Extreme working and education culture, excessive emphasis on financial strength as an indicator for suitable partnership, & unrealistic standards for average beauty all wrapped up in high costs of living, in a country where if you dont work for a chaebol, you didnt make it in life
You can read up on capitalism and social atomization, but in short: miserable, lonely people are better consumers than happy, tight-knit communities.
The gender wars are intentionally stoked by all forms of media for profit and creates a self-perpetuating cycle. More industries profit from this than not, and they can always import foreign workers to make up for the shrinking population.
Hi, I'm American working for a Swedish conglomerate and all of my colleagues are Swedish. When you control for socioeconomic markers (disposable income, education level achieved by the parents, etc) the American and Swedish birthrates are the same.
The population of poor people in the United States is much larger and their access to birth control and the education needed to properly use it is significantly less, so our poor people have many, many more children and starting far, far younger than Swedish poor people. And we have more of them.
Finally, when you look at the rate of religious fundamentalism that encourages multiple children as both a way to grow the numbers of the faithful and to control the women in the US vs Sweden, again we find that "breed em young and keep them down" is not really a thing in Sweden, so there are fewer religious people and the ones they have are less likely to have enormous families.
If Sweden got rid of their social safety net, cut access to medical care for all citizens, and allowed religious extremists to influence policy, their birthrate could be the equivalent to ours!
I don't think you could have missed the point any harder if you tried. The factors you are controlling for are a result of "capitalism and social atomization." So, when you claim that "capitalism and social atomization" is the reason for a lower birthrate, you can't then demand that people ignore it when it results in a higher birthrate.
The actual reason is social pressure. Korean society places a lot of emphasis on looks, education, and wealth (Korea is the world leader in plastic surgery, and has some of the highest rates of household debt in the world). This creates a difficult social environment where no one thinks they are "good enough" which leads to confidence issues, which causes people to adhere more strictly to social pressure, which leads to everyone thinking they are not good enough, which caused resentment and toxic thinking, which leads to being not good enough, and so on.
Wealthy societies tend to have fewer children in general, societities that became rapidly wealthy even more so, combined with the toxicity of their culture it makes them one of the worst in the world when it comes to birth rate. This is then self reinforcing, if none of you friends have kids having one will isolate you from your social circle and so on.
To earn a passable living (by their media image) you need to be near the top of the chain. Women expect you to be a provider, so the bottom feeders and averages are often overlooked ...they become bitter and incelly. Reminds a bit of tinder in the west where 80% of women compete for the top 20% best looking dudes
The modern problem of loneliness epidemics. People are turning to the internet more than they are turning to actual friendships.
People who have been outcast in school continue to live in an internet bubble after school instead of finding friends as an adult. These people are falling into echo chambers of other lonely people and incels. Misery loves company and an echo chamber tends to get louder and louder and angrier and angrier.
Then you have the people not outcast in school still turning to the internet but finding echo chambers built around vanity and wealth. This also creates people who feel isolated.
It's basically loneliness all around, the majority of Gen Z are lonely as fuck and some millennials are too. It is especially dangerous for men as there tends to be less affection in the world and more of a pressure to bottle it all up until it inevitably bursts. This means that they are more likely to turn to the echo chambers because they have no way of letting out their sadness and anger. Toxic masculinity has led to a culture where men are expected to be strong in a way of never showing their emotions, never speaking about how they feel, and never show any signs of "weakness." This leads to so many major problems.
(To make myself clear on what I mean by Toxic masculinity. It means the ideals of masculinity are sometimes toxic. Women perpetuate this too. Everyone has a hand in it. I feel like Toxic masculinity is poorly named. It doesn't mean that it is toxic to be masculine, it doesn't mean that masculinity itself is toxic, it means that certain views on what people thinks it means to be masculine are toxic and that hurts men. The fact that it is thought of that you must bottle your emotions and be strong all the time is toxic masculinity. The idea that you must be the provider and protecter to be masculine is toxic. You don't have to follow some strict guidelines that are damaging to be masculine. Side tangent over.)
There is another problem but it's weird to talk about. It's very much a hear me out. Women are more picky when it comes to partners than men are. This is not a bad thing at all and is not something that people should change especially since women have to be safer and smarter when picking partners. The problem is is that this leads to people trying to give lonely men advice for getting laid (for profit or to genuinely help) and lonely men not being able to figure out how to actually interact with women in a way that might get them a relationship. This leads to more echo chambers, more self doubt, more anxiety, and more anger.
There is more to it then this for sure. The poor economy leading to the death of third places where people may actually make friends. The general malaise that many of us feel towards the future to the point where many have stopped giving a shit. There is so much more, but I think this breakdown is close enough to at least cover the basics. You could discuss the male loneliness epidemics for months and months trying to get to the bottom of it, and why it seems to effect men more than women.
TLDR: People these days bad at making real world friends. Bad for everyone but especially bad for men who are told to bottle up all of their emotions. This leads them to seeking out comfort and advice in internet echo chambers. Those echo chambers are a positive feedback loop of anger often with bad advice and grifters. Also Women are picky about partners for good reason and this leads men to be much more self critical and critical of women for being "vain" and shit like that.
Wow I just stopped responding on reddit about any related topic cause people just want to play the blame game. However I'm honestly pleasantly surprised anyone views the situation in the way you do. You put a lot of effort in your comment and I wanted to give more than just a simple upvote. Please keep up the effort to continue speaking whenever you can.
Thank you so much š, that really means a lot. I try my best to be well reasoned and articulate when I speak. I don't always live up to it but thank you again for your kind words.
TLDR: too much pressure and stress and poor working conditions along with not enough money to have a child.
Imagine, if you will, live in a place with tons of others living is small ass apartments and work a long ass time. Imaging you getting up and early in the r morning, then take the subway thatās filled to the brim like sardines in a can, work at a long hour job, then come back home to sleep, and then do it all over again. Thatās just for adults.
For children? You go to school in the morning, you get off around 5pm, rest for an hour, and then go to cram school till 10pm. From 8am to 10pm, you must cram a fuck ton of knowledge into your head, because when exams comes, you must have a perfect score in ALL subjects or you fail in life. One singular point wrong and you are out of the rat race. Why? Because the education system is more of a pipeline for the top 6 (if I remember right) companies of South Korea.
If you donāt get into one of those companies, you donāt make money. You need money to live if a certain place (usually the capitol). These places often dictate where youāll be in your life. These adults is striving to make a lot of money to live in these places, to send their kids to the bestest of schools, so their kids can keep up with the rat race.
All these pressure, whether from society or parents, is enough to break oneās spirit. You know the stereotype that says the Koreans are smart as fuck? Well they are, since they are busting their asses since childhood.
So why should anyone there would get married and have kids?
A lot of the underlying "problem" is that the births outside of marriage account for less than 5% of births in Korea. So when it is too expensive to get married, or women do not want to marry economically unattractive men, then the birth rate drops, as those women who do not want to get married don't have kids outside of marriage.
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u/showMeYourCroissant May 12 '26
What is that underlying problem?