this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
197 points (95.0% liked)

News

23294 readers
4181 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] JackFrostNCola 74 points 5 months ago (6 children)

I keep hearing stories about falling birth rates, USA, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and on and on.
The articles often pose many questions about why younger generations dont seem to care about having kids, but very few articles actually say the real reasons:

  • Being able to afford a house or stable long term rent without either option competing for money to buy food or other essentials
  • Further to this the cost of a child once you can get by with enough money for the above
  • Climate change & future conditions for their children anxiety
[–] The_v 36 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

The first one is the main reason we could afford to have kids.

We were able to buy our first house because of three things. First the housing market crash in 2008-9. My wife's car was totaled by a rich bitch in a Mercedes. Our rented duplex was robbed and we had renters insurance. The combination of insurance payments and cheaper prices allowed us to purchase our first home.

My house payment hasn't changed since 2009. It made up 36% of our take-home income then. Today it makes up less than 11%. I pay less per month than it costs to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.

The older I get the more I see that landlords are a parasite on society. They extract huge amounts of wealth from the suffering of others.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I bought an old home in ~2016, I'm 100% conditionally with the VA so was looking at fitting expenses to my budget. After recently upping my payment to pay it off for my 50th bday (36 now) its only $600/mo. $632 or something right now cause insurance sucks at the moment.

Ive watched as people have gone from happy for me, to jokingly jealous, to jealous, to cranky jealous, to "I'm going to off you and steal your identity." 🤣

This market sucks and we HAVE to get institutional investors out of housing. We HAVE to start building. In order to do that, we HAVE to stop this cultural bullshit of housing being the prime investment/retirement vehicle for Americans.

[–] Olhonestjim 4 points 5 months ago

Totally jealous, but I'm happy for you. I'm glad you get to own a home.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A big one is that pregnancy and child birth SUUUUUCK. Women finally have the ability to avoid it entirely, and I don't blame them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Honestly I don't think that's the biggest factor. I think a lot more people would be willing to go through the process of having kids, if they felt financially stable enough to properly care for them afterwards.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

im not sure I would call the last point anxiety. As existential threats go its not like nuclear war. Which might or might not happen based on our actions. Its something that is definately happening and extreme good action by us might mitigate it but we by and large have been taking worse actions or at best our beneficial vs non beneficial actions cancel each other out. Heck even without climate change pollution alone has the same ending.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

"apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill : a state of being anxious" -Merriam Webster

Nothing about the word 'anxiety' implies that it's an unrealistic or irrational feeling. You might be thinking of phobias.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Its happening now though. Its like being anxious about walking down a dark alley because you might get the shit beat out of you as opposed to being anxious about the medical bills you will have while your getting the shit beat out of you.

[–] HauntedCupcake 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Climate change is happening now, but the anxiety is about how bad it'll get in the future

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

yeah. I guess is are they not having it because of anxiety about the future or the fact its a reality now and the future effects are just reality. Is facing reality anxiety?

[–] HauntedCupcake 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I'm just saying that accepting your definition of anxiety being tied to apprehension, anxiety about the climate is still valid.

I would say your definition is correct, but your application is extremely limited. The anxiety is about things getting worse, it's a vague nebulous feeling that can apply 1ms in the future or several decades. Or even about finding out past information in the future (the unknown). Or just not knowing what the future holds.

So yes, being super pedantic, you can't really be anxious about the literal state of the literal climate literally right now, but it's instead about the possible future outcomes and events. But it's very commonly understood that when someone says they're anxious about climate change, they don't mean it in the super pedantic literal way

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

this has actually benn really interesting for me and im now evaluating how I think of both depression and anxiety.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

They specifically said they were talking about how bad it would get in the future, and the future is definitely not happening now.

But also, pay attention to the word "usually" in the definition i quoted.

If you think that one cannot be anxious about something happening right the fuck now, then you don't know much about anxiety. Which is not a slam, I'm mostly jealous.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Im starting to get it. the phrase just to me sounds like its more about a possibility but the replies make me get it. I definitely get anxiety from current circumstances although I guess both my wife and I were discussing that with our depression. Its not like it can be cured because it comes from our current circumstances and often you think about like diagnosis and medication and its like how is that going to help when there are external factors. We think of it as more anxiety/depression for no reason or for reasons that should not cause them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The real reason is more educated people worry to much, and less educated people just go for it.

[–] TubularTittyFrog 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

A lot of women I meet dating think there is no point to having a kid unless you can you are a 8 figure millionaire. it's absurd to me, since i grew up on a family income of like 30K.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

After having a kid, I can confirm younger is better. 5 years ago would have gave me a lot more energy, and not significantly less money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

They have 17 kids.

[–] TubularTittyFrog 4 points 5 months ago

education and healthcare costs too

[–] DarkCloud 3 points 5 months ago

Also, wouldn't increasing the population cause more inflation. Like if you look at Japans decline in Japanese born citizens it overlaps with the "lost years" of economic growth, which was a surprisingly stable period where depreciation ruled the economy... Prices for every day items were stable for decades on end.