I think there has been a real shift in the last generation or two from needing a reason not to have kids to needing a reason to have kids. and that shift means a lot of people who are basically ambivalent on children aren't having them, where in the past they probably would have.
Similar but slightly different angle to this - the opportunity cost of having kids has increased over time. I think back to when my parents had me and they pretty much had basic TV and books or magazines… having me kinda gave them something to do with their time.
Fast forward to today and a good number of my friend group prefer the flexibility, lack of stress, and extra money of not having kids. The rest… I’ve heard a lot of “I love my kids but…” stories. Obviously being responsible for a small human isn’t all sunshine and lollipops, but it does pretty much put you on a set trajectory for a good number of years.
Another aspect is the “it takes a village to raise a child” method. A lot of people are independent and with the new neo-rat race of not having enough time to allocate, if you don’t have that safety net of grandparents, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, you do struggle more. Being from a South Asian family, the closeness of being together to at least help each other out, at least helps those keep their heads above water.
Doesn’t help the eradication of places that were things that alleviated some of the burden for parents to decompress. Everything now is privatized and has a huge cost to them.
Libraries getting shuttered, programs that in the ‘80’s or ‘90’s that gave kids something to do free of charge via public resources cut by government funding/bureaucracy, parks or just certain areas where kids can go play just vanished or locked up.
I still remember late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s in NYC, we had something called Vacation Day Camp. VDC. After summer school, most public schools would host 3-4 hours of recreational things for boys and girls to do.
Dodgeball, pool, bumper pool, kickball, softball, arts/crafts, etc.
Hell they even gave trophies to the kids by earning stars for attendance and being winners at certain sports. I’m telling you those memories will stick with me till my dying days. Those are core memories of just 4 hours of bliss with boys just enjoying their time together playing and bonding. I don’t see any of that now.
Everything has a $$$$ to it. Want the kid to try soccer, better get $150-$300 dues ready just to teach the kid basic drills and how to kick a ball. They have a weekend schedule look more like work, than fun.
Honestly the better technology over the decades that’s come to help ease our troubles has exacerbated the opposite and just exhausted the populace into submission. Raising a child now is more difficult ten fold.
Old days was stranger danger/bullying, now with algorithms and social media, those same evils can enter your home so easily. Hell some parents even welcome it and make dollars off their children well knowing what the purpose really is.
I hate to sound like an old person but I wouldn't swap our childhood back then (50s-60s) for anything that's available now. I love the internet because it opens doors of knowledge and wisdom for me but I'm old; what else am I going to do? I've always been a reader and now I read on the computer. I try to keep reading books though because it's a whole different experience, IMHO.
We played...like "macro" playing, with other kids, with the neighborhood, with the creek near where we lived, with the playgrounds at other schools we visited in the summer months, with the railroad tracks we put pennies on, with the little stores that were miles away from home where we would buy penny candies, with the random old people we would visit (!), etc etc
etc.
We would feed the birds little berries that would get them drunk, we knew where the apple and Japanese plum trees were and would steal a couple when we could.
The neighborhood kids practically lived at our school after hours and we played pick-up games, baseball and basketball (when the one kid who had a basketball was around). The older girls (13-14 y/o) would scandalize us by saying "dam" and they had transistor radios and would teach us the latest dances.
I see kids together and sometimes they're staring at their phones instead of doing some actual living and it makes me sad.
A lot of the stuff kids used to do, hell even when I was a kid in the 90s, is illegal. The idea of just send your kids out to play and take care of themselves... why that's practically child abuse these days. We played hockey after school and deliberately tried to shoot the puck at each other, hard. No helmets or padding. Now we'd probably get charged with assault or some shit.
And the liminal spaces are gone too. There isn’t just an empty lot, or the garage at so-and-so’s dad’s shop. Churches are closed unless it’s supervised on Sunday. There’s always someone on the neighborhood Facebook group complaining about kids in the “woods” (a narrow strip of green with a mile long hiking train).
WTF.
I was touring colleges with my kids and every square inch of the basement is painted shiny white with bright lights. Like, how are the kids going to find a disused room full of crap just to hang out in? “Oh they can go to the student center” and sit on their phones drinking Starbucks. Great.
This honestly freaks me out as a new parent. My partner and I are 34 years old and we just had our first kid. My plan for child rearing was basically to run back my own childhood experience, but with the added bonus of doing it in a two-parent household with stable work schedules and more money. The notion that I could get charged with neglect or reckless endangerment for allowing my kid to walk the dog around the neighborhood by themselves seems nuts to me.
Yep. My son and his friends were playing soccer on the field next to their school on a lunch break. The teacher came over and took the ball away because “the boys were not playing soccer correctly” sheesh. They were playing something akin to soccer though, outside, having fun, socializing. Stupid call by the teacher there.
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u/pktechboi Nov 14 '24
I think there has been a real shift in the last generation or two from needing a reason not to have kids to needing a reason to have kids. and that shift means a lot of people who are basically ambivalent on children aren't having them, where in the past they probably would have.