When the global population does decline sometime this century, it will be the first time since the Black Death, 700 years ago. But this time, it will be driven by human choice – specifically, the choice of women globally to not have so many children.
Often it’s just the money. People can’t afford having kids. Cost of living is just to high in all developed countries.
Yeah I wondered about how much of “women said this is what they want” was really “women can’t imagine having mouths to feed in this environment”. Wanting for self satisfaction and wanting for avoidance of future hardship are different.
Maybe but anecdotally it doesn’t seem that.
Poor people+ have quite a few kids near me, they just don’t send then to private schools, dont pay for any further education, don’t enrol them in 400 activities that require diriving them all over the place, don’t send them on overseas camp trips to Japan etc an old bicycle and a football is about it for outdoor activities. Pool entry is free in my town for example and full of kids in summer.
Middle class seem to have maybe one kid but hell, one I know spent nearly $5k on their 2yr olds birthday and also claim “kids are expensive”
I don’t have any kids but that was a deliberate decision and vasectomy decades ago becase the world is full.
+I say poor people but I should qualify that as working class, manual labour, 20yr old car, small house partly run down, in a small town where kids can get about everywhere on a bicycke. There are dozens of these families in the very small town where i live.
I susoect its women having a choice, thinking abiut it and going fuck that. Speaking to older Gen X women or booner women on occasion and they said they didn’t even think about it, it was just what was done.
I still rember helping fund a contraceptive class aka Famiky Planning in Camboida and being there (on the periphery) when the female nurse explained to the women they could have this medicine injected under their arm and no then kids and their eyes lit up with and such animation and joy about that ability to have control.
Good call. Good call.
