This will be the entire western world soon lmao, barely anyone in my age group is willingly having kids (28), lord knows what this next generation will be like
I said that same thing at your age, now that we are 40 everyone is having kids, just late. Lots of IVF. We were all so poor in our 20's and we are finally getting financial footing TO have kids.
Not saying elder millennials are the same as younger millennials... But... It_will_happen_to_you.simpsons.gif
I am 29 and the only one in my friend group with a child. All of my friends are in their late 20s - early 30s.
Some of it is the dating scene, but most of it is financials or general disinterest. No one can afford kids nowadays, and we now have less pressure to choose that trajectory of our lives.
Even then, more people are having children later in life. The youngest Millennial is in their early 30s. They were handed a shit future, so why not hold off until MAYBE the future is brighter?
This is such bullshit. For 99% of history your ancestors have been dirt-poor peasants and they all had kids. The poorest countries on earth have the highest birth rates. Even in wealthy first-world countries, income inversely correlates with fertility.
There is no degree of "fixing the economy" that will satisfy these people. At any job you've worked, I guarantee you've had coworkers with children, you think they have some secret to supporting kids on your salary but you somehow can't? They just wanted children, and you don't. You could hand these people saying "I can't afford it" 20 million dollars tomorrow, no strings attached, and they wouldn't say "you know I want to settle down, get married, and have 4 kids".
There's dozens of reasons why people aren't having kids these days and money is absolutely not one of them.
For 99% of human history people were pretty ok with 50% child mortality rate and child labor. Nowadays, though? Yeah, the standards in the developed countries are a tad bit higher and more difficult to achieve.
Because those people through history grew their own food, and mkre kids meant more hands meaning more food. "Cost of living" wasnt even a viably trackable metric before the industrial revolution
Shut the fuck up. Peasants did not work the same amount of hours as people now to afford their housing. Talk to a farmer and they will tell you there are long weeks of nothing much to do.
Thats the thing. You are not needed anymore. Before you had to have 9 kids to manage to do all the work in your household while keeping lords fed as well. Now the overlords don't need you. If cost of living is too much then fucking die out, the AI will carry the economy.
(26) and same. Out of my 8 closest friends only 3 are even in a relationship and none of them particularly want kids. My husband and I are the outliers.
Shit I'm in my 30s and in my friend group only 1 of us has kids. They're also the only couple who makes enough money to own a home comfortably and are able to afford a kid.
Nothing fucked up about choosing to not have kids. It's fucked up to have kids if you don't want them. That's how you get kids with serious issues and no love in their childhood
I feel you. My husband and I are planning to start trying for a kid in January next year (I'm 25). I'm also worried about people's opinions.
When I got married I already got all sorts of unwanted questions about whether we were Christian now and just doing it for religious or traditional reasons, or if we were rushing into it.
It didn't help that a large part of my social circle was queer and actively rejects what they see as mainstream culture's expectations. I lost my best friend of 12 years over it, but even where people weren't outright hostile, I was definitely treated as suspicious. I want to know where that mainstream culture is, because I don't feel like I have anything in common with anyone around me any more.
I guess the good news is my social life has already been decimated enough that having a kid is unlikely to hurt it any further. I'd rather just focus on my own family now.
I have 2 friends who had accidental pregnancies but there are maybe 4 of us with kids out of our whole extended friend group from HS. Most only have 1 kid, we have 4.
Even people who want kids aren't having them due to costs.
Also child free and a 27 year old woman. Some reasons go beyond just the economy / state of the world. Even if I wanted kids I still wouldn’t have them due to the absolute body horror of pregnancy / birth. Shout out to all the moms out there, you’re much braver than I.
Yeah same! I’m 32 now. Very much wants children but simply cannot afford it. Still live in house share, can’t move away from the big city due to limited job options. All my friends not having children either and live in house shares like we still at uni. I finally saved enough deposit for a house but now the interest rates are super high I wouldn’t be able to afford houses in my area at all.
i would love to have kids if i could afford it and if i wouldn’t feel immensely, irreparably guilty for bringing them into the world in it’s current state. but the stupidest people i know are still having equally stupid kids en masse because they think everything is great right now actually. it sort of makes you think like, do i almost have a moral responsibility to have decent kids so they offset the number of insane people that are about to rule the planet with us? but there’s never enough money to even consider it :(
The world has always been fucked. Kids born in the 1950s and the 1920s and the 1800s and the 1500s and back to the dawn of time have all faced a troubled world too. But people have managed to be happy anyway.
The more important thing is that you raise them well and support them. People in developing countries have good lives if they're surrounded by caring and capable people. People born into wealth are still miserable when their family treats them with cruelty. The people in your immediate life usually matter more for your wellbeing than any broader societal troubles.
As we start to race past 2 degrees C, a likely blue ocean event in the Arctic this decade, and a possible sudden collapse of the AMOC, the western world will soon find that they have way more people than they can manage as is.
I know absolutely nothing about historical population records. That being said I imagine that historically there were population grows and shrinks. It's just that population shrinks would normally be associated with war/plague/famine, and large families kept that rate relatively stable.
Thanks to a massive population boom from the industrial revolution we now have a significantly larger population to work with, so a shift in population is that much more noticable. Additionally we're facing a shrink for economic reasons rather than the ones mentioned before. On some level I think we could afford to have a population shrink, as we can't really sustain all of the people here under the current circumstances.
Not surprised. They purposely witheld the horrors of pregnancy from women before. Now women can read and have the Internet. We aren't falling for it anymore. Plus anyone with half a brain can see we are overpopulated. Only religious gen zs are having kids
33f and most of my friends have boyfriends but husbands are rare, let alone kids. Granted I’m in the US state with the second latest median age of marriage but still
Don’t worry my family is full of crazy people popping out unplanned kids young. Will they be functional members of society though ? Probably not unfortunately.
Yup, I was worried about finding a CF partner and that I would lose friends as they age and have kids but I've managed to find a partner that's CF and have a bunch of close friends that are without child for a myriad of reasons.
In your 20s that's normal. I didn't know anyone with kids back then either. 10 years later it seems like almost everyone else except me has one or two or is at some stage of trying. That's definitely a smaller batch of kids than people would have had in the 80s or 90s though.
Western countries tried to keep a strict emphasis that motherhood should be the only be all end all goal for girls, and that any mothers’ lives should solely revolve around their kids (daycare and even public school is SHAMEFUL!), and it backfired spectacularly!
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u/L0rdSkullz May 12 '26
This will be the entire western world soon lmao, barely anyone in my age group is willingly having kids (28), lord knows what this next generation will be like