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[–] 121 points 5 months ago* (13 children)

The cost is parenthood is probably one of the biggest obstacles to having a higher fertility rate in most industrialized countries.

You want more babies? Stop hoarding all the money with the other 15 richest people in the country. Pay your fair share of taxes so the people looking to start building families get the support they need and their children have access to an affordable quality education. Also give everyone a fair pay.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    The cost is parenthood

    Money is certainly a big factor, but so is time and the general lack of support parents get from society. Historically (and in some parts of the world today), there was more focus on the extended family rather than the elementary family. The shift in focus on family structure has put a lot more demands on parents. Combined with the higher expectations of parenting, and it's no wonder many people are opting out. When I talk about expectations, think about not only material items but how norms have changed regarding the level of supervision.

    Parenting has become punitive in many modern societies.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I think I heard the best explanation as a generation of people being devoid of hope for the future being told that their actually wrong and really just being selfish and life isn't that bad. Like truly dead inside and just going thorough the motions on autopilot.

    Because fertility rates everywhere are going down, and it's not just an economic consideration. North Korea is racing South Korea to the bottom in terms of who can go extinct first, and they are the most disparate case that could possibly be presented.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Combined with the higher expectations of parenting, and it’s no wonder many people are opting out.

    It's now Darwinian in the sense that only those who can afford quality have the likelihood of better upward mobility, like some of them insisting to have private education over public. Of course and sadly, the so-called middle class is being hollowed out as the wealth gap widens.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    To add: Baby boom wasn't horny vets.

    They through money at it. One form was affordable mortgages

    government-guaranteed mortgages in the 1930s and 1940s led to dramatically higher rates of home ownership among young couples. β€œMortgage insurance programs led to 3 million additional births from 1935-1957, roughly 10 percent of the excess births in the baby boom,

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    This may have been his purpose for raiding the US government files. Probably some schemes involving widespread eugenics by nudging more favorable social supports for certain groups. Completely speculatory but plausible given what can be done with big data these days. We still have zero leads as to what he stole all that data for.

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