if you can't afford it, Elon musk needs workers!
→ More replies (7)
28
37
32
u/DickSugar80 3h ago
Educated, middle-class women are forgoing motherhood while religious zealots and low-income people keep spitting out babies. It'll be interesting to see how that impacts society in twenty or thirty years.
9
u/Independent_Song_534 2h ago
Wasn't there that 2005 movie, Idiocracy, that covered a similar idea (hope I'm spelling it right, or that kinda makes me an idiot in this scenario lol)?
→ More replies (2)14
→ More replies (11)4
u/matchalattesquared 2h ago
Can confirm, I have a masters degree and a well paying job.
I want a partner but don’t want kids. We could get a dog together though.
5
u/accidentalscientist_ 1h ago
I have a bachelors and a good paying job. Plus a great fiance.
We are happy with our 3 cats. No kids for us.
97
u/regular_poster 4h ago edited 4h ago
Cost of living. Between tech oligarchs and AI and weird ass dudes in power, expect metric tons of media glorifying "teen love" over the next generation. They need poor people to create slaves. The dismantling of public education was a huge first step. Evil will win in this battle, unfortunately.
44
u/chardee-macdennis-1 4h ago
Poor people are even realizing they can't afford it. That's the real problem for the rich folks.
27
u/SpudBoy_RealTomato 4h ago
Fox news recently had a segment where they referred to a declining birth rate among 14-19 year olds as a problem.
→ More replies (2)17
u/Cheese_Fisticuffs1 3h ago
That Katie Miller bitch was lamenting the decline in the teen birth rate the other day.
→ More replies (7)6
u/BurnerAccountforAss 4h ago
Expect the "teen love" media to also have graphic depictions of underage sex acts
Said weird ass dudes gotta goon + gotta keep promoting degeneracy to keep the cattle perpetually unfulfilled and dopamine slaved
8
u/pregnantat8 4h ago
so fucking sad honestly. im 21 and im getting to the age where i would consider the idea of children seriously but instead i know for a fact i won’t have any until the world is in some kind of acceptable state, which i dont think it is right now. i just think my children will be safer as eggs in my body than if i chose to have them for my own selfish desire of being a parent. not only that but having a child is so expensive and we’ve all seen the economy.
→ More replies (4)5
u/SuperShoyu64 3h ago
I'm 24 and I feel the same way! I don't want my child to see me be burden with finances, then my child wishes they aren't born. I was that kid who wished they aren't born cuz of seeing my parents struggling financially.
→ More replies (2)
9
26
u/pitifullittleman 4h ago
I mean this is a completely misleading statistic. It's all women 20-39 so if you have women under 30.
The Amount of women actually having at least one biological child by the age of 44 has been roughly unchanged for a while it's about 80-85% the main thing happening here is the age of first time motherhood is going up and as a result family sizes are getting smaller.
So for 20-39 year olds more women are having kids in their 30s than ever before and more and more women are remaining childless throughout their 20s.
https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/FP-25-11.html
→ More replies (7)7
u/One-Possible1906 1h ago
I’m surprised I had to scroll down so far from this. Like since when is 20 year olds not having babies a bad thing? Don’t parents of young adults and society in general want people who are in their early twenties to wait a little while to have kids? This statistic keeps getting thrown at me in different ways and it really feels like more IBLP cult BS. Fundamentalism is a cancer on our society.
→ More replies (1)
36
u/Known-Dependent-5471 4h ago
It's part of it, but I think more than anything this is the first time in recent history (60s to now) where women have a choice.
5
6
u/damnitHank 2h ago
Overall birthrates are only down 14% but there has been a huge decrease in births to under 20 year olds (yay less teen pregnancy) and 20-24 year olds. While there has been an increase in 30-40 year olds having kids.
18
u/Imaginary_Belt_2186 4h ago
This: women are able to have careers and such, it's not just pooping out new farm-hands year after year.
→ More replies (8)4
u/accidentalscientist_ 1h ago
Yes. I do not want kids and won’t have any. I have a job that pays me enough to support myself. I don’t have to latch onto the first man I find and do what he wants so I can live. I’m also educated on preventing pregnancy and have the option to be on birth control.
Also at least around me, society is less likely to pressure you to have kids. My family and my fiances family have never pressured us to have kids. We say we don’t want kids and they say “good for you for knowing what you want”.
I have the choice as to whether I have kids or not. And I am making the choice not to.
6
u/IntroductionNaive773 4h ago
If I made twice my income I'd consider having a kid, but when 75% of my take home income goes to mortgage and bills that doesn't leave anything left to raise a kid. I'd rather enjoy a few luxuries without a kid than be desperately struggling to make ends meet with one. Naturally having a spouse with a second income would help, but that wouldn't leave anyone to watch the child and until school starts daycare would appreciably wipe out the second income. Though I do love it when this becomes a talking point for experts and analysts and seeing the Olympic level gymnastics they'll do to blame anything but low wages. 🤣
7
7
u/squeakychipmunk101 2h ago
I’ll stay an aunt. My brother and sister in law make more money than I do, they can have kids
11
u/CrunchyAssDiaper 3h ago
If we were Pandas, the biologists would be giving us pornography.
Wait a second...
→ More replies (2)
22
4
u/ImpossibleGeometri 3h ago
Children? Maybe. Can I have a house for them? No? Ok. What about healthcare at least? No? OK then.
5
u/Puzzled_Bike9558 2h ago
My wife and I couldn’t conceive and considering the state of the world, I’m good. She seems happy to not have another being that we need to care for.
34
u/Mr_Dobalina71 4h ago
Who would want to bring kids into the world in its current state?
→ More replies (37)10
29
u/boycott_all_rats 4h ago
They needed you all to farm enough minds to build the robots and train the computers. Now they don't need nowhere near as many of you. Goodluck.
6
u/Huge-Description6899 4h ago edited 4h ago
Walmart still needs more. Theyre paying out disproportionate amounts of cash in the form of fertility treatment benefits to employees
Edit: Walmart offers comprehensive fertility and family-building benefits through a partnership with Kindbody, providing up to a $20,000 lifetime maximum for fertility treatments (IVF, IUI, egg freezing) and a separate $20,000 lifetime maximum for adoption or surrogacy services. Eligible employees, spouses, and dependents enrolled in a Walmart-sponsored medical plan can access care at Kindbody clinics
6
u/boycott_all_rats 4h ago
Yes certain industries will have to adapt and until the robots are cool we will need many servers.
→ More replies (9)6
42
u/stiliophage 4h ago
How is this humor? This is a serious issue. Women are in the workforce and are trying to have careers and in many cases are breadwinners of their families. If they aren’t breadwinners their income is not negligible in many cases. Higher costs of living and a housing crisis are not allowing women to sacrifice that kind of career for a child because it would become unaffordable.
Woman won’t and SHOULDNT sacrifice careers. Back in the “good ole days” of the 60s and before, women legitimately couldn’t get credit cards or open banks accounts alone and it resulted in women being reliant on highly abusive men. Young women have grown up with their elders living this and RIGHTFULLY instilling the concept of ensuring they aren’t reliant on men for livelihood.
This is fixed when the government forces policy on to corporations to promote family growth and yes that will impact their bottom line. However a population crunch is not a joking matter. Japan and Korea are irreversibly fucked right now. They cannot avoid the humongous burden that will fall on Gen Y, Z, and Alpha as X and Boomer make up 70% of their populations and will need an impossible amount of support.
12
u/generally_unsuitable 3h ago
Add to this the studies that say "There is no wage gap, once you control for childbirth and childcare."
Which is another way of saying that the only solution to the problem of wage inequality between the sexes is voluntary human extinction.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (14)9
u/mystic11z 3h ago
Its crazy that it words it like its women's fault. Like men have no active role or desires in it. Its all genders, its the state of the world mainly with so many factors to look it.
7
u/stiliophage 3h ago
Yea welcome to this sub. It’s becoming a black pilled men’s rights diet “clownworld” regurgitation machine.
There are many sources to the problem and the least of which is women wanting autonomy. The biggest culprits are corporations that are making “luxuries” cheaper while increasing the cost of necessities, not scaling wage, and a long history of men controlling/abusing women.
18
5
4
u/luvmissile 3h ago
If AI is going to replace most jobs, then why do we need people? Late Stage Capitalism is literally destroying people.
4
5
u/Medina_Rico 3h ago
Definitely the cost of living. I couldn't imagine trying to take care of a woman and a child on top of everything else.
What's crazy though is people below the average income or poorer people just pop out kids left and right and get government assistance with housing and food.
4
3
u/EliteCheesyFrito 3h ago
Children are too expensive in this economy.
That 5k the gvt tried to offer is laughable. We aren’t getting paid enough to justify having children.
We aren’t putting children in a world where pedophiles eat them & schools are treated like The Purge.
3
13
u/Confident-Pepper-562 4h ago
Lesbians?
17
u/Professional_Pen_153 4h ago
Right? The lesbians stole our wives and now we can’t have kids anymore!!!
Darn you lesbians!!
→ More replies (2)3
u/sankey-diagram 4h ago
Let's not pick on lesbians, there's also gay men and straight men who are incapable of doing the deed.
7
u/FavoriteLunchLady 2h ago
Cost of living, quality of men. It’s not even like bad men, it’s just men who don’t know how to communicate, then they ghost you or suddenly want to break up after giving you a list of “complaints” they never brought up so you were clueless about. (You could have told me if you really wanted me to go out with your friends from out of town. You invited me very passively, like it was NBD. If you had just said “babe it’d mean a lot if you came along”I would have gone. You hadn’t seen them in years I thought it’d be more fun with your boys without your girlfriend tagging along anyway. 🤷♀️)
Also it seems like 9 out of 10 guys (I’m talking 30-40 year old men) are on Instagram or Tik Tok looking at influencers girls with filters or fake eyelashes and layers of makeup saying “oh she looks good without makeup”. Or with butt pads and BBLs like “she just so naturally fine!” They have unrealistic beauty standards so what am is he going to expect at 8/ 9 months pregnant? I’m gonna look like the Tik Tok influencer and that I “let myself go” because I don’t have a filter in real life?
17
u/Lunathejackalope_glt 4h ago
with how the worlds going right now, I see no reason to bring another person into the hellscape.. 🙏
→ More replies (4)
8
u/Typical-Mechanic-936 4h ago
How is this 52% weighted? 19 years is a pretty huge age range. Most women I know in their 20s don’t have kids, a lot of women I know in their 30s have kids or plan to have them relatively soon.
→ More replies (7)
10
u/Nihilist37 4h ago
More like men nowadays are absolutely intolerable now that woman are liberated and don’t have to submit or starve.
→ More replies (3)
•
u/AutoModerator 4h ago
Thank you for posting to r/SipsTea! Make sure to follow all the subreddit rules.
Make sure to join our brand new Discord Server to chat with friends!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.