__________ is/are overrated.

[kphoger]

What do you see as the root cause of the SERIOUSLY declining fertility rates in the 'west'?

needing less kids to plow the fields.

This.  Industrialization.

Western nations are further to the right than developing nations on the graph below.  For much of the 20th Century, we were in the middle 'gap', with fertility rates reflecting a prior less-industrialized society.  Now they're catching up.

[Scott5114]

What do you see as the root cause of the SERIOUSLY declining fertility rates in the 'west'?

Mike

Non-sequiturs that change the subject and distract people from having sex.

[Max Rockatansky]

My wife and I wanted to at least have one kid.  Things didn't work out due to infertility issues.  Slim chance it might happen, but we probably weren't in the best position to begin with having gotten married in our mid-30s.

FWIW, I've only been married once but I was in a previous relationship which lasted over four years.  The woman I was dating was pregnant once but had a miscarriage.  In her case she took what happened incredibly hard.

I will say though if I had hypothetically had kids in my earlier life, it would have messed up a lot of things.  I definitely would have no been able to travel and do as many recreational things as I did in my 20s.  That is different now that I'm older but as I said above, I think the window is closed on kids.

[TheCatalyst31]

What do you see as the root cause of the SERIOUSLY declining fertility rates in the 'west'?

Mike

I typed up a response, thinking this was the Random thoughts thread, but then I remembered that this is the thread about overrated things and your comment is way off topic. Anyway, complaining about birthrates is overrated.

[kkt]

What do you see as the root cause of the SERIOUSLY declining fertility rates in the 'west'?

Mike

The high cost of raising a child.

Yep.  Housing, education, medical expenses, the whole thing.

[kphoger]

Non-sequiturs that change the subject and distract people from having sex.

I assumed that non-sequiturs were just as much a turn-on for everyone else as they are for my wife and me.  Huh.

My wife and I wanted to at least have one kid.  Things didn't work out due to infertility issues.  Slim chance it might happen, but we probably weren't in the best position to begin with ...

doggy or modified missionary ftw lol

The high cost of raising a child.

Yep.  Housing, education, medical expenses, the whole thing.

Really?  Other than not having health insurance, money didn't factor one single bit in our decision-making.

And are you claiming that having children makes more of an impact on housing and expenses in the West than it does in, say, the nations with the top ten fertility rates in the world?  I imagine that additional children have a much greater impact on a family's financial situation in those places than here.  UN 2025 list shown below:

1. Chad
2. Somalia
3. DRC
4. CAR
5. Niger
6. Mali
7. Angola
8. Burundi
9. Afghanistan
10. Mozambique

[Rothman]

Non-sequiturs that change the subject and distract people from having sex.

I assumed that non-sequiturs were just as much a turn-on for everyone else as they are for my wife and me.  Huh.

My wife and I wanted to at least have one kid.  Things didn't work out due to infertility issues.  Slim chance it might happen, but we probably weren't in the best position to begin with ...

doggy or modified missionary ftw lol

The high cost of raising a child.

Yep.  Housing, education, medical expenses, the whole thing.

Really?  Other than not having health insurance, money didn't factor one single bit in our decision-making.

And are you claiming that having children makes more of an impact on housing and expenses in the West than it does in, say, the nations with the top ten fertility rates in the world?  I imagine that additional children have a much greater impact on a family's financial situation in those places than here.  UN 2025 list shown below:

1. Chad
2. Somalia
3. DRC
4. CAR
5. Niger
6. Mali
7. Angola
8. Burundi
9. Afghanistan
10. Mozambique

"I'm assuming our own experience is representative of the population, despite overwhelming data to the contrary"

...and I say that as one who married and had kids earlier than the American average, significantly due to religious reasons...and then later decided not to have more kids for all sorts of other reasons...

[thspfc]

The high cost of raising a child.

Yep.  Housing, education, medical expenses, the whole thing.

Really?  Other than not having health insurance, money didn't factor one single bit in our decision-making.

"I'm assuming our own experience is representative of the population, despite overwhelming data to the contrary"

Not only that, he also threw in a nice "other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" When a fallacious argument still has fallacies even when taken at face value, that's pretty funny.

[kphoger]

Housing, education, medical expenses, the whole thing.

"I'm assuming our own experience is representative of the population, despite overwhelming data to the contrary"

And see, I initially thought you were basically replying to |kkt|.  He seemed to be doing the same thing, until I realized he might be looking at actual research.

Now that I'm looking at the research for myself, I see that my wife and I definitely are in the minority:  after all, overpopulation and climate change didn't factor one little bit into our decision to have kids either.  Basically, for us, nothing that could be categorized as "concerns over the state of the world", which seem to top the charts, had any influence on our decision-making.

So yeah, poll results are genuinely a surprise to me, as I assumed people were generally basing their decisions about raising a family on things other than their bank account.

Not only that, he also threw in a nice "other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" When a fallacious argument still has fallacies even when taken at face value, that's pretty funny.

In my [flimsy] defense, I didn't think of the cost of childbirth itself when I read "medical expenses".  I only thought about ongoing medical costs during childhood, which didn't occur to us at the time either.

But, other than that, your point is totally valid.  When weighing our decision to have kids back then, we could have easily looked at our lack of health insurance and simply decided "nope".

[Max Rockatansky]

Paint me as another person who didn't factor "state of the world" into my decision to attempt to have kids. 

[Scott5114]

My wife and I have never wanted kids, mostly because we both know we'd make awful parents due to our mental health problems. (The short-term memory problems associated with ADHD mean there's a non-zero chance that I'd just straight-up forget I had the kid with me and leave them somewhere.) That being said...

At no point since I got married have I ever been in a state where I could afford to do so. Hell, for most of that time I've been barely scraping by. If I suddenly had a kid, I have no idea where I'd get the money to even feed them, much less buy them the endless supply of clothes they need or school supplies or anything else. And while I like Las Vegas for lots of reasons, the school system here is notoriously crappy.

[kphoger]

At no point since I got married have I ever been in a state where I could afford to do so. Hell, for most of that time I've been barely scraping by. If I suddenly had a kid, I have no idea where I'd get the money to even feed them, much less buy them the endless supply of clothes they need or school supplies or anything else. And while I like Las Vegas for lots of reasons, the school system here is notoriously crappy.

We couldn't afford kids either.  We decided to anyway.  And here we are, three kids later.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Per the edited thread title of this post . At least over here I feel that.

[kphoger]

(The short-term memory problems associated with ADHD mean there's a non-zero chance that I'd just straight-up forget I had the kid with me and leave them somewhere.)

Our best friends down in Mexico, who have four kids (three planned and one oops)... the dad has ADHD.  For him, the biggest thing I've noticed isn't that he forgets a kid somewhere, but that, when they have to pile all the kids and all the stuff into the car and lock up the house and everything else that goes into leaving home on a driving trip—sometimes his brain just gets kind of 'stuck' and he simply can't process everything and do everything in a timely fashion.  When it should take 5 minutes to leave the house, sometimes it takes them 25 instead.

And, for what it's worth, plenty of parents forget their kids somewhere at some point.

My parents asked me once if I remembered the time my dad forgot to pick me up from kindergarten.  Nope, I have no memory of that.

The headmaster of the classical school here in town is married with several kids, and all of them either work at or attended that school.  In the hustle and bustle of getting everyone out of the minivan upon arriving to school one day, everyone just kind of assumed someone else had collected the youngest kid out of his car seat.  Nobody realized for several hours that he was still in the van.  At lunch time, they went out to the van and found him there, still sitting in his car seat, still buckled in.  They felt awful, and then asked him, "What did you do that whole time?"  As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he simply answered, "Waiting."

It happens, to the best of us—ADHD or not.

[Scott5114]

For what it's worth, ADHD will have different symptoms for different people. I have no doubt some people with ADHD can handle that and being a parent just fine—there are enough people with ADHD that some of us must be having kids—I just know myself well enough that don't think I could handle it.

My wife's mental health, on the other hand, is quite a bit worse—like, bad enough that multiple psychiatrists have taken one look at the chart and then refused service based on what's there. (Mind you, this usually means they're not very good psychiatrists—the ones that have been up to the challenge have been phenomenal enough that I usually end up using the same ones because they end up doing a better job than people who actually specialize in ADHD.) It is a challenge enough for her just to exist some days, so adding someone to the picture who is dependent on her to live and grow into a good person wouldn't be fair to either her or the kid.

As for the financial situation, my fondest wish in life is to have enough of a cushion in savings that I don't have to freak out and start striking off parts of the grocery list because the electric bill came in higher than we thought it would. Maybe we could even dare to dream of being able to afford my office being cooler than 80°F in the summer.  Having a child is not compatible with achieving either of those. We're a little bit closer to this American Dream by moving to Nevada, but we've still got a few years yet.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I don't think I would be a good fit for kids. I don't handle sensory stuff well, and kids are nothing but sensory hell. It doesn't fit my lifestyle. It's not for me.

[vdeane]

sometimes his brain just gets kind of 'stuck' and he simply can't process everything and do everything in a timely fashion.  When it should take 5 minutes to leave the house, sometimes it takes them 25 instead.

...

That explains a few things.

I frequently have times where I wonder how so much time could have passed, or how something that normally takes me X amount of time ends up taking Y sometimes even though it doesn't feel like I did anything different or moved at a different speed.

[kphoger]

As for the financial situation, my fondest wish in life is to have enough of a cushion in savings that I don't have to freak out and start striking off parts of the grocery list because the electric bill came in higher than we thought it would. Maybe we could even dare to dream of being able to afford my office being cooler than 80°F in the summer.  Having a child is not compatible with achieving either of those. We're a little bit closer to this American Dream by moving to Nevada, but we've still got a few years yet.

We were basically in the same position when we decided to have kids.  Zero savings, low-paying jobs, any car repair requiring assistance from grandparents, no health insurance, etc.  Praise God for Medicaid covering pregnancy and childbirth! (which we didn't know until after we made the decision).  We've never "gotten ahead" financially—only managed to break even this whole time, and still with occasional help from others.  Honestly, I don't even know how much extra it costs us to have kids at home.  It's probably mainly just groceries, and cooking for five is not 2½ times more expensive than cooking for two.  We almost never buy new pants and shirts, but rather get hand-me-downs from friends and then hand those down between them.  There's no way in Helsinki that we'll be paying for their college.  Taxpayer money still pays for their health insurance.  We get tax credit.  I actually sometimes wonder if we'll be worse off financially once they grow up and leave home.

I don't think I would be a good fit for kids. I don't handle sensory stuff well, and kids are nothing but sensory hell.

Uh.  Yeah.  Or, at least, you'd need the other parent to be OK with smells.  I mean, nobody actually likes waking up at 2:30 am and walking into a room full of vomit, but what you really don't want is for neither parent to be able to do anything about it.

That explains a few things.

I frequently have times where I wonder how so much time could have passed, or how something that normally takes me X amount of time ends up taking Y sometimes even though it doesn't feel like I did anything different or moved at a different speed.

Or drugs.  Could be drugs. 

[Max Rockatansky]

People used to say I had ADHD before I was in the 7th grade.  I was always told that "lost time" was part of that.  I don't recall a time where I didn't have a good idea what time it was.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I don't think I would be a good fit for kids. I don't handle sensory stuff well, and kids are nothing but sensory hell.

Uh.  Yeah.  Or, at least, you'd need the other parent to be OK with smells.  I mean, nobody actually likes waking up at 2:30 am and walking into a room full of vomit, but what you really don't want is for neither parent to be able to do anything about it.

And it wouldn't take long for the other partner to get pretty pissed off at that arrangement, that they're always changing the diapers or cleaning up puke because I physically can't handle it.

[bugo]

I never wanted kids. It's too much damn responsibility. Besides, the world is a landfill, and I wouldn't want to bring another being into the world. I'm not selfish and arrogant enough to think I have to extend my bloodline. It stops here.

[bugo]

Little yappy dogs. I'm visiting family, and the dogs won't shut up and let me sleep. It reminds me of why I'm a cat person.

[Scott5114]

And it wouldn't take long for the other partner to get pretty pissed off at that arrangement, that they're always changing the diapers or cleaning up puke because I physically can't handle it.

I mean, not necessarily. My wife always handles the cat puke and poop because it grosses me out. But I always handle the dishes because that grosses her out.

[Max Rockatansky]

Jessica is grossed out by vomit for some reason and gets nauseous.  I'm usually the one who cleans up bodily waste from the dogs.  Oddly though, in the year her mom (who has failing cognitive health) here Jessica was one who would clean up accidents. 

[formulanone]

You'd be amazed how many disgusting things you can put up with when the responsibility of precious life is in your hands. A lot of physical stuff becomes trivial in the heat of the moment, and a lot of problems tend to evaporate when focused on parenting. But those moments are honestly far and few between unless you have a child with a lifetime of digestive issues (not "lettuce makes me sick", I mean those who require G-tubes and frequent visits to actual hospitals) or you're an incapable meth head of ceaseless escapist fantasies. Some of this is because I've had households of cats and dogs for decades so kids are just another animal in the household and your monkey brain instincts tend to kick in and prioritize things. You wind up becoming a zombie, mechanic, cook, chemist, equipment manager, club bouncer, political strategist, and air traffic controller on top of your daily duties. In a lot of ways, parenting shattered a lot fears and it helped widen my scope of tolerance for the imbalances in this messed-up world, and that gives me more peace than just getting my way in a battle to settle a temporary score with the cosmos.

On the other hand, it seems to open up the possibility of random people telling you detailed stories of their kids' excretions while eating...that's only necessary if we're visiting a pediatrician. They can go get lost.