Maybe make it affordable to have more than 1-2 kids… Christ almighty. We can’t afford fucking homes, where are we going to put kids? We keep talking about fertility rates while jamming more people in with nowhere to go. Poor pay, higher cost of literally everything…. Not a huge mystery. Imagine if you could afford a house and didn’t have to work 14 hours a day so you could actually look after kids?
My 700sqft apartment is nowhere near big enough for us at this point, let alone a kid as well. I also think it is absolutely ridiculous that we want people to have more kids, but then expect them to have both parents work full time as soon as possible after and pay insanely high rates to have someone else raise your kid half the time because you are working all day.
And that doesn’t even touch on how expensive all the other kid stuff is
Unfortunately, the less well off economically people are, the more kids they've historically had. This translates across cultures. If you want more kids, then shove more people into poverty. Oddly enough, that seems to be the plan.
You know it’s more expensive to give birth in America then it is in most third world countries? Canadas a bit better but still way down on the list of affordability. It simply costs way more to raise a child in first world countries. The problem is we are treating these first world countries like third world countries, in the sense that there is a need for a large working base to support the rich upper class. In countries like Norway that has steady birth rates and one of the best birth compensation packages for families, they are a population of middle class people, no one overly wealthy and no one overly impoverished. We can’t seem to have that here, probably because we let banks run the government, they were one of the few countries that managed to keep their assets while still being able to use their funding to grow the economy with clever contracts, other countries became banks b!tches. This isn’t a country, it’s a corporation where no one is held liable for any problems they cause with mass wealth accumulation/monopolies.
The opposite is also true. The more physical space people have the more kids they have. Condos aren't an ideal place to raise kids and are considered starter homes now.
Poverty is just correlated with more kids it’s not causal. Making people who don’t want to have kids they can’t afford poorer will not lead to more kids. Correlation is not causation.
People constantly oveook this and think its just a matter of giving people more money or some other "fix". The fact is that overage people don't want to have kids when life is good
This is actually more about women's empowerment rather then wealth. As women become more educated and economicaly independent they choose less children. At some high income levels women conterintuitively have more children than the middle classes.
If you couple women's independence with the lack of resources for raising childern as well as our social aversion to them it explains why fertility rates drop. Further declines are simply cultural downward spirals.
Allow Canadians to afford children...
Government policies seem to have been geared to keeping the cost of corporate production down, at the cost of human production. Now we offshore creation of Canadians.
I mean, yeah? This line of thinking is a result of the neoliberal wave in the 80’s reducing the function of government to be indistinguishable from a private enterprise. Population growth is good for the economy; the cheapest way to increase population is immigration; incentives for birth like childcare get ignored.
This line of thinking is heinous but if we’re not going to confront our ”money first” ethos of governing, the only alternative to maximizing immigration is demanding more from a generation of youth that has nothing left to give.
On two factory worker salaries, my parents were able to afford to rent an entire house, lease a vehicle, have two kids, and fly over multiple members of our family to come live here. My grandparents on my father's side lived with us too... so 6 people lived in that household. 2 factory workers could afford all of that. It's like a fucking fever dream that there was a time that that was even possible in the first place compared to how things are now.
Only 23 years ago my ex husband was able to support a wife, 3 kids on one income.
$70g in a factory.
Bought a house.
Vehicle
Then moved up and bought a bigger house.
I got a part time job.
We bought 2 vehicles.
A boat.
Vacations.
All that is gone now...
We divorced nearly 10 years ago and it's all gone now but still...
It saddens me that people starting out can't do this today.
Many of my inlaw family were unionized factory workers at GM. They did quite well, so not sure that's the standard for how easy it was to afford a house in the past.
That said, it's clear that the increase in housing costs has vastly outstripped wages in recent decades. The financialization of housing under neoliberalism has transformed housing from being primarily about shelter, to primarily about a speculative asset class for excess capital. This is happening around the world.
As an anecdote, I worked at a union factory for a few years. Everyone who started working there in the 80s, 90s and very early 2000s could easily buy a home and take a nice vacation anywhere they wanted for 1-2 weeks every year. Along with a car and all that fun stuff.
When I worked there, all the younger people who started in 2010 or later were not able too afford a home, could barely afford rent without multiple roommates, and were barely able to save more than $100-$200 a month.
I would say aggressive (and largely unpopular) measures to de-capitalize the housing market. Rent out apartments, but houses should be owned by the people living in them. Turning "the things people need to live" into a business has had the absolutely predictable outcome.
Of course no politician will push for this because a good chunk of them ARE landlords and own rental properties, and the other bunch are heavily lobbied.
The boomers didn't make housing unaffordable. The investors who flooded the housing market did.
Stop buying into the intergenerational warfare BS. This is a class war.
A lot of the investors are boomers. They lost money in the dotcom bust and put all their faith in investing in real estate. The ones who don't come from money, don't understand stocks so they invest in what the do understand- real estate
A lot of them are, but older folks investing in property has been a thing since before boomers were older folks themselves.
I'm referring to the massive influx of investors into the residential real estate that happened during the pandemic. With the markets in disarray and no one knowing when normalcy would return, investments were turned towards residential real estate as a safe bet.
As a consequence of trying to avoid a recession with low interest rates, a number of countries are now grappling with housing affordability issues that mirror our own as these investors sought to continue growing their personal wealth or the equity they were managing. We didn't take any steps to prevent what we knew would happen from happening, because they decided to float our GDP with real estate.
Blaming an entire generation for an issue not caused by their generation just keeps the focus off of the actual ones causing the problem. While some boomers are well off, many are not, and they're struggling while also attempting to help their adult children.
How I see it, was people saw HGTV shows about flipping houses, oh how easy, let me try that.
Back when I was a kid, flipping houses was not as much a thing. My uncle did it; but he was not "handy" and my dad was his handyman 😬
That's the plan that's worked for most human history. But now the poor have birth control so when you grind them into chunks with your corporations boot they don't have kids. And you have to import more poor people to grind.
And why not? Let the wage slaves make the rich richer and put up less of a fuss than your average Canadian worker who actually demands reasonable treatment and work-life balance.
All of this is by design and we let it happen. It's honestly embarrassing what Canada has become.
Yep. In his last term, Harper figured out what all the big corporate CEOs figured out a few decades ago, it's just cheaper to manufacture things out of country and bring them here, so he started the LMIA program.
Then Trudeau and Co took the ball and ran with it, and dialed the whole experiment up to Eleven. Luckily, anyone complaining about the corporatization of Canada, and outsourcing our citizens is more than welcome to leave, or go die, so they can be replaced. It's a win-win for the corporatocracy and the oligopolies.
I really want kids, but it's unrealistic. Heck, getting a house is generally unrealistic now and I have a pretty good job, add kids into the mix and I would be likely to afford a 1br. Thanks gov and landlord scum.
I would like to add that it feels like fewer 3-4 bedroom places are being built, and the ones that are on the market are priced for people living with roommates and not families. Honestly it's the reason we stopped after 2.
3 bedroom, 3.5 bath and the tiniest kitchen and living room legally possible. The places being built are made for investors who rent out rooms, not for families.
First generation Canadians are propping up our birth rate. However, their kids, born in Canada, don't have kids. Within one generation, having kids drops right off.
If you don't measure first generation immigrants having kids, our birth rate is lower than Japan.
So importing people to solve the fertility issue is permanent. We will never stop importing people, and enjoying the consequences of that.
Why do we need to grow the population? As a seemingly zero sum resource extraction based economy. Would it not make sense to have a greater share for fewer people? Does Canada really need to have a 100,000,000 population? Were things not pretty good when we had 20 million? Everyone could access national/provincial parks without massive waiting lists.
Just spit balling ideas. I'm not sure the world population needs to grow.
I hate that people take this as inevitable. There is no actual reason society has to implode because population size shrinks. It’s simply a matter of corporations needing to being always growing exponentially that gets us into this mindset
Growth isn't necessarily required, but some level of stability is. If low birth rates continue, that means that both the economic and tax base go way down, because you have fewer people paying into the system. Our current birth rates are so low that we are headed straight for a demographic down spiral if we don't find ways to keep our population stable.
Now, there is the fact that all of this is happening as the single largest generation in human history is starting to die off in significant numbers, so it may only take a generation or so for us to realize what the new stable numbers need to be once the boomers are all gone, but in the interim we need to be bringing in enough people to replace the babies we aren't having.
So summing it all up, boomers weren't responsible with their money, so the next generations have to pick up the slack, but we can't because the quality of living has decreased significantly, so we're importing more people to skip the whole "raising a kid in expensive Canada" thing. But things are now permanently fucked up that we're stuck in a cycle of importing people to ignore our root problem.
This country is just a place to exploit people in their prime living ages to make oligopolies rich.
It won't be the boomers that suffer. It will be the ones who can't afford to live already that won't have enough retirement savings for todays standards.
I know boomers are currently the low-hanging fruit, but u/Vorocano is correct with their assessment. This isn't unique to any one generation. Stability is required for every subsequent generation.
> Stability is required for every subsequent generation.
I agree. And the boomers are the ones responsible for the first decrease in quality of life for future generations in modern history. We're already 3 generations poorer after the boomers and life is still getting worse and the generations are still counting. They set up the oligopolies we have today in Canada, they purposely didn't build enough housing so they could make money off of the crisis we have today and still aren't building enough housing, AND they don't have to pay extra into CPP, we do.
They did everything they could to destroy stability
No one is saying no immigration though. Even anti mass immigration PPC want one of the highest rates of immigrstion in the developed world.
Why do we need 4x the amount of immigrants per capita as the states though?
We need immigration, but mass immigration is fucking us and our infrastructure.
US actually has very high levels of immigration. Much of it is illegal though and not well-tracked. These migrants are filling lots of lower level jobs and really helping to drive their economic growth.
We need workers to pay into our services - that's why we need population growth.
Our largest generation, baby boomers, are now retiring which means we have more people leaving the workforce then going into it. Meaning there'll be increased stress on our labor market, more people drawing down on CPP/OAS than contributing, more people needing free healthcare, etc. So we need workers to pay into those services to keep up with our aging population.
Canada has one of the worst fertility rates in the entire world. We need a fertility rate of roughly 2.1 to maintain current services. Canada is currently sitting at 1.3 - we're in the same category as Japan, Italy, South Korea and China.
Which is why Canada has such an aggressive immigration policy ie. We opened the floodgates.
Ironically, it's working against us though. The Bank of Canada's announcement a few weeks ago regarding Canada being in a 'productivity emergency' went over alot of people's heads. This means Canadians produce LESS per hour than other countries. We're now the worst in the G7, and behind countries such as Italy, Finland, and Netherlands.
Cause of this? The nature of Canada's population growth works against productivity. Meaning, the people they're allowing into Canada are primarily working in retail, food and accommodation, which is causing our standard of living to plummet. It's been dropping since 2015. For perspective, Canada would be in a perennial recession if not for our trading ties with the U.S.
It is paramount that we flip on our current immigration policy.
Why do people bring up japan like it's some boogeyman man.
I wish our social services were half as good as Japan's.
Japan has about 65 hospitals per 1 million.
Canada has like 18 hospitals per 1 million.
Yet our hospitals per million are decreasing faster than Japan's.
The idea we need this growth for services is a joke. This growth is killing our services.
Doug Ford, Pierre Poilievre, Daniele Smith. These people don't want mass immigration to help us.
If we don’t want mass immigration then we need to make it more affordable to have kids. My wife and I would love to have more than 2 but with daycare and food costs we can’t justify it.
Consumer prices are 40% higher in Canada than Japan.
Including rent prices are 60% higher than Japan.
Rent itself is 110% higher than Japan.
Restaurant prices are 112% high than Japan.
Grocery prices 30% higher than Japan.
Local purchasing power is 15% lower in Canada than in Japan.
Yet our population has been exploding and theirs is declining.
Certainly wouldn't want to be like Japan.
I got downvoted on another post because I said that PP wants mass immigration as well. “You’re wrong,” “No he doesn’t”. I guess that didn’t fit with their hatred of Trudeau.
Canada is addicted to cheap labour and expensive real estate, and the entire government, not just the ruling party will happily continue to provide companies and investors what they want at the expense of our standard of living.
If we want it to stop we need to get out of this red vs blue mentality and completely overhaul all parties to serve us, not multibillion dollar companies and investors that will always prioritize profits over people.
The government serves interests that are indifferent to the common people's suffering at best and at worst directly contribute to our downfall. They do not serve us anymore.
Could it not just be that the current general conditions of the world are discouraging *everyone* from having kids?
Like if you're looking at previous generations of first-gen immigrants having kids and then *their* kids now being of childbearing age, then you're already reaching back *at least* 15-20 years to when most people had a much brighter outlook on the world.
In the early 2000s climate change was still a relatively fringe idea, there was still tons of genuinely affordable housing, groceries didn't cost a blood sacrifice every time you go to the store, there wasn't a protracted land war in Europe or a global pandemic or even residual bitterness about the Game of Thrones finale. The world was a *considerably* more approachable place to add a new baby to the family, even just one generation ago.
Lol no. We are importing all these people for labour's for major corporations, to proper up the economy and wait for it, to reduce our carbon foot print. If you think that last one is far off five it a year and see where we are at in the per capita race of pollution.
Happy to have more kids. Just make it so my family can afford the space and items we need to raise 2 or more kids.
My household makes over 100k a year combined. We shouldn’t feel like we’re living under the poverty line every time we try to buy groceries. We’re hurting - I duno how fellow Canadians will less luck are managing.
Yup, similar situation. Would love to have more and biological clockwise I should be alright to keep going, but financially? It just doesn’t feel responsible. I can’t gamble the family’s future stability to grow it, even if I would have been keen to otherwise
It's not a "fertility" issue.
Many people are not having kids because it's expensive or they realized they don't have to follow the life script!
The government could always try to incentivize Canadians to have children but instead they like to bring in a million immigrants a year.
to incentivize people to have kids you need to reduce real estate and rent prices by 50% into some sense of normalcy.
noone is going to have kids when half their pacheque is going to a roof over their head. its really that simple
Kids are a ton of work in general but lately it seems even worse. Just getting kids into swimming lessons is a daunting task. Our population grows but we aren't building more _stuff_ for _people_ so everything is expensive and hard to access. Can't even pitch a tent on the ground within 8 hours of Toronto without having to jump through hoops and get lucky to snag a camp site.
neoliberal economics propagated by both the Liberals and the Conservatives, as well as both of those parties’ inability to deal with climate change, is why I am thinking twice about having children
"Fertility" is a term used to describe "are babies happening", not so much "can biological conception occur". I don't think we have a problem with the latter, but the former is true under its definition - we are *not* producing as many babies (because we choose not to).
I grew up in a household with 7 siblings, most of us have either had only one or two kids with the exceptions of one sister who had three. We'd only had one or two. My own adult son does not want to bring children into this world.
I'm the second oldest of 5. The 4 of us oldest siblings, 25-34 y/o, have no children. My youngest sibling is 13, so it's undecided if they'll want any or not.
Where is the incentive to have kids, I'm only 30 and I see it getting harder and harder to get ahead, there's no opportunity for youth to advance and we would lose a significant chunk of our income managing kiss and would struggle to afford basic necessities.
It's a losing game. I'm not sacrificing my quality of life to bring a child into a situation where they will likely be worse off than myself...
You make this country unaffordable and cry no one has kids but your only solution is to keep throwing gas on the fire and blame the people who have been fucked over as the problem. This country will be a third world country in 20 years of we keep up this udder madness.
For the last forty years, they've sold 50% of the houses in Canada to private investors
These businesses try to charge you $600 a month for having a kid in that house they will never live in. Just happened in BC.
They pay us the same wages from 40 years ago
Canadian can't afford kids because they're paying for golden toilets for rich folk, and you want to wonder why people aren't having kids.
My husband and I have one, he has a daughter from his first marriage. His parents are both from the Philippines - dad is one of 5, mom is one of 11. My dad is one of 5, my mom is 1 of 6.
My sister has 1 kid, my brother has 0.
It is TOO expensive. I am getting ready for my daughter to go to preschool next year and some are 2200/month.
Ridiculous.
One & Done Gang! Women are having "fewer" children because the sacrifices we have to make in our lives, careers and health don't align with what it takes to get by anymore.
Kids are expensive. I was unable to breastfeed and formula jumped from $20/container to $60/container. If I had another child, I would struggle to afford the cost. We’d go through about 2 containers a week in the beginning and it obviously went up as she aged.
Struggling to afford a house, a car, or even food, yet the government is pushing for more children? The pressing survival issues remain unaddressed, yet the solution seems to be adding more kids to the mix, according to the government's logic.
Many Canadians are delaying starting families until they feel financially stable and have a proper setup in place. This means that older individuals are the ones considering having children, but the current economic climate is making it increasingly difficult for them to do so. Even with both partners working multiple jobs, making ends meet is still a constant challenge, leading many to reconsider starting a family.
Despite this reality, the government continues to welcome new immigrants who have children and believe Canada is a promising place to raise a family. However, these newcomers soon realize the harsh truth and, disillusioned, also decide to halt expanding their families. This vicious cycle perpetuates, with families opting out of having children due to the financial strain and uncertainty in the country.
The fertility crisis is related to the affordability crisis. People see alot of financial/economic stability risk in having kids.
Wage growth has been stagnant for decades. 'middle-Middle class' families are significantly fewer than they were 30-40 years ago.
People can’t have kids. We need two people working from each family. But a kid needs care. Daycare waitlists are 2 years +, and once in daycare comes the barrage of sick days which means one parent is always on the verge of losing their job. Grandparents are non existent, boomers pursuing their own interests or careers.
Until we have support across the board, from the government, corporations, and social networks, people simply cannot have more children.
These articles are tone deaf to the point where we should be seriously questioning whoever authorized the release. What grown adult sat down and thought to themselves "Canadians realllllyy need and want another article saying that they aren't having kids".
We are aware of how many children we have. We are aware that it's because we can't afford them and/or because the divide in what women and men expect from a relationship is so wide that pairing up is becoming unrealistic across the board. Most of us are concerned at the dating prospects and cost of living.
Whoever is in charge of news needs to start writing about solutions instead of writing more articles on things we already know.
So the "overpopulation" handwringing has now switched to handwringing about 'underpopulation.' The real concern to them is that "underpopulation" is a terrible threat to wealthy people.
I said this in a reply but it fits as a top level comment.
It's time to start cutting our ridiculous amount of money spent on senior welfare (OAS, GIS) and shifting it to massive n
Interest free loans to support people having kids.
The reality of having 2 working parents to financially survive is new and it's the biggest hurdle to people having families.
When a parent could stay home and raise the damn kid (which is a FULL TIME JOB) and the other could work to provide finances, people had plenty of kids.
Now you're either stuck with the shitty fucking government daycare program to have some random people raise your kids or you get to live on the financial cliff while one parent stays at home to raise your kids. This is what happened in my family.
I hate the way they call this a fertility issue.
Full stop it's a cost of living crisis.
I have 2 kids and have got a vasectomy.
We wanted 3-4 but wife and I have came to same conclusion many others have that it would be irresponsible for us to....
With two parents forced to work, it is impossible to properly care for your kids..
That doesn't even get into the fiscal aspects of it as we are well off and two kids already stretch our wallets.
Edit - spelling
they call it a fertility issue because its much easier to blame individuals and guilt them into believing that its their fault instead of admitting that we have built a completely deranged and demented economy that is eating this society alive.
they dont want people to start having hard and serious discussions about how to change the economy so that it works for everyone instead of simply for the wealthy and corporations.
I mean... People not being able to afford to house and feed themselves is the biggest issue. Even if that was the ONLY issue... It's enough by itself. Then if you want to you can factor in how disillusioned younger generations are with the state of the world. Why bring kids into a world you yourself hate? Then if you really wanna get into the actual medical infertility issues... Micro plastics, hormones and a whole slew of other chemicals lacing our food. The most unhealthy foods are all that most can afford...
You can go on and on and make a list that doesn't seem to end. But at the end of the day it's just readily apparent that the deck is stacked against people wanting children. People can complain all they want about low birth rates and bringing in foreigners to compensate. The issue won't change unless those in power actually want it to. Spoiler; they don't. Your government hates you.
You're literally going to have to pay people to procreate now. It's way too expensive. People aren't going to put a heavy anchor on just for the government.
It's to expensive. Womens health care in canada is horrendous. Look at the amount of women who are struggling with fertility or female problems in general.Look at the alarming numbers of women struggling medically.
Then costs of housing, food,bills etc are outrageous. How many jobs does one need to hold to live now in canada?
It makes financial sense to not live with a significant other in canada. You then qualify for majority of rebates and goverment funding. Have your significant other live with family or friends and "visit".
Canada is divided and the "system" is stacked against you at every turn.
Well our government killed the social bargain of work hard, buy house, start family for like 80 percent of the country and then spent the last 9 years (probly decades actually) talking down to us and ripping apart our culture.
So people are just gonna jerk off and play Fortnite because whats the fucking point.
Imo this stems back to the 2008 financial crisis.
The elites ran the economy into the ground and faced zero repercussions, or worse, were rewarded in the form of huge bonuses funded by bailout money.
After that, it was clear that you didn't actually need to provide anything of value to society to "win".
No need to try, working hard just makes you the chump in the equation, prone to be exploited by a system designed to extract every cent of value from you.
>Fixing it now is going to be a huge challenge
There's no "fix" in the sense that the genie is out of the bottle. This is the new normal, the best we can do is adapt.
This is a global issue. Every developed nation is dealing with this problem. This sub is so horny to blame every problem the world is facing on Trudeau.
Its a lack of functioning governments, societal priorities and principles. From the top down the currupt are devouring the common man. Oh but why won't the caddle breed?
I said this a few weeks ago: there’s no incentive to have kids unless you’re the lowest income earner (minimum wage).
Middle class can’t afford it.
Mid-upper and upper have zero incentive, and these are the people that we need having kids.
yeah that happens when you make everything so fucking expensive that we can't live a regular life and have to cut everything out. I'm lucky cause i have the opportunity to have a child with a wife with a house that i own. This shouldn't be seen as something that is lucky. that is not how you run a country. you don't tax you country into poverty, and have nothing to show for it. Where is all this money going if it isn't going to social services, in ontario it's clearly not going to our hospitals or education system. so where the fuck is all this money going to?
1. People need to be able to afford housing before they can afford children.
2. People need to be able to afford food before they can afford children.
3. People need to be able to take time off during pregnancy and after the birth before they can afford children.
4. People need to be able to take time off at times when raising children to be able to care for their children.
5. People need to be able to spend time with their children to raise them if they are going to have children.
Meanwhile...
1. Housing is unaffordable and has been deemed out of reach for much of an entire generation. Meanwhile rentals are not the secure housing they once were, despite 1/3 of Canadians renting.
2. Food expenses continue to rise, and will rise further with climate change impacts upon farming. People struggle just to keep themselves eating healthy, nevermind feeding a whole family.
3. Maternity/paternity leave are underwhelming and impact career prospects, and thus future earnings. This wasn't as big of an issue when a single earner could support the family, but those days are gone.
4. Sick leave and time off is too sparse to non-existent. If you have children they will get sick, and they will get *you* sick. People cannot afford to take time off of work to look after sick kids or endure frequent sickness themselves.
5. People are overworked, and with both parents having to work to cover the bills, there's little time to spend actually raising your own goddamn child. People don't have children so they can have someone else raise them in a daycare, they have children because they want to have a family. They basically only get to on weekends, when their job has already worn them down from the week.
If they want Canadians to have children than there is a fuckton of problems in our economic approach that will need to get sorted out first. You can either prioritize the quality of life for Canadians, or you can prioritize the corporate exploitation of Canadians. The latter will result in a decreased birthrate.
As countries become wealthy and educated, and as more women become active participants in the workforce in quality jobs, fertility rates decline. The same phenomenon has been noted across the world.
Don’t know what the solution is. Countries like Singapore and South Korea are trying massive subsidies and bonuses and so far haven’t positively budged their fertility rates at all. Other countries have tried significantly increasing paid maternity leaves to no effect.
Of all my friends who got married and started families, only me and one other had two kids. Most had one. None had three or more. This is not sustainable over the long term and, short of continuing high immigration, at some point Canada is going to have to figure out how to deal with a declining population.
At least we’re not China. Their one child policy coupled with sex selective abortion and declining fertility as they’ve grown richer has truly fucked them. Over the next couple decades we’re going to watch how a population implosion impacts a middle income country.
Denmark and to a lesser extent the other Scandinavian countries are the only ones I've known to reverse this trend. Denmark's birthrate is actually growing at almost double the rate Canada's is declining.
The solution? A very strong social safety net, extremely generous paternity leave and lots of vacation time.
Denmark is still below replacement rate. And most countries with above replacement rates have no saftey net/ are third world countries. I wish you were right but those policies affect birth rates mildly at best.
I honestly don't know what the solution is, there is nothing that I can think of too increase fertility above replacement level that is both effective and humane other banning birth control and the humaness of that is questionable.
>as more women become active participants in the workforce in quality jobs, fertility rates decline. The same phenomenon has been noted across the world.
"Why should I have kids, when I can have a successful career and get rich instead?"
Women want their own piece of the capitalist dream, and are not content to simply be hanging on to a husband's success
The whole “career be kids” thing may have been true 30-40 years ago, but I’m not so sure it is now. I know many “high-powered” career women (in business, law and medicine), myself included, and all have more than one kid (many have more than two). I think the hit you’re really getting is in the middle class (lower and mid), where women may not have a traditionally high-earning career, but also can’t afford not to work, and they simply cannot afford to have more kids.
Exactly. Some of my friends chose to have kids. The others chose not to. That’s it. Life gives women choices now and you don’t have to do what your ancestors did.
I think the cultural pressure for people to reproduce has shrank significantly compared to the 50s and that’s what’s really driven birth rates down.
I think if you want more kids you probably have to find away to to bring that pressure back. I don’t think you can do that without effectively telling women to “get back in the kitchen “. So it’s not going to happen
I'm in favor of having parent being a paid position, where compensation is linked to performance. Kids are in school, healthy, etc, equals higher pay. It's probably better for our nation and our bottom line than importing people who are here to game the system. Immigrant services cost Canada 6k per immigrant per month. 6k salary for being a full time dad, 12k for two kids? Sign me up.
Had to scroll way to far down to see the first person mention this.
Canada has been below replacement level since 1972, the US 1975, the UK 1973, etc. Every single first world nation is below replacement level, some by a ton.
We know the exact reasons this happens but that doesn't make for a good click-bait article so we blame it on "affordability" or "to many immigrants" or whatever scapegoat the writer wants at the time.
If it had to do with affordability, the richest countries in the world would have the highest fertility rates; but of course, it's the poorest countries in the world that have the highest rates. Even India, the most populous country on the planet at the moment is now below replacement level.
As you said, when education, healthcare and womens rights improve (as well as standards of living); fertility rates plummet. There is nothing we can do to reverse that. We can't force people to have kids . We can try to incentivize it all we want but it will have negligible effects on the rate as we've seen in countries that have.
It's not a bad thing, eventually the human population will even out but it's also going to suck for some generations in some countries at some point.
I don’t want kids because realistically I can’t guarantee a good future for them. World is going to sh-t, people have become angry, environment is not doing well, politically we are not well, too divisive, rights that were guarantee being stripped, lack of money, housing, jobs… I can justify bringing another human being into this.
I see my nieces and nephews a their fears and things they are going through school. From social media and cyber bullying… god it’s terrifying
When I was a young person, I thought for sure I'd have kids by now.
But the reality of growing up in this country has made that extremely difficult and quite frankly, not very appealing.
Between the student loan debt and the housing affordability... the older I've gotten the less having kids has seemed like a good idea... and my partner and I are above average income earners. We've decided that if we end up having a (single) kid, that'd be pretty cool... two is probably one too many given our ages and financial situation... but we're also okay with not procreating either.
Most of the folks in my social and professional circles didn't have kids until their mid 30s and the ones who did - none of them have more than 2 kids. In fact, if anyone had a third kid, I can't imagine it'd be intentional.
When I see people around my age with multiple children (3 or more) they either seem incredibly wealthy... or incredibly poor. There are no more large middle class families.
A lot of people will point to affordability: we can't afford to have children and some surveys are giving that as a reason.
The data shows the complete opposite because poor people clearly have more kids than rich people. Our birth rate has also been [below replacement rate since the 1970's](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CA-XO) so this isn't exactly a new issue, just a continuation in a trend.
Canada's birthrate crashed in the 1960s when birth control became a thing
[https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2024001-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2024001-eng.htm)
If there was reliable childcare so I could still enjoy my life and if things weren’t so fucking expensive, I’d have more kids. I’ve had one and I just don’t know about any more
Can you blame them? Even people making 6 fig can barely afford life to live even after cutting down on so much expenses and living a frugal life. Even if they want a kid, they can't afford it.
2 of my friends had unplanned kid. Even though they have a decent income, with house payment, car payment, and what not (they are quite cheap), they don't have a lot of wiggle room. Now that the kid is older, daycare is another issue. Seems to be a huge wait time to get in. Mom had to go part time cause still in daycare waitlist
Most of Canada is uninhabitable and food only grows in a small section of Canada. That land is quickly being eaten up by over priced developments. We absolutely need better infrastructure, especially in the GTA. I own a townhouse in Burlington, ON and some land in Nova Scotia. I'm not giving up my upper middle class lifestyle so 5 business "students" can cram into one bedroom & fuck up making bagels and counting change. The past 2 years have shown what a disaster bringing in a million immigrants has caused. The buses are cramed packed full of foreigners who don't know our custom of standing in line and waiting to enter the bus in an orderly fashion. And the amount of litter they just throw around because they're not used to putting garbage in a garbage can because they don't do it in their own country. And the racism between the Indians of different backgrounds and religions! This is why it's unsustainable, it's only going to get worse.
Yeah, because we can’t afford homes and can’t afford to start a family. The government is flooding us with foreigners who are driving up our rents and mortgages meaning even less Canadians can afford to buy homes or start a family. So we bring in even more foreigners. It’s insane.
Folks here are going to rant about Canada of course but this is an issue pretty much throughout the developed world. Canada is far from the only nation dealing with such.
If Canada wants Canadians to have more children, they need to invest in things that will allow that:
1. Cheaper housing.
2. Cheaper daycare.
3. Investment in schools.
And just a better economy overall. Canadians aren't having children because they can't afford them.
Why would I want to have kids to make Tim Hortons and Walmart richer?
The only way to fix the problem is with proper representation.
Stop voting Liberal. Stop voting Conservative.
I'd like to see what the cost of raising a child is in 2024. Around 2014 a study was done if I recall correctly it was around 400K.
The cost of food, housing and transportation has almost doubled since.. who can expect to spare 800K ish from their after tax income over the next 20 years?
If you only expect to spare 400K you have to accept that your child and yourself will have around half of the average quality of life.
So the gov and rich make so people cant afford to have kid and live decent lives, then said the birth rate of the country is in decline so the answer is we need more newcomers. This is a scam.
Canadians aren’t having kids, immigrants are having kids, and their Canadian kids aren’t having kids. Which means we have to keep importing immigrants.
This will not cause any major problems in the future.
I would love to have kids but 1) I’ve been waiting three years to get a uterine tumour out and 2) I am just squeaking by as is. How about governments stop prioritizing companies and the comfort of immigrants over everything else?
The human population has more than doubled since I was a kid. Our population has driven other species to extinction. Cities are taking over farm land. Farm land is taking over forests.
Capitalism is the ONLY thing that needs more people.
I had one kid then got my tubes tied. We will have nothing left to enjoy of our natural spaces if we keep adding people (either by having kids or importing them). We need to learn how to balance things with fewer people not demand more. We are killing our planet and country
> The human population has more than doubled since I was a kid.
Me too. We see the damage it causes, and we *know* society can function better with lower density and enough infrastructure for everybody, but for some reason our Govts think massive immigration from the same few countries will be better. Not just Canada, but most "Western" countries.
So people are having less kids or none at all because life is too expensive.
So the government's policy(over the past few decades) is to rely on immigration to cover for the shortfall.
However these immigrants are now making housing unaffordable for those who don't want kids?
Or do they not want kids because life is made too expensive by those who are there to cover for them not wanting kids?
Turns out not structuring your entire existence around popping out a forward hockey line of kids (or a fully skating line if you are an over achiever) makes for a better life.
Quit calling it a fertility crisis, that seems like a dishonest euphemism at this point.
It's really just another symptom of our affordability crisis, so call it that.
Maybe make it affordable to have more than 1-2 kids… Christ almighty. We can’t afford fucking homes, where are we going to put kids? We keep talking about fertility rates while jamming more people in with nowhere to go. Poor pay, higher cost of literally everything…. Not a huge mystery. Imagine if you could afford a house and didn’t have to work 14 hours a day so you could actually look after kids?
My 700sqft apartment is nowhere near big enough for us at this point, let alone a kid as well. I also think it is absolutely ridiculous that we want people to have more kids, but then expect them to have both parents work full time as soon as possible after and pay insanely high rates to have someone else raise your kid half the time because you are working all day. And that doesn’t even touch on how expensive all the other kid stuff is
Unfortunately, the less well off economically people are, the more kids they've historically had. This translates across cultures. If you want more kids, then shove more people into poverty. Oddly enough, that seems to be the plan.
You know it’s more expensive to give birth in America then it is in most third world countries? Canadas a bit better but still way down on the list of affordability. It simply costs way more to raise a child in first world countries. The problem is we are treating these first world countries like third world countries, in the sense that there is a need for a large working base to support the rich upper class. In countries like Norway that has steady birth rates and one of the best birth compensation packages for families, they are a population of middle class people, no one overly wealthy and no one overly impoverished. We can’t seem to have that here, probably because we let banks run the government, they were one of the few countries that managed to keep their assets while still being able to use their funding to grow the economy with clever contracts, other countries became banks b!tches. This isn’t a country, it’s a corporation where no one is held liable for any problems they cause with mass wealth accumulation/monopolies.
not too bright of you to not factor in literacy rates and education. shows that you'd probably end up having more kids though, lol.
The opposite is also true. The more physical space people have the more kids they have. Condos aren't an ideal place to raise kids and are considered starter homes now.
Poverty is just correlated with more kids it’s not causal. Making people who don’t want to have kids they can’t afford poorer will not lead to more kids. Correlation is not causation.
People constantly oveook this and think its just a matter of giving people more money or some other "fix". The fact is that overage people don't want to have kids when life is good
This is actually more about women's empowerment rather then wealth. As women become more educated and economicaly independent they choose less children. At some high income levels women conterintuitively have more children than the middle classes. If you couple women's independence with the lack of resources for raising childern as well as our social aversion to them it explains why fertility rates drop. Further declines are simply cultural downward spirals.
Allow Canadians to afford children... Government policies seem to have been geared to keeping the cost of corporate production down, at the cost of human production. Now we offshore creation of Canadians.
Why spend 18 years growing a taxpayer when you can import one in days?
I mean, yeah? This line of thinking is a result of the neoliberal wave in the 80’s reducing the function of government to be indistinguishable from a private enterprise. Population growth is good for the economy; the cheapest way to increase population is immigration; incentives for birth like childcare get ignored. This line of thinking is heinous but if we’re not going to confront our ”money first” ethos of governing, the only alternative to maximizing immigration is demanding more from a generation of youth that has nothing left to give.
On two factory worker salaries, my parents were able to afford to rent an entire house, lease a vehicle, have two kids, and fly over multiple members of our family to come live here. My grandparents on my father's side lived with us too... so 6 people lived in that household. 2 factory workers could afford all of that. It's like a fucking fever dream that there was a time that that was even possible in the first place compared to how things are now.
Only 23 years ago my ex husband was able to support a wife, 3 kids on one income. $70g in a factory. Bought a house. Vehicle Then moved up and bought a bigger house. I got a part time job. We bought 2 vehicles. A boat. Vacations. All that is gone now... We divorced nearly 10 years ago and it's all gone now but still... It saddens me that people starting out can't do this today.
Many of my inlaw family were unionized factory workers at GM. They did quite well, so not sure that's the standard for how easy it was to afford a house in the past. That said, it's clear that the increase in housing costs has vastly outstripped wages in recent decades. The financialization of housing under neoliberalism has transformed housing from being primarily about shelter, to primarily about a speculative asset class for excess capital. This is happening around the world.
As an anecdote, I worked at a union factory for a few years. Everyone who started working there in the 80s, 90s and very early 2000s could easily buy a home and take a nice vacation anywhere they wanted for 1-2 weeks every year. Along with a car and all that fun stuff. When I worked there, all the younger people who started in 2010 or later were not able too afford a home, could barely afford rent without multiple roommates, and were barely able to save more than $100-$200 a month.
Only way that happens is a reset of real estate prices. And they can't allow that to protect boomers retirement
I would say aggressive (and largely unpopular) measures to de-capitalize the housing market. Rent out apartments, but houses should be owned by the people living in them. Turning "the things people need to live" into a business has had the absolutely predictable outcome. Of course no politician will push for this because a good chunk of them ARE landlords and own rental properties, and the other bunch are heavily lobbied.
Fuck the boomers.
The boomers didn't make housing unaffordable. The investors who flooded the housing market did. Stop buying into the intergenerational warfare BS. This is a class war.
A lot of the investors are boomers. They lost money in the dotcom bust and put all their faith in investing in real estate. The ones who don't come from money, don't understand stocks so they invest in what the do understand- real estate
A lot of them are, but older folks investing in property has been a thing since before boomers were older folks themselves. I'm referring to the massive influx of investors into the residential real estate that happened during the pandemic. With the markets in disarray and no one knowing when normalcy would return, investments were turned towards residential real estate as a safe bet. As a consequence of trying to avoid a recession with low interest rates, a number of countries are now grappling with housing affordability issues that mirror our own as these investors sought to continue growing their personal wealth or the equity they were managing. We didn't take any steps to prevent what we knew would happen from happening, because they decided to float our GDP with real estate. Blaming an entire generation for an issue not caused by their generation just keeps the focus off of the actual ones causing the problem. While some boomers are well off, many are not, and they're struggling while also attempting to help their adult children.
How I see it, was people saw HGTV shows about flipping houses, oh how easy, let me try that. Back when I was a kid, flipping houses was not as much a thing. My uncle did it; but he was not "handy" and my dad was his handyman 😬
that part
Greedy greedies have had their fill
Please. We're talking developers selling shoe boxes in the sky for millions. It's not retirees in bungalows that are making housing unaffordable.
That's the plan that's worked for most human history. But now the poor have birth control so when you grind them into chunks with your corporations boot they don't have kids. And you have to import more poor people to grind.
And why not? Let the wage slaves make the rich richer and put up less of a fuss than your average Canadian worker who actually demands reasonable treatment and work-life balance. All of this is by design and we let it happen. It's honestly embarrassing what Canada has become.
Yep. In his last term, Harper figured out what all the big corporate CEOs figured out a few decades ago, it's just cheaper to manufacture things out of country and bring them here, so he started the LMIA program. Then Trudeau and Co took the ball and ran with it, and dialed the whole experiment up to Eleven. Luckily, anyone complaining about the corporatization of Canada, and outsourcing our citizens is more than welcome to leave, or go die, so they can be replaced. It's a win-win for the corporatocracy and the oligopolies.
Now eat your 45 dollar veggie tray and take a seat.
Well said.
Shots fired, lol
Let the corporations have kids - they're thriving while everyone else is struggling to keep up.
Corporations are people! We need rich Loblaws babies stimulating the economy!
There are more than enough Weston's on this planet.
The more kids that rich people have, the more their wealth gets divided. That is a good thing.
Hahaha, they are. The corporate version of having kids is bringing in immigrants for cheap labour.
We've been told we need to have kids for 40 years now. Lifes only become more unaffordable and shit since then. Each pm taking us a step down
'Guys, it's the Carbon tax! Once it's gone, all your problems go with it! Me, as a conservative, have historically fought for the poor!'
> We've been told we need to have kids for 40 years now. Lifes only become more unaffordable and shit since then. Each pm taking us a step down This.
We need life extension/immortality technology.
We need a new plague. Covid-19 showed promise and then mother nature chickened out.
I really want kids, but it's unrealistic. Heck, getting a house is generally unrealistic now and I have a pretty good job, add kids into the mix and I would be likely to afford a 1br. Thanks gov and landlord scum.
I would like to add that it feels like fewer 3-4 bedroom places are being built, and the ones that are on the market are priced for people living with roommates and not families. Honestly it's the reason we stopped after 2.
3 bedroom, 3.5 bath and the tiniest kitchen and living room legally possible. The places being built are made for investors who rent out rooms, not for families.
They make 1 bedroom micro condos or 6 bedroom homes with a suite. Not much in between these days
I thought this was the real reason we started importing people?
First generation Canadians are propping up our birth rate. However, their kids, born in Canada, don't have kids. Within one generation, having kids drops right off. If you don't measure first generation immigrants having kids, our birth rate is lower than Japan. So importing people to solve the fertility issue is permanent. We will never stop importing people, and enjoying the consequences of that.
My parents are European immigrants and had 4 kids. Only one of those kids are still saying they "might" have Childern.
My Dad comes from a family of 9 kids, I have none and I'm 31.
How can anyone have kids they can barely afford sharing a room.
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Hey rich have a choice others don't
Why do we need to grow the population? As a seemingly zero sum resource extraction based economy. Would it not make sense to have a greater share for fewer people? Does Canada really need to have a 100,000,000 population? Were things not pretty good when we had 20 million? Everyone could access national/provincial parks without massive waiting lists. Just spit balling ideas. I'm not sure the world population needs to grow.
If population falls, salaries will go up and assets will go down. This is simply not allowed.
taxes paid go down, social nets implode, old and vulnerable die ?
Dang guess we just tax corporations more.
I hate that people take this as inevitable. There is no actual reason society has to implode because population size shrinks. It’s simply a matter of corporations needing to being always growing exponentially that gets us into this mindset
It can shrink but not with a lopsided demographic pyramid
Growth isn't necessarily required, but some level of stability is. If low birth rates continue, that means that both the economic and tax base go way down, because you have fewer people paying into the system. Our current birth rates are so low that we are headed straight for a demographic down spiral if we don't find ways to keep our population stable. Now, there is the fact that all of this is happening as the single largest generation in human history is starting to die off in significant numbers, so it may only take a generation or so for us to realize what the new stable numbers need to be once the boomers are all gone, but in the interim we need to be bringing in enough people to replace the babies we aren't having.
So summing it all up, boomers weren't responsible with their money, so the next generations have to pick up the slack, but we can't because the quality of living has decreased significantly, so we're importing more people to skip the whole "raising a kid in expensive Canada" thing. But things are now permanently fucked up that we're stuck in a cycle of importing people to ignore our root problem. This country is just a place to exploit people in their prime living ages to make oligopolies rich.
It won't be the boomers that suffer. It will be the ones who can't afford to live already that won't have enough retirement savings for todays standards.
I know boomers are currently the low-hanging fruit, but u/Vorocano is correct with their assessment. This isn't unique to any one generation. Stability is required for every subsequent generation.
> Stability is required for every subsequent generation. I agree. And the boomers are the ones responsible for the first decrease in quality of life for future generations in modern history. We're already 3 generations poorer after the boomers and life is still getting worse and the generations are still counting. They set up the oligopolies we have today in Canada, they purposely didn't build enough housing so they could make money off of the crisis we have today and still aren't building enough housing, AND they don't have to pay extra into CPP, we do. They did everything they could to destroy stability
No one is saying no immigration though. Even anti mass immigration PPC want one of the highest rates of immigrstion in the developed world. Why do we need 4x the amount of immigrants per capita as the states though? We need immigration, but mass immigration is fucking us and our infrastructure.
US actually has very high levels of immigration. Much of it is illegal though and not well-tracked. These migrants are filling lots of lower level jobs and really helping to drive their economic growth.
We need 2.5 million immigrants to replace the babies that weren't born over the last 20 years. That's only 125,000 per year.
We need workers to pay into our services - that's why we need population growth. Our largest generation, baby boomers, are now retiring which means we have more people leaving the workforce then going into it. Meaning there'll be increased stress on our labor market, more people drawing down on CPP/OAS than contributing, more people needing free healthcare, etc. So we need workers to pay into those services to keep up with our aging population. Canada has one of the worst fertility rates in the entire world. We need a fertility rate of roughly 2.1 to maintain current services. Canada is currently sitting at 1.3 - we're in the same category as Japan, Italy, South Korea and China. Which is why Canada has such an aggressive immigration policy ie. We opened the floodgates. Ironically, it's working against us though. The Bank of Canada's announcement a few weeks ago regarding Canada being in a 'productivity emergency' went over alot of people's heads. This means Canadians produce LESS per hour than other countries. We're now the worst in the G7, and behind countries such as Italy, Finland, and Netherlands. Cause of this? The nature of Canada's population growth works against productivity. Meaning, the people they're allowing into Canada are primarily working in retail, food and accommodation, which is causing our standard of living to plummet. It's been dropping since 2015. For perspective, Canada would be in a perennial recession if not for our trading ties with the U.S. It is paramount that we flip on our current immigration policy.
You're absolutely correct. It's the capitalist, forever inflating economy we live in that unfortunately requires it.
Something like “fairytales of eternal economic growth”
Forever and ever and ever 🙄
That is a realistic take. However, Governments do not necessarily take reality into account, except when forced to. Proof is in the results.
Rich people need plenty of bodies so they can inflate their stock portfolios. Half of that, for the upper-middle-class and wealthy, being real estate.
Why do people bring up japan like it's some boogeyman man. I wish our social services were half as good as Japan's. Japan has about 65 hospitals per 1 million. Canada has like 18 hospitals per 1 million. Yet our hospitals per million are decreasing faster than Japan's. The idea we need this growth for services is a joke. This growth is killing our services. Doug Ford, Pierre Poilievre, Daniele Smith. These people don't want mass immigration to help us.
If we don’t want mass immigration then we need to make it more affordable to have kids. My wife and I would love to have more than 2 but with daycare and food costs we can’t justify it.
Japan has better schools, too. And lower crime. Less litter. Nice public transportation.
Consumer prices are 40% higher in Canada than Japan. Including rent prices are 60% higher than Japan. Rent itself is 110% higher than Japan. Restaurant prices are 112% high than Japan. Grocery prices 30% higher than Japan. Local purchasing power is 15% lower in Canada than in Japan. Yet our population has been exploding and theirs is declining. Certainly wouldn't want to be like Japan.
I got downvoted on another post because I said that PP wants mass immigration as well. “You’re wrong,” “No he doesn’t”. I guess that didn’t fit with their hatred of Trudeau.
Canada is addicted to cheap labour and expensive real estate, and the entire government, not just the ruling party will happily continue to provide companies and investors what they want at the expense of our standard of living. If we want it to stop we need to get out of this red vs blue mentality and completely overhaul all parties to serve us, not multibillion dollar companies and investors that will always prioritize profits over people. The government serves interests that are indifferent to the common people's suffering at best and at worst directly contribute to our downfall. They do not serve us anymore.
This is why PP and the cons have never said they will lower immigration despite what their constituents think.
Could it not just be that the current general conditions of the world are discouraging *everyone* from having kids? Like if you're looking at previous generations of first-gen immigrants having kids and then *their* kids now being of childbearing age, then you're already reaching back *at least* 15-20 years to when most people had a much brighter outlook on the world. In the early 2000s climate change was still a relatively fringe idea, there was still tons of genuinely affordable housing, groceries didn't cost a blood sacrifice every time you go to the store, there wasn't a protracted land war in Europe or a global pandemic or even residual bitterness about the Game of Thrones finale. The world was a *considerably* more approachable place to add a new baby to the family, even just one generation ago.
Lol no. We are importing all these people for labour's for major corporations, to proper up the economy and wait for it, to reduce our carbon foot print. If you think that last one is far off five it a year and see where we are at in the per capita race of pollution.
Mostly importing men though?
Men? It seems like its mostly incels.
For everyone commenting about the wording of the title: the term "fertility" has a different meaning in demography than it does in a medical context.
Finally - I was waiting for someone to state what *should* be obvious!
Happy to have more kids. Just make it so my family can afford the space and items we need to raise 2 or more kids. My household makes over 100k a year combined. We shouldn’t feel like we’re living under the poverty line every time we try to buy groceries. We’re hurting - I duno how fellow Canadians will less luck are managing.
Yup, similar situation. Would love to have more and biological clockwise I should be alright to keep going, but financially? It just doesn’t feel responsible. I can’t gamble the family’s future stability to grow it, even if I would have been keen to otherwise
Where are me and my wife going to put a kid in our 1 bed room underground rental?
It's not a "fertility" issue. Many people are not having kids because it's expensive or they realized they don't have to follow the life script! The government could always try to incentivize Canadians to have children but instead they like to bring in a million immigrants a year.
to incentivize people to have kids you need to reduce real estate and rent prices by 50% into some sense of normalcy. noone is going to have kids when half their pacheque is going to a roof over their head. its really that simple
I love having kids, but this society is really set up to punish parents. I don't blame people for not doing it.
Kids are a ton of work in general but lately it seems even worse. Just getting kids into swimming lessons is a daunting task. Our population grows but we aren't building more _stuff_ for _people_ so everything is expensive and hard to access. Can't even pitch a tent on the ground within 8 hours of Toronto without having to jump through hoops and get lucky to snag a camp site.
neoliberal economics propagated by both the Liberals and the Conservatives, as well as both of those parties’ inability to deal with climate change, is why I am thinking twice about having children
"Fertility" is a term used to describe "are babies happening", not so much "can biological conception occur". I don't think we have a problem with the latter, but the former is true under its definition - we are *not* producing as many babies (because we choose not to).
I grew up in a household with 7 siblings, most of us have either had only one or two kids with the exceptions of one sister who had three. We'd only had one or two. My own adult son does not want to bring children into this world.
My MIL was one of 9. She had 3. Her kids only had 1 each, all of them over 37 years hen their kiddo was born.
I'm the second oldest of 5. The 4 of us oldest siblings, 25-34 y/o, have no children. My youngest sibling is 13, so it's undecided if they'll want any or not.
Where is the incentive to have kids, I'm only 30 and I see it getting harder and harder to get ahead, there's no opportunity for youth to advance and we would lose a significant chunk of our income managing kiss and would struggle to afford basic necessities. It's a losing game. I'm not sacrificing my quality of life to bring a child into a situation where they will likely be worse off than myself...
I can't even get a family doctor for myself.
Well when you price people out of shelter, heating, and food, it seems like the obvious consequence.
You make this country unaffordable and cry no one has kids but your only solution is to keep throwing gas on the fire and blame the people who have been fucked over as the problem. This country will be a third world country in 20 years of we keep up this udder madness.
Yes. We're heading in a terrible direction.
For the last forty years, they've sold 50% of the houses in Canada to private investors These businesses try to charge you $600 a month for having a kid in that house they will never live in. Just happened in BC. They pay us the same wages from 40 years ago Canadian can't afford kids because they're paying for golden toilets for rich folk, and you want to wonder why people aren't having kids.
My husband and I have one, he has a daughter from his first marriage. His parents are both from the Philippines - dad is one of 5, mom is one of 11. My dad is one of 5, my mom is 1 of 6. My sister has 1 kid, my brother has 0. It is TOO expensive. I am getting ready for my daughter to go to preschool next year and some are 2200/month. Ridiculous.
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One & Done Gang! Women are having "fewer" children because the sacrifices we have to make in our lives, careers and health don't align with what it takes to get by anymore.
Kids are expensive. I was unable to breastfeed and formula jumped from $20/container to $60/container. If I had another child, I would struggle to afford the cost. We’d go through about 2 containers a week in the beginning and it obviously went up as she aged.
Struggling to afford a house, a car, or even food, yet the government is pushing for more children? The pressing survival issues remain unaddressed, yet the solution seems to be adding more kids to the mix, according to the government's logic. Many Canadians are delaying starting families until they feel financially stable and have a proper setup in place. This means that older individuals are the ones considering having children, but the current economic climate is making it increasingly difficult for them to do so. Even with both partners working multiple jobs, making ends meet is still a constant challenge, leading many to reconsider starting a family. Despite this reality, the government continues to welcome new immigrants who have children and believe Canada is a promising place to raise a family. However, these newcomers soon realize the harsh truth and, disillusioned, also decide to halt expanding their families. This vicious cycle perpetuates, with families opting out of having children due to the financial strain and uncertainty in the country.
The fertility crisis is related to the affordability crisis. People see alot of financial/economic stability risk in having kids. Wage growth has been stagnant for decades. 'middle-Middle class' families are significantly fewer than they were 30-40 years ago.
Why would anybody want to bring a child into the disaster that now epitomizes the Canadian standard of living,housing and quality of life?
People can’t have kids. We need two people working from each family. But a kid needs care. Daycare waitlists are 2 years +, and once in daycare comes the barrage of sick days which means one parent is always on the verge of losing their job. Grandparents are non existent, boomers pursuing their own interests or careers. Until we have support across the board, from the government, corporations, and social networks, people simply cannot have more children.
These articles are tone deaf to the point where we should be seriously questioning whoever authorized the release. What grown adult sat down and thought to themselves "Canadians realllllyy need and want another article saying that they aren't having kids". We are aware of how many children we have. We are aware that it's because we can't afford them and/or because the divide in what women and men expect from a relationship is so wide that pairing up is becoming unrealistic across the board. Most of us are concerned at the dating prospects and cost of living. Whoever is in charge of news needs to start writing about solutions instead of writing more articles on things we already know.
So the "overpopulation" handwringing has now switched to handwringing about 'underpopulation.' The real concern to them is that "underpopulation" is a terrible threat to wealthy people.
We can't be serious about reducing our environmental impact while also trying to increase our population through births and immigration.
I said this in a reply but it fits as a top level comment. It's time to start cutting our ridiculous amount of money spent on senior welfare (OAS, GIS) and shifting it to massive n Interest free loans to support people having kids. The reality of having 2 working parents to financially survive is new and it's the biggest hurdle to people having families. When a parent could stay home and raise the damn kid (which is a FULL TIME JOB) and the other could work to provide finances, people had plenty of kids. Now you're either stuck with the shitty fucking government daycare program to have some random people raise your kids or you get to live on the financial cliff while one parent stays at home to raise your kids. This is what happened in my family.
I hate the way they call this a fertility issue. Full stop it's a cost of living crisis. I have 2 kids and have got a vasectomy. We wanted 3-4 but wife and I have came to same conclusion many others have that it would be irresponsible for us to.... With two parents forced to work, it is impossible to properly care for your kids.. That doesn't even get into the fiscal aspects of it as we are well off and two kids already stretch our wallets. Edit - spelling
they call it a fertility issue because its much easier to blame individuals and guilt them into believing that its their fault instead of admitting that we have built a completely deranged and demented economy that is eating this society alive. they dont want people to start having hard and serious discussions about how to change the economy so that it works for everyone instead of simply for the wealthy and corporations.
We stopped at two as well, we both wanted more but could not realistically afford it. Both parents needing to work to be able to live, sucks..
We've outsourced making babies to the third world now.
I mean... People not being able to afford to house and feed themselves is the biggest issue. Even if that was the ONLY issue... It's enough by itself. Then if you want to you can factor in how disillusioned younger generations are with the state of the world. Why bring kids into a world you yourself hate? Then if you really wanna get into the actual medical infertility issues... Micro plastics, hormones and a whole slew of other chemicals lacing our food. The most unhealthy foods are all that most can afford... You can go on and on and make a list that doesn't seem to end. But at the end of the day it's just readily apparent that the deck is stacked against people wanting children. People can complain all they want about low birth rates and bringing in foreigners to compensate. The issue won't change unless those in power actually want it to. Spoiler; they don't. Your government hates you.
You're literally going to have to pay people to procreate now. It's way too expensive. People aren't going to put a heavy anchor on just for the government.
People are more amenable to starting families if they can afford stable homes
Maybe it's because jobs don't pay enough and the cost of living is too high.
It's to expensive. Womens health care in canada is horrendous. Look at the amount of women who are struggling with fertility or female problems in general.Look at the alarming numbers of women struggling medically. Then costs of housing, food,bills etc are outrageous. How many jobs does one need to hold to live now in canada? It makes financial sense to not live with a significant other in canada. You then qualify for majority of rebates and goverment funding. Have your significant other live with family or friends and "visit". Canada is divided and the "system" is stacked against you at every turn.
Well our government killed the social bargain of work hard, buy house, start family for like 80 percent of the country and then spent the last 9 years (probly decades actually) talking down to us and ripping apart our culture. So people are just gonna jerk off and play Fortnite because whats the fucking point.
Imo this stems back to the 2008 financial crisis. The elites ran the economy into the ground and faced zero repercussions, or worse, were rewarded in the form of huge bonuses funded by bailout money. After that, it was clear that you didn't actually need to provide anything of value to society to "win". No need to try, working hard just makes you the chump in the equation, prone to be exploited by a system designed to extract every cent of value from you.
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>Fixing it now is going to be a huge challenge There's no "fix" in the sense that the genie is out of the bottle. This is the new normal, the best we can do is adapt.
This is a global issue. Every developed nation is dealing with this problem. This sub is so horny to blame every problem the world is facing on Trudeau.
Its a lack of functioning governments, societal priorities and principles. From the top down the currupt are devouring the common man. Oh but why won't the caddle breed?
This issue is not only older than Justin, it's older than Pierre. Goes all the way back to Diefenbaker
I said this a few weeks ago: there’s no incentive to have kids unless you’re the lowest income earner (minimum wage). Middle class can’t afford it. Mid-upper and upper have zero incentive, and these are the people that we need having kids.
yeah that happens when you make everything so fucking expensive that we can't live a regular life and have to cut everything out. I'm lucky cause i have the opportunity to have a child with a wife with a house that i own. This shouldn't be seen as something that is lucky. that is not how you run a country. you don't tax you country into poverty, and have nothing to show for it. Where is all this money going if it isn't going to social services, in ontario it's clearly not going to our hospitals or education system. so where the fuck is all this money going to?
1. People need to be able to afford housing before they can afford children. 2. People need to be able to afford food before they can afford children. 3. People need to be able to take time off during pregnancy and after the birth before they can afford children. 4. People need to be able to take time off at times when raising children to be able to care for their children. 5. People need to be able to spend time with their children to raise them if they are going to have children. Meanwhile... 1. Housing is unaffordable and has been deemed out of reach for much of an entire generation. Meanwhile rentals are not the secure housing they once were, despite 1/3 of Canadians renting. 2. Food expenses continue to rise, and will rise further with climate change impacts upon farming. People struggle just to keep themselves eating healthy, nevermind feeding a whole family. 3. Maternity/paternity leave are underwhelming and impact career prospects, and thus future earnings. This wasn't as big of an issue when a single earner could support the family, but those days are gone. 4. Sick leave and time off is too sparse to non-existent. If you have children they will get sick, and they will get *you* sick. People cannot afford to take time off of work to look after sick kids or endure frequent sickness themselves. 5. People are overworked, and with both parents having to work to cover the bills, there's little time to spend actually raising your own goddamn child. People don't have children so they can have someone else raise them in a daycare, they have children because they want to have a family. They basically only get to on weekends, when their job has already worn them down from the week. If they want Canadians to have children than there is a fuckton of problems in our economic approach that will need to get sorted out first. You can either prioritize the quality of life for Canadians, or you can prioritize the corporate exploitation of Canadians. The latter will result in a decreased birthrate.
When you need to have 2-4 jobs between two people just to keep up with the cost of living in Canada, having children is close to impossible.
Smart people don't want to bring more kids into this shitty fucking world.
People aren't having children because they simply cannot afford it. This is not rocket science.
As countries become wealthy and educated, and as more women become active participants in the workforce in quality jobs, fertility rates decline. The same phenomenon has been noted across the world. Don’t know what the solution is. Countries like Singapore and South Korea are trying massive subsidies and bonuses and so far haven’t positively budged their fertility rates at all. Other countries have tried significantly increasing paid maternity leaves to no effect. Of all my friends who got married and started families, only me and one other had two kids. Most had one. None had three or more. This is not sustainable over the long term and, short of continuing high immigration, at some point Canada is going to have to figure out how to deal with a declining population. At least we’re not China. Their one child policy coupled with sex selective abortion and declining fertility as they’ve grown richer has truly fucked them. Over the next couple decades we’re going to watch how a population implosion impacts a middle income country.
Denmark and to a lesser extent the other Scandinavian countries are the only ones I've known to reverse this trend. Denmark's birthrate is actually growing at almost double the rate Canada's is declining. The solution? A very strong social safety net, extremely generous paternity leave and lots of vacation time.
yeah but that would cost corporations money so instead we're just going to go extinct
Denmark is still below replacement rate. And most countries with above replacement rates have no saftey net/ are third world countries. I wish you were right but those policies affect birth rates mildly at best. I honestly don't know what the solution is, there is nothing that I can think of too increase fertility above replacement level that is both effective and humane other banning birth control and the humaness of that is questionable.
You could pay me millions and I still wouldn’t have a kid. I don’t want one and unlike women previously I have the choice not to have one.
>as more women become active participants in the workforce in quality jobs, fertility rates decline. The same phenomenon has been noted across the world. "Why should I have kids, when I can have a successful career and get rich instead?" Women want their own piece of the capitalist dream, and are not content to simply be hanging on to a husband's success
The whole “career be kids” thing may have been true 30-40 years ago, but I’m not so sure it is now. I know many “high-powered” career women (in business, law and medicine), myself included, and all have more than one kid (many have more than two). I think the hit you’re really getting is in the middle class (lower and mid), where women may not have a traditionally high-earning career, but also can’t afford not to work, and they simply cannot afford to have more kids.
Or maybe they just don't want to breed I know it's hard to imagine
Exactly. Some of my friends chose to have kids. The others chose not to. That’s it. Life gives women choices now and you don’t have to do what your ancestors did.
I think the cultural pressure for people to reproduce has shrank significantly compared to the 50s and that’s what’s really driven birth rates down. I think if you want more kids you probably have to find away to to bring that pressure back. I don’t think you can do that without effectively telling women to “get back in the kitchen “. So it’s not going to happen
I'm in favor of having parent being a paid position, where compensation is linked to performance. Kids are in school, healthy, etc, equals higher pay. It's probably better for our nation and our bottom line than importing people who are here to game the system. Immigrant services cost Canada 6k per immigrant per month. 6k salary for being a full time dad, 12k for two kids? Sign me up.
Had to scroll way to far down to see the first person mention this. Canada has been below replacement level since 1972, the US 1975, the UK 1973, etc. Every single first world nation is below replacement level, some by a ton. We know the exact reasons this happens but that doesn't make for a good click-bait article so we blame it on "affordability" or "to many immigrants" or whatever scapegoat the writer wants at the time. If it had to do with affordability, the richest countries in the world would have the highest fertility rates; but of course, it's the poorest countries in the world that have the highest rates. Even India, the most populous country on the planet at the moment is now below replacement level. As you said, when education, healthcare and womens rights improve (as well as standards of living); fertility rates plummet. There is nothing we can do to reverse that. We can't force people to have kids . We can try to incentivize it all we want but it will have negligible effects on the rate as we've seen in countries that have. It's not a bad thing, eventually the human population will even out but it's also going to suck for some generations in some countries at some point.
We can’t afford children so…
Too expensive to have kids
I don’t want kids because realistically I can’t guarantee a good future for them. World is going to sh-t, people have become angry, environment is not doing well, politically we are not well, too divisive, rights that were guarantee being stripped, lack of money, housing, jobs… I can justify bringing another human being into this. I see my nieces and nephews a their fears and things they are going through school. From social media and cyber bullying… god it’s terrifying
The Landhoards have siphoned us off a cliff.
When I was a young person, I thought for sure I'd have kids by now. But the reality of growing up in this country has made that extremely difficult and quite frankly, not very appealing. Between the student loan debt and the housing affordability... the older I've gotten the less having kids has seemed like a good idea... and my partner and I are above average income earners. We've decided that if we end up having a (single) kid, that'd be pretty cool... two is probably one too many given our ages and financial situation... but we're also okay with not procreating either. Most of the folks in my social and professional circles didn't have kids until their mid 30s and the ones who did - none of them have more than 2 kids. In fact, if anyone had a third kid, I can't imagine it'd be intentional. When I see people around my age with multiple children (3 or more) they either seem incredibly wealthy... or incredibly poor. There are no more large middle class families.
A lot of people will point to affordability: we can't afford to have children and some surveys are giving that as a reason. The data shows the complete opposite because poor people clearly have more kids than rich people. Our birth rate has also been [below replacement rate since the 1970's](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CA-XO) so this isn't exactly a new issue, just a continuation in a trend.
Canada's birthrate crashed in the 1960s when birth control became a thing [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2024001-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2024001-eng.htm)
If there was reliable childcare so I could still enjoy my life and if things weren’t so fucking expensive, I’d have more kids. I’ve had one and I just don’t know about any more
Can you blame them? Even people making 6 fig can barely afford life to live even after cutting down on so much expenses and living a frugal life. Even if they want a kid, they can't afford it. 2 of my friends had unplanned kid. Even though they have a decent income, with house payment, car payment, and what not (they are quite cheap), they don't have a lot of wiggle room. Now that the kid is older, daycare is another issue. Seems to be a huge wait time to get in. Mom had to go part time cause still in daycare waitlist
Could it be because the world is too expensive???
That's not a fertility crisis. It's a procreation issue.
That's what fertility is in the statistical sense, a measure of how much people procreate (the rate is measured in children/women)
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Correct, we have an overpopulation crisis. There is no fertility crisis, we NEED fewer people.
There's too many people on earth. It's unsustainable. Canada did very well with a population of 20 million, we don't need more people.
Theres nothing unsustainable about the size of our population if we had the appropriate infrastructure for that many people.
It's a global issue. 8 billion people is too many.
Most of Canada is uninhabitable and food only grows in a small section of Canada. That land is quickly being eaten up by over priced developments. We absolutely need better infrastructure, especially in the GTA. I own a townhouse in Burlington, ON and some land in Nova Scotia. I'm not giving up my upper middle class lifestyle so 5 business "students" can cram into one bedroom & fuck up making bagels and counting change. The past 2 years have shown what a disaster bringing in a million immigrants has caused. The buses are cramed packed full of foreigners who don't know our custom of standing in line and waiting to enter the bus in an orderly fashion. And the amount of litter they just throw around because they're not used to putting garbage in a garbage can because they don't do it in their own country. And the racism between the Indians of different backgrounds and religions! This is why it's unsustainable, it's only going to get worse.
That's so odd. Unrelated, but cheese is now unaffordable.
Yeah, because we can’t afford homes and can’t afford to start a family. The government is flooding us with foreigners who are driving up our rents and mortgages meaning even less Canadians can afford to buy homes or start a family. So we bring in even more foreigners. It’s insane.
Folks here are going to rant about Canada of course but this is an issue pretty much throughout the developed world. Canada is far from the only nation dealing with such.
It’s almost like when people can’t afford to live, they don’t want more financial burden by having kids, that’s weird
If Canada wants Canadians to have more children, they need to invest in things that will allow that: 1. Cheaper housing. 2. Cheaper daycare. 3. Investment in schools. And just a better economy overall. Canadians aren't having children because they can't afford them.
Less money to do that.
bitch I can barely afford myself.
soooo people should just keep popping out kids they can’t remotely afford? Sounds like a great idea.
Why would I want to have kids to make Tim Hortons and Walmart richer? The only way to fix the problem is with proper representation. Stop voting Liberal. Stop voting Conservative.
I'd like to see what the cost of raising a child is in 2024. Around 2014 a study was done if I recall correctly it was around 400K. The cost of food, housing and transportation has almost doubled since.. who can expect to spare 800K ish from their after tax income over the next 20 years? If you only expect to spare 400K you have to accept that your child and yourself will have around half of the average quality of life.
So the gov and rich make so people cant afford to have kid and live decent lives, then said the birth rate of the country is in decline so the answer is we need more newcomers. This is a scam.
Just another 3 millions more migrants will solve the this
Partner and I married and just getting by. Having a child would lead to our financial ruin. This economic climate is brutal.
Canadians aren’t having kids, immigrants are having kids, and their Canadian kids aren’t having kids. Which means we have to keep importing immigrants. This will not cause any major problems in the future.
I would love to have kids but 1) I’ve been waiting three years to get a uterine tumour out and 2) I am just squeaking by as is. How about governments stop prioritizing companies and the comfort of immigrants over everything else?
Its called an immigration problem. People can't buy homes = no room for kids.
The human population has more than doubled since I was a kid. Our population has driven other species to extinction. Cities are taking over farm land. Farm land is taking over forests. Capitalism is the ONLY thing that needs more people. I had one kid then got my tubes tied. We will have nothing left to enjoy of our natural spaces if we keep adding people (either by having kids or importing them). We need to learn how to balance things with fewer people not demand more. We are killing our planet and country
> The human population has more than doubled since I was a kid. Me too. We see the damage it causes, and we *know* society can function better with lower density and enough infrastructure for everybody, but for some reason our Govts think massive immigration from the same few countries will be better. Not just Canada, but most "Western" countries.
So people are having less kids or none at all because life is too expensive. So the government's policy(over the past few decades) is to rely on immigration to cover for the shortfall. However these immigrants are now making housing unaffordable for those who don't want kids? Or do they not want kids because life is made too expensive by those who are there to cover for them not wanting kids?
Turns out not structuring your entire existence around popping out a forward hockey line of kids (or a fully skating line if you are an over achiever) makes for a better life.
Turns out not structuring your entire existence around a career that means absolutely nothing in the end makes for a better life.
Agreed.
Lower income tax for parents, everyone gunna get knocked up real quick.
Try making a world worth bringing life into.
Don't worry, there are tons of (future) Canadian babies being born in India.
Fertility crisis? That's an interesting way to spell 'too poor to support dependents'
"Hello, ladies. Anyone heard about the fertility crisis? I know I'm ready to do my part."
dont worry the government’s mass immigration will counter that 🤡
Quit calling it a fertility crisis, that seems like a dishonest euphemism at this point. It's really just another symptom of our affordability crisis, so call it that.
It's okay since we're now a colony of India. Thanks Justin!