Also, maybe 8 billion is "enough". Not breeding is only a problem for the economy. Capitalism needs perpetual growth, there is no end game, just more, of everything, forever.

Want higher birthrates? Just convince people that tomorrow will be better than today.

That's how you see a spike in birth rates.

To maintain a steady birthrate, just convince potential parents that the world will not be any worse for their children than it is today.

See, easy.

This raises birth rates

I'm trying to get pregnant, but it's kinda hard when you're a guy. I won't stop trying, tho. 🫡

The birth rate moral panic is 100% manufactured by neoliberal capitalists who simultaneously want high consumption and low wages, which is a logical impossibilty. You cannot have a consumerist society where the average consumer lives paycheck to paycheck

I mean you're half right. In a zoo, the keepers care for their animals, making sure they're well fed, enriched, and healthy.

We're being farmed. They are using us to make money from our produce (labour). They're using us to make money. We're so over exploited we simply cannot afford to have children.

im not spending a fortune to raise a child when i can barely afford eggs

A friend of mine has three kids and works 70 hours a week. He is not able to make enough to support his family, and social services have been cut so much that his only option is to take out a personal loan, which will only make his problem worse.

Growing up, I was of the mindset that I would have got married and started a family by this point in my life. But as of the last few years, my thoughts have done just about a 180.

Even if I was currently with someone/married, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to raise kids in this day and age in the US (the bullet dodged me when my ex-girlfriend used plan b after we got intimate without protection). I think best case scenario for me now would be DINK, but gotta find someone that can put up with my dumpster fires first.

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation...

Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it. But in civilised society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.

The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their children, and consequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen and extend those limits. It deserves to be remarked, too, that it necessarily does this as nearly as possible in the proportion which the demand for labour requires. If this demand is continually increasing, the reward of labour must necessarily encourage in such a manner the marriage and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to supply that continually increasing demand by a continually increasing population.

• Adam Smith, the father of capitalism

I wish I could feel comfortable bringing children into the world.

I really want to be a parent in my life

why would I want to bring somebody into this world. they'd only have to fight for basic things like "let's be nice to each other" and "maybe we should pool our money to spend it on big things that benefit us all"

fuck that. I'll live my little servile life as a cog in the machine as best I can, and then I'll die. and the dumb fucks who won't stop breeding while they try to make things worse for their children will repopulate the earth

I want biological kids, and I'm right about the point in my life where it would make the most sense to have them. But whenever family asks about it, I tell them I'm not raising children in this kind of administration. They try to suggest that it's not that bad and I stand firm that they're not seeing grandbabies until the government stops being so fashy.

Actually, millennials could probably hold our hypothetical babies hostage, see what's more important to them.

I love this person's glasses.

Dumb question: do we really need more people? It feels very much like technology/productivity will allow us to support a good lifestyle with fewer people.

Proud owner of a tubal litigation here

Born in 84, I've noticed something of a trend in my area. Late gen X and late millennials are having children, most are having two or three, but a lot of people like me born in the mid 80's aren't. While this is by no means universal, there does seem to be more people within five years of my age going without kids.

By choice.

Not my choice tbh.