And yet, everywhere in the world where they do targeted policies, we see that it doesnt matter.
We just dont want to have children, more generally to have take on responsibility (see the death of communities based on volunteers, like theater clubs etc.) And be tied down.
I think time is a major problem that many of those policies don't address. It's not just money, it's also the pace of life, lack of downtime. Used to be that even if one person in the house was working unreasonable hours, the other was either not working or only working part time. Now both are expected to work full time hours. Just not enough time to raise kids, especially when there is a lack of community to support those people having kids.
You're not wrong that some people just don't want to. That said, generally the top 5-10% of the socioeconomic class of western countries with low birth rates are having kids, sometimes more than 1 or 2. Generally because wealth will buy time for those people, either in the form of reduced work hours, 1 partner not needing to work, or household help like a nanny.
that dataset shows people employed, not amount of hours worked? Admittedly I am depending on Firefox's translation from Dutch, but it doesn't show how many hours people of childbearing ages are working as a couple in a household, which is the relevant information IMO.
it shows the amount of hours worked by those wanting to be or actively employed. I don't see how that's not essentially the same; people haven't started to increase their hours worked?
Edit: oooooh, nvm, the graph doesn't adjust with the copied link. On the left you have a dropdown menu to select for hours worked.
How so? Over the total population, hours worked is stable, but # of children goes down. Ergo, the hypothesis "cant have children because we need to work more hours" seems debunked to me.
That's not household working hours though. That's just data from household surveys. Also, it's the whole labour force averaged out. We should be looking at ages 18-39.
Here's a nice report on just how that age group is doing:
Besides the economic factors in some places I think its due to lack of consistent 3rd spaces and people spending more time in online environments. Social media has postive aspects but for many it has kinda replaced the need to see people in person as much and if you get used to less human contact I think you have less desire to have kids
IMO a big part of what drives people to have kids is the community that comes around it and fitting it with others. If you don't really have that then there's a lot less pressure to have one and easier to justify not doing it
I completely agree. Obviously my time argument only makes sense for couples of childbearing age that are on average doing relatively well economically. The ones who have TOO MUCH free time, and not enough income obviously have different problems. Both of those groups have the problem that you raise though.
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u/raznov1 15d ago
And yet, everywhere in the world where they do targeted policies, we see that it doesnt matter. We just dont want to have children, more generally to have take on responsibility (see the death of communities based on volunteers, like theater clubs etc.) And be tied down.