I don't know many people having or even considering children under the age of 30. The window to actually have them gets pretty tight, a mother aged 35 or older is considered a geriatric mother on the NHS (basically higher risk). I'm sure that a lot of my friends are going to find it difficult to have children as they get older, in contrast to parents in the 80s and 90s who were mostly having their first child in their 20s.
From my anecdotal perspective it feels like we are going to see population growth flatlining and global population starting to decline over the next 100 years. It feels like the data is moving in that way to back that up.
This could be a really tough problem to solve. How do we keep economic growth going if our main driver (human capital) is disappearing?
> I don't know many people having or even considering children under the age of 30.
We now value professional careers above everything else. You can't have kids and be competitive anymore. Half of the people I know who have kids basically delegates everything to caretakers, they see them 30 min in the morning, and 30 min when they get back to work and kiss them goodnight.
Instead of telling men to slow down and take care of their kids we tell women to forget about kids and follow men in their insane quest for professional conquests. Sprinkle a bit of consumerism over that and it's game over, kids are too expensive, why would people do that instead of buying a nice car, the new $2k smartphone or a trip to Venice to flex on instagram for imaginary internet points.
I'm also inclined to believe that the hookup culture plays a huge role in the trend, why would you want to settle down when you have a virtually limitless pool of potentially better mates available at the tips of your fingers. Newer generations are afraid of commitment and responsibilities, having kids in your early 20s is more stigmatised than having a one night stand every other night until you're 40.
> We now value professional careers above everything else. You can't have kids and be competitive anymore.
Do you have any evidence of that?
> Half of the people I know who have kids basically delegates everything to caretakers, they see them 30 min in the morning, and 30 min when they get back to work and kiss them goodnight.
And that’s fine. There is nothing special about biological parents being the ones to take care of kids. Daycare workers, grandparents, etc., love the kids too and are better equipped to keep them engaged.
> One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59.
I can't read any of the detail (no access), but look at the example graph for Danish mothers. It suggests that in 1965, the average time spent by a non-university-educated mother on childcare for an under 13 was less than 10 minutes. That's an extraordinary claim, and needs extraordinary evidence to back it up.
> And that’s fine. There is nothing special about biological parents being the ones to take care of kids.
There absolutely is an irreplaceable bond between natural parents and their children that can’t be replaced. If you spend time around a lot of kids it’s very easy to notice a happiness difference between those with a stay at home parent and those raised by paid professionals (who are usually taking care of many other children, unless you’re wealthy).
> Indeed, our parents and grandparents spent half as much time with their kids than we are spending today, and their kids (us) turned out fine
I mean, did we? The birth rate is dropping through the floor, marriage rates are down, and studies show women in particular are more unhappy than ever.
As my generation ages into their 40s I see a stark happiness divide between those that focused on their careers vs those that built families (strongly in favor of the latter).
Instead of telling men to slow down and take care of their kids we tell women to forget about kids and follow men in their insane quest for professional conquests.
This is really true.
It was just assumed that the “right” goal for women was the same career focus as men have always had.
It won’t surprise me if that changes in the future once families realize the cost of it.
I think it will change in the future, not once families realize the cost, but because families that have already valued kids have kids while those that didn't realize the cost die out.
That is because men were valued more. Women and female infested things were considered lesser. Being like a girl was insult, manning up was compliment.
Besides, it is not just about career and money. This forum is full of men who don't work solely for money. Who work for challenge, to feel like they can do something special, to compete, to be with collegues, because the job fits their personality well etc.
It depends. After all “women and children first” has been the historical norm. Men have been treated as disposable for the history of humanity. Men get drafted to fight wars, women don’t.
> This forum is full of men who don't work solely for money. Who work for challenge, to feel like they can do something special, to compete, to be with collegues, because the job fits their personality well etc.
I have a great job but definitely work for the money. I am after all enriching the founders, execs and investors. I don’t think it’s a great idea to glamorize working for someone else.
That was not historical norm really. It happened once on side of titanic partly and in most situations there was no ordering. Yes, men died in wars. Then you had areas with many women and less men. The men were the ones making decisions still, voting, owning property, having accounts and the ones who were supposed to be head of household and women the ones considered stupider and having less options.
Male physical power and inability to be pregnant had a lot to do with most of this. Obviously.
The end result was that telling men to be more like girls would amount to massive insult.
It is about work and profession being super glamorous. It is about aspects of it fullfiling human psychology in small and big things that you don't even realize until you looses it.
I replied in depth up thread but I don’t agree. You’re framing this in a very specific lens of a very narrow period of time and ignoring all of the negative stereotypes about men and positive stereotypes about women that existed at that time as well.
Mother's Day is the biggest day for retailers. I wouldn't say that things typical mothers of yesteryear did were lesser. Speaking as a 43 year our mothers were less in the public eye but they definitely in our hearts.
That is not enough for men to take "you should be more like women" as compliment or inspiring ambition back then.
Typical mother of yesteryear was soccer mom and it is used as insult to this day. Typical mother of yesteryear would call with friends a lot, because she spent most of time completely alone in house otherwise - and that was but of jokes often. She would make big deal over non-existent color shade differences (this might have to do with men being more likely to be colorblind). When she complained, one just knew she is oversensitive.
It does not really matter how they really were and that their husbands were alright respectful guys. What matters is that there was that collective stereotype that added up to "I dont want to be like that" for many people.
> Instead of telling men to slow down and take care of their kids we tell women to forget about kids and follow men in their insane quest for professional conquests.
It is not just abstract us telling men and women what they should focus on out of other context.
It is more that being more like women was not appealing enough proposition to average guy. That would be something emasculating, something other guys would mock. The cool guy considers feminine things stupid - regardless of whether the thing would be actually good for him.
The reverse works differently. Being more like what guys do was something inspiring for enough women. Not all, but enough. The cool girl is often the one that crosses gender boundary - even when it is not actually good for her.
To add to sibling comment[0]. As I grow older I marvel at how the world behaves as if we are still in high school. Where I went to school there were definitely cool kids and most of us guys aspired to be in the football/rugby team. Our excuse back then was being teenagers. Now in hindsight, I realise there is no such thing as better. It is all relative. A man working a thankless corporate job for a lifetime only to be given a watch, to be managed by an MBA who knows nothing about the actual work isn't better than a woman who spends time raising her children. Man ends up with a watch and not so great relationship with his children and the woman ends up with deep love of her children. It is all relative. Some people love corporate life others find it suffocating. I wish people would stop saying something is better. By all means, doors should be opened for everyone so they have a chance to try it out. Maybe being a stay at home mom isn't for all women, that's fine too. We also need to grow a thick skin and learn to ignore people who make it seem like their chosen path is the right path. There is no such thing. Everything has pros and cons. There was great post on HN the other day, "What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy".
You’re cherry picking various stereotypes from different time periods and not including the bad stereotypes men had in the 20th century as well: the oafish dad, the wannabe player, the nerd, dumb jock...
None of this says much about people’s place in the world, more that 20th century sitcoms went for easy laughs.
The reality is that being a mother has always been seen as a powerful important role (because it is). It wasn’t until the late 20th century that diminished often at the hands of feminists.
You seem focused on the idea that telling a man to be like a woman is an insult but for as long as I’ve been alive people have been telling men to get in touch with their sensitive side, do more duties around the house...
I don’t think you’re accurately describing the big picture, just one slice of one piece of mainstream, late 20th century culture.
The 20th century culture is what is relevant to changes by the end of 20th century. Thomas Aquinas opinions or Ancient Rome opinions are much less relevant to the outcome.
Are you saying that a men or boy would take "you are like a girl" as a compliment? Or that femininity was something men would inspire to? Because afaik, while the girl who "is like a boy" is breaking rules, the expression is less humiliating then other way round. A boy in pink is more mockable then girl in blue. This alone tilts a lot peoples decisions on what they want for themselves and which wishes they show in public.
Mothers were not powerful except limited power over children, not in the usual "can get her way effortlessly in important things" way. It was not matriarchy for long time. I am not saying they were slaves or something. There were places where female social status depended greatly on number of children. In that sense, being mother was advantageous. But calling it powerful position is a stretch.
But for that matter, it is not like fatherhood was some kind of super powerful position, through it added social status where family was valued too. Father had great power over children, but calling it powerful position is a stretch too.
Yes, there are changes and increasingly more toward pushing men more toward that household works and emotional contributions. That is framed more as duty and work. Less as something men organizations push for as thing-men-should-want. Men do play more with small children or wash dishes etc. But the mass interest for changes in the past was the other way round.
There is difference between "I want better career for me" and "you should wash dishes more often".
First of all I don’t think telling someone that they should be more like the opposite gender has ever been well received. I dispute your point that telling a woman to be more like a man is less of an insult than the opposite statement.
I also think you’re downplaying the importance of mothers not just in the family unit but in society as a whole. Mother’s Day has always been a bigger deal than Father’s Day. Aside from optics the personal influence that a mother has traditionally had over children of both genders is second to none. That’s very powerful. Having a career isn’t very powerful for most people. You have multiple layers of people above you (your “superiors”) that have a very large amount of control over your life in exchange for a potentially livable wage. You can be fired at any time, for almost any reason. I don’t think divorce happens as easily.
We need to make it more common for people to have children first, then once the youngest is in school, only then, for the stay at home parent to get a part time job (or possibly study at university part time), and when the kids are in their teens switch to a full time career.
People are living longer, there's no reason you can't have a career second. But biology is such that kids need to be first.
And no, kids aren't as expensive as people think. If you wait till you have lots of money you'll never have the kids to spend the money on.
It could be more a product of the current economic system that requires both parents work full time jobs and have a career path. Its possible that in the future we could see a different system that actually increases birth rates.
Also, demand for fertility techniques for couples over 35 is going to drive a lot of research into that area.
It isn't the economic system, it is the lifestyle. I know a number of families where one parent stays home with the kids and they do fine. They don't "keep up with the jone's", but they have enough to eat and a warm roof. (Interestingly, in half those families it is dad staying home while mom works)
This is a subtle difference, but I think it is important.
It does sound like an economic system still. Anecdotal evidence, but of the people I know, those that can afford single-income household with kids are those with pretty high income, or eligible to social support, or really running two-income home with one person doing work in the "hidden economy" (e.g. gigs, or trading stuff via Facebook groups). "Just enough to eat and a warm roof" is pretty much the definition of living in poverty in the western world; no surprise people don't want to settle for that.
The vast majority of the population has chosen that lifestyle. mrmoneymustache.com lives a modest lifestyle and is able to afford it - he is also clear about all the luxuries he has to skip to do it.
I don't think it's just anecdotal, some data suggests this is happening. The book 'Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline' talks about this. The only place in the world with high total fertility rate is now subsaharan Africa, even countries you might think have a lot of children don't really anymore. China is well known to have a low TFR now, but even India appears to have reached replacement level, although something called population momentum will mean population continues to increase for a couple more decades, and then decline.
The states with better human rights, medicine have gone below replacement while the others have not progressed. South India with ever-lower voter share is becoming irrelevant to national politics, in effect a punishment.
It’s not really that narrow. Historically, people had an extended reproductive window. Elizabeth Schuyler (Alexander Hamilton’s wife) had half her kids after 35, three of them after 40. Risk goes up, but it’s still pretty low through the 30s. The NHS labeling is based on the medical community’s attitude of reducing risk at all costs, without regard to cost-benefit analysis.
I still think this notion of saving up (401(k) and superannuation) is going to fall in a heap. What good is money if no one is around to do the work? Demand will increase and all that saved up money is killed by inflation. The government is going to have to step in anyway, and do what it always did with pensions. That is, redistribute tax to care for people who are limited in their ability to do it themselves... because the tax will represent current labour than the false notion of nebulous saved "value".
Government redistribution won't work because it will just result in even more inflation. The only solution is to bring those people back into the workforce.
This could be a really tough problem to solve. How do we keep economic growth going if our main driver (human capital) is disappearing?
1. There is so much waste and distributional inefficiency in our global economy that there is plenty of room for growth by correcting these
2. Fewer people means that less growth is required to maintain and continue to improve living standards
3. Human capital isn't disappearing, its rate of appearance is slowing; there will always be new humans unless the global birth rate goes lower than the global death rate and stays that way for a long time
4. Human productivity is becoming decreasingly dependent on human capital over time
It's one of the most predictable features of capitalism that after a while any productivity gain becomes widespread, and on doing so its profits are distributed among consumers, not producers.
Distributed among consumers (via price reductions) and via _owners_ (via profit increases). Those graphs you've probably seen showing that the richest ~1% of the population owns an ever-increasing fraction of the assets suggest that quite a lot is going to owners rather than to consumers.
This prediction ignores the probably best-funded area of research on the planet, that is inventing ever more complex business models in order to retain the gains instead of distributing them.
> How do we keep economic growth going if our main driver (human capital) is disappearing?
The majority of the population does low or unskilled labor. This can be replaced by machines. Reduced focus on low skill work will also give more time to the individual which could foster more innovation. The future may have less people, but if technology removes the need for basic work, then it could end up that in absolute numbers the relatively small future population could have more advanced human workers than today's population.
> going to see population growth flatlining and global population starting to decline
Western population growth is flatlining. I have Beduin neighbours, who I have terrific relations with, who have over twenty children each. Some have over thirty, like the guy I buy my gas from. Some have more than that.
One guy that I know of, but have not met, is mentioned every time the subject comes up. If the Wikipedia list of most children had less of a Western slant, then he would be around number sixty on that list.
I do know that the one with 53 children (last time I heard, which was about a year ago, so the number has gone up) had more than the "allowed" four wives. I do not know enough about Beduin culture to tell you if he just went over the limit, or divorced, or what. I'll ask.
Growth will have to stop anyway at some point because the world is limited and it'll be a while until we can mine the solar system. Either that or the notion of growth will stop mattering (we enter a simulation, post-scarcity society, or society collapses)
As they say it's easier to picture the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
From my anecdotal perspective it feels like we are going to see population growth flatlining and global population starting to decline over the next 100 years. It feels like the data is moving in that way to back that up.
This could be a really tough problem to solve. How do we keep economic growth going if our main driver (human capital) is disappearing?