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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I'm reminded of the "lets define conservativism" in Gen Pol. Specifically, of the idea that conservativism focuses on individuals over structural problems. In this case shaming people into having children instead of addressing the actual (structural) problems that lead people into not having children.
Edited by Risa123 on Nov 27th 2023 at 6:31:08 PM
Surely there must be some balance of personal vs. societal responsibility here, no? If social support for child rearing were as crucial a factor as it's claimed to be, why do poorer countries have higher birthrates?
Yes, I know the basic answer: because more children equals more chance of being cared for in old age. But this presents a paradox: the more support we give for the elderly, the fewer kids people have? This is not sustainable.
Edited by Fighteer on Nov 27th 2023 at 2:27:26 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Then society should actually fucking incentivize having kids in a serious way. Because right now, it's just a lot of punishing people for having kids. The average cost of giving birth in the US is $18,865. You can buy a car with that. For many people, it's half or more of a year's salary. And that's on top of things like the disgustingly high maternal mortality rate the US has and the incredibly high cost of childcare and the lack of substantial family support in most of the country.
And poorer countries tend to have higher birthrates because of a lack of contraceptives and social structures that mean women tend to be less educated. It's seriously that. I don't think that's an example to pull anything from. It turns out that when there's no way to prevent pregnancy, no access to safe abortion and the culture tells women their only job is to raise kids, that you have more kids.
And that paradox isn't much of one. We can use immigration for now to shore things up while (ideally) adjusting the welfare system in order to put less of a burden on younger people while still letting older people handle things with dignity. Countries like Japan and South Korea are refusing to use the immigration stopgap to give them time to handle things, but the US and most of the west is refusing to fix the system with the time they're buying. But as is, the answer it's increasingly looking like is just making it so old people can't retire.
Edited by Zendervai on Nov 27th 2023 at 2:40:05 PM
Assuming this isn’t a rhetorical question and you just missed my earlier explanation.
- Healthcare provision is generally worse so people aren’t able to choose as much.
- Women have fewer rights so can be forced to have children more easily and will often face expectations to care for the children of others.
- Social support is stronger due to jobs and families being more localised.
- Children provide more imidiate economic benefit due to lower barriers to workplace entry (high-level education exists in the Developing World but it’s not the must have it is in the Developed World) and child labour being more common.
So yes if we send children to factories or everyone started homesteading again we could boost the birth rate that way, but I know I’d rather we did it in a way that didn’t compromise the social and economic progress that we’ve made over the last couple hundred years.
Edited by Silasw on Nov 27th 2023 at 8:05:30 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI'm sorry, but, "Conservatives want children so they can maintain white demographics against those evil minorities," should not map to, "Well then we should stop having children to spite them." That's toddler level psychology.
Edited by Fighteer on Nov 27th 2023 at 3:01:29 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I fail to see what giving birth will accomplish if you can't afford to raise the child to adulthood.
My musician page"I'm sorry, but, "Conservatives want children so they can maintain white demographics against those evil minorities," should not map to, "Well then we should stop having children to spite them." That's toddler level psychology."
Who said this? We're saying that there's a lot of really legitimate reasons to not choose to have a child and that the GOP tactic is 1) intended to force people into having children and 2) racist as fuck.
You need an actual answer to all of those reasons to not have a kid that isn't just "but the conservatives are having kids" because you need to actually address the real problems that people are facing and give them a compelling personal reason to have kids that isn't "we need to beat the other team." Because when you're asking people to potentially bankrupt themselves and have kids when they genuinely do not feel like they're ready or in a place where they can bring up a kid properly, you're giving them a really hard sell and you need to meet them where they're at and actually take their position into account.
And "having kids is way too expensive, I literally can't afford it, and I'm scared I'd just be bringing them into this world to die from climate change" is really hard to argue against.
Edited by Zendervai on Nov 27th 2023 at 3:14:52 PM
There's also the psychological aspect, i.e. some people don't want to have children because they don't think they're capable of being parents.
Which is honestly a good thing - you shouldn't have children just because society thinks you should if you feel like you'd just end up messing them up for life.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Nov 27th 2023 at 9:17:09 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyWhich under no circumstances is something to mock or belittle. In fact, doing so is a really great indicator that you're behaving like an absolutely garbage person with zero regard for the people who are dealing with something that is usually difficult to think through and decide on.
There's a lot of people with severe mental issues who don't have kids because they don't want to saddle anyone with the problems they had. I remember statements to the effect of the "left being in a sad place" because the forum has a lot of people who are self-aware enough about themselves to understand the situation and make an informed and responsible decision.
Which is pretty damn revolting to say about people who choose to not risk hurting a baby they aren't equipped to raise.
Yes, blah blah blah tragedy of the commons blah blah blah, bullshit. Under no circumstances is it okay or reasonable to force people to have children if they don't want to. We have had people fighting for centuries for the right of women to genuinely be able to choose and that is the bottom line. Everyone has the right to choose to have kids or not and fuck anyone who pushes back against that or tries to argue that it's not perfectly valid, reasonable and responsible to choose to not have a kid.
Edited by Zendervai on Nov 27th 2023 at 3:21:40 PM
The assumption underlying the "we need to breed more good white Christians to keep dem (insert minority slur here) from outvoting us" has always fascinated me - as when white people are demanding that other white people have kids, they don't stop to consider that the people they're haranguing might raise their children as broad-minded liberals. Or that their children might reject their beliefs (especially if they learn basic critical thinking skills).
If people exercising their own bodily autonomy is causing the economy to collapse, then it's the economy that needs to change, not the people. The economy exists to serve people. People do not exist to serve the economy.
Late-stage capitalism is an out-of-control train that's on fire and hurtling towards a brick wall for a lot of reasons. The system needs to evolve. There is no salvaging the present status quo, which is already failing to provide for people.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 27th 2023 at 1:05:46 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.For that matter, the economy changing could become a positive feedback loop. Remove the barriers to having children then more people have them and society can reap the benefits in addition to the direct benefits of the change in economic systems.
My musician pageExactly!
If you want to salvage welfare programs and pensions, you don't need 100 million more babies who will die in poverty before they're 25. You need rich people to pay their fucking taxes.
But if you make rich people pay their fucking taxes and use it to fund stronger welfare programs, you might start seeing more babies born as a result. The economy exists to serve people.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 27th 2023 at 1:09:13 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.People already addressed other parts of this, but I don't think raising kids for its own sake is socially or personally responsible if you don't have the money or mental faculties to properly raise a child. The problems with that should be self-evident. The human species isn't anywhere near close to dying out to the point that having kids should be prioritized to this extent.
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Even if it were, "the human race" has no value beyond that of the individuals involved, so there would still be no moral onus on any individual to have children.
No weirder than any other thing. It's a highly emotionally-charged subject, and if you disagree with someone on something like that, they're going to go through the stages of grief but stop well before reaching "acceptance," because there's clearly something wrong with you.
Edited by Ramidel on Nov 27th 2023 at 12:13:07 AM
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It’s more that Fighteer has brought it up independently several times now in a couple of different places. It’s a weird thing in that context specifically.
It’s an odd bugbear that lead to one of the bigger explosions the site has had.
But this time, it’s a constructive and polite conversation, so that’s fine.
Edited by Zendervai on Nov 27th 2023 at 4:16:13 AM
I would actually argue that if one is not worried about their ability to be a (good) parent, then that is worrying. By all accounts, parenting is hard. If you are not worried about doing something hard, then you are at best overconfident, generally speaking.
Edited by Risa123 on Nov 27th 2023 at 10:21:32 AM

Nor does socioties treatment of women really help either, we are kind of just expected to take all the burdon of childbirth, the pain with medicine that often doesn't help with it fully, the expected to give up our entire life to raise them, not enough sociotial aide to help cover that...
and then deal with "so why aren't you guys having kids" constantly...