It’s not unreasonable, fertility rate did drop below 2.1 in the 1930s
But it was still above 2.1 throughout the 1900s-1930s, so before WW1 and the Interwar period
MyrinVonBryhana on
The fertility articles and gender war will continue until birth rates improve.
ulysses_s_gyatt on
The reason is revealed preferences.
dweeb93 on
I just think for a long time people had babies because that’s what everybody else did. You get married in your late teens and early 20s and have kids shortly after, that was just the way life was done.
ResponsibilityNo4876 on
In the many posts about the declining fertility rate, the NYT discusses an overlooked reason for it uncertainty about the future. Revolutionary times reduces the fertility rate. The first nation to go through the demographic transition was France. In 1800 France had more than 2 x the population of the United Kingdom by 1900 the population was roughly the same even though millions of Brits emigrated to the colonies. The early 1900s was also a revolutionary time and fertility rates dropped below replacement level in several of European nations. Right now we live in one of the most revolutionary times. A couple the NYT times interview delayed having kids due to the climate revolution, something humans haven’t faced for thousands of years. If you add on top of that the potential AI revolution and other rapid changes it adds to a lot of uncertainty.
hypsignathus on
Is fear of uncertainty really an “overlooked” reason? I suppose the author of the piece likely didn’t write the title, but it’s so baity it feels like just shilling the book. It’s hard for me to get over that objection to think clearly about the piece. Also the link with decline in religion/faith seems clear to me, but to suggest this as a solution is a little vomit-inducing.
One thought I had while reading it is–are things *really* more uncertain now than they were in say, 1910s Europe? I believe birthrates do fall during crisis-times, but is there any reason to think *now* is somehow materially different than the past in terms of uncertainty and crisis such that rates would be much lower? Maybe social media is a compounding factor?
brianpv on
>What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.
Authors burying their thesis 5 paragraphs deep is kind of maddening lol.
HistoryPerv420 on
Leaning child free because I don’t think I’d like being a parent. I also think I’d be bad at it.
I think it is good people who don’t want to nor would be good parents stay child free.
probablymagic on
>The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty.
Sorry, but Boomers grew up doing nuclear attack drills at school knowing that we and the Soviets could blow up the whole world on a random Tuesday over a misunderstanding, and they made lots of babies.
We live in a time when people *feel* less optimistic about the future, but we don’t live in a time when they *should* feel less optimistic.
The kids have been cooked (am I using that right?) by a media environment optimized to create anxiety in exchange for ad revenue. People will look back as they’re old and realize it would’ve been fine to have kids and they got too caught up in the daily catastrophe, but it’s very hard to know how to pull them out of this in realtime.
CaptainApathy419 on
I get the theories attributing the decline to social media, to economic instability, to housing prices, to fears about climate change, etc. There’s probably some truth to all of them. What I think is missing is the general idea that bearing at least two—probably more—children used to be expected of everyone who got married but no longer is.
In the past, having lots of children was economically necessary to work the farm and support the parents in their old age. The child mortality rate was shockingly high for most of human history. I know this has been written about plenty. But for mid-20th century families, having multiple kids was still the norm even though we were no longer living on farms and most kids survived to adulthood. The post-WWII families that moved to the suburbs didn’t *need* to have two-four kids apiece. It was just…what everyone did. Call it a hangover from the pre-Social Security/pre-modern medicine/pre-industrialization world. It took a a couple generations for that norm to wither away, but what we’re seeing now is the result of a trend that began long before smartphones and climate change.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to have this thought, so please let me know if a writer has done a better job articulating it.
Grum1991 on
I have wanted kids…but the more I read about climate change and how we are basically utterly fucked barring a miracle, hard for me to justify bringing kids in to suffer decades from now (or even sooner!)
Background-Bottle-23 on
If “vibes theory of demographic decline” is correct and the main reason for the demographic crisis is a pervasive sense of uncertainty about the future, what is the prescription?
The main couple in the article repeatedly delayed parenthood due to wildfires, political volatility, racial profiling fears, and climate anxiety, despite having planned for years. When the crisis is this scattershot you can’t really solve it, can you?
MAXIMUS-BLACK on
According to the article, the reason is “Thanks for reading The Times.
Create your free account or log in to continue reading.”
14 Comments
Link for global poors?
Uncertainty, you say?
*Processing img 46y3h4frqx1h1…*
It’s not unreasonable, fertility rate did drop below 2.1 in the 1930s
But it was still above 2.1 throughout the 1900s-1930s, so before WW1 and the Interwar period
The fertility articles and gender war will continue until birth rates improve.
The reason is revealed preferences.
I just think for a long time people had babies because that’s what everybody else did. You get married in your late teens and early 20s and have kids shortly after, that was just the way life was done.
In the many posts about the declining fertility rate, the NYT discusses an overlooked reason for it uncertainty about the future. Revolutionary times reduces the fertility rate. The first nation to go through the demographic transition was France. In 1800 France had more than 2 x the population of the United Kingdom by 1900 the population was roughly the same even though millions of Brits emigrated to the colonies. The early 1900s was also a revolutionary time and fertility rates dropped below replacement level in several of European nations. Right now we live in one of the most revolutionary times. A couple the NYT times interview delayed having kids due to the climate revolution, something humans haven’t faced for thousands of years. If you add on top of that the potential AI revolution and other rapid changes it adds to a lot of uncertainty.
Is fear of uncertainty really an “overlooked” reason? I suppose the author of the piece likely didn’t write the title, but it’s so baity it feels like just shilling the book. It’s hard for me to get over that objection to think clearly about the piece. Also the link with decline in religion/faith seems clear to me, but to suggest this as a solution is a little vomit-inducing.
One thought I had while reading it is–are things *really* more uncertain now than they were in say, 1910s Europe? I believe birthrates do fall during crisis-times, but is there any reason to think *now* is somehow materially different than the past in terms of uncertainty and crisis such that rates would be much lower? Maybe social media is a compounding factor?
>What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.
Authors burying their thesis 5 paragraphs deep is kind of maddening lol.
Leaning child free because I don’t think I’d like being a parent. I also think I’d be bad at it.
I think it is good people who don’t want to nor would be good parents stay child free.
>The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty.
Sorry, but Boomers grew up doing nuclear attack drills at school knowing that we and the Soviets could blow up the whole world on a random Tuesday over a misunderstanding, and they made lots of babies.
We live in a time when people *feel* less optimistic about the future, but we don’t live in a time when they *should* feel less optimistic.
The kids have been cooked (am I using that right?) by a media environment optimized to create anxiety in exchange for ad revenue. People will look back as they’re old and realize it would’ve been fine to have kids and they got too caught up in the daily catastrophe, but it’s very hard to know how to pull them out of this in realtime.
I get the theories attributing the decline to social media, to economic instability, to housing prices, to fears about climate change, etc. There’s probably some truth to all of them. What I think is missing is the general idea that bearing at least two—probably more—children used to be expected of everyone who got married but no longer is.
In the past, having lots of children was economically necessary to work the farm and support the parents in their old age. The child mortality rate was shockingly high for most of human history. I know this has been written about plenty. But for mid-20th century families, having multiple kids was still the norm even though we were no longer living on farms and most kids survived to adulthood. The post-WWII families that moved to the suburbs didn’t *need* to have two-four kids apiece. It was just…what everyone did. Call it a hangover from the pre-Social Security/pre-modern medicine/pre-industrialization world. It took a a couple generations for that norm to wither away, but what we’re seeing now is the result of a trend that began long before smartphones and climate change.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to have this thought, so please let me know if a writer has done a better job articulating it.
I have wanted kids…but the more I read about climate change and how we are basically utterly fucked barring a miracle, hard for me to justify bringing kids in to suffer decades from now (or even sooner!)
If “vibes theory of demographic decline” is correct and the main reason for the demographic crisis is a pervasive sense of uncertainty about the future, what is the prescription?
The main couple in the article repeatedly delayed parenthood due to wildfires, political volatility, racial profiling fears, and climate anxiety, despite having planned for years. When the crisis is this scattershot you can’t really solve it, can you?
According to the article, the reason is “Thanks for reading The Times.
Create your free account or log in to continue reading.”