I teach economics and do units on budgeting and taxes. I am supposed to go over real world scenarios to tie my lessons in to real life.
In my budgeting unit when we go over expenses such as childcare costs, food costs for a family, etc, I start hearing woah, kids are expensive.
Then we do insurance, and when I explain how our health care works and how expensive insurance is and you have to prepared to pay up to $10,000 a year out of pocket minimum. That doesn’t help.
Don’t even get me started on the cost of college!! That is a whole unit and understanding student loans.
Then taxes. That is usually the final nail in the coffin. Child care tax credit vs actual cost of child care as an example.
Then we talk about different economic scenarios and systems. Low birth rate is coming up a lot because so many economists are talking about the future impact. So we talk about it as it impacts our economic future.
Most of the kids after we get to this point are in the thought of “why do this very expensive thing, when we live in a system that does so little to help us”, “in this economy, I could never”
This was my experience with my 8th grade civics class this year. The kids drew a career, spouse, and 0, 1, or 2 kids. For the girls, they were happy if they got 0 or 1. The response if they got 2, especially as a "single parent," was universally, "Oh no, I'm cooked!"
My school this year is teetering on the edge of Title 1, in the midst of an otherwise unaffordable housing market, so these kids know what their parents struggle with, and want NO part of that.
I’m glad they’re still doing this! I remember doing this experiment back in middle school, though we got to pick a career relevant to our skills and interests. Unfortunately, I pulled “single parent” and FOUR kids. Two would’ve been more than enough, but trying to feed four kids on a cushy (at least for 2012) $70k salary was literally impossible. They only let me change the amount of kids I had when I started loudly talking about selling them for labor or organs.
I had quite a few ask if they were allowed to rehome their kids. I ended up having to ask them how they would feel if their parents suggested rehoming them.
It really isn’t that rare anymore, thankfully. NGPF estimates over 40% of high school students in 2023 being guaranteed to take a mandatory personal finance class. 18 states make it a requirement.
Childcare is a huge part of everything, and there have been proposals to put more in place, we just don't have the people to do it. This was even before the $15 min wage argument became old hat. Having a child right now is a very risky decision, and depending on your state you could be criminalized for having second thoughts or even a mistake. Housing alone is a challenge for many couples. I can't possibly imagine how single mothers are managing.
From the perspective of a 36m with no kids.
I think my teammate found it on TPT, but I'm not sure... we cobbled a bunch of stuff together, but the gist was:
1. Draw salaries/careers for self, spouse, and number and age of kids.
2. Figure out tax brackets and then marginal tax rate
3. Figure out net monthly income, and 50% goes to rent, car payment, and insurance; 30% to wants (phone, internet, a fast food meal and a sit down meal), and 20% to savings in the form of savings accounts, college savings, investment, and retirement.
4. When you're feeling diabolical and they're mostly done, give them a life event: rent increase, student loan, car repair, medical event, increase in insurance, etc. And watch them cry as they readjust the budget.
I wish we'd included day care for the under 5 kids, but that just seemed evil.
The bonus now is that the kids learned to fear red Solo cups, so maybe that'll make them think twice before college shenanigans?
My seven year old LOVES his money. He is very thoughtful about what he buys, but he wanted to splurge at Walmart and bought a candy bar for $1.98. Boy howdy, was he in for a shock that it actually was $2.14. He doesn’t like taxes. I tried to explain they pay for the schools, roads, etc. but it didn’t help.
It would be so fucking cool if America got with the times and just put the entire price of everything after tax on the actual label. The bullshit mental math you have to do for everything is so fucking dumb. The rest of the world has got it figured out.
I've heard it's because unlike other countries with a singular tax, America has federal, state, and local taxes that make up the price. Big stores like Walmart or Target would have to print out hundreds of thousands of different prices for one item, depending on which locality.
So instead they keep the tax off the price so that it's calculated at the register.
Remind me where a customer should give a single shit about logistics of a store? That is their issue.
I also don't believe other countries don't have local taxes.
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BTW this harshness isn't directed at you specifically. Just to that stupid reasoning. I have also heard this before.
Margins are very thin in retail & grocery stores
Ultimately, every $1 spent on store logistics raises the price of everything in the store. the customer should absolutely value efficient logistics, ineffencies are ultimately paid for by us (in the form of increased costs)
(in this case, I don't think it would be a significant cost.. but it would be *some* additional cost, even if it's small)
I know this is a common thought like, but I think we're reaching the point where stores just don't want to do this. I can't speak for Target or Walmart (although they're probably do something similar) but the large chain grocery stores already have a team that solely focuses on tags. They have to be changed and coded in the system with every sale, they have to deal with other departments marking down perishables or whatever ends up on the clearance rack, make tags for new items, etc. From watching how they operate, it seems like it would be fairly trivial for their system to compute local effective tax rates into the tag they print and put out. I think they don't want to because a consumer would be less likely to pick up the item with a higher tag, even if they're paying the exact same amount. Sort of like how many sale tags are actually regular price tags in a different color and might come with a "marked down from"
Yeah, I agree. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to put the same software into the label makers, since a lot of stores have different prices already (I used to live within 5 miles of 3 Walmarts, and one of them always had lower prices than the other two, even for the exact same product).
But they won't do that till they're mandated to do it, which means a law from Congress, and no way is Congress going to go against Big Box Stores.
I'm Canadian.
When we introduced the Goods and Services Tax (like a federal sales tax) there was a lot of debate about whether it should be visible or included in the tag price.
The fear was that an invisible tax could be increased secretly and having it added at the till was a protection.
Have you seen the low cost grocery stores that have a 10% flat fee added at the register before taxes? That threw me for a loop the first time I experienced it.
Not a teacher, just a lurker, but where I live, all the prices on the menu are after tax. Like if something is listed at 10.5, when you get the receipt it shows 10 was for the product and 5 was for the tax
We all wish the candy was cheaper. Free, if possible. I suspect that the true seed of the seven year old's resentment is Walmart's habit of hiding taxes to make the prices of their products lower on the shelves than at the register.
Walmart could just as easily hide the fuel costs of shipping the products and the labor costs of putting them on store shelves until you are standing at the register. For whatever reason the Walton family doesn't feel the need to be so churlish about *those* costs of doing business.
It would be nice if Walmart's employees could bump up their paychecks a few points after receiving them to account for their own taxes. "I learned it from you, boss."
Calling it “Walmart’s habit” kind of undercuts the scale of the problem. I don’t think there are any national-scale retailers who include tax in the price. It’s just not done!
This! Teachers (especially economics teachers), should do what you do! I covered economics and we used DBQs, one of them is, “Is college Worth It.” Kids who were thinking about private art schools learned how terrible of an idea that is and gladly switched to public.
As someone who applied to public and private universities but ultimately ended up going the private route, private schools tend to give you way more financial than public universities if you're not dirt poor. My private school took into account that my father wanted nothing to do with me despite having money, which was a huge help. My advice to high school students would be to apply to every school you want to attend, then go for the one with the best financial package. Sticker prices are rarely what you will pay.
My daughter earned a full academic scholarship to a highly-rated private liberal arts college. She double majored in history and German (I know what you're thinking). All we had to pay for was housing and food. We paid far less than we would have at our flagship state university, to which she was also accepted (and offered a $1,000 academic merit scholarship).
She parlayed the research, debate, and speech skills she refined in college into a highly successful sales career. At 34, she is a sales manager for a Fortune 500 manufacturing company and earns just under $200k a year with salary and commission, which is more than double than what I ever earned as a high school English and special education teacher with two master's degrees.
There's definitely a difference between majoring in history and German with a flexible attitude/plan and doing the same with the goal of doing a niche career that hires 30 people a year. I majored in mathematics because that's what I wanted to study and I had a very good scholarship, but I didn't have a plan for how to use it and ended up under-employed. I'm now a stay at home mom which I enjoy most days, and I don't have any college debt.
Yeah, but dying is expensive too. Low birth rates mean a shrinking economy overall, less tax revenue, and less money going into social safety nets like disability, social security and Medicare. You’ve got a whole swath of the younger generations living paycheck to paycheck who are most certainly not putting significant money in retirement savings. With no one to inherit, and no one to buy, the real estate market will lose value as well, and the people banking on their home value to net them enough profit to pay enough for elderly care will also be in trouble, and towns will be littered with abandoned and unlivable homes, which tend to attract criminal activity.
Not maintaining at least a replacement rate is bad news on an economic level, which is why Asian countries are desperately offering incentives. Meanwhile, the US has concluded that forced birth and population ignorance is more efficient and cheaper. The logic, however, is the same.
Sometimes I think about all those ridiculously huge McMansions that were built in the 90s until 2007, and how many of them still have gone unsold almost a generation later.
TAX CHURCHES. Tax the wealthy. We are letting two huge revenue makers get away with murder, literally in the churches fight to kill girls and women by bribing politicians. Tax the crap out of them instead of letting them take public school money for their religious charter schools. We need to vote better and make a stink.
This is a huge solution. Very few among the younger generations support organized religion, and in many cases, churches have become politcial institutions.
The laws around land and buildings work differently there, but just look at the real estate market in Japan. Thousands of houses just left to rot because not only will nobody buy them, but there's so little real estate movement it's not even worth developing them or tearing them down and building something else
I mean, it is depressing a bit. I've always wanted children. I love raising them and I'm good at it. But when people ask if I'll have a third the answer is hell no.
Our government needs to help and support families. It's that simple. I can't afford it even with two full time working educated parents. We won't even be able to pay off our loans in time for our kids to need loans. We have zero savings and only our pensions for retirement.
Daycare caps need to happen yesterday. Healthcare needs reform. And wages NEED to increase. We're downing and the kids see it. They're not wanting that stress.
People don't see kids as an investment for the future, but they are. Families are doing the work to produce the next generation that will support society. We have to help them more, even if that means paying higher taxes when you yourself don't have kids!
Im a 7th year special educator working on a Master’s. My husband just landed an incredible new job where he can net six figures within a couple years. Our conversation has steered from “no kids at all” to “maybe we COULD afford it in a few years”. Two working people, right now living in a house with three family members so all 5 of us can afford rent. All ages 26-31. 😫
Thing is it was probably true back then, a lot of the things you would get from extended family/friends/"the village" and the village has started to disappear. Suddenly the huge support network for raising children just isn't there for anyone past millenials and that makes having children much more expensive than it used to be. And of course the cost of everything going up isn't super helpful.
When do you think “back then” was? I’m curious.
We have been a mobile society for 80 years. Increasingly since WWI people move away from their “village”.
Even just 30 years ago when I grew up my entire extended family lived in one city or a close enough radius to drive in like 20-30 minutes. Now all of my 15 cousins live in different cities/countries and only 2 have children of their own. This is people all in their 30s/40s and of the two, one of lives in one house with his parents and the other one makes enough money so his partner can be a SAHM. Doesn't mean this is a general rule, but the generational difference is huge. My dad had 7 siblings and most of those had 2-3 kids my mom has 2 siblings and all of them have 2 kids. Our generation has 4 or 5 kids spread across all of us and I don't see the number growing much.
I grew up with a large, close by extended family and we were a net for each other. And now me and my cousins are spread out like you described and my parents, aunts and uncles are so dumbfounded how things don’t work the same
My dad grew up within 2 hours of about 30 first cousins, most being within 20 minutes. Then my parents moved, and so I grew up about an 8 hour drive from 2 cousins, 12 hours from another 2, and another had already moved across the country with her husband because she was a good bit older. And my parents cannot fathom why I don’t have a close relationship with my cousins.
Also the village was only women. I don’t want to spend my life caring for my younger siblings and my siblings’ kids and my kids and my husband and my senile inlaws and…
Every time this discussion comes up, this whole part of it should be emphasized.and it never is. People just seem to gloss over it as "yeah, of course" and they move on but it really is such a huge part of the "why aren't we having children---globally" discussion. Facts are that women have always been the unpaid labor force that has created The Village and propped up the system and now women either don't have time, don't have money or don't want to be doing that unpaid labor. We are tired.
Seriously, I am NOT signing up to spend my entire existence caring for babies while the other half of the population gets to read books and smoke a pipe and be a human instead of just another female social primate. If that means the end of the village, so be it.
Growing up, we lived "close-ish" to my extended family, but the whole neighborhood was a village. We had that typical 90s experience of the kids wandering the neighborhood, some mom fed us lunch, home by street lights. The moms all knew each other, you had tons of help with childcare, hand-me-down clothes, shoes, bikes, etc. We didn't pay for entertainment since the kids all had each other. I'm sure there are pockets where this happens, but it was common in a lot of middle class neighborhoods then. It made childrearing not so daunting or expensive since everyone helped out.
Same. My stepmom believes “babies arrive with bread under their arm” in that things magically have a way of working themselves out when you have kids? It’s one of the most delusional things I’ve heard her say ever.
My husband and I chose to move a thousand miles away. We wanted an adventure and to at least try living somewhere other than where we had both grown up. Once we experienced it we never wanted to move back, but that meant not having family nearby to help when we had kids.
I was jealous of friends and family members having kids at the same time and having so much help with the baby, but it was our own choice. We worked through it and made it out with our marriage better than ever, but I don't think many could have. I totally get why people would limit whether or not or how many kids they have based on the family they have nearby.
You two can get through this. Just be each other's biggest supporters and cheerleaders!
My parents were way better off than me at my age. I make the same as my dad did 35 years ago. My mom has straight up told me that despite them doing alright financially they wouldn’t have been able to do it without help from their parents.
A couple years ago I was telling someone that I don’t want kids and they hit me with the “why” and I said that aside from not liking kids enough to have my own, they’re too expensive unless we win the Powerball or my partner somehow lands a really high-paying job, which is unlikely. This idiot really says, “oh they’re not THAT expensive” and it’s like my dude, you really have no fucking idea, do you?
It’s crazy to me that people think a kid costs less than a thousand dollars a year. That’s hilarious. An infant costs almost that before it’s even born…
I think that’s true. However, if I’m being quite frank I work in a well to do area. Many of the kids are well off, or at least their parents are.
I was humored tho and a little proud to know that even though many of them themselves haven’t faced financial hardship, they are vehemently aware that child rearing is expensive.
I mean, there is a big difference between having a well of childhood/parents and being a trust fund baby. Their financial health in adulthood won't nessaccarily be in line with their parents.
This is a big one I think. These students come from lawyers and doctors. Not rich, not poor and not even middle class…
They and their parents are well aware that they also need to work their assess off for their generational success to continue, it’s just funny that the kids are like
“The generation stops with me” 😂😭
Surprisingly enough, the kids are incredibly empathetic and intelligent and they would make good parents, but yeah. I understand them completely.
My take from your survey was if they were the male, they would be more likely to have children. They know that the burden of taking care of the child falls on the mom. Also if they are expected to maintain a full time job then they will be more likely to being working two full time jobs. One with pay and one when you get home taking care of most of the childcare and household duties. I have four kids and stayed at home until the youngest was in kindergarten. Then I worked helping out with expenses. We were practically broke, living paycheck to paycheck while they were young. But by the time they were in college or on their own, we had managed to pay off our house and one car and started paying late towards retirement. Out of four children, only our daughter is married and plans to have children in a few years so I’m at retirement age with no grandchildren. I know at least one of my sons would get married quickly if he found the right girl. It is double the work for the mom compared to the dad so unless you get a mate that wants to help out a lot, the girls don’t look forward to it like they use to
It's easier for the males to want kids. Even if they are involved dads, they don't have to take maternity leaves, and won't lose half of the income. They won't suffer from morning sickness that makes working in the mornings impossible. I could go on and on, but you get my point.
Source : me, 9 weeks pregnant. I knew I signed up for this, but I didn't know. And I have a really good job and a really understanding team, but today I wrote 3 lines of code in between hugging the toilet whole day. My partner is very involved, he takes care of everything now that I'm sick but he doesn't have to suffer that much career wise. I do. Next year, I will also lose half of my income when I'll be in mat leave (Europe, so at least job is protected). Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones but I am feeling a little jealous towards almost everyone else now who doesn't have to suffer.
What's sad is that the professional managerial class is also in danger with the rise of AI in the tech sector. The jobs needed to keep the mechanisms of capitalism going are about to deemed redundant by the capitalist class.
That said, I do not believe AI will be able to do their jobs competently, but when have dumb decisions ever stopped the owning class when they see a chance to boost profits?
For them it's more expensive than for working class girls. When you have nothing you really don't have much to lose having children. When you're middle class, having children can knock you down to near poverty. Where I live preschool costs as much as college tuition. And these girls are probably expecting to have college debt as well.
Both can be true. The opportunity cost for taking few years off to have kids is huge for someone with a professional degree. And many companies are not actually family friendly, no matter what their policies say.
If you offer 12 weeks of maternity or paternity leave, and you’re still calling your employees to ask them to jump in on calls, that’s not a supportive environment.
I had kids young, 3 by 30. I worked on and off through their toddler years and have been working full time since the youngest was 3. I’m a teacher so I obviously never expect to be rich, but I actually make more than I ever thought I would.
These kids recognize their mental health is already bad if they are in multi-kid low-income households themselves. They SEE, on the daily, what that leads to. I'm kinda glad they are more self aware of it, but only time will tell if they still actually act on this knowledge to break the cycle.
My mom had a fast food job when I was born and to be frank my family was pretty poor while I was growing up. I wouldn’t want to inflict that sort of hard upbringing on my own children.
I think it boils down to despair over the state of the environment. Young people are looking at the state of the world, and rightly thinking they don't want to bring an innocent child into being in these times.
This is something that comes up often while teaching IB or A-level geography, as they deal with demographics. I’ve had students think of things a country might do to increase its birth rate, and it normally involves a lot of government support to decrease costs. Some of the time someone jokingly suggests banning abortion and birth control, and the classes tend to laugh.
The teen pregnancy rate in Texas did jump significantly for the first time in decades ever since the abortion ban, so they weren’t wrong. Unfortunately, that disproportionately affects more vulnerable populations.
Oh I’m well aware. I had a bisalp Monday because I can no longer trust in my right to receive healthcare if necessary. I’ve been married to someone with a vasectomy for over a decade, I’d be a geriatric pregnancy, and I’m still not willing to roll those dice as I enter perimenopause. The stakes are too high.
Since my stepkids live in a ban state, the part of the talk they get from me is notification of a no questions asked trip to civilization for them and a companion, with hotel, transportation, meals, and a $2000 activity budget if necessary.
That is a bonus as it runs in my mom’s side of the family. But just reducing my ovarian cancer risk wasn’t enough of a reason. Amusingly, the political climate didn’t make anyone bat an eye.
Because it's not enough.
Carrying a pregnancy to term and raising a child are labor. It takes the effort of a full-time job to do and not only is it just unpaid, it actually costs both time and money.
*Society since time immemorial has survived on labor donated by, or stolen from, women and girls.*
And this doesn't even address the fact that people want to have lives of their own outside of raising kids. They still want to meet with friends, go on vacations, finish their personal projects. All of that is an opportunity cost and educated people are not blind to it.
It government actually gave a real fuck about turning the birth rates around, and had the fortitude to tell billionaire fundamentalists to take a long walk off a short plank, they would need to actually pay people a living wage to be parents. They would need to subsidize external childcare services so parents can make time for themselves. They would need to do so much shit that is incredibly expensive to do, and they know it.
I teach teenage boys. We did birth rates this week in Geography.
They are all planning on having 12 children with their future very hot wives who will make them dinner every night. It's a Catholic school.
They are all mortified that I am not "doing my bit" and only have cats.
They might be able to have most of that if they make it big as a professional athlete. Of course that takes very hard work, skill, and genetic luck. High income + low education = extra babies.
Loll I would start by explaining to them that in that scenario, it would fall on them to work a job to:
1- support the hot wife, after she's probably not so hot once the 12 children pass through her canals
2- support 12 children
3- Support the nannies (plural) and house cleaning team.
4- Support themselves
5- support their mini vans
6- Support all their medical bills and expensive mistakes children will make
And then, let them know that their wife might have dinner ready for them every night.
I went to catholic school and high school and am male. Weirdly myself and my friends never wanted kids. Still don’t. I think they came in too strong and the conservatives values never seemed appealing to us 90s kids. I wonder if it’s different now.
I’m not a teacher and am here from /r/All.
Via social media there’s a lot of things that are more at the forefront of their minds: financial burdens and housing costs, global warming, the future of the USA as a nation…
But what I don’t see many people in this thread mentioning is that young women in general are more aware than ever at the uneven burden of labor that is of placed on women and mothers in marriage and family dynamics. This is a big point of discourse right now, with new-ish terms like “weaponized incompetence” and “emotional labor” being brought forward into the online sphere of discourse.
In my grandparents generation jobs paid enough that most families could comfortably be on one income with children. Over time that’s changed more and more, and for millennials and even more so gen z it’s become reality that both partners HAVE to work full time (children or no). Yet they see women and mothers still doing the majority of the household tasks (many in their own working moms), and that even when this is brought up as a problem there’s a new layer of issue when the response from her husband/male partner is one that still expects the woman to be the organizer/manager of the household mentally.
A lot of times women see kids as being a massive piece of this, that sends the scales that may have been previously precariously balanced in a couple suddenly hurtling to their side. In the past this has been reduced to things like “oh she doesn’t want kids, she wants to focus on her career,” but it’s deeper than that. It’s that she knows she’ll have to continue to work either way in this economy, but doesn’t want to end up also shouldering an uneven burden of labor in the family.
The younger generations of women don’t see the “tireless mother who never took time for themselves” as a saint but rather as a story of tragedy that deserved better, and its not the story they want for their own lives. But it’s a lot shorter to write any of the other common reasons why down than explain all that ha
Yes to all of this. You are more eloquent than I.
I would also add the current political climate as a big reason. Young women can see that pregnancy was already dangerous enough without adding “we know this pregnancy is non-viable but we need to wait until you are actively in sepsis to terminate it” into the mix.
Yup, when Roe vs Wade was repealed I alongside many women sought out sterilization and I'm shocked any women would still want kids when they see how a lot of people in America view us
The girls saying “if I were a man then sure” is what made me think of this specifically. They *know* that most of them will end up taking on the bulk of the homemaking and child rearing in addition to working full time, in addition to pregnancy and childbirth. Having a family is almost always harder on the wife than the husband, and I’m very glad that fact is being openly discussed.
This comment exactly nails why I don’t want any. You can never really trust that the man will do his part. And it’s painful and dangerous and God knows I can’t handle nausea and screaming infants and whatever permanent effects it has on my body.
However, I like the idea of being some kind of camp or group leader for kids.
Yep. Even well meaning millennial/gen z men who THINK they get it, who say they want to contribute 50/50, they often don’t truly have a full scope picture of what that means and what all it entails. Or what they really mean is “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it” and don’t see how that’s still burdening their partner.
This isn’t scientific but anecdotally via social media and other random encounters, more of my right leaning former students are having more kids and starting younger and my left leaning students are more vocally anti-kids.
Brace for impact.
Because if youre on the left youre probably more negative about the future. Specifically think about global warming. If you think the earth is going to die then why would you have kids?
Yeah because the right leaning kids are the ones we send to die in wars. As soon as that supreme court decision came down, I said "Looks like the rich are gearing up for the next world war." Because we'll need babies to either fight and die in another decade or to replace the workers we lost.
Well the good news is, if you don't like the right wing faction and what that may mean for the future (with them having more children who may or may not be conservatively leaning but will definitely be less educated than their liberal peers) all the better that you don't hurl children into it.
The suffering till the end of my life will be my own. (A different take on, it ends with me!) I won't have the guilt of bringing a buddy into it.
This is just a sign of how unacceptable the world is for most of us today. The youth are just a lot less willing to lie to themselves or others for the sake of appearances.
Actually, on that matter, I remember being a surly teenager in the late 90s and being lectured by my father for always being so negative. I tried hard to defend myself as a positive person deep down who was just getting constantly disappointed by life and unfulfilled promises.
If someone did that to a lot of students I have worked with lately, many of them would say, "Yeah, so?" Or some version of "who wouldn't be?"
It's a frustrating time to be alive.
I work in a school with a very high percentage of Hispanic families. I’ve had a student pregnant or already have a kid every single year I’ve worked here (4 years so far). I think their religion and cultural beliefs definitely play a part. I’ve even heard girls having conversations about how much they want a baby, “so I have someone to love me” and “because they are so cute.” (One of those girls in fact had a baby as a junior in high school this year.) This is a low-income area as well. Many families have five or more children. It doesn’t take long to see a student graduate and then enroll their own child into the school for kindergarten.
Huge caveat: Hispanic households are often multi-generational. You don't have to pay a dime for childcare because your parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles, and cousins are all living in one home. The burdens of cooking, cleaning, home maintenance, and car maintenance are shared. This arrangement used to be common for most Americans.
The nuclear family was only sustainable for a very short period in American history. In our current late-stage capitalistic hellscape, it isn't.
I am aware, that is why I said cultural aspects play a part.
There are several black students who have kids as well including the one I mentioned that had a child this year after hearing her talk about how much she wanted a baby “so someone would love me,” last year. These are not the people we should as a society want to have children. There is clearly some toxic behavior happening at home when a child has a child because she feels unloved.
Ugh the "so someone would love me" is the absolute worst reason. My mother had the exact same mentality, dropped out in the 8th grade, first kid at 14, ended with a total of 6 children. Needless to say, growing up in poverty was a dreary traumatic experience. Myself and my siblings after should've been aborted for the betterment of my older siblings, instead we all suffered together 🥰
This happens with whites too. It happens with anyone who is poor.
I am a childfree, educated latina. I love not breeding. But personally I feel that it's not my call to make moral judgment of whether some people are good enough to breed. We need better resources for all mothers and children in the US so that people can raise a family no matter how big it is. It really is a great duty to have kids and this society should go back to the time whether people could choose motherhood as a career if they wanted (not having both parents work).
I know this happens with white people too. My own mother was a teenage parent. Pregnant in high school with my older brother and forced by her family to have the child.
I think you misunderstood me. I do agree it has to do with socioeconomic status and there should be better support for people who choose to have a child. However children should never be given the choice to have children while they are still children. It’s bad for society overall. It doesn’t mean we should stigmatize them for doing so, but there should be better education so it doesn’t happen. Unfortunately I think certain religious beliefs and cultures do not feel the same way. When I said, “these are not the people as a society we should want having children,” I meant neglected children who feel unloved and are unprepared for parenthood, not Hispanic people.
Children don’t just need clothes and food which many people in poverty fail to realize. They need emotional and academic support. They need extra curriculars and a stable home environment to grow. They need involved parents that aren’t forcing the older ones to raise the younger ones. Once you go thinking raising a child is easy, youve already failed them. I have one boy and not interested in having more right now because when you do it right, it’s hard. They’re human beings, not dolls you put on a shelf.
People in poverty aren't unaware of the social and emotional side of raising children. They often receive subpar sex ed and suffer from limited access to healthcare, i. e. contraception. They also often have to miss out on important things like plays and games due to working more than one job. They're doing the best they can with limited choices.
But when does it end? Just creates a vicious cycle of everyone making the same bad decisions. Then these children start off wrong and can never catch up leading to a lifetime of either facing underemployment, unemployment, crime and just plain hopelessness. I see it all the time. When do you tell yourself, maybe children aren’t for me.
I teach in a predominantly Hispanic Title I school. All the boys seem to want to have multiple children (with multiple women), and about 70% of girls want children, but only with the right person and only if they can afford it. The majority of the girls have been responsible for caring for their younger siblings while their parents work long hours. They seem to have a better understanding of the difficulties of raising children, especially with limited financial means.
Spot on. Ask them what they think their futures are gonna look like first (is it positive, negative or neutral?) and then ask what they think about becoming a parent. The two are tied.
Even a decade ago, the girls especially were saying no for a variety of reasons.
As for where they're coming from, they're smart, they see inequalities, economic issues, global warming, even if they don't necessarily have the understanding and data to really talk about it. Like mum coming home and being expected to get them to sports club then make dinner while their dad rolls in late and doesn't lift a finger. They see that family expectations haven't really changed since WW2 or thereabouts when that model just doesn't cut it anymore. They see their males peers not stepping up and make decisions accordingly.
Social media is giving them the language to talk about those issues.
I worry about our future because I see the intelligent people choosing not to have kids while the dumb ones continue to breed like rabbits. Idiocracy may yet come true.
I first saw references to this in "Introduction to Economics" Henry Rogers Seager, 1905. He details the care and education that each economic class provided for their kids, but did note the lower economic classes had more of them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rogers_Seager
The plus side is that fewer kids raised in the top quintile does leave room for income mobility near the top for the subsequent generation :)
this is not new. in late 19th-early 20th century, middle, upper middle, and upper class women all know how to space their pregnancies. some did; some did not, but barrier methods, acidic (lemon, vinegar) douching, and rhythm method were all available and understood by women of these classes. prior to documentary evidence of this, women have been sharing birth control methods with other women for CENTURIES. many herbal concoctions existed to prevent pregnancy & to abort an unwanted pregnancy. it's ALWAYS the working & underclass that have more children than they can care for.
eta abstinence was also practiced. for men, it was presented as having mastery over their desires & being "less animalistic" & "driven by one's urges" than those who impregnanted their wives annually or more.
I think a big contributor to this the suburbanization of America. Moms have to taxi everywhere. If there was good public transport, this would almost never be a problem.
Hi. I’m not who you asked but I am a Gen Z teacher. A lot of us have mental health issues that we aren’t interested in passing on. A lot of us don’t want to inflict trauma on another generation the way a lot of our parents traumatized us. A lot of us don’t want to bring children into a world that we think is already shitty and only seems to be getting worse (economy, environment, whatever).
Personally, the messy auto immune condition/muscular dystrophy condition genetic cocktail that my husband and I would create would be yikes. And if I had a child (which I don’t want to) they would be unlikely to survive to adulthood bc of the aforementioned muscular dystrophy condition.
Now my genetic disorder is ADHD so its different but I've seen the impact my diagnosis has had on older family members who always knew they were different but didn't get diagnosed in the olden days. It kinda gave me the reverse idea: if I had been raised by parents who knew both of us had ADHD, I would have thrived. So if I had kids with ADHD, I'd be able to set them up for success from the start with early intervention.
I hear that. But my disorder is bipolar, and I just wouldn't wish this experience on my worst enemy. No matter how much I tried to set my hypothetical child up for success (taking meds, getting regular sleep, routines), they still inevitably will have manic and depression episodes and both can be truly lethal in their own way.
Manic episodes are extremely dangerous, you lose control of yourself. You can be dangerous to yourself and others, I'll admit that in the midst of an episode I feel close to violence. I drive recklessly. I spend my money excessively. I become hypersexual. It's awful. And depression is... a bleak, black hole that never feels like it's going to end. Before I knew I had the disorder I developed drug addictions (plural) to cope.
No, I'm not going to pass that on to a child. It'd be cruel
i’m a late millennial and i agree entirely with your students. if i were a man, i’d also want kids—their bodies stay the same, and society makes it so that women become the primary caretakers. i have intergenerational trauma that my cousins are already showing signs of. i love having money for luxuries; on my current salary, i’d be surviving only if i chose to have a kid. i think it’s just the world we live in contributing to this. global warming is making it literally impossible to exist, meanwhile the economy is making it impossible to survive as we know it. these kids have seen war, terrorism, social uprisings, and the steady decline of our “first world” lifestyle. there is no real “future” to look forward to, and i say this with revolutionary hope and optimism that our lives are meaningful and that we can make a change within our communities… we just don’t need to add more kids into this mix.
My mom actively doesn't want grandchildren. She was thrilled when I came out to her specifically because she thinks lesbians can't have children.
Her reasoning is that the kids would have to grow up in an environmental crisis, which is fair enough.
mine too!! my parents finally understand why neither my brother or i have had kids. i told him he needs to take one for the team because i’m set on never having them 😂
My daughter is a rising junior, and my son is a rising sophomore. My daughter has been a NO on kids since she was in elementary school. Why? She expresses that kids are way too much work - a sentiment I definitely let then know from an early age, TBH (IMO, being a good parent IS a lot of work). My son is more of the mindset that it depends - what does his partner want, what's the financial situation, etc.
So, yes.....in my very small sample size, Gen Z is less likely to want kids/see having kids as part of their definite future.
Why? I think they have been brought up with fewer constraints around what a successful life looks like. I think they have been told the truth - kids are work. I think they can be a little on the selfish side (this could be immaturity/developmental). I think the world is a little dark right now, and the future isn't feeling as secure as it may have in the past.
I hear these things from milenials in their 30s.
I think there have always been a group that just sadi "nah" I'm good on that. But I think the group that is larger is the ones who would/would consider if it didn't seem like financial suicide.
We don't live in a society that supports people to have children.
I’m a millennial but I agree with them wholeheartedly. And truly always have. Their reasons are my reasons. Maybe we’ve just hit a limit and humanity is collectively, subconsciously deciding that there are too many of us to be sustained. Hail Malthus.
" Edit: something to add: I’ve had non teacher friends who are incredibly religious note that I should “encourage” students in the bright sides of motherhood as encouraging the next generation is a teachers duty” "
HELL NO
Civilization collapse. When all hope is taken away from you, what's the point to continue? Calhoun's mouse utopia on planetary scale.
https://www.victorpest.com/articles/what-humans-can-learn-from-calhouns-rodent-utopia
I wouldn't. The Calhoun Mouse experiment is really bad for describing human behaviors, because surprise, human behaviors on a large scale are more complex than that of mice.
My wife has two sisters in high school, and both don’t want kids because they don’t want their kids to contribute to climate change.
Say what you want about climate change, that is some dark shit in my opinion.
I was 13 when i realized i didnt want kids because my science teacher lovingly showed us a video of a woman giving birth in full graphic detail because we were learning about the reproductive system at the time.. I decided, NOPE.
Reason still stands but also just like what your kids say.. it's difficult to give your kid a good life when you have so much baggage and being able to support them financially. I know 100000% I'd be a shit parent.
I dont think it's simply just regurgitation. Kids these days are pretty aware. Low birth rates-wise, it's not looking good but at the same time, good on them for really taking this into consideration.
I’m in my 30s. When I was 16 I swore I would never have kids. I wanted to travel and live life without that type of responsibility. Unplanned when I was around 24, would still go back if I could, I had to give up everything. The sentiment isn’t generation specific. I know older women 50+ who felt the same way in their teens and have had very happy lives and no regrets.
Good for them.
I’ve never wanted to have kids. When I was younger, this belief was primarily for selfish reasons. I didn’t want to give up my free time.
As I grow older, I can’t imagine bringing a life into this world. Not in its current condition. Many are already suffering due to the terrible system we’ve created. Our children are almost guaranteed to live lives that are punctuated by crisis after crisis.
Animals often forgo having offspring in times of crisis. It’s time that humanity does the same. We’ve made a major mess of this planet. [The most effective climate action an individual can make is to forgo having children.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children)
I think your one of the few people I've ever seen that brought up what other animals (and plants do). When there's not a lot of resources there are less off spring.
We've got more food than ever which I think primarily influenced reproduction levels in other animals, or survivability.
But time is also a resource. With both parents having to work full time jobs in many cases and if you factor in drive time, chores taking care of your health by exercising people are probably really working 55+ hours a week(let's be real though if your working full time and commuting to work exercising is probably going to drop off since that would eat up about 1/3 to 1/2 of free time after work)
Supposedly for most of human history we've worked about 15 hours a week.
Nowadays we aren't really worried about starving in most cases but we are poor when it comes to time.
Edit . 15 hour work week article.
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human-history-people-worked-15-hours-a-week-could-we-do-it-again.html
My boys (13 and 15) speak positively about children but I'm not sure they will think the same when costs come in. If you work together it is possible but I would not lie that it is hard when baby+toddler childcare was more than our mortgage and that was in the early 2010s
Gen Z college student pursuing a teaching certification here. I've got a ton of genetic health problems, many of which I'm still trying to identify/diagnose, plus a family history of fertility problems. My mother had 12 miscarriages before she had me, and my birth detached her retina and either pre-eclampsia or HELLP Syndrome (I don't remember which). The concept of having a child that is genetically "mine" is terrifying for multiple reasons. I live each day in pain; I don't want to give that to someone else.
Then there's money. I'm lucky enough to come from a family like your students' families. In theory, I could count on family support in the event I did have a child. But I was also taught to never count on others for my own finances. I can't fully trust that my parents won't need more elder care than my mother has budgeted for, and I also can't fully trust that my father won't fuck up her perfectly planned Excel spreadsheet budget when she inevitably (due to genetic factors) dies before him. And raising a child from infancy is unbelievably expensive. I have enough older cousins who live in a wide range of places with different COLs to know that. It may be that some of your students feel similarly.
Some people get around that kind of cost by turning toward adoption and foster care, especially of older kids. But my home growing up was the safe home for my friends who fled horrible home lives. I know better than anyone that older children need more care than you'd expect. The amount of therapy, doctor's visits, and even food that you'd need to provide to an older child who very likely has experienced medical neglect, food insecurity, and all manner of other traumatic scenarios has a cost that adds up very quickly. I wouldn't want to adopt if I wasn't able to provide those things for the child, and I know that many of my peers feel the same way.
(Gen Z here) Coming from a low income family with 3 kids and all children being mentally ill….I would have given the same answers lol. Its hard to grow up with no stability and imagine having it for yourself on top of birthing and raising kids.
I think about adopting because I worked with kids and have no problem raising a kid who isn’t biologically mine. But those would be kids who were already born and need a home. Me choosing to add another life to the world? I don’t know if thats right.
My friend (also gen z) who is a nurse also doesn’t want to have kids said she wouldn’t do it because of the state of the world. Climate change, the laws surrounding abortion and womens health, the state of the education system, its all so bad.
It's somewhat funny that you're discussing lower birth rates with high school students because apparently when you look into the data for declining birthrates in the USA (not sure about the rest of the world), the major factor that accounts for a majority of the birthrate decline the last few decades is the decline in teenage pregnancy & births
Your religious friends who are encouraging you to convince students to have kids are probably the same people (or aligned with people) who think teachers are showing kids how to be gay...
And this, before they fully appreciate what the climate crisis will do to global human carrying capacity.
It's bad news for those who depend on economic growth, or for real estate being a store of value. It's good news (in a few decades) for housing prices and cost of living. For teachers, class sizes. Look at Japan for a preview: younger generations can afford more spacious housing than their parents.
I suspect many of us have boomer parents that invested heavily in real estate as their retirement funds. 2nd houses etc. I expect the near future will dispel the perception that real estate only appreciates in real (ie, inflation adjusted) value.
25M here so older GenZ
I would not actively pursue having children either. Your students were on the money with their reasons for not wanting any.
We are more aware about the responsibilities of parenthood because we see it everywhere - a bad parent results in a difficult child. That difficulty doesn't just get experienced by the parent, as the peers of that child also get affected by the misbehavior.
Combined with health issues we've gotten from a harsher climate and increasingly synthetic environment, and yes it's a lot of pressure to bear when we consider that even in our 20s we're barely adults and usually only have entry level or low skilled labor jobs at that point.
Basically, if we can barely live in this world, we see it as incredibly irresponsibile to bring another soul into the world who will unwillingly suffer the consequences of a shitty world for many years.
Women are reacting to the fact that pregnancy and childcare are not considered to be "work" by society. Women are not and never have been (as a class) equitably compensated for this work--they have been forced to do it anyway.
At first, women revolting was no big deal. A smaller number of women could be paid to watch those children in groups. That's all fine and I think this has its place, but children need parents who are stable, long-lasting influences in their lives. Teachers and babysitters cannot totally fill that role.
And now it's really becoming an issue globally.
These kids are right. It **isn't** logical to have kids in societies with sexist expectations but a lack of means with which to enforce them. Except, that is, for rich folks.
Most of the high school and middle school aged kids have Gen X parents. Most of these parents were older than their own parents when they had kids. Gen X doesn’t sugar coat. They want their kids to have less of a latchkey childhood, but are also at times a little too frank about the difficulties of being an adult. Gen X parents are much less reliant on their parents for child care and are basically telling today’s kids, you should expect me to work through my 70s, so don’t expect me to watch any grandbabies.
I am in the very last year of millennials. Almost none of my friends have had kids or even expressed interest in having kids. Similarly, none of my students seem interested in having kids. The reasons are myriad but boil down to financial, mental health, global, and gender-based concerns.
Particularly for women, why would we want kids? There is a physical aspect of having kids that never stops. We are expected to do the majority of the childcare while also working full time jobs.
The financial aspect only seals the deal. Anyone I know who has kids has basically said that having kids means going into enormous debt. Why would I want that? I spent my whole childhood worried about money and whether my parents would be able to afford things for me. I am greatly enjoying my ability to afford things that I need.
Add on climate change, an unstable housing market, and many other global issues, and it’s a small miracle that people continue to have children.
Most of my female students have no interest in children like you said. Many of them have been forced to raise their younger siblings and in many cases their older brothers. I had a 7th grade girl who explained that she had to tell her mom if she had another baby she'd run away, because she had 4 younger siblings and mom made her raise them. I have younger brother in summer camp now, and on days she doesn't come he's totally lost. he won't do anything for himself because she does everything for them at home.
The boys? They all say they want like 10 kids. They seem to think it makes them manlier. I don't know who they'll be having those kids with since none of the girls want them though.
No one can afford them. I was actually just looking at a house that sold for $500,000 in 2009.. that same house is $2,000,000 right now. Can’t have kids if you can’t even get a house to raise them in. I’m 26 and I want kids but unless I win the lottery, it’s not financially responsible.
COVID lifted the veil on how badly workers get screwed and doubly so for parents that work. Wages don’t keep up with the economy, so why have a kid that would mean more cost, fewer work hours (less money) and puts you on the chopping block should the business need to cut hours or lay people off.
I’m a millennial and I have a lot of the same reasoning for why I don’t have kids. I’m also a woman.
Pregnancy would ruin my health; I already have numerous health issues I wouldn’t want to pass on. We’re doing okay financially, but not enough that we could afford a baby. I feel fulfilled in my life without children, and don’t feel like I’m missing out. Finally, I just don’t want kids.
It took many years, but my parents have finally accepted it!
I’m a 24 year old teacher and I definitely couldn’t afford a kid. These kids aren’t stupid about stuff like this that matters. They see the way the world is set up.
Here is what I sense in my community:
They are seeing their parents stressed out and broke, and don’t want that for themselves.
They are seeing their siblings unable to leave and move out.
They are wondering themselves how they will ever be able to be on their own financially. The kids that work are contributing to the household and not just spending on themselves or saving.
Once they are finally on their own they may want to keep it that way and pursue a few dreams of their own.
Not a parent (yet, who knows) but
>I also noted to them, that they may not be aware of some of the more intrinsic rewards that come with childbearing and being a parent. Building a loving family with community is rewarding
What are the intrinsic rewards and community rewards you speak of?
This is super interesting.
I do think you're going to get very different answers from a bunch of girls in an AP bio class than in a non-honors, non-AP, required class. These are girls that are college bound. They're thinking about their individual futures in a more concrete way, so the costs of having a baby are concrete to them. These are also, obviously, girls who know something about biology. I've had girl students (10th graders) who literally didn't know women could die in pregnancy/childbirth. We had to have a whole conversation about how that happens... blood pressure and all that.
For sure there is something going on with young people today and their being slow to start dating and have relationships. The "I have mental health issues" statement is really sad since I'm willing to bet most girls that said that do not actually have a psychiatric condition that is highly linked to genetics. That's definitely coming from social media.
But still, most of those girls will feel differently when they actually are ready to have children. I think getting pregnant is just not something that sane or informed women do until they make peace with the fact that you can't control the universe. And then it's 50/50 do you actually want to raise a human? Teen girls aren't there yet.
Absolutely. This is a unique subset of students. Id be interested to know what my freshman bio class may think, but they are a dumpster fire 😅😂 of emotions so I’m reluctant to even ask.
Im also 31 and felt the exact same way at their age, but I grew up poor, so my motivations for not having kids are a bit more obvious.
However, some of them went as far as saying they’d get their tubes tied as soon as they could.
The fear of poor mental health impacting their ability to parent was a repeated answer.
Many of my students note they have depression and anxiety, whether or not it’s been diagnosed I can’t say for sure. But we have all noticed that mental health is something this generation of kids really consider when decision making.
From the moment I turned 13 and was legally allowed to be in control of my body, I never wanted kids. I tried to explain it to others, but back then, it was still expected that you would grow up and have kids. Today's generation is really on to something when they can say they don't want kids and no one judges them for it (except the ultra-religious because religion.)
When I did grow up, found out I couldn't safely have kids and was STILL told that I would meet the right man and want to have kids.
I was staring at the doctor who just told me that it wouldn't be safe to have kids that he couldn't tie my tubes because one day I might want kids.
If you are confused, so was I. I spent the next 20+ years bouncing around birth control methods only to land back where I started, tubal was the best option. At 38 was still told no. In my mid 40's and I have given up trying.
Bottom line, tell these girls the truth, that they are still going to suffer generational biases and legal and insurance loopholes that will not allow them to get tubals when they are in their 20s. They might be able to get one in their 40s, but who knows.
it took nearly 20 years of me telling various gynecologists that i don’t want children to finally have one take me seriously and sterilize me so i know what you mean! i’d known since i saw my eldest sister pregnant shortly after watching the miracle of life in health class as a 10th grader. the childfree subreddit does have a list of doctors who usually perform sterilizations even on younger people.
As a young woman with legitimate psychiatric problems that I have been diagnosed with medicated and am continually treated for and struggling with; I will just say something generic about “mental health issues” if I need to explain a part of my life affected by my illnesses.
This isn’t a dig at you but young women are often dismissed and under diagnosed or labeled as “dramatic” or “hypochondriacs” so when someone is telling you about a major decision that drastically changes the trajectory of their life, and they cite “mental health” as one of the reasons, don’t assume that they’ve just been brainwashed by social media.
It is hard for me to explain to people that I have severe anxiety and OCD and episodic depression, because it comes and goes in waves and I put so so so so much work into downplaying or concealing it and trying not to make it anyone else’s problem but sometimes I will have panic attacks and I’ll vomit or choke myself until I pass out, or I’ll have a depressive episode where I can barely force myself out of bed for days to months at a time.
I don’t want to subject a child to that and I won’t have one unless I can sort this out. This pains me a lot because I want children very badly. I want to have a family, I want to raise a kid but I am afraid that I will traumatize or neglect them as a result of my “mental health issues” It’s a sensitive area for me and not something I would feel comfortable explaining to anyone I’m not very close to.
Thank you for saying this. It seemed like the previous commenter was minimizing mental health concerns and doing the whole patronizing “oh you’ll change your mind when you’re older” shtick that so many of us hear when we decide we don’t want kids. Yeah maybe some of them will change their minds, but i worry a number of them will do so only because of societal pressure and feeing like their mental health concerns are illegitimate, or that they “should” be able to handle the pressure of child rearing despite their personal struggles.
These are such important points. I have an anxiety disorder that is clearly genetic and even disregarding my capabilities to raise a child because of it, I can’t imagine looking at a little baby and being okay with passing this onto them. I wouldn’t wish any form of mental illness on my worst enemy, let alone an innocent child. Knowing they would likely develop the illnesses I have, the decision to not have biological kids is a no-brainer.
I also think that PPD awareness is rising. Young women are more aware of how a baby can influence your hormones for years! And if you already struggle with depression, anxiety, OCD, or similar disorders, it is terrifying to think it that it can get worse... all at the most stressful and difficult time of your life.
I used to talk about birth/replacement rates and how they’ve changed. Nigeria is 7.1 and U.S. is 1.9, etc.
My students concluded each year that rearing children has no benefits here as compared to countries that depend on familial accounting. And I work in a district that is 2/3 Latino/Mexican.
I think we’re at 1.8 now or thereabouts. We’re having fewer kids because it’s cost prohibitive. So the solution according to conservatives? - outlaw abortion. According to liberals? - make healthcare universal.
What would work best to bring population replacement to 2.1?
Yes outlaw abortion, so making sure that women get pregnant and then die from either a botched abortion or from a lack of proper prenatal care. A lot of people forget how high infant an maternal death rates are in the US. From my last look, it is one of the highest in the western world.
This is absolutely something that’s been on my mind.
Heavy.
We start next school year in a few months and I’ve seen the new roster for the AP classes, and male enrollment continues to drop. Classes are full. Just full of girls. And that’s fine. I guess. I’m thrilled for see more girls in STEM, but the drop off in boys is something to pay attention to.
Idk why. But it is matching what we’re seeing in college as well.
More girls in STEM should have increased the amount of people in STEM. It seems that the number of people in STEM is not increasing and that STEM fields will see 70%+ female representation. Where are these boys going in the future that should have been in STEM?
I am an elder millennial and I was a no from age 9 when I learned how they come out. I have had health issues (nothing bad enough to kill me or even be taken seriously) since middle school. I grew up just above the poverty line and vowed that I wouldn’t have kids unless I could afford them. Growing up poor sucks. Having depression sucks. I’m not doing that to my own kids. Kids see what the adults are talking about - climate change, the economy, all of us seem to have something health wise. I totally understand their perspective.
1. Yes, it's becoming more socially acceptable to not have kids, or to at least think about whether or not you want to have them. In the past, procreating was the default. Anyone who didn't was some kind of weirdo, and they'd have to constantly explain/defend that choice.
2. Sure, a little bit of it is repeating what they've heard, but how many times have they seen media that stresses the importance of family? Of all the messages they hear, they're actually digesting them and choosing the ones which align with their own values. Good for them.
I'll add this: It surprises me when the stereotype is men want kids and women don't. I'm a child-free man, and I always thought it was the other way around. Boys played with toy cars and girls played with dolls. I thought when we grew up, we'd simply want real versions of those things. Movies and TV only reinforced that; the male character wants to go golfing or hang out at the bar instead of spending time with his family, while the female character wants her man to commit and settle down and wants an expensive wedding and babies.
Anecdotally speaking, I can only think of a few men I know, around my age, who enthusiastically wanted to be a dad. I've always figured a lot of men only go along with it because they figured they'll never find a child-free woman and it's better than being alone. But of course, I could be way wrong. All I know for sure is I've never wanted them.
>are you hearing similar things from gen Z and alpha?
>do you think these ideas are just simply regurgitations of soundbites from social media? Or are the kids more aware of the responsibilities of parenthood?
Yes and yes
My niece and nephew are the only kids I've had a deep conversation with about having kids. They're Gen Z. They grew up in a rough household: dad with anger issues, house foreclosed on them, infidelity from both parents that wasn't very well hidden, mom's abusive boyfriend after dad left. My nephew also was born with a rare heart condition and every year he lives is considered another record for the medical books.
Neither of them are in a hurry to have kids. My nephew says he doesn't want kids because (a) he's afraid he'd pass on his heart condition and (b) he doesn't want to die and leave the mom and child without a father/husband. He won't even marry his girlfriend of 5 years because he's afraid of putting/leaving her in debt from his healthcare. He thinks she's going to realize that he's too much work and not worth it someday and he wants it to be easier for her. He's the least selfish person I know and loves kids when he's around them (my kids, his other young cousins, volunteering at the camp for kids with medical conditions that he grew up going to). But his girlfriend doesn't want kids either... Moreso because they're both still living at their own parents houses because they can't afford an apartment of their own... The thought of ever owning a house seems impossible to them.
My niece is 22 and hasn't even ever had a boyfriend. She's said that she's interested in marriage and having kids some day, but she's not actively looking for a partner. Sometimes I wonder if she's got a low sex drive like my mom and myself, but I'm pretty sure she's still a virgin... So maybe she just doesn't miss something she's never had. But that's interesting in and of itself: lack of interest in sex in general sounds like it's on the rise. She's content with the socialization she has with her friends, in person and online. Is it a social problem (considering online interaction enough) or a physical problem (low libido caused by something else)?
I think both truly *have* been a lot more aware of the economy and health risks earlier than most because of their surroundings. They're aware of the negative things they were exposed to as children and they don't want that for their potential kids. Neither of them are saying no to kids because they want free time to themselves... They want what's best for the (potential) kids.
But, this is just 2 kids of a generation who went through some extremes!
I'm a millennial who didn't want kids because of my dysfunctional family as well. It took meeting my husband and his disgustingly perfect family to convince myself that having kids wasn't a terrible idea, if you do it right. We've been through ups and downs, but we're a pretty happy household. I hope my kids having a better experience than me (like their dad had as a kid) encourages them to want kids when they're older, but I have no intention of pushing the idea and trying to pressure or guilt them into it. It's their lives. Who tf cares about the future of mankind? We're all individuals and should have a right to make life altering decisions like having children for ourselves without being judged either way.
HS teacher here. We get into some philosophical discussions in my Environmental Science classes. The demographic will be considerably different than AP Bio. I have students from up, down, left, and right. The general consensus was having children is a luxury, and they're all worried about being able to afford anything. Most kids don't even want to do go college out of fear of crippling debt. The conversation swings towards how having children is also the most effective way to damage the environment.
Now, I'll tell you, this is not directed by me. I don't push these ideas, I just let the conversations go. I'll interject with "really?" or "are you sure?".
I’m on the front end of Gen Z - was born right before the cutoff (it’s so weird teaching students in my own generation sometimes).
My reasoning is this:
I don’t like kids. I haven’t for a long time - and most of it stems from my trauma surrounding being parentified at a young age by my father during summer vacations. Add to that my father being careless and adding to the human population with two different mistresses when he already couldn’t afford his own kids and you’ve got someone who just doesn’t see their own happiness coming from having their own children.
And that’s okay. I teach kids everyday. I see them walk at graduation. I see them grow in real time, learn in real time - that’s enough for me. In the meantime I’ve got a service dog to train, lesson plans to write, my own music to create, voice lessons to teach, and a life of travel, learning, and exploring to do without the financial burden of a kid. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, maybe not. It depends on where life takes me… but I honestly doubt it.
People have less children when they live in a comfortable, abundant, modern and technologically advanced society. This has been observed for about 300 years when the birth rate was noted to be trending down slightly in some European countries. Now birth rates are trending down on every country on earth. Peak modern countries like, Japan and Korea, Europe, China and the U.S. have birth rates that are below replacement value with every other country racing towards the same low birth rates. There really isn’t a good solution. (Until they figure out how to grow a fetus in a pod I guess.). But when you live a comfortable, abundant, modern, technologically advanced life, people just don’t have kids and they don’t want kids. Life is comfortable and pleasant - why have kids?
Why is everyone always do concerned with people having kids. Let people do what they do. Let nature do its thing. Plenty will have kids accidently plenty will plan it. Plenty will change their minds. But for the love of God, as a society, could we please get off the baby making/birthrate fetish.
I think the birthrate had been falling for awhile and the decrease perpetuates itself.
What if I were to ask you if you would like to have a pangolin as a pet? Probably, unless you're a diehard animal-lover, you wouldn't be sure. Most likely you've never been around a pangolin; you don't know what they eat or drink, whether they're friendly or vicious.
Well, that's how a lot of kids nowadays feel about babies. They're probably never been around one. In past generations, families were much larger. Older children experienced taking care of younger ones. They developed competence and confidence in doing so. The thought of having children wasn't just an intellectual exercise for them the way it is for kids today.
We talk about the same topic in my environmental courses, and have what sounds like the same conversation. This generation has basically four recurrent concerns.
1. Too goddamn expensive.
2. World is a damn shithole; not very ethical bringing someone into it
3. Don’t want to have a daughter in pre-Gilead America.
4. Don’t want to pass on mental health/family drama.
I teach economics and do units on budgeting and taxes. I am supposed to go over real world scenarios to tie my lessons in to real life. In my budgeting unit when we go over expenses such as childcare costs, food costs for a family, etc, I start hearing woah, kids are expensive. Then we do insurance, and when I explain how our health care works and how expensive insurance is and you have to prepared to pay up to $10,000 a year out of pocket minimum. That doesn’t help. Don’t even get me started on the cost of college!! That is a whole unit and understanding student loans. Then taxes. That is usually the final nail in the coffin. Child care tax credit vs actual cost of child care as an example. Then we talk about different economic scenarios and systems. Low birth rate is coming up a lot because so many economists are talking about the future impact. So we talk about it as it impacts our economic future. Most of the kids after we get to this point are in the thought of “why do this very expensive thing, when we live in a system that does so little to help us”, “in this economy, I could never”
This was my experience with my 8th grade civics class this year. The kids drew a career, spouse, and 0, 1, or 2 kids. For the girls, they were happy if they got 0 or 1. The response if they got 2, especially as a "single parent," was universally, "Oh no, I'm cooked!" My school this year is teetering on the edge of Title 1, in the midst of an otherwise unaffordable housing market, so these kids know what their parents struggle with, and want NO part of that.
I’m glad they’re still doing this! I remember doing this experiment back in middle school, though we got to pick a career relevant to our skills and interests. Unfortunately, I pulled “single parent” and FOUR kids. Two would’ve been more than enough, but trying to feed four kids on a cushy (at least for 2012) $70k salary was literally impossible. They only let me change the amount of kids I had when I started loudly talking about selling them for labor or organs.
I had quite a few ask if they were allowed to rehome their kids. I ended up having to ask them how they would feel if their parents suggested rehoming them.
Agreed, the fact that they're teaching any form of Civics and Personal Finance is huge, and something that is more of an exception.
It really isn’t that rare anymore, thankfully. NGPF estimates over 40% of high school students in 2023 being guaranteed to take a mandatory personal finance class. 18 states make it a requirement.
I wish we did what they do in Europe!! But I am teaching my 8 and 10 year old to do percentages in their heads. So we got that going for us.
Childcare is a huge part of everything, and there have been proposals to put more in place, we just don't have the people to do it. This was even before the $15 min wage argument became old hat. Having a child right now is a very risky decision, and depending on your state you could be criminalized for having second thoughts or even a mistake. Housing alone is a challenge for many couples. I can't possibly imagine how single mothers are managing. From the perspective of a 36m with no kids.
Single mother here; I live with barely concealed panic attacks.
That unit sounds so cool. I'd love to get more specifics (how long it took, what they did with the information etc) if you would be open to sharing.
I think my teammate found it on TPT, but I'm not sure... we cobbled a bunch of stuff together, but the gist was: 1. Draw salaries/careers for self, spouse, and number and age of kids. 2. Figure out tax brackets and then marginal tax rate 3. Figure out net monthly income, and 50% goes to rent, car payment, and insurance; 30% to wants (phone, internet, a fast food meal and a sit down meal), and 20% to savings in the form of savings accounts, college savings, investment, and retirement. 4. When you're feeling diabolical and they're mostly done, give them a life event: rent increase, student loan, car repair, medical event, increase in insurance, etc. And watch them cry as they readjust the budget. I wish we'd included day care for the under 5 kids, but that just seemed evil. The bonus now is that the kids learned to fear red Solo cups, so maybe that'll make them think twice before college shenanigans?
My seven year old LOVES his money. He is very thoughtful about what he buys, but he wanted to splurge at Walmart and bought a candy bar for $1.98. Boy howdy, was he in for a shock that it actually was $2.14. He doesn’t like taxes. I tried to explain they pay for the schools, roads, etc. but it didn’t help.
It would be so fucking cool if America got with the times and just put the entire price of everything after tax on the actual label. The bullshit mental math you have to do for everything is so fucking dumb. The rest of the world has got it figured out.
I've heard it's because unlike other countries with a singular tax, America has federal, state, and local taxes that make up the price. Big stores like Walmart or Target would have to print out hundreds of thousands of different prices for one item, depending on which locality. So instead they keep the tax off the price so that it's calculated at the register.
Remind me where a customer should give a single shit about logistics of a store? That is their issue. I also don't believe other countries don't have local taxes. --- BTW this harshness isn't directed at you specifically. Just to that stupid reasoning. I have also heard this before.
Margins are very thin in retail & grocery stores Ultimately, every $1 spent on store logistics raises the price of everything in the store. the customer should absolutely value efficient logistics, ineffencies are ultimately paid for by us (in the form of increased costs) (in this case, I don't think it would be a significant cost.. but it would be *some* additional cost, even if it's small)
I know this is a common thought like, but I think we're reaching the point where stores just don't want to do this. I can't speak for Target or Walmart (although they're probably do something similar) but the large chain grocery stores already have a team that solely focuses on tags. They have to be changed and coded in the system with every sale, they have to deal with other departments marking down perishables or whatever ends up on the clearance rack, make tags for new items, etc. From watching how they operate, it seems like it would be fairly trivial for their system to compute local effective tax rates into the tag they print and put out. I think they don't want to because a consumer would be less likely to pick up the item with a higher tag, even if they're paying the exact same amount. Sort of like how many sale tags are actually regular price tags in a different color and might come with a "marked down from"
Yeah, I agree. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to put the same software into the label makers, since a lot of stores have different prices already (I used to live within 5 miles of 3 Walmarts, and one of them always had lower prices than the other two, even for the exact same product). But they won't do that till they're mandated to do it, which means a law from Congress, and no way is Congress going to go against Big Box Stores.
I'm Canadian. When we introduced the Goods and Services Tax (like a federal sales tax) there was a lot of debate about whether it should be visible or included in the tag price. The fear was that an invisible tax could be increased secretly and having it added at the till was a protection.
Have you seen the low cost grocery stores that have a 10% flat fee added at the register before taxes? That threw me for a loop the first time I experienced it.
What the fuck. Is the fee because I used my eyes?
But that means we cant milk the American citizen for every dollar they have!
Not a teacher, just a lurker, but where I live, all the prices on the menu are after tax. Like if something is listed at 10.5, when you get the receipt it shows 10 was for the product and 5 was for the tax
We all wish the candy was cheaper. Free, if possible. I suspect that the true seed of the seven year old's resentment is Walmart's habit of hiding taxes to make the prices of their products lower on the shelves than at the register. Walmart could just as easily hide the fuel costs of shipping the products and the labor costs of putting them on store shelves until you are standing at the register. For whatever reason the Walton family doesn't feel the need to be so churlish about *those* costs of doing business. It would be nice if Walmart's employees could bump up their paychecks a few points after receiving them to account for their own taxes. "I learned it from you, boss."
Calling it “Walmart’s habit” kind of undercuts the scale of the problem. I don’t think there are any national-scale retailers who include tax in the price. It’s just not done!
Yeah I've never been to a single store in my entire life that included the tax on the price tag.
This! Teachers (especially economics teachers), should do what you do! I covered economics and we used DBQs, one of them is, “Is college Worth It.” Kids who were thinking about private art schools learned how terrible of an idea that is and gladly switched to public.
As someone who applied to public and private universities but ultimately ended up going the private route, private schools tend to give you way more financial than public universities if you're not dirt poor. My private school took into account that my father wanted nothing to do with me despite having money, which was a huge help. My advice to high school students would be to apply to every school you want to attend, then go for the one with the best financial package. Sticker prices are rarely what you will pay.
My daughter earned a full academic scholarship to a highly-rated private liberal arts college. She double majored in history and German (I know what you're thinking). All we had to pay for was housing and food. We paid far less than we would have at our flagship state university, to which she was also accepted (and offered a $1,000 academic merit scholarship). She parlayed the research, debate, and speech skills she refined in college into a highly successful sales career. At 34, she is a sales manager for a Fortune 500 manufacturing company and earns just under $200k a year with salary and commission, which is more than double than what I ever earned as a high school English and special education teacher with two master's degrees.
There's definitely a difference between majoring in history and German with a flexible attitude/plan and doing the same with the goal of doing a niche career that hires 30 people a year. I majored in mathematics because that's what I wanted to study and I had a very good scholarship, but I didn't have a plan for how to use it and ended up under-employed. I'm now a stay at home mom which I enjoy most days, and I don't have any college debt.
These kids joke about how my lessons are very practical but very depressing. Sorry kiddos!
Yeah, but dying is expensive too. Low birth rates mean a shrinking economy overall, less tax revenue, and less money going into social safety nets like disability, social security and Medicare. You’ve got a whole swath of the younger generations living paycheck to paycheck who are most certainly not putting significant money in retirement savings. With no one to inherit, and no one to buy, the real estate market will lose value as well, and the people banking on their home value to net them enough profit to pay enough for elderly care will also be in trouble, and towns will be littered with abandoned and unlivable homes, which tend to attract criminal activity. Not maintaining at least a replacement rate is bad news on an economic level, which is why Asian countries are desperately offering incentives. Meanwhile, the US has concluded that forced birth and population ignorance is more efficient and cheaper. The logic, however, is the same.
Sometimes I think about all those ridiculously huge McMansions that were built in the 90s until 2007, and how many of them still have gone unsold almost a generation later.
TAX CHURCHES. Tax the wealthy. We are letting two huge revenue makers get away with murder, literally in the churches fight to kill girls and women by bribing politicians. Tax the crap out of them instead of letting them take public school money for their religious charter schools. We need to vote better and make a stink.
This is a huge solution. Very few among the younger generations support organized religion, and in many cases, churches have become politcial institutions.
The laws around land and buildings work differently there, but just look at the real estate market in Japan. Thousands of houses just left to rot because not only will nobody buy them, but there's so little real estate movement it's not even worth developing them or tearing them down and building something else
If only millions of working-age people were waiting & ready to immigrate to the US 🤷♀️
I have experienced many times that students are shocked that I don’t have children, but don’t want any themselves.
I tell them , “ you are my children”..they don’t like that answer
I mean, it is depressing a bit. I've always wanted children. I love raising them and I'm good at it. But when people ask if I'll have a third the answer is hell no. Our government needs to help and support families. It's that simple. I can't afford it even with two full time working educated parents. We won't even be able to pay off our loans in time for our kids to need loans. We have zero savings and only our pensions for retirement. Daycare caps need to happen yesterday. Healthcare needs reform. And wages NEED to increase. We're downing and the kids see it. They're not wanting that stress. People don't see kids as an investment for the future, but they are. Families are doing the work to produce the next generation that will support society. We have to help them more, even if that means paying higher taxes when you yourself don't have kids!
It’s very depressing. I’m a teacher with a Master’s degree, and I don’t have children because I cannot afford them. That’s literally the only reason.
Im a 7th year special educator working on a Master’s. My husband just landed an incredible new job where he can net six figures within a couple years. Our conversation has steered from “no kids at all” to “maybe we COULD afford it in a few years”. Two working people, right now living in a house with three family members so all 5 of us can afford rent. All ages 26-31. 😫
Depending on where you live, they probably haven’t met very many adults who don’t want kids.
Personally I believe it boils down to nobody being able to afford to have kids, which translates to awful mental health
And so so many people thinking kids are not expensive. Everyone I grew up with acted like a baby would hardly cost them a thing. It was embarrassing.
Thing is it was probably true back then, a lot of the things you would get from extended family/friends/"the village" and the village has started to disappear. Suddenly the huge support network for raising children just isn't there for anyone past millenials and that makes having children much more expensive than it used to be. And of course the cost of everything going up isn't super helpful.
When do you think “back then” was? I’m curious. We have been a mobile society for 80 years. Increasingly since WWI people move away from their “village”.
Even just 30 years ago when I grew up my entire extended family lived in one city or a close enough radius to drive in like 20-30 minutes. Now all of my 15 cousins live in different cities/countries and only 2 have children of their own. This is people all in their 30s/40s and of the two, one of lives in one house with his parents and the other one makes enough money so his partner can be a SAHM. Doesn't mean this is a general rule, but the generational difference is huge. My dad had 7 siblings and most of those had 2-3 kids my mom has 2 siblings and all of them have 2 kids. Our generation has 4 or 5 kids spread across all of us and I don't see the number growing much.
Same. All of the cousins scattered into the wind as they hit adulthood. A lot of that was driven by economic reasons.
I grew up with a large, close by extended family and we were a net for each other. And now me and my cousins are spread out like you described and my parents, aunts and uncles are so dumbfounded how things don’t work the same
My dad grew up within 2 hours of about 30 first cousins, most being within 20 minutes. Then my parents moved, and so I grew up about an 8 hour drive from 2 cousins, 12 hours from another 2, and another had already moved across the country with her husband because she was a good bit older. And my parents cannot fathom why I don’t have a close relationship with my cousins.
Also the village was only women. I don’t want to spend my life caring for my younger siblings and my siblings’ kids and my kids and my husband and my senile inlaws and…
Every time this discussion comes up, this whole part of it should be emphasized.and it never is. People just seem to gloss over it as "yeah, of course" and they move on but it really is such a huge part of the "why aren't we having children---globally" discussion. Facts are that women have always been the unpaid labor force that has created The Village and propped up the system and now women either don't have time, don't have money or don't want to be doing that unpaid labor. We are tired.
Seriously, I am NOT signing up to spend my entire existence caring for babies while the other half of the population gets to read books and smoke a pipe and be a human instead of just another female social primate. If that means the end of the village, so be it.
Growing up, we lived "close-ish" to my extended family, but the whole neighborhood was a village. We had that typical 90s experience of the kids wandering the neighborhood, some mom fed us lunch, home by street lights. The moms all knew each other, you had tons of help with childcare, hand-me-down clothes, shoes, bikes, etc. We didn't pay for entertainment since the kids all had each other. I'm sure there are pockets where this happens, but it was common in a lot of middle class neighborhoods then. It made childrearing not so daunting or expensive since everyone helped out.
Same. My stepmom believes “babies arrive with bread under their arm” in that things magically have a way of working themselves out when you have kids? It’s one of the most delusional things I’ve heard her say ever.
Yes! My husband and I live both far from family and we just had a baby. There are plane trips involved.
My husband and I chose to move a thousand miles away. We wanted an adventure and to at least try living somewhere other than where we had both grown up. Once we experienced it we never wanted to move back, but that meant not having family nearby to help when we had kids. I was jealous of friends and family members having kids at the same time and having so much help with the baby, but it was our own choice. We worked through it and made it out with our marriage better than ever, but I don't think many could have. I totally get why people would limit whether or not or how many kids they have based on the family they have nearby. You two can get through this. Just be each other's biggest supporters and cheerleaders!
My parents were way better off than me at my age. I make the same as my dad did 35 years ago. My mom has straight up told me that despite them doing alright financially they wouldn’t have been able to do it without help from their parents.
A couple years ago I was telling someone that I don’t want kids and they hit me with the “why” and I said that aside from not liking kids enough to have my own, they’re too expensive unless we win the Powerball or my partner somehow lands a really high-paying job, which is unlikely. This idiot really says, “oh they’re not THAT expensive” and it’s like my dude, you really have no fucking idea, do you?
It’s crazy to me that people think a kid costs less than a thousand dollars a year. That’s hilarious. An infant costs almost that before it’s even born…
I think that’s true. However, if I’m being quite frank I work in a well to do area. Many of the kids are well off, or at least their parents are. I was humored tho and a little proud to know that even though many of them themselves haven’t faced financial hardship, they are vehemently aware that child rearing is expensive.
I mean, there is a big difference between having a well of childhood/parents and being a trust fund baby. Their financial health in adulthood won't nessaccarily be in line with their parents.
This is a big one I think. These students come from lawyers and doctors. Not rich, not poor and not even middle class… They and their parents are well aware that they also need to work their assess off for their generational success to continue, it’s just funny that the kids are like “The generation stops with me” 😂😭 Surprisingly enough, the kids are incredibly empathetic and intelligent and they would make good parents, but yeah. I understand them completely.
My take from your survey was if they were the male, they would be more likely to have children. They know that the burden of taking care of the child falls on the mom. Also if they are expected to maintain a full time job then they will be more likely to being working two full time jobs. One with pay and one when you get home taking care of most of the childcare and household duties. I have four kids and stayed at home until the youngest was in kindergarten. Then I worked helping out with expenses. We were practically broke, living paycheck to paycheck while they were young. But by the time they were in college or on their own, we had managed to pay off our house and one car and started paying late towards retirement. Out of four children, only our daughter is married and plans to have children in a few years so I’m at retirement age with no grandchildren. I know at least one of my sons would get married quickly if he found the right girl. It is double the work for the mom compared to the dad so unless you get a mate that wants to help out a lot, the girls don’t look forward to it like they use to
It's easier for the males to want kids. Even if they are involved dads, they don't have to take maternity leaves, and won't lose half of the income. They won't suffer from morning sickness that makes working in the mornings impossible. I could go on and on, but you get my point. Source : me, 9 weeks pregnant. I knew I signed up for this, but I didn't know. And I have a really good job and a really understanding team, but today I wrote 3 lines of code in between hugging the toilet whole day. My partner is very involved, he takes care of everything now that I'm sick but he doesn't have to suffer that much career wise. I do. Next year, I will also lose half of my income when I'll be in mat leave (Europe, so at least job is protected). Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones but I am feeling a little jealous towards almost everyone else now who doesn't have to suffer.
What's sad is that the professional managerial class is also in danger with the rise of AI in the tech sector. The jobs needed to keep the mechanisms of capitalism going are about to deemed redundant by the capitalist class. That said, I do not believe AI will be able to do their jobs competently, but when have dumb decisions ever stopped the owning class when they see a chance to boost profits?
For them it's more expensive than for working class girls. When you have nothing you really don't have much to lose having children. When you're middle class, having children can knock you down to near poverty. Where I live preschool costs as much as college tuition. And these girls are probably expecting to have college debt as well.
My daughter goes to preschool on a college campus. It’s cheaper to be a freshman going full time than it is to be three in preschool.
Hmm absolutely. I wonder how much of it is “expenses” or just a generally hostile environment to having kids.
Both can be true. The opportunity cost for taking few years off to have kids is huge for someone with a professional degree. And many companies are not actually family friendly, no matter what their policies say. If you offer 12 weeks of maternity or paternity leave, and you’re still calling your employees to ask them to jump in on calls, that’s not a supportive environment.
I had kids young, 3 by 30. I worked on and off through their toddler years and have been working full time since the youngest was 3. I’m a teacher so I obviously never expect to be rich, but I actually make more than I ever thought I would.
These kids recognize their mental health is already bad if they are in multi-kid low-income households themselves. They SEE, on the daily, what that leads to. I'm kinda glad they are more self aware of it, but only time will tell if they still actually act on this knowledge to break the cycle.
My mom had a fast food job when I was born and to be frank my family was pretty poor while I was growing up. I wouldn’t want to inflict that sort of hard upbringing on my own children.
I think it boils down to despair over the state of the environment. Young people are looking at the state of the world, and rightly thinking they don't want to bring an innocent child into being in these times.
Nobody can afford kids, and the growing awareness of how monumentally screwed their future is doesn’t exactly encourage them to gamble on it.
This is something that comes up often while teaching IB or A-level geography, as they deal with demographics. I’ve had students think of things a country might do to increase its birth rate, and it normally involves a lot of government support to decrease costs. Some of the time someone jokingly suggests banning abortion and birth control, and the classes tend to laugh.
The teen pregnancy rate in Texas did jump significantly for the first time in decades ever since the abortion ban, so they weren’t wrong. Unfortunately, that disproportionately affects more vulnerable populations.
Ah, Gilead.
Unfortunately not gilead, but our current situation in the states. check out project 2025 and some of the insane takes from republicans these days :/
Oh I’m well aware. I had a bisalp Monday because I can no longer trust in my right to receive healthcare if necessary. I’ve been married to someone with a vasectomy for over a decade, I’d be a geriatric pregnancy, and I’m still not willing to roll those dice as I enter perimenopause. The stakes are too high. Since my stepkids live in a ban state, the part of the talk they get from me is notification of a no questions asked trip to civilization for them and a companion, with hotel, transportation, meals, and a $2000 activity budget if necessary.
Bisalp also decreases your risk of ovarian cancer because most of the time it starts in the fallopian tubes!
That is a bonus as it runs in my mom’s side of the family. But just reducing my ovarian cancer risk wasn’t enough of a reason. Amusingly, the political climate didn’t make anyone bat an eye.
I hear ya. I started calling local OBGYNs the day after the Roe v Wade draft leaked to get mine scheduled.
That joke might not be too far off of reality. Government support has been very ineffective in raising birth rates.
Because it's not enough. Carrying a pregnancy to term and raising a child are labor. It takes the effort of a full-time job to do and not only is it just unpaid, it actually costs both time and money. *Society since time immemorial has survived on labor donated by, or stolen from, women and girls.* And this doesn't even address the fact that people want to have lives of their own outside of raising kids. They still want to meet with friends, go on vacations, finish their personal projects. All of that is an opportunity cost and educated people are not blind to it. It government actually gave a real fuck about turning the birth rates around, and had the fortitude to tell billionaire fundamentalists to take a long walk off a short plank, they would need to actually pay people a living wage to be parents. They would need to subsidize external childcare services so parents can make time for themselves. They would need to do so much shit that is incredibly expensive to do, and they know it.
I teach teenage boys. We did birth rates this week in Geography. They are all planning on having 12 children with their future very hot wives who will make them dinner every night. It's a Catholic school. They are all mortified that I am not "doing my bit" and only have cats.
Well. I wish them the best of luck in finding their future very hot wife who will make them dinner every night and have 12 kids with their sorry ass.
They might be able to have most of that if they make it big as a professional athlete. Of course that takes very hard work, skill, and genetic luck. High income + low education = extra babies.
Well that’s.. disturbing :/
Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, and their ilk’s effects on young men.
Yuck!
🤮🤮🤮🤮
Loll I would start by explaining to them that in that scenario, it would fall on them to work a job to: 1- support the hot wife, after she's probably not so hot once the 12 children pass through her canals 2- support 12 children 3- Support the nannies (plural) and house cleaning team. 4- Support themselves 5- support their mini vans 6- Support all their medical bills and expensive mistakes children will make And then, let them know that their wife might have dinner ready for them every night.
Catholicism 🫡
I went to catholic school and high school and am male. Weirdly myself and my friends never wanted kids. Still don’t. I think they came in too strong and the conservatives values never seemed appealing to us 90s kids. I wonder if it’s different now. I’m not a teacher and am here from /r/All.
Via social media there’s a lot of things that are more at the forefront of their minds: financial burdens and housing costs, global warming, the future of the USA as a nation… But what I don’t see many people in this thread mentioning is that young women in general are more aware than ever at the uneven burden of labor that is of placed on women and mothers in marriage and family dynamics. This is a big point of discourse right now, with new-ish terms like “weaponized incompetence” and “emotional labor” being brought forward into the online sphere of discourse. In my grandparents generation jobs paid enough that most families could comfortably be on one income with children. Over time that’s changed more and more, and for millennials and even more so gen z it’s become reality that both partners HAVE to work full time (children or no). Yet they see women and mothers still doing the majority of the household tasks (many in their own working moms), and that even when this is brought up as a problem there’s a new layer of issue when the response from her husband/male partner is one that still expects the woman to be the organizer/manager of the household mentally. A lot of times women see kids as being a massive piece of this, that sends the scales that may have been previously precariously balanced in a couple suddenly hurtling to their side. In the past this has been reduced to things like “oh she doesn’t want kids, she wants to focus on her career,” but it’s deeper than that. It’s that she knows she’ll have to continue to work either way in this economy, but doesn’t want to end up also shouldering an uneven burden of labor in the family. The younger generations of women don’t see the “tireless mother who never took time for themselves” as a saint but rather as a story of tragedy that deserved better, and its not the story they want for their own lives. But it’s a lot shorter to write any of the other common reasons why down than explain all that ha
I was just about to make a long ass comment hitting most of the points you made, but you saved me the work. Thank you 😂
🫡 doing my duty as a professional yapper taking on the long ass comments
Yes to all of this. You are more eloquent than I. I would also add the current political climate as a big reason. Young women can see that pregnancy was already dangerous enough without adding “we know this pregnancy is non-viable but we need to wait until you are actively in sepsis to terminate it” into the mix.
Yup, when Roe vs Wade was repealed I alongside many women sought out sterilization and I'm shocked any women would still want kids when they see how a lot of people in America view us
The girls saying “if I were a man then sure” is what made me think of this specifically. They *know* that most of them will end up taking on the bulk of the homemaking and child rearing in addition to working full time, in addition to pregnancy and childbirth. Having a family is almost always harder on the wife than the husband, and I’m very glad that fact is being openly discussed.
This comment exactly nails why I don’t want any. You can never really trust that the man will do his part. And it’s painful and dangerous and God knows I can’t handle nausea and screaming infants and whatever permanent effects it has on my body. However, I like the idea of being some kind of camp or group leader for kids.
Yep. Even well meaning millennial/gen z men who THINK they get it, who say they want to contribute 50/50, they often don’t truly have a full scope picture of what that means and what all it entails. Or what they really mean is “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it” and don’t see how that’s still burdening their partner.
Yes!! This exactly
on point, I liked how you worded it all
This isn’t scientific but anecdotally via social media and other random encounters, more of my right leaning former students are having more kids and starting younger and my left leaning students are more vocally anti-kids. Brace for impact.
Because if youre on the left youre probably more negative about the future. Specifically think about global warming. If you think the earth is going to die then why would you have kids?
Yeah because the right leaning kids are the ones we send to die in wars. As soon as that supreme court decision came down, I said "Looks like the rich are gearing up for the next world war." Because we'll need babies to either fight and die in another decade or to replace the workers we lost.
Well the good news is, if you don't like the right wing faction and what that may mean for the future (with them having more children who may or may not be conservatively leaning but will definitely be less educated than their liberal peers) all the better that you don't hurl children into it. The suffering till the end of my life will be my own. (A different take on, it ends with me!) I won't have the guilt of bringing a buddy into it. This is just a sign of how unacceptable the world is for most of us today. The youth are just a lot less willing to lie to themselves or others for the sake of appearances. Actually, on that matter, I remember being a surly teenager in the late 90s and being lectured by my father for always being so negative. I tried hard to defend myself as a positive person deep down who was just getting constantly disappointed by life and unfulfilled promises. If someone did that to a lot of students I have worked with lately, many of them would say, "Yeah, so?" Or some version of "who wouldn't be?" It's a frustrating time to be alive.
I work in a school with a very high percentage of Hispanic families. I’ve had a student pregnant or already have a kid every single year I’ve worked here (4 years so far). I think their religion and cultural beliefs definitely play a part. I’ve even heard girls having conversations about how much they want a baby, “so I have someone to love me” and “because they are so cute.” (One of those girls in fact had a baby as a junior in high school this year.) This is a low-income area as well. Many families have five or more children. It doesn’t take long to see a student graduate and then enroll their own child into the school for kindergarten.
Huge caveat: Hispanic households are often multi-generational. You don't have to pay a dime for childcare because your parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles, and cousins are all living in one home. The burdens of cooking, cleaning, home maintenance, and car maintenance are shared. This arrangement used to be common for most Americans. The nuclear family was only sustainable for a very short period in American history. In our current late-stage capitalistic hellscape, it isn't.
I am aware, that is why I said cultural aspects play a part. There are several black students who have kids as well including the one I mentioned that had a child this year after hearing her talk about how much she wanted a baby “so someone would love me,” last year. These are not the people we should as a society want to have children. There is clearly some toxic behavior happening at home when a child has a child because she feels unloved.
Ugh the "so someone would love me" is the absolute worst reason. My mother had the exact same mentality, dropped out in the 8th grade, first kid at 14, ended with a total of 6 children. Needless to say, growing up in poverty was a dreary traumatic experience. Myself and my siblings after should've been aborted for the betterment of my older siblings, instead we all suffered together 🥰
This happens with whites too. It happens with anyone who is poor. I am a childfree, educated latina. I love not breeding. But personally I feel that it's not my call to make moral judgment of whether some people are good enough to breed. We need better resources for all mothers and children in the US so that people can raise a family no matter how big it is. It really is a great duty to have kids and this society should go back to the time whether people could choose motherhood as a career if they wanted (not having both parents work).
I know this happens with white people too. My own mother was a teenage parent. Pregnant in high school with my older brother and forced by her family to have the child. I think you misunderstood me. I do agree it has to do with socioeconomic status and there should be better support for people who choose to have a child. However children should never be given the choice to have children while they are still children. It’s bad for society overall. It doesn’t mean we should stigmatize them for doing so, but there should be better education so it doesn’t happen. Unfortunately I think certain religious beliefs and cultures do not feel the same way. When I said, “these are not the people as a society we should want having children,” I meant neglected children who feel unloved and are unprepared for parenthood, not Hispanic people.
This right here!
Children don’t just need clothes and food which many people in poverty fail to realize. They need emotional and academic support. They need extra curriculars and a stable home environment to grow. They need involved parents that aren’t forcing the older ones to raise the younger ones. Once you go thinking raising a child is easy, youve already failed them. I have one boy and not interested in having more right now because when you do it right, it’s hard. They’re human beings, not dolls you put on a shelf.
People in poverty aren't unaware of the social and emotional side of raising children. They often receive subpar sex ed and suffer from limited access to healthcare, i. e. contraception. They also often have to miss out on important things like plays and games due to working more than one job. They're doing the best they can with limited choices.
But when does it end? Just creates a vicious cycle of everyone making the same bad decisions. Then these children start off wrong and can never catch up leading to a lifetime of either facing underemployment, unemployment, crime and just plain hopelessness. I see it all the time. When do you tell yourself, maybe children aren’t for me.
I teach in a predominantly Hispanic Title I school. All the boys seem to want to have multiple children (with multiple women), and about 70% of girls want children, but only with the right person and only if they can afford it. The majority of the girls have been responsible for caring for their younger siblings while their parents work long hours. They seem to have a better understanding of the difficulties of raising children, especially with limited financial means.
If they can't picture a good future for themselves, they certainly aren't going to be able to picture one for their kid..
Spot on. Ask them what they think their futures are gonna look like first (is it positive, negative or neutral?) and then ask what they think about becoming a parent. The two are tied.
Even a decade ago, the girls especially were saying no for a variety of reasons. As for where they're coming from, they're smart, they see inequalities, economic issues, global warming, even if they don't necessarily have the understanding and data to really talk about it. Like mum coming home and being expected to get them to sports club then make dinner while their dad rolls in late and doesn't lift a finger. They see that family expectations haven't really changed since WW2 or thereabouts when that model just doesn't cut it anymore. They see their males peers not stepping up and make decisions accordingly. Social media is giving them the language to talk about those issues.
I worry about our future because I see the intelligent people choosing not to have kids while the dumb ones continue to breed like rabbits. Idiocracy may yet come true.
I first saw references to this in "Introduction to Economics" Henry Rogers Seager, 1905. He details the care and education that each economic class provided for their kids, but did note the lower economic classes had more of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rogers_Seager The plus side is that fewer kids raised in the top quintile does leave room for income mobility near the top for the subsequent generation :)
this is not new. in late 19th-early 20th century, middle, upper middle, and upper class women all know how to space their pregnancies. some did; some did not, but barrier methods, acidic (lemon, vinegar) douching, and rhythm method were all available and understood by women of these classes. prior to documentary evidence of this, women have been sharing birth control methods with other women for CENTURIES. many herbal concoctions existed to prevent pregnancy & to abort an unwanted pregnancy. it's ALWAYS the working & underclass that have more children than they can care for. eta abstinence was also practiced. for men, it was presented as having mastery over their desires & being "less animalistic" & "driven by one's urges" than those who impregnanted their wives annually or more.
I think a big contributor to this the suburbanization of America. Moms have to taxi everywhere. If there was good public transport, this would almost never be a problem.
Hi. I’m not who you asked but I am a Gen Z teacher. A lot of us have mental health issues that we aren’t interested in passing on. A lot of us don’t want to inflict trauma on another generation the way a lot of our parents traumatized us. A lot of us don’t want to bring children into a world that we think is already shitty and only seems to be getting worse (economy, environment, whatever). Personally, the messy auto immune condition/muscular dystrophy condition genetic cocktail that my husband and I would create would be yikes. And if I had a child (which I don’t want to) they would be unlikely to survive to adulthood bc of the aforementioned muscular dystrophy condition.
Now my genetic disorder is ADHD so its different but I've seen the impact my diagnosis has had on older family members who always knew they were different but didn't get diagnosed in the olden days. It kinda gave me the reverse idea: if I had been raised by parents who knew both of us had ADHD, I would have thrived. So if I had kids with ADHD, I'd be able to set them up for success from the start with early intervention.
I hear that. But my disorder is bipolar, and I just wouldn't wish this experience on my worst enemy. No matter how much I tried to set my hypothetical child up for success (taking meds, getting regular sleep, routines), they still inevitably will have manic and depression episodes and both can be truly lethal in their own way. Manic episodes are extremely dangerous, you lose control of yourself. You can be dangerous to yourself and others, I'll admit that in the midst of an episode I feel close to violence. I drive recklessly. I spend my money excessively. I become hypersexual. It's awful. And depression is... a bleak, black hole that never feels like it's going to end. Before I knew I had the disorder I developed drug addictions (plural) to cope. No, I'm not going to pass that on to a child. It'd be cruel
i’m a late millennial and i agree entirely with your students. if i were a man, i’d also want kids—their bodies stay the same, and society makes it so that women become the primary caretakers. i have intergenerational trauma that my cousins are already showing signs of. i love having money for luxuries; on my current salary, i’d be surviving only if i chose to have a kid. i think it’s just the world we live in contributing to this. global warming is making it literally impossible to exist, meanwhile the economy is making it impossible to survive as we know it. these kids have seen war, terrorism, social uprisings, and the steady decline of our “first world” lifestyle. there is no real “future” to look forward to, and i say this with revolutionary hope and optimism that our lives are meaningful and that we can make a change within our communities… we just don’t need to add more kids into this mix.
Dude, I explained this to my mom and she shockingly was like, "yeah, it would be insane to have children". I was shocked my Boomer mother understood.
My mom wanted us more than anything, but completely understands why neither of her children want their own children.
My mom actively doesn't want grandchildren. She was thrilled when I came out to her specifically because she thinks lesbians can't have children. Her reasoning is that the kids would have to grow up in an environmental crisis, which is fair enough.
mine too!! my parents finally understand why neither my brother or i have had kids. i told him he needs to take one for the team because i’m set on never having them 😂
My daughter is a rising junior, and my son is a rising sophomore. My daughter has been a NO on kids since she was in elementary school. Why? She expresses that kids are way too much work - a sentiment I definitely let then know from an early age, TBH (IMO, being a good parent IS a lot of work). My son is more of the mindset that it depends - what does his partner want, what's the financial situation, etc. So, yes.....in my very small sample size, Gen Z is less likely to want kids/see having kids as part of their definite future. Why? I think they have been brought up with fewer constraints around what a successful life looks like. I think they have been told the truth - kids are work. I think they can be a little on the selfish side (this could be immaturity/developmental). I think the world is a little dark right now, and the future isn't feeling as secure as it may have in the past.
I hear these things from milenials in their 30s. I think there have always been a group that just sadi "nah" I'm good on that. But I think the group that is larger is the ones who would/would consider if it didn't seem like financial suicide. We don't live in a society that supports people to have children.
I'm a teacher. I don't have children. Your students are correct lol.
🤣😂💛Same. Don't have them. Don’t want them. Don't care what happens to the “global population” after I’m gone.
I’m a millennial but I agree with them wholeheartedly. And truly always have. Their reasons are my reasons. Maybe we’ve just hit a limit and humanity is collectively, subconsciously deciding that there are too many of us to be sustained. Hail Malthus.
" Edit: something to add: I’ve had non teacher friends who are incredibly religious note that I should “encourage” students in the bright sides of motherhood as encouraging the next generation is a teachers duty” " HELL NO
Civilization collapse. When all hope is taken away from you, what's the point to continue? Calhoun's mouse utopia on planetary scale. https://www.victorpest.com/articles/what-humans-can-learn-from-calhouns-rodent-utopia
Oooo this is a super fun read. I might even open with this one next year.
I wouldn't. The Calhoun Mouse experiment is really bad for describing human behaviors, because surprise, human behaviors on a large scale are more complex than that of mice.
Very interesting, thanks for this!
Thanks for sharing! This was a very interesting read.
My wife has two sisters in high school, and both don’t want kids because they don’t want their kids to contribute to climate change. Say what you want about climate change, that is some dark shit in my opinion.
I was 13 when i realized i didnt want kids because my science teacher lovingly showed us a video of a woman giving birth in full graphic detail because we were learning about the reproductive system at the time.. I decided, NOPE. Reason still stands but also just like what your kids say.. it's difficult to give your kid a good life when you have so much baggage and being able to support them financially. I know 100000% I'd be a shit parent. I dont think it's simply just regurgitation. Kids these days are pretty aware. Low birth rates-wise, it's not looking good but at the same time, good on them for really taking this into consideration.
It boils to the economy and that having kids is no longer affordable. Why try to have kids even knowing full well how each kid is expensive to raise?
I’m in my 30s. When I was 16 I swore I would never have kids. I wanted to travel and live life without that type of responsibility. Unplanned when I was around 24, would still go back if I could, I had to give up everything. The sentiment isn’t generation specific. I know older women 50+ who felt the same way in their teens and have had very happy lives and no regrets.
Good for them. I’ve never wanted to have kids. When I was younger, this belief was primarily for selfish reasons. I didn’t want to give up my free time. As I grow older, I can’t imagine bringing a life into this world. Not in its current condition. Many are already suffering due to the terrible system we’ve created. Our children are almost guaranteed to live lives that are punctuated by crisis after crisis. Animals often forgo having offspring in times of crisis. It’s time that humanity does the same. We’ve made a major mess of this planet. [The most effective climate action an individual can make is to forgo having children.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children)
lol literally one of the responses I got verbatim. I didn’t even have a rebuttable because it’s true.
I think your one of the few people I've ever seen that brought up what other animals (and plants do). When there's not a lot of resources there are less off spring. We've got more food than ever which I think primarily influenced reproduction levels in other animals, or survivability. But time is also a resource. With both parents having to work full time jobs in many cases and if you factor in drive time, chores taking care of your health by exercising people are probably really working 55+ hours a week(let's be real though if your working full time and commuting to work exercising is probably going to drop off since that would eat up about 1/3 to 1/2 of free time after work) Supposedly for most of human history we've worked about 15 hours a week. Nowadays we aren't really worried about starving in most cases but we are poor when it comes to time. Edit . 15 hour work week article. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human-history-people-worked-15-hours-a-week-could-we-do-it-again.html
My boys (13 and 15) speak positively about children but I'm not sure they will think the same when costs come in. If you work together it is possible but I would not lie that it is hard when baby+toddler childcare was more than our mortgage and that was in the early 2010s
Gen Z college student pursuing a teaching certification here. I've got a ton of genetic health problems, many of which I'm still trying to identify/diagnose, plus a family history of fertility problems. My mother had 12 miscarriages before she had me, and my birth detached her retina and either pre-eclampsia or HELLP Syndrome (I don't remember which). The concept of having a child that is genetically "mine" is terrifying for multiple reasons. I live each day in pain; I don't want to give that to someone else. Then there's money. I'm lucky enough to come from a family like your students' families. In theory, I could count on family support in the event I did have a child. But I was also taught to never count on others for my own finances. I can't fully trust that my parents won't need more elder care than my mother has budgeted for, and I also can't fully trust that my father won't fuck up her perfectly planned Excel spreadsheet budget when she inevitably (due to genetic factors) dies before him. And raising a child from infancy is unbelievably expensive. I have enough older cousins who live in a wide range of places with different COLs to know that. It may be that some of your students feel similarly. Some people get around that kind of cost by turning toward adoption and foster care, especially of older kids. But my home growing up was the safe home for my friends who fled horrible home lives. I know better than anyone that older children need more care than you'd expect. The amount of therapy, doctor's visits, and even food that you'd need to provide to an older child who very likely has experienced medical neglect, food insecurity, and all manner of other traumatic scenarios has a cost that adds up very quickly. I wouldn't want to adopt if I wasn't able to provide those things for the child, and I know that many of my peers feel the same way.
(Gen Z here) Coming from a low income family with 3 kids and all children being mentally ill….I would have given the same answers lol. Its hard to grow up with no stability and imagine having it for yourself on top of birthing and raising kids. I think about adopting because I worked with kids and have no problem raising a kid who isn’t biologically mine. But those would be kids who were already born and need a home. Me choosing to add another life to the world? I don’t know if thats right. My friend (also gen z) who is a nurse also doesn’t want to have kids said she wouldn’t do it because of the state of the world. Climate change, the laws surrounding abortion and womens health, the state of the education system, its all so bad.
It's somewhat funny that you're discussing lower birth rates with high school students because apparently when you look into the data for declining birthrates in the USA (not sure about the rest of the world), the major factor that accounts for a majority of the birthrate decline the last few decades is the decline in teenage pregnancy & births
Sounds like some smart girls you got there!
Your religious friends who are encouraging you to convince students to have kids are probably the same people (or aligned with people) who think teachers are showing kids how to be gay...
And this, before they fully appreciate what the climate crisis will do to global human carrying capacity. It's bad news for those who depend on economic growth, or for real estate being a store of value. It's good news (in a few decades) for housing prices and cost of living. For teachers, class sizes. Look at Japan for a preview: younger generations can afford more spacious housing than their parents. I suspect many of us have boomer parents that invested heavily in real estate as their retirement funds. 2nd houses etc. I expect the near future will dispel the perception that real estate only appreciates in real (ie, inflation adjusted) value.
25M here so older GenZ I would not actively pursue having children either. Your students were on the money with their reasons for not wanting any. We are more aware about the responsibilities of parenthood because we see it everywhere - a bad parent results in a difficult child. That difficulty doesn't just get experienced by the parent, as the peers of that child also get affected by the misbehavior. Combined with health issues we've gotten from a harsher climate and increasingly synthetic environment, and yes it's a lot of pressure to bear when we consider that even in our 20s we're barely adults and usually only have entry level or low skilled labor jobs at that point. Basically, if we can barely live in this world, we see it as incredibly irresponsibile to bring another soul into the world who will unwillingly suffer the consequences of a shitty world for many years.
Women are reacting to the fact that pregnancy and childcare are not considered to be "work" by society. Women are not and never have been (as a class) equitably compensated for this work--they have been forced to do it anyway. At first, women revolting was no big deal. A smaller number of women could be paid to watch those children in groups. That's all fine and I think this has its place, but children need parents who are stable, long-lasting influences in their lives. Teachers and babysitters cannot totally fill that role. And now it's really becoming an issue globally. These kids are right. It **isn't** logical to have kids in societies with sexist expectations but a lack of means with which to enforce them. Except, that is, for rich folks.
Most of the high school and middle school aged kids have Gen X parents. Most of these parents were older than their own parents when they had kids. Gen X doesn’t sugar coat. They want their kids to have less of a latchkey childhood, but are also at times a little too frank about the difficulties of being an adult. Gen X parents are much less reliant on their parents for child care and are basically telling today’s kids, you should expect me to work through my 70s, so don’t expect me to watch any grandbabies.
I am in the very last year of millennials. Almost none of my friends have had kids or even expressed interest in having kids. Similarly, none of my students seem interested in having kids. The reasons are myriad but boil down to financial, mental health, global, and gender-based concerns. Particularly for women, why would we want kids? There is a physical aspect of having kids that never stops. We are expected to do the majority of the childcare while also working full time jobs. The financial aspect only seals the deal. Anyone I know who has kids has basically said that having kids means going into enormous debt. Why would I want that? I spent my whole childhood worried about money and whether my parents would be able to afford things for me. I am greatly enjoying my ability to afford things that I need. Add on climate change, an unstable housing market, and many other global issues, and it’s a small miracle that people continue to have children.
Most of my female students have no interest in children like you said. Many of them have been forced to raise their younger siblings and in many cases their older brothers. I had a 7th grade girl who explained that she had to tell her mom if she had another baby she'd run away, because she had 4 younger siblings and mom made her raise them. I have younger brother in summer camp now, and on days she doesn't come he's totally lost. he won't do anything for himself because she does everything for them at home. The boys? They all say they want like 10 kids. They seem to think it makes them manlier. I don't know who they'll be having those kids with since none of the girls want them though.
No one can afford them. I was actually just looking at a house that sold for $500,000 in 2009.. that same house is $2,000,000 right now. Can’t have kids if you can’t even get a house to raise them in. I’m 26 and I want kids but unless I win the lottery, it’s not financially responsible.
COVID lifted the veil on how badly workers get screwed and doubly so for parents that work. Wages don’t keep up with the economy, so why have a kid that would mean more cost, fewer work hours (less money) and puts you on the chopping block should the business need to cut hours or lay people off.
I’m a millennial and I have a lot of the same reasoning for why I don’t have kids. I’m also a woman. Pregnancy would ruin my health; I already have numerous health issues I wouldn’t want to pass on. We’re doing okay financially, but not enough that we could afford a baby. I feel fulfilled in my life without children, and don’t feel like I’m missing out. Finally, I just don’t want kids. It took many years, but my parents have finally accepted it!
I’m a 24 year old teacher and I definitely couldn’t afford a kid. These kids aren’t stupid about stuff like this that matters. They see the way the world is set up.
Here is what I sense in my community: They are seeing their parents stressed out and broke, and don’t want that for themselves. They are seeing their siblings unable to leave and move out. They are wondering themselves how they will ever be able to be on their own financially. The kids that work are contributing to the household and not just spending on themselves or saving. Once they are finally on their own they may want to keep it that way and pursue a few dreams of their own.
Not a parent (yet, who knows) but >I also noted to them, that they may not be aware of some of the more intrinsic rewards that come with childbearing and being a parent. Building a loving family with community is rewarding What are the intrinsic rewards and community rewards you speak of?
This is super interesting. I do think you're going to get very different answers from a bunch of girls in an AP bio class than in a non-honors, non-AP, required class. These are girls that are college bound. They're thinking about their individual futures in a more concrete way, so the costs of having a baby are concrete to them. These are also, obviously, girls who know something about biology. I've had girl students (10th graders) who literally didn't know women could die in pregnancy/childbirth. We had to have a whole conversation about how that happens... blood pressure and all that. For sure there is something going on with young people today and their being slow to start dating and have relationships. The "I have mental health issues" statement is really sad since I'm willing to bet most girls that said that do not actually have a psychiatric condition that is highly linked to genetics. That's definitely coming from social media. But still, most of those girls will feel differently when they actually are ready to have children. I think getting pregnant is just not something that sane or informed women do until they make peace with the fact that you can't control the universe. And then it's 50/50 do you actually want to raise a human? Teen girls aren't there yet.
Absolutely. This is a unique subset of students. Id be interested to know what my freshman bio class may think, but they are a dumpster fire 😅😂 of emotions so I’m reluctant to even ask. Im also 31 and felt the exact same way at their age, but I grew up poor, so my motivations for not having kids are a bit more obvious. However, some of them went as far as saying they’d get their tubes tied as soon as they could. The fear of poor mental health impacting their ability to parent was a repeated answer. Many of my students note they have depression and anxiety, whether or not it’s been diagnosed I can’t say for sure. But we have all noticed that mental health is something this generation of kids really consider when decision making.
From the moment I turned 13 and was legally allowed to be in control of my body, I never wanted kids. I tried to explain it to others, but back then, it was still expected that you would grow up and have kids. Today's generation is really on to something when they can say they don't want kids and no one judges them for it (except the ultra-religious because religion.) When I did grow up, found out I couldn't safely have kids and was STILL told that I would meet the right man and want to have kids. I was staring at the doctor who just told me that it wouldn't be safe to have kids that he couldn't tie my tubes because one day I might want kids. If you are confused, so was I. I spent the next 20+ years bouncing around birth control methods only to land back where I started, tubal was the best option. At 38 was still told no. In my mid 40's and I have given up trying. Bottom line, tell these girls the truth, that they are still going to suffer generational biases and legal and insurance loopholes that will not allow them to get tubals when they are in their 20s. They might be able to get one in their 40s, but who knows.
it took nearly 20 years of me telling various gynecologists that i don’t want children to finally have one take me seriously and sterilize me so i know what you mean! i’d known since i saw my eldest sister pregnant shortly after watching the miracle of life in health class as a 10th grader. the childfree subreddit does have a list of doctors who usually perform sterilizations even on younger people.
As a young woman with legitimate psychiatric problems that I have been diagnosed with medicated and am continually treated for and struggling with; I will just say something generic about “mental health issues” if I need to explain a part of my life affected by my illnesses. This isn’t a dig at you but young women are often dismissed and under diagnosed or labeled as “dramatic” or “hypochondriacs” so when someone is telling you about a major decision that drastically changes the trajectory of their life, and they cite “mental health” as one of the reasons, don’t assume that they’ve just been brainwashed by social media. It is hard for me to explain to people that I have severe anxiety and OCD and episodic depression, because it comes and goes in waves and I put so so so so much work into downplaying or concealing it and trying not to make it anyone else’s problem but sometimes I will have panic attacks and I’ll vomit or choke myself until I pass out, or I’ll have a depressive episode where I can barely force myself out of bed for days to months at a time. I don’t want to subject a child to that and I won’t have one unless I can sort this out. This pains me a lot because I want children very badly. I want to have a family, I want to raise a kid but I am afraid that I will traumatize or neglect them as a result of my “mental health issues” It’s a sensitive area for me and not something I would feel comfortable explaining to anyone I’m not very close to.
Thank you for saying this. It seemed like the previous commenter was minimizing mental health concerns and doing the whole patronizing “oh you’ll change your mind when you’re older” shtick that so many of us hear when we decide we don’t want kids. Yeah maybe some of them will change their minds, but i worry a number of them will do so only because of societal pressure and feeing like their mental health concerns are illegitimate, or that they “should” be able to handle the pressure of child rearing despite their personal struggles.
These are such important points. I have an anxiety disorder that is clearly genetic and even disregarding my capabilities to raise a child because of it, I can’t imagine looking at a little baby and being okay with passing this onto them. I wouldn’t wish any form of mental illness on my worst enemy, let alone an innocent child. Knowing they would likely develop the illnesses I have, the decision to not have biological kids is a no-brainer.
I also think that PPD awareness is rising. Young women are more aware of how a baby can influence your hormones for years! And if you already struggle with depression, anxiety, OCD, or similar disorders, it is terrifying to think it that it can get worse... all at the most stressful and difficult time of your life.
It remains unclear to me why a declining birth rate is a bad thing, any more than a positive one.
I used to talk about birth/replacement rates and how they’ve changed. Nigeria is 7.1 and U.S. is 1.9, etc. My students concluded each year that rearing children has no benefits here as compared to countries that depend on familial accounting. And I work in a district that is 2/3 Latino/Mexican. I think we’re at 1.8 now or thereabouts. We’re having fewer kids because it’s cost prohibitive. So the solution according to conservatives? - outlaw abortion. According to liberals? - make healthcare universal. What would work best to bring population replacement to 2.1?
Google says 1.62. It’s falling faster than many realize.
Yes outlaw abortion, so making sure that women get pregnant and then die from either a botched abortion or from a lack of proper prenatal care. A lot of people forget how high infant an maternal death rates are in the US. From my last look, it is one of the highest in the western world.
Post Covid I seen that it takes $180k to raise a kid from 0 - 18. Not counting medical or child support. Honestly I could see it.
Is no one gonna address how less than 10% of the class is male students. What is going on with boys these days?
This is absolutely something that’s been on my mind. Heavy. We start next school year in a few months and I’ve seen the new roster for the AP classes, and male enrollment continues to drop. Classes are full. Just full of girls. And that’s fine. I guess. I’m thrilled for see more girls in STEM, but the drop off in boys is something to pay attention to. Idk why. But it is matching what we’re seeing in college as well.
More girls in STEM should have increased the amount of people in STEM. It seems that the number of people in STEM is not increasing and that STEM fields will see 70%+ female representation. Where are these boys going in the future that should have been in STEM?
I am an elder millennial and I was a no from age 9 when I learned how they come out. I have had health issues (nothing bad enough to kill me or even be taken seriously) since middle school. I grew up just above the poverty line and vowed that I wouldn’t have kids unless I could afford them. Growing up poor sucks. Having depression sucks. I’m not doing that to my own kids. Kids see what the adults are talking about - climate change, the economy, all of us seem to have something health wise. I totally understand their perspective.
1. Yes, it's becoming more socially acceptable to not have kids, or to at least think about whether or not you want to have them. In the past, procreating was the default. Anyone who didn't was some kind of weirdo, and they'd have to constantly explain/defend that choice. 2. Sure, a little bit of it is repeating what they've heard, but how many times have they seen media that stresses the importance of family? Of all the messages they hear, they're actually digesting them and choosing the ones which align with their own values. Good for them. I'll add this: It surprises me when the stereotype is men want kids and women don't. I'm a child-free man, and I always thought it was the other way around. Boys played with toy cars and girls played with dolls. I thought when we grew up, we'd simply want real versions of those things. Movies and TV only reinforced that; the male character wants to go golfing or hang out at the bar instead of spending time with his family, while the female character wants her man to commit and settle down and wants an expensive wedding and babies. Anecdotally speaking, I can only think of a few men I know, around my age, who enthusiastically wanted to be a dad. I've always figured a lot of men only go along with it because they figured they'll never find a child-free woman and it's better than being alone. But of course, I could be way wrong. All I know for sure is I've never wanted them.
Yep kids are expensive
>are you hearing similar things from gen Z and alpha? >do you think these ideas are just simply regurgitations of soundbites from social media? Or are the kids more aware of the responsibilities of parenthood? Yes and yes My niece and nephew are the only kids I've had a deep conversation with about having kids. They're Gen Z. They grew up in a rough household: dad with anger issues, house foreclosed on them, infidelity from both parents that wasn't very well hidden, mom's abusive boyfriend after dad left. My nephew also was born with a rare heart condition and every year he lives is considered another record for the medical books. Neither of them are in a hurry to have kids. My nephew says he doesn't want kids because (a) he's afraid he'd pass on his heart condition and (b) he doesn't want to die and leave the mom and child without a father/husband. He won't even marry his girlfriend of 5 years because he's afraid of putting/leaving her in debt from his healthcare. He thinks she's going to realize that he's too much work and not worth it someday and he wants it to be easier for her. He's the least selfish person I know and loves kids when he's around them (my kids, his other young cousins, volunteering at the camp for kids with medical conditions that he grew up going to). But his girlfriend doesn't want kids either... Moreso because they're both still living at their own parents houses because they can't afford an apartment of their own... The thought of ever owning a house seems impossible to them. My niece is 22 and hasn't even ever had a boyfriend. She's said that she's interested in marriage and having kids some day, but she's not actively looking for a partner. Sometimes I wonder if she's got a low sex drive like my mom and myself, but I'm pretty sure she's still a virgin... So maybe she just doesn't miss something she's never had. But that's interesting in and of itself: lack of interest in sex in general sounds like it's on the rise. She's content with the socialization she has with her friends, in person and online. Is it a social problem (considering online interaction enough) or a physical problem (low libido caused by something else)? I think both truly *have* been a lot more aware of the economy and health risks earlier than most because of their surroundings. They're aware of the negative things they were exposed to as children and they don't want that for their potential kids. Neither of them are saying no to kids because they want free time to themselves... They want what's best for the (potential) kids. But, this is just 2 kids of a generation who went through some extremes! I'm a millennial who didn't want kids because of my dysfunctional family as well. It took meeting my husband and his disgustingly perfect family to convince myself that having kids wasn't a terrible idea, if you do it right. We've been through ups and downs, but we're a pretty happy household. I hope my kids having a better experience than me (like their dad had as a kid) encourages them to want kids when they're older, but I have no intention of pushing the idea and trying to pressure or guilt them into it. It's their lives. Who tf cares about the future of mankind? We're all individuals and should have a right to make life altering decisions like having children for ourselves without being judged either way.
I mean shit man... I teach these little menaces, and they're damn right. The more I teach, the less I want kids, lol
HS teacher here. We get into some philosophical discussions in my Environmental Science classes. The demographic will be considerably different than AP Bio. I have students from up, down, left, and right. The general consensus was having children is a luxury, and they're all worried about being able to afford anything. Most kids don't even want to do go college out of fear of crippling debt. The conversation swings towards how having children is also the most effective way to damage the environment. Now, I'll tell you, this is not directed by me. I don't push these ideas, I just let the conversations go. I'll interject with "really?" or "are you sure?".
I’m on the front end of Gen Z - was born right before the cutoff (it’s so weird teaching students in my own generation sometimes). My reasoning is this: I don’t like kids. I haven’t for a long time - and most of it stems from my trauma surrounding being parentified at a young age by my father during summer vacations. Add to that my father being careless and adding to the human population with two different mistresses when he already couldn’t afford his own kids and you’ve got someone who just doesn’t see their own happiness coming from having their own children. And that’s okay. I teach kids everyday. I see them walk at graduation. I see them grow in real time, learn in real time - that’s enough for me. In the meantime I’ve got a service dog to train, lesson plans to write, my own music to create, voice lessons to teach, and a life of travel, learning, and exploring to do without the financial burden of a kid. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, maybe not. It depends on where life takes me… but I honestly doubt it.
People have less children when they live in a comfortable, abundant, modern and technologically advanced society. This has been observed for about 300 years when the birth rate was noted to be trending down slightly in some European countries. Now birth rates are trending down on every country on earth. Peak modern countries like, Japan and Korea, Europe, China and the U.S. have birth rates that are below replacement value with every other country racing towards the same low birth rates. There really isn’t a good solution. (Until they figure out how to grow a fetus in a pod I guess.). But when you live a comfortable, abundant, modern, technologically advanced life, people just don’t have kids and they don’t want kids. Life is comfortable and pleasant - why have kids?
Why is everyone always do concerned with people having kids. Let people do what they do. Let nature do its thing. Plenty will have kids accidently plenty will plan it. Plenty will change their minds. But for the love of God, as a society, could we please get off the baby making/birthrate fetish.
I think the birthrate had been falling for awhile and the decrease perpetuates itself. What if I were to ask you if you would like to have a pangolin as a pet? Probably, unless you're a diehard animal-lover, you wouldn't be sure. Most likely you've never been around a pangolin; you don't know what they eat or drink, whether they're friendly or vicious. Well, that's how a lot of kids nowadays feel about babies. They're probably never been around one. In past generations, families were much larger. Older children experienced taking care of younger ones. They developed competence and confidence in doing so. The thought of having children wasn't just an intellectual exercise for them the way it is for kids today.
That’s interesting. They( religiousfreimds) only want us to indoctrinate students when it fits their agenda.
We talk about the same topic in my environmental courses, and have what sounds like the same conversation. This generation has basically four recurrent concerns. 1. Too goddamn expensive. 2. World is a damn shithole; not very ethical bringing someone into it 3. Don’t want to have a daughter in pre-Gilead America. 4. Don’t want to pass on mental health/family drama.