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What's the real reason most countries aren't having children? (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Haha, it's interesting. I'm a lesbian, never had an interest in kids. My brother is straight, never been interested in kids. My sister is a lesbian and has had two kids (so far?). It's just interesting to see what different people see as the barriers/reasons for not having kids (not having a dig, it's genuinely interesting!)

That's where it would be fascinating to see the statistics laid out for so many things side by side; how many more LGBTQ people are having families than in the past, same with infertile people, single people (more rare but it happens!) and then the ways that it's decreased too elsewhere. There are groups who are having more kids than ever before - because it's more accessible (IVF) and then obviously groups that aren't.

Then of course the way that life expectancy has increased which is where the balance gets tricky and the numbers are important.

I'm also curious if 4-5 kid families are still more common in any western countries than others. I'm in Australia and agree that they're rare here now. I'd see 2 as the norm though I'm going to jump down a rabbit hole now 😅 🐇

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    I think only Israel is above replacement levels now. All the other developed countries have significantly lower birthrate than couple of decades ago. All the gay couples having kids and IVF is simply not enough to offset the loss of big families. And that's on top of the simple fact, that not having kids is socially acceptable now and people who don't want kids simply don't have them. To offset that we would need 3-4 kids to be the norm for a family, not 1-2.

    And yes, detailed stats would be interesting. Let me know what you'll find :)

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Yep, definitely not saying that we're not below the replacement numbers despite certain demographics having more access and increases! The replacement number itself is so generic.

    It's based on developed country's requirements without taking migration into account. So it's not what most developed countries talking about declining birth rates, are actually aiming for. Australia, for example, is built on immigration, our goal being based on no immigration makes no sense! Other countries (Ireland for example) still have a high rate of emigration. A lot to take into consideration outside the very generic replacement number of 2.1 when you start to narrow it down 😅 You're right about Israel in terms of developed countries! They're sitting at ~2.9!

    Some of the rhetoric I see seems to be that the birth rates have "suddenly" dropped which is far from accurate.

    I'm looking at a couple of countries but particularly Australia. Contraception being introduced (early 60s) had a big effect as did the accessibility of abortion (70s). In fact, it appears that the biggest "sudden drop" actually occured through the 70s/early 80s. I wonder if they were speaking about it in the alarmist way we (society) do now.

    Interestingly - Australia - teen pregnancies have dropped 75% since the 1970s. Gonna say this is a good thing about declining birth rates. 👏

    I'm no data analyst but I think that it looks like the biggest factor for declining birth rates came with birth control. If not for that I think the graphs would look relatively stable with smaller fluctuations.

    Australia actually had a small increase in the early 2020s! Still below 2.1 though!

    I don't know, it's all very interesting. I think there are a lot of very good things about the birth rate having dropped. Found a study around the decreasing rate of "undesired births". Such a nuanced topic! I'm sure there's more numbers out there for individual countries about the projection around migration numbers needed rather than focusing on the generic replacement number.

    A few of the sources I read;

    https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/historical-population/latest-release

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12205728/

    https://www.id.com.au/insights/articles/australias-birth-rate-increases-for-the-first-time-in-10-years/

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7834459/

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I think contraception is kind of coincidence. The biggest change is society becoming less conservative. This meant that women were able to access contraception but it's no the main reason for drop of birthrate. Women starting careers means they are less interested in spending a decade or two raising 5 kids. Being single or living in informal relationship was also normalized. Basically the model of family where woman stays at home and has a kid every year or two was replaced by both parents working and sharing responsibilities. People have 1 or 2 kids to satisfy the need of having their own family unit and stop.

    And yes, the replacement number is a fairly xenophobic concept. The narrative is that GDP has to keep growing. To constantly grow the economy you need more workers (or offset the decline with increased productivity but when population numbers fall fast that's difficult). So the narrative from capitalists is that we need to hit replacement levels or the economy will suffer. If people don't want to have kids then we will need immigrants and this is turned into replacement theory and used as propaganda by far right. So the far right wants to return to traditional family to save us from immigrants. And how do you return to traditional family? Less rights for women, harder access to contraception and abortion and, of course, no rights for same sex couples.

    So right now in Europe Spain is for example openly saying their future depends on immigrants and is welcoming them (the current government does at least) while Poland is still very much opposed to any immigration and didn't make any social progress in decades (no same sex marriages, difficult access to IVF, banned abortion).

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