r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 06 '25

Health After the US overturned Roe v Wade, permanent contraception surged among young adults living in states likely to ban abortion, new research found. Compared to May 2022, August 2022 saw 95% more vasectomies and 70% more tubal sterilizations performed on people between the ages of 19 and 26.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/06/permanent-contraception-abortion-roe-v-wade
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4.4k

u/ThatDandyFox Jan 06 '25

Growing up, I was always taught "don't have kids if you can't afford them"

It sounds like people took that to heart.

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u/Tearakan Jan 06 '25

Yep. Most of the world it seems has switched from kids helping a family make money to causing significant economic hardship during the 1st decade or so. So humanity as a whole is having less kids. Samething with Africa even. Their birth rate is declining now too.

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u/S7EFEN Jan 06 '25

on a non economical point: the internet has allowed people to anonymously have conversations that typically would not be socially acceptable in person, and hindsight analysis around the choice to have kids is one of those major things.

the number of people on offmychest/regretfulparents etc that are just absolutely miserable... like, the whole 'i am miserable in my marriage' stuff has been around for a long time, the whole 'i am miserable taking care of my children' really has never been forefront in any media anywhere.

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u/Late-Experience-3778 Jan 07 '25

A lot of us got front row seats to how miserable our own parents were growing up.

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u/ACaffeinatedWandress Jan 07 '25

I find it ironic that Baby Boomers bellyache about no grandkids. The take home message that generation gave me about having kids was that it was something I should do when I was good and ready for life to be over.

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u/midnightauro Jan 07 '25

When I wanted more stress than I could ever imagine, the terrifying and invalidating experience of hospital birth because medical complications are severe in my family, and to never have enough money again, I should totally have kids.

I could never do anything for myself again, and I’d hate every miserable moment of having a little me as “payback” for how I was as a child.

“Are you sure you want surgery? Doesn’t that sound extreme?” the exact same people told me. Five years since this month, no second thoughts or regrets.

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u/ArtODealio Jan 07 '25

My mother used to tell me “never have any children.” She said it very lovingly while touching my hair or face..

Years later, after I was married, she wanted to know when I was having kids..?

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u/Saxboard4Cox Jan 07 '25

The word dysfunctional comes to mind. Not only was my parents dysfunctional but a lot of my friends parents were too.

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u/PercentagePrize5900 Jan 09 '25

Or were abused by narcissistic siblings.

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u/angelicism Jan 07 '25

A few years ago a woman I went to high school messaged me out of the blue: turns out sometime in our high-school-or-college-age-ish era (this was ~20+ years ago) we'd had a private drunken conversation where I was apparently the first woman who ever matter of factly stated I didn't want children, and addressed it as a perfectly valid life choice. The recent message was her reminding me of this incident (that I have zero recollection of) that she kept as a core memory because up until then she'd kind of felt like children were an inevitability. She thanked me for that and for validating her and that conversation is something I now keep as a core memory.

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u/Propane4days Jan 07 '25

I (a man) was on the other side of this conversation many years ago when my best friend and his wife casually mentioned never having kids. It had never crossed my mind not to have kids, it's just what you did/do.

I was lucky that I had a positive financial situation where I could have kids and still be able to eat, but it was also 10 years ago. My best friends however, weren't that luckily, and a child would have led them to living with family instead of on their own, or possibly worse.

I am so glad to see them thriving though today because they made that decision so many years ago! While it was most peculiar to me to hear that in 2009, they are perfect as aunt and uncle and are reaffirmed in their choices every time they finish babysitting.

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u/Euruzilys Jan 08 '25

I'm the opposite I think. I'm a man, but it never cross my mind to want a kid ever. Ever since I was about 5 or 7 years old. Almost 32 now and still think I probably never will have one.

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u/righteouscool Jan 07 '25

That's a beautiful piece of humanity. Thanks for sharing.

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u/Pineapple_Herder Jan 07 '25

Those out of the blue messages from former friends/colleagues are some of the most impactful. I hope she's doing well

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u/gearnut Jan 08 '25

They generally show that you had value to the person outside the context in which you knew them.

A year after we had first met a former line manager pulled me aside to thank me for my openness around my autism when I started working for him as it helped him recognise that he is also autistic. It meant a lot to me that he had found my openness so helpful (it also made things much more comfortable for me and I am still enjoying the job).

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u/Pineapple_Herder Jan 08 '25

That's awesome. And you're absolutely right. It shows how much we can impact others without ever really even knowing

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u/WetBrainSurfer Jan 07 '25

Wow what a trip 

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

That same conversation happened between me and my husband. I've been child-free my whole life and he grew up in a place where everybody had kids. He said the conversation we had over the weeks and months that followed felt like it released him from something he didn't even know he was imprisoned by.

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u/SenKelly Jan 07 '25

Marriage is also the best comparison to this issue and the biggest indicator that people are overstating the fertility crisis. When you remove the necessity and social expectation from things that should be wonderful, personal decisions you end up with the people who DO choose to get married / have children being people who really want those things in life. Far fewer dysfunctional families, and people are able to feel they chose these things rather than have it forced upon them. In the long run, things balance out, and people find a sustainable middle ground to live in. The state is presently trying to force/trick people into having children without having to do the hard work of reforming our politics and economy to match a world with fewer children being born minute to minute.

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u/babygrenade Jan 07 '25

The state is presently trying to force/trick people into having children without having to do the hard work of reforming our politics and economy to match a world with fewer children being born minute to minute.

Well put

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

More children?

No financial aid! Only more children!

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u/Confused_Noodle Jan 07 '25

Best I can do is a below minimum wage job for your 8 yo.

It's free childcare!

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Jan 07 '25

I disagree. I know several people who have kids (or a few kids) simply because they're irresponsible and short sighted. They're also mostly pretty bad parents.

I think really it's a lot of the more responsible people who forego having kids.

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u/SenKelly Jan 07 '25

No, I'm not going to morally load people not having children as "being responsible," if they are who you are referring to. Said folks just chose not to have kids, they're not model citizens because of it. Yes, there will still be children out of wedlock, but there are far more children who are planned well in advance by their parents. The number of unwanted children is significantly lower, nowadays, than it was 100 years ago.

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u/is0ph Jan 07 '25

Yes, there will still be children out of wedlock

This is a weird assumption. I live in a country where a large fraction of kids are born out of wedlock but it doesn’t mean they aren’t planned. It’s just couples foregoing the wedding and building their family without that expensive and largely unnecessary part.

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u/Disig Jan 07 '25

Weird to you, sure. Not weird to those of us living in countries where marriage is preached as necessary before kids. Which is a lot.

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u/occono Jan 07 '25

Common law marriage differs from region to another. They might mean the wedding and officiating is less necessary where they live.

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u/Disig Jan 07 '25

That's fine but my point still stands?

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u/bladex1234 Jan 08 '25

I mean, you could just get courthouse married. Being married legally has tax benefits.

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u/is0ph Jan 08 '25

If a country now has 65% children born out of wedlock (up from 10% in 1978), it probably means that the tax benefits of marriage are not that big a selling point.

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u/Tearakan Jan 07 '25

Good point. There's also the general state of the world that isn't looking great in the near future. Lots of issues economic and climate wise and in history when troubled times come birth rates historically went down quickly.

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u/Illustrious_Maize736 Jan 07 '25

Yeah and 90% of the time the posts are not even about the kids themselves but about the increasing social demands on parents. 

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u/robo-puppy Jan 07 '25

I'm not planning on having kids but isn't that part of raising children? It would be cruel not to ensure they're given opportunities to properly socialize. I don't think these social demands are separate from the kids, it's part of the whole picture of raising them

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u/jobforgears Jan 07 '25

Raising children is demanding, but there are so many extra things on top of making sure your children are fed, clothed and happy. Essentially people are expected to not cause any kind of harm, even unintentionally, to their children. If you raise your voice to your children? You've failed as a parent. Were you unsupportive of some of their goals? Your children are going to remember you as the one who stifled them. I'm not saying that a person should mistreat their children, but I have siblings who still live at home, have a much more affluent lifestyle than I did ever growing up, and they are constantly fighting with my mom over very petty things.

I have a sister who is constantly on r/AITO and similar subreddits and citing these things in conversations. She, and I would venture a guess, many others are under the impression that if you live in a unsupportive household that you live in an abusive household. This sister staged an intervention with her friends where they called the police on my mother because she was abusing her for moving from the neighborhood to another place, thus isolating her from her friends. This kind of stuff was unthinkable a decade or two ago.

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u/Mygaming Jan 07 '25

They need real life to hit them a few times.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

I think the increase social demands on parenting are self-fulfilling. And self perpetuating. I watched My Friends start having kids when I was around 26 and the level of judgmental nonsense that parents passive aggressively and sometimes aggressively throw it one another is insane. It made me hate my friends. They became ugly people who are hateful and judgmental and also simultaneously neurotic and unhinged about parenting. Turn them into aliens. 

I had one friend who adopted this whole mindset of child rearing that is so bizarre that I didn't even recognize her anymore. She acted so smug and superior to other mothers too and then didn't understand why she didn't have any friends. This is not an isolated incident. 

Parents spend more time with their kids and they've ever spent with their kids and they still don't feel like they're doing enough. They're constantly holding each other to impossible standards while simultaneously being neurotic messes about it. I can't even go to yoga with my friends that have kids because they feel like it's not fair that they don't have dinner with their children every night of the week. I invite them out for Happy hour, nope they can't come cuz they have to take their kid to 50 different after school activities and unlike our parents who would leave us there for the hour they sit there and watch them the whole time. Because they would feel too bad if they didn't. 

The level of guilt shame and demand that parents are putting on each other and themselves is literally sickening and the problem that really gets to me and makes me angry beyond belief is that their children are suffering for it. Kids need to be by themselves sometimes and with other people that are not their parents to develop a strong sense of self and be able to trust themselves in the world. Without that self-trust they just get anxious and depressed and they don't thrive. Kids these days are completely helpless and they have no ability to walk themselves through problem solving. It's drastically affecting their ability to function in the world and with each other. I absolutely fear for people who are under 25 right now. Some of them I'm sure are doing fine but the hand holding their parents have done to them is making them infantilized way beyond 18. 

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u/frazieje Jan 07 '25

A lot of what you describe is probably the impact of social media on parenting. Social media is known to foster unrealistic and unhealthy ideas and standards about beauty, nutrition, money, success, etc. Modern parenting is likely impacted in the same way. Parents' comparison of themselves with 'ideal' parents online along with comparisons of their childrens' abilities/behavior with those seen online are almost certainly causing heightened shame and negative self image for parents

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u/Illustrious_Maize736 Jan 07 '25

I was an assistant teacher for 6 years. 100% correct. 

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u/FarplaneDragon Jan 07 '25

I think it's slowly become more acceptable to regret having kids. Years ago you'd be treated as a monster if you admitted that.

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u/PhDresearcher2023 Jan 07 '25

There's also a lot more people becoming aware of the impacts of family trauma in their lives and wanting to break the cycle

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u/nut-sack Jan 07 '25

There are a lot more people who know about diseases/genes/etc that run in their family. Many of them choose to not risk it.

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u/midnightauro Jan 07 '25

This was a major factor for my spouse and I. Not the only factor, but significant illness runs through our families.

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u/DefOfAWanderer Jan 07 '25

I think it's also more widely recognized that often the kids aren't the root of the issue. Childcare costs have increased exponentially, while cost of living vs wages make single income homes less and less possible to consider as an option. I have one kid and by the time they go to college, it will be cheaper to send them to the moon at the rate schools are getting more expensive

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_LEFT_IRIS Jan 07 '25

Yup. My wife and I would dearly love to have a couple of kids, but we can do basic accounting and unless something changes wildly it just isn’t happening… we both work and the daycare would be another mortgage/rent every month. It’s impossible. Maybe in a few years we can look at fostering. I don’t know.

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u/Paksarra Jan 07 '25

Agreed. I know more than one woman who wanted several children, but realized after the first one that they couldn't afford several children.

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u/Away-Ad4393 Jan 07 '25

This is what the powers that be conveniently overlook when they are ‘encouraging’ women to have more children. I wonder if they are making childcare so expensive to force sahm?

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u/ScallionAccording121 Jan 07 '25

Sahm?

But no, I doubt they care enough about people to even bother thinking about this, for them people are just cattle to be manipulated into breeding, if they end up miserable and desperate its even easier to control them, this has 0 downsides for them.

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u/Away-Ad4393 Jan 07 '25

Well yes I think that’s more realistic than I was being tbh.

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u/Saxboard4Cox Jan 07 '25

My sister is a SAHM living in Menlo Park with two adult kids. When her kids were younger they went to public school and she spent a ton of money on private tutors for them over the years. Most of the kids in this area go to expensive private schools. Most families rent now because the real estate costs are too high to buy a home outright. Local public schools can't get parent volunteers because both parents are working full time.

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u/TicRoll Jan 07 '25

Childcare costs have increased exponentially

Where I am, every childcare center is roughly $3,800-$4,000/month for two children. And it increases twice each year. At those rates, they all have 6-8 month waiting lists.

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u/putin_my_ass Jan 08 '25

It still exists. I shared an anecdote about how one of our friends confided in us that though she loved her children she recognizes now that we made the correct choice by opting not to have children.

People came out of the woodwork to tell me to stop making up stories on the internet. They decided I must be lying, because no couple would actually say that.

They can't allow this admission to be made out loud, to the point that they have to believe any stories to that effect are lies.

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u/ihopeitsnice Jan 07 '25

And a lot of women are realizing there are few men who will do housework and/or child rearing. I am very lucky to have a partner who does a lot. I do a lot too, but my women friends always complain about their husbands not being able to take the kid to the doctor because they don’t know their own kids’ medical history, not being able to get the kid dressed because they don’t know where the child’s clothes are, etc. Add that on to not cooking, not cleaning, and not doing laundry and you’ve got a tense situation at home. And these are not stay-at-home moms. They have jobs too. I know the young women are beginning to see how one-sided motherhood is in this country especially with the rise of bro internet culture that mocks child rearing and domestic labor.

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u/jerseyanarchist Jan 07 '25

40's white dude checking in.

when i got canned for covid, i decided i'm retiring and focusing more on home. so, i homeschool my youngest, care for the dogs, chickens, meals, clean, maintain the heating (wood stove by choice). the wife goes and works, i make the house work so she doesn't have to. but damn, some days, it's like pushing that rock up the mountain.

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u/jane000tossaway Jan 10 '25

Ts is why I am child free

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u/cindad83 Jan 07 '25

These are all lies at this point. There have been several studies published recently that Millenial Men spend 3x the amount of time with their kids than their fathers.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

3x the amount the fathers did says nothing. 3x of what????

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u/pistachiotorte Jan 07 '25

My father made dinner once a month, while not working. That was his contribution to the household. My husband watches the kids one afternoon per week and starts the laundry for me twice a month. It’s not a scientific study, but anecdotally, it still has a long way to go.

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u/OhGod0fHangovers Jan 07 '25

My FIL worked and my MIL was a homemaker, and my FIL was minimally involved in my husband’s raising and never lifted a single finger in the house—when he retired, MIL negotiated that he would clear the table after breakfast because it was unfair if she still had to do it all if he wasn’t working, that’s how absolutely nothing he did before.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

There has been a larger push for father involvement but that does not mean the issue has been fully eradicated.

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u/ihopeitsnice Jan 07 '25

Time spent with children is not the issue. Do those studies break down how the time is spent? Is it transporting children? Is it doctor’s appointments? Is it feeding the children? Is it all the things that are necessary for raising a child?

Despite spending more time with children, fathers still spend half as much time with children than mothers do and half as much time doing housework.

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u/trades_researcher Jan 07 '25

Spending time ≠ caretaking.

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u/gavrielkay Jan 07 '25

Millenials are not the generation in question. Current 25 year olds are Gen Z. There seems to be a pendulum swinging between more and less engagement and parenting among men, but there is a rising sub-culture of toxic masculinity trying to get back to the days when they could demand dinner and sex from their wives without having to contribute anything but a salary to the household. Not all men of course, but I trust younger women's experience of younger men and those aren't Millenials any more.

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u/sylbug Jan 07 '25

what's 3 x 0, again? Because that's what a lot of these guys are giving.

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u/JimBeam823 Jan 07 '25

There are still a lot of conversations that aren’t happening even online.

The “not wanting kids conversation” is happening a lot more than the “want kids but can’t have them” conversation and the “want kids but don’t have a partner” conversation which is giving a skewed picture of why people aren’t having children.

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u/Ineedabeer65 Jan 07 '25

My youngest calls my eldest’s offspring “The Contraceptives”.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

I grew up a very young sibling out of five. I am the youngest by 8 years. And the oldest is 17 years older than me. 

Growing up one sister was vocally child-free, the other sister never really talked about it. My two brothers I didn't know yet so for this conversation are irrelevant.

My vocally child-free sister ended up changing her mind at 37 and got pregnant within a month of stopping birth control. Immediately. Her first full month without it. 

The sister who didn't talk about it seemed to come around to motherhood but it didn't seem like roses and sunshine. The sister who didn't want kids originally has been very vocal about how she regrets it. I'm her sister so obviously she's going to be honest with me but even people who she doesn't talk to about it can tell she hates it. She has money, a great career, a dad is pretty decent, kid has good health, but the whole thing was just not for her. It's absolutely not for some people. I wish she would have listened to her gut and the 37 years previous that told her it wasn't for her instead of listening to her biological imperative that clicked on at 37. 

She said she literally changed her mind within a couple months. I left for college and she said watching me leave after having lived with her for a few years when I was getting my bachelor's degree, made her realised she liked watching something grow and wanted to do it herself. She deeply regrets it. 

A couple years after she had her kid my mom asked me, at 25, whether I thought I would ever have. I told her under no circumstances what I ever have children. I'm 40 now and I have never felt an inkling, not even a twitch to want it. 

I'm so grateful that I am around in a time where being child-free is becoming more acceptable because the first 25 years of my life I absolutely was a pariah for it if it ever came up. Luckily it doesn't come up very often before the age of 25. I definitely had a lot of men who I was on dates with act absolutely disgusted and angry and sometimes become quite vile after finding out. 

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u/aidanpryde98 Jan 07 '25

Daycare for my 3 year old is 50% the cost of my mortgage. Imagine having 2 kids? I can afford it, but I’m also in my 40’s with a great job. I can’t even fathom how anyone in their twenties navigates this these days.

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u/muchado88 Jan 07 '25

My youngest's becoming old enough for Kindergarten was like getting a $15,000/year raise. We're lucky to live in an area with relatively low-cost preschool, so it could have been much worse. We're like you, in our 40s with established jobs, and the daycare was still harrowing.

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u/frazieje Jan 07 '25

I feel you. I have two kids in daycare and each one is 75% of my mortgage. Together daycare is 150% (obviously) of my mortgage. My wife and I both earn well in tech so the math still works out for us, but childcare costs are completely insane.

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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu Jan 07 '25

1st decade? A good number of my older coworkers are helping their adult children with housing. Some are in the last years of school, some are working, some have their own children. All cannot afford comfortable and safe dwelling without their parents’ help one way or another.

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u/Redditer51 Jan 07 '25

I'm in a position where I'm basically a tenant. I wanna have something to call my own (and to live closervto my family again) but with how expensive rent is now, even the chances of me owning an apartment looks bleak.

I get angrier and angrier at these billionaires in politics and in various other industries. Because they essentially gained their wealth by stealing our future. 

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u/Dwarfdeaths Jan 07 '25

You should definitely read about Henry George and the Land Value Tax. It might sound too good to be true but this "housing" problem is entirely solvable with the right policy. And housing isn't the only thing that involves land rent. People are getting mad at capitalism when the real problem is that land isn't capital.

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u/Roflkopt3r Jan 07 '25

Yes. The rising complexity of the world has shifted parental attitude from "kick your kids out at 16 and they'll manage somehow" towards supporting kids well into their 20s.

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u/Tearakan Jan 07 '25

That's a good point too

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u/Nauin Jan 07 '25

One of my friends is already planning renovations to her house to make it bigger and more accommodating for her kids as they turn into adults. They're toddlers but she's already predicting they'll need to stay with her well into adulthood. She ran the numbers and realized it was cheaper by hundreds of thousands to add onto her current house than it is to buy a new one at the current interest rates.

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u/spinbutton Jan 07 '25

Maybe this is more common now, but it often happened in the past. My grandmother gave my dad money to build our first house, that was in 1960

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u/1920MCMLibrarian Jan 07 '25

Honestly, good. Give the earth a goddamn break.

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u/Turd_Goblin911 Jan 07 '25

The children yearn for the mines

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u/No_Jelly_6990 Jan 07 '25

Musk, gates, et. al., must be quite excited these days.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

[deleted]

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u/Tearakan Jan 07 '25

Yep. The African birth rate has been declining too.

Immigration wont solve these issues ultimately. Changing our economic system is required just to handle the birth rate changes. And that's if we survive the coming climate chaos which is gonna get really horrific.

We are above the worst case scenario models for CO2 based climate change.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

[deleted]

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u/Tearakan Jan 07 '25

With our current government and economic systems in place I don't see that happening without extreme violence.

I wish there was another way but it seems like we are doomed to horrific violence this century regardless of the path we choose.

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u/SeattleResident Jan 07 '25

This isn't true at all. Every country will reach an equilibrium with populations. Even if the population declined like in South Korea, they still don't have to bring on a lot of migrants.

This whole "bring in migrants to fix declining birthrates" is only imperative if extreme forever growth of capitalism is the goal which we know is inherently bad nowadays. Countries are far more likely to begin to automate more which means migrants will actually hurt their economy by sapping resources in these societies. It's more likely in the coming future for countries to be far more closed borders to migrants as a whole across the global north as automation continues to take over.

You also have the problem that mass migration has its own problems in and of itself. A lot of cultures simply can't coexist as peacefully together as others and it will cause friction. This friction will invariably lead to mass violence and more conservative leadership being put into place in almost every Western country. This just means even more closed borders.

I simply don't see any scenario where mass migration happens from the global south to the north that doesn't involve extreme violence and war.

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u/Commentariot Jan 07 '25

It will happen and there will be extreme violence. Not that complicated.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

[deleted]

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u/osiris0413 Jan 07 '25

I'm glad you feel that way, but the administration we just elected and the supporters they have cultivated are anything but the "diversity is strength" type.

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u/No_Jelly_6990 Jan 07 '25

... but what about European culture? Aren't savages going g to destroy euro-history? That would be unfair... said the right-wingers.

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u/MegaThot2023 Jan 07 '25

Yeah, no thank you. I'm not going to support accepting any more sub-saharan immigrants/refugees than we already are.

You might be willing to sacrifice the well-being and cohesion of your nation due to climate guilt and self-loathing, but I'd rather my children not live in that kind of place.

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u/CommodoreQuinli Jan 07 '25

You won't have a choice, they need labor to subsist their empires. If the kids won't come from their citizens, they'll import them like always. Make the proles rail hard against immigration then turn around and double H1B visas.

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u/djinnisequoia Jan 07 '25

I look at it a little differently. If a woman has one child, she has replaced herself. In order for a man to replace himself, he must convince a woman to have a second child, and many men aren't being too convincing.

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u/conquer69 Jan 07 '25

Women in poor countries have lots of children because it's their "wifely duty". It's not their choice. All those countries are misogynistic.

Importing a bunch of sexists and hoping they keep up their sexism is not how a progressive country should hope to improve fertility rates.

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u/invariantspeed Jan 07 '25
  1. Most places with high fertility are still declining.
  2. The top end projections on when the human population peaks tend to just ask when we run out of enough food. We have a limit on us like yeast in a fermenting jug of grape mash.

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u/Roflkopt3r Jan 07 '25

The top end projections on when the human population peaks tend to just ask when we run out of enough food. We have a limit on us like yeast in a fermenting jug of grape mash.

The more reasonable estimates peak out at about 10 billion some time in the later half of the 21st century. So not that big of a change from our current 8 billion.

Estimates for how much population our resources could support are much more volatile. I believe typical estimates are at about 12-20 billion if we were reasonably efficient. Even now, the biggest issue is inequality/bad distribution/waste rather than total quantity after all.

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u/invariantspeed Jan 07 '25

Even now, the biggest issue is inequality/bad distribution/waste rather than total quantity after all.

True, but the devil is always in the details. That’s why the US exported tons of food to the Soviet Union even though its farms produced more than enough. Much of their food rotted in fields, unable to get across the country.

It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of our food waist comes from safety regulations, and there’s also just Americans eating more than is necessary to support them, but American farms would probably just produce less food if either of those were reduced. Food gets delivered to where it’s paid for.

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u/Roflkopt3r Jan 07 '25

In comparison, South Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. As of 2024, the TFR was reported at around 0.72 to 0.81, significantly below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. China and Japan's TFR are estimated to be approximately 1.1 and 1.2, respectively.

Yeah the bottom 3 are South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Wealthy but highly conservative and hierarchical societies with high economic competition between workers. Being a parent or a child is absurdly stressful there with the amount of educational competition and social expectations.

While all highly developed countries have low birth rates, those that offer more benefits and freedom to parents definitely have done better. It's just that even the Scandinavian countries aren't quite as "socialist" as many assume.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt Jan 07 '25

Carrot or the Stick

If you want your populace to have more children, you'll get more children by offering "carrot" policies then "stick" policies.

Carrot Policies being free healthcare, free daycare, more taxbreaks, more paid leave.

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u/jfrost378 Jan 07 '25

Are there any evidence that supports this? 

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u/Canjie_Pheasant Jan 08 '25

How many of the children survive to adulthood?

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u/MagicCuboid Jan 08 '25

And in the US, the first decade's expenses is a cakewalk compared to the college debt to come (if your aspiration is to help your kid pay at least, which is laughably out of reach to most anyway). As a teacher, I see so much anxiety and stress on the faces of kids' parents as they try to work every angle for scholarships.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but nowadays your children even helping you raise your other kids as seen as abusive. Kids went from helping to being completely helpless. 

Parents spend more time with their kids than ever. 

Also not a judgment but I do think the pendulum has swung and an equilibrium needs to be reached. However many circumstances in the world today have changed where that equilibrium lies.

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u/Mountain-Durian-4724 Jan 07 '25

Reopen the mines and steel mills

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

Samething with Africa even. Their birth rate is declining now too.

Can you give me some sources. I'd like to read. Thnx.

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u/kraggleGurl Jan 07 '25

That is one of the many reasons I got fixed at 25. 47 now. No regrets. I know I am a lucky lady to have been sterilized in my twenties when single and childless.

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u/ArchaicBrainWorms Jan 07 '25

I got a vasectomy at the same age, during the first few months of marriage. I just cold called urologists on my insurance website, scheduled a couple consultations.

Went with this urologist that had a Yosemite Sam figure on his desk and described his approach as "scorched earth". He asked how many kids I want and how many I already have. I replied "zero and zero", he told me that the math checks out and we scheduled it. Total bro, even hooked it up with that Micheal Jackson drug so he could take his time

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u/kraggleGurl Jan 07 '25

It's so my easier for guys. My ex-boyfriend got fixed after we dated. Very little paperwork and no psych eval. I was so jealous. He found the procedure nearly painless. No regrets for him either. They should give out tax credits fir us taking stress off the system.

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u/OMalley_ Jan 07 '25

It really is. When I went in for My initial appointment about a vasectomy, the urologist who I gathered later was a religious, pro-having kids type of man only asked:

Do you have kids?

Sure you don't want any?

Are you married?

Does your wife know you're here?

And that was that.

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Jan 07 '25

One of my friends got her tubes tied in her 20's, this was a long time ago as we're around your age.

The doctor apparently didn't want to do it because she was so young. She told the doctor that if she got pregnant she'd put the baby in a blender and pour it through their mail slot.

They decided to schedule her for surgery.

I talked to her not too long ago and asked her if she regretted doing it. She said no. I asked because I became a father after being fairly anti-kid. I feel like I'm more likely to regret having a kid than she is to regret not having a kid. But this is one of those paths not taken scenarios.

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u/kraggleGurl Jan 07 '25

Oh I like your friend.

I rattled off my list of reasons at Planned Parenthood and apparently it was convincing. A couple of weird appts later I was fixed. No one should have to go thru a "lite psych evaluation" and ream of paperwork just to not reproduce.

"Don't make me do it myself with a rusty ice cream scoop. I'll do it."

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u/Tricky-Sentence Jan 07 '25

You wanna get pregnant at 15? Go right ahead.

You want to get sterilized at 25/35/45? You are not ready for such a monumental, premanent decision.

Love being a woman.

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u/ManCakes89 Jan 09 '25

You know who also chose not to have kids? The Barefoot Contessa! “Isn’t that fabulous?” :Jazz piano:

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u/PhoenixTineldyer Jan 06 '25

Growing up, I was always taught "don't have kids if you can't afford them"

Growing up, I was always taught "God wants you to have a thousand Christian children, and he'll take care of all of them as long as you believe"

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u/ThatDandyFox Jan 06 '25

Contradictory messages. "have lots of kids to fulfill God's will" but if you can't take care of the kids "maybe you should have kept your legs closed"

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u/PhoenixTineldyer Jan 06 '25

Teach the kids to accept two opposites as simultaneous truth and you can make them do anything you want.

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u/uptownjuggler Jan 07 '25

Text book double-think

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u/TheWeidmansBurden_ Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

Vote directly against their own interests as long as it screws over [ insert group ]

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u/gavrielkay Jan 07 '25

That's due to the unholy marriage that makes up the current Republican party. The rich old white men who don't want to pay taxes got together with the poor young white men who want to feel superior to women and minorities. That's why you see the mixed message of 'give your man and your God lots of babies' and 'pay for it yourself you loser' coming out of the same party.

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u/Roflkopt3r Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

I'm by no means supportive of Christian natalism, but it's not contradictory.

They believe that you should get into a stable marriage first and then have children. And that as long as these conditions are given, you will be able to manage somehow. But if you don't have that, you should not have kids.

Obviously this has tons of issues:

  1. They want women to marry so young that they have no reasonable way to estimate how stable their marriage will be in the coming 30+ years.

  2. On top of that, young people make lots of mistakes in choosing their partners. Forcing them to stick it out no matter how it turns out means to accept domestic abuse at large scale (which is arguably a significant reason why so many Republicans want women to stop being able to get divorced...)

  3. Living on a single income have always been impossible for a large part of families, but it's especially so in our modern economy.

  4. It simply doesn't work. Highly developed traditionalist-chauvinist societies have the worst birth rates in the world.

South Korea is the peak example of how this model fails, being exactly what Republicans want America to be: Extremely sexist and conservative, lot's of "stable marriages", a strict social hierarchy, people are extremely economically competitive... yet the country is at the absolute bottom of birth rates, and the spirit among young Koreans is that their country is Hell Yoseon.

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u/Common_Senze Jan 07 '25

Sums up all of religion

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u/spinbutton Jan 07 '25

It is easy to look around and see how often god comes through on their side of that statement

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u/PhoenixTineldyer Jan 07 '25

Mysterious ways

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u/CardOfTheRings Jan 07 '25

Wonder which of those two philosophies will end up having the majority of the population in a democracy given a couple generations

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u/RudeAndInsensitive Jan 07 '25

There is a paper on this called "The Conservative Fertility Advantage" from a conservative think tank whose name presently escapes me. The conservative intelligensia is well aware that in time they are destined to win the political landscape. A victory doubly assured by liberal voters fleeing more conservative leaning districts for bright blue cities. In 30 years time Republicans will have a tight grip on all levels of government except for dense cities which will get rolled by their respective state governments plus DC.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer Jan 07 '25

The first 10 minutes of Idiocracy

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

Yeah I watched my parent’s relationship crumble, living paycheck to paycheck. No thank you.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

There's a lot more to having kids than just affording them, which is why I had MY vasectomy when I was 26.

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u/Outside-Advice8203 Jan 07 '25

Growing up, I was always taught "don't have kids if you can't afford them"

"Can't afford" also means "can't afford the medical risk"

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u/Altostratus Jan 07 '25

That’s certainly one way to look at it. There’s also the “I don’t want to be forced to deliver a potential rapist’s baby” argument. It may have nothing to do with someone’s finances or capabilities.

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u/AnotherBoojum Jan 07 '25

I'm thos far down the comments section and no one has yet mentioned that women are terrified that if they get pregnant and something goes wrong that the (possibly non-viable) fetus's life will be chosen over theirs. That they'll get an ectopic pregnancy and be left to bleed out internally rather than delivered medical care. That they'll have a normal miscarriage and be charged with foetucide.

America is a fudementally unsafe place for women right now

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u/saijanai Jan 07 '25

Most young women aren't getting sterilized in anticipation of being raped, I suspect. Certainly most men aren't getting vasectomies in anticipation of raping hordes of women (or so I also suspect).

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u/PhlegmMistress Jan 07 '25

Also factor in most women know their rapists, and sometimes that means they are their husbands or boyfriends. (Though certainly men can be raped and if they don't want kids ever then getting a vasectomy is a good idea in general, aside from the idea of rape.)

Women may feel that they might not be able to leave an abusive relationship (maybe they already have kids with their abuser and are waiting for their kids to get older. A baby would tie them to their abuser for longer.) but if women can get permanent birth control, then yes, I can see rape being a factor even if obviously the plan is never to be raped. 

I would have loved to have gotten my tubes tied in my 20s. I'm glad it seems to be easier now. 

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u/fizystrings Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

A male rapist loses way less by impregnating someone else than the "someone else" does, in fact as long as we are just talking about suspicions, I suspect a lot of male rapists actually are excited by the prospect of impregnating their victims against their will.

Edit to add that anecdotally, I know one person who did get her tubes tied specifically because she had already been raped before and was terrified of it happening again, and then having to suffer the rest of her life for it on top of it. It was before Roe v Wade was overturned, but if people are scared enough to do it in that sitiation I don't think it is a safe assumption that it just isn't something anyone would do after the risk becomes even higher

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy Jan 07 '25

It really helps when you witness teenage pregnancies in high school and see how having a baby pretty much ruins your childhood life and forces you into adulthood real quick.

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u/yeswenarcan Jan 07 '25

The same boomers who used that weapon against "welfare queens" are now pissed that they don't have grandkids.

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u/StrangeCharmVote Jan 07 '25

It sounds like people took that to heart.

Exactly.

If all these pearl clutching lunatics want people to stop having abortions, the real solution is to fix the economy so that people could afford to have children.

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u/Thascaryguygaming Jan 07 '25

Now when I tell my mom I can't afford them she says you will never be ready so just have kids. Um excuse me I make 17 an hour I cant afford a child.

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u/heeden Jan 07 '25

For the women in particular it's "don't have kids if your state regulations will leave you to die from unforeseeable complications with the pregnancy."

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u/alegonz Jan 07 '25

Also, Missouri state representatives were complaining that decades of sex ed had cratered the state's birth rate, thus admitting that teen pregnancy was a major factor in the state's birth rate.

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u/TourAlternative364 Jan 07 '25

People kind of forced into it as given no other option. It is understandable.

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u/nagi603 Jan 07 '25

Some other countries have basically banned these, so I'd expect that to be lifted over.

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u/PM_ME_IMGS_OF_ROCKS Jan 07 '25

Ironically said most often by people who want poor people to have as many kids as possible.

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u/JimBeam823 Jan 07 '25

The unintended consequences of this is that the next generation will either be the children of the affluent or the irresponsible.

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u/Reaverx218 Jan 07 '25

I have a daughter who I love dearly. But damn is raising a kid hard in this day and age. If the governments of the world want people to have more kids they better start subsidizing families more directly or else we are going to die as a species out of fear of destitution.

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u/FlanneryODostoevsky Jan 07 '25

Would be interesting to see if people who are lower income decided to spend a bunch of money in these procedures.

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u/korphd Jan 07 '25

Birth rates tend to drop as education raises... or laws pass that fucks up our lives

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u/putin_my_ass Jan 08 '25

Wife and I made that decision over 10 years ago because we didn't see great economic prospects in our future and we weren't cool with taking the plunge on a hope that things will get better.

We are super satisfied with that decision, after seeing our peers struggling over the past handful of years. This world is not an easy one to raise children in, and we saw it coming. I'm sure young people today see the same thing.

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u/ArtOfWarfare Jan 08 '25

Almost nobody knows how much kids cost though. I spent a long time trying to figure it out ahead of time and I asked a lot of parents and nobody could tell me.

Actually having the kid won’t exceed the max out of pocket on your insurance plan. So budget for that - but you should be budgeting for that anyways since you never know what medical disaster will strike.

After that your next biggest cost is child care. Check with daycares in the area. Personally I’m paying ~$375/week which works out to about $20K a year. There are small tax deductions for this but… mostly be prepared to eat that whole expense.

Then there’s formula. If you get it via club stores, that’s about $200/month (if you get it elsewhere, it can be way more expensive.) Baby will need either mother’s milk or formula for the first year but it stops after that.

And finally there’s diapers. Again, go to club stores. It’s about $50/month.

So the first year is $23K + the medical expenses, and then the next ~three are $20600 each.

Clothing and toys are basically free. Family and friends will just rain that stuff down on you, and if you need to buy it yourself, it’s cheap no matter where you get it, and you can find second hand stores where it’s even cheaper.

Food… my daughter is 19 months old. She just eats a bit of whatever my wife and I are eating… we haven’t noticed any increase in what we’re spending on food based on my daughter’s presence.

So… once she’s done with diapers and moves into public school, hopefully the expense goes way down.

Hope that helps someone.

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u/SuperToxin Jan 10 '25

Yea no i literally cant afford to have a kid, so I dont. Thats not gonna magically change either.

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u/nononoh8 Jan 07 '25

And they wonder why no one's having kids.

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u/devperez Jan 07 '25

I never liked this saying because reproduction is a human right. We should be contributing to systems that allow anyone who wants children, to have them. Reproduction shouldn't be limited to the wealthy.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '25

[deleted]

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u/Phyraxus56 Jan 07 '25

You never learned how to pull out?

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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 Jan 07 '25

You know what they call people who pull out? Parents.

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u/homelaberator Jan 07 '25

Because their children interrupt them when they are trying to have sex.

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u/Otherwise_Athlete198 Jan 07 '25

it's probably the smartest thing

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