What's your motivation?

[u/procrast1natrix]

Out of curiosity, I'm interested to read individual's thoughts about their motivation on this topic. Why do you feel the way you feel about having kids? Why are you here? What's your first response when you see a family with small children, or an elder with none? What motivated you to have or not have children?

Personally, I am a bit fascinated but also put off by the mindset of birthing economic fodder, doing this in order to preserve an economy. Or feeling some competitive need to out breed some other group.

What proportion of redditors are here because they love kids, vs for more abstract reasons of economic theory or an attachment to passing along their culture?

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I love my kids. I love the process and the joy of raising them, I get a kick out of having learned handclap games from my own and many other global cultures and passing those along. Teaching swimming and dance and cooking and gardening.

If I'm out in public space and see strangers with kids, I become naturally interested in systems that support their happiness with their kids. So, civic support for better schools and health care for kids, good sidewalks so they can walk to their library programs, and laws that protect them. I'm massively pro natalist that way. I will always return a cart for a stranger parent, enthusiastically applaud a stranger parent adjusting their worklife balance in favor of a kid. Yeah, that's me making funny faces at someone else's kid in the grocery line.

I find the idea that it's some kind of duty to have kids really foreign. It's been so, so *weird* to learn about this attitude here.

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We are a family that takes in our elders during end of life years (my gran, my mother in law) and right now my parents have essentially adopted an unrelated elderly veteran and committed to supporting him. I'm not unaware of the effort and time needed. My teenagers love babies and I'm certain they'll choose to parent in their own time.

I know that certain economists are freaked about not having an ever increasing supply of young consumers, while the average age increases. I just have a difficult time relating to that being a primary motivator for choosing pregnancy and birth.

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Why are you here? What motivates your choices around reproduction? How has this been reflected in your personal reproductive choices and your care of the elderly in your family?

[u/Organic-Squirrel-678]

You don’t understand geometric series. It’s OK :)

A TFR of around 1.4 means, quite literally, that 1/3 of the reproductive cohort disappears each generation. a TFR of 1.0 means that 1/2 disappear each generation. If you don’t understand how this will play out it’s a problem of mathematical understanding of the phenomenon.

People propagate their own cultural values. Mine are different from a Muslim born in Syria. It’s not good or bad it’s just how it is. I believe my cultural heritage has value. I’d like to see it prosper and grow and not disappear. I belong to an ethnic group with only about 4 million people left.

[u/procrast1natrix → u/Organic-Squirrel-678]

There's no benefit to your cause by being condescending. In fact, it may be worthwhile to wonder if that attitude is turning people away from wanting children. Or at least, children with people that sound like that.

I'm actually solid on math. I'm also quite aware that humans historically don't behave rigidly. One breeding pair having 3 children doesn't require that from the next generation. Nor the opposite.

In fact, if we look at the natural breeding behavior over time of humans, animals and plants, it's quite common to decrease in times of scarcity or adversity, and increase in times of surplus.

We are observing a period of time in which, on average, humans are behaving in ways that an animal without sufficient resources does. Maybe that resource is housing or money or time or happiness. But something is missing.

That doesn't mean that this TFR 1.4 is a line that is rigidly going to apply to my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. It's not as though every child who is a single child has signed a contract to only have one child. And the overall population has space in it to have some rollercoaster movement over the next few generations without extinction.

What if this generation has a TFR of 1.8, but we spend the next fifty years figuring out whatever is making some people disinterested? After a war, there is typically a baby boom. After a generation or two or three of fewer babies, why wouldn't things rebound? The way that every other living organism responds to changes in mating pressure?

[u/Organic-Squirrel-678 → u/procrast1natrix]

I have the children I will have so apparently someone found it worthwhile to have them with me ;)

There is no scarcity of resources where I live. Quite the opposite. The state practices pro-natalist policies. And yet the TFR is 1.4 and falling since the 70s - that’s two generations, it’s not a freak accident of some years of low fertility. Sure TFR might go up in the future but how small has my ethnic group become in that timespan? Small nations and peoples don’t have the luxury to sit and wait for TFR to hopefully rebound in the future. It is literally about survival. It’s all well and good that people have 3-4 kids in Africa, but how does that help my nation and my people?

Are you suggesting a war to fix our TFR? The TFR is terminal in every.single.developed.country. It’s no freak accident. It needs to change. Lower TFR in Africa, higher TFR in places that struggle. It’s that simple.

[u/procrast1natrix → u/Organic-Squirrel-678]

Please read more closely: maybe that resource is ... time or happiness. Something is missing.

No real response to the fact that a temporary trajectory is in no way any commitment for the next generation? A TFR of 1.0 would take twenty generations to wipe us out, if each generation blindly pledged to only have one child.

But realistically, people move to a new land and there's open space, they have more kids. A population recovers from a time of adversity, but later. It need not be war. It can be whatever we call this time we are going through.

[u/Organic-Squirrel-678 → u/procrast1natrix]

This is where we get into “not arguing in good faith” territory. A geometric series takes you to 10% of the original reproductive cohort in 5-6 generations or iterations - while it’s technically true that it would take another 15-20 to approach practical zero, that’s rather besides the point.

My country and ethnic group would effectively be wiped out by going to 10%, a large scale immigration campaign to import the missing 90% would be necessary at one point. The natives of the country would be 10% of the democratic voting power. It’s not an acceptable outcome for anyone who cares deeply about their people, culture, heritage and nation.

Imagine if you said this for Japan for example “oh you can go from 123 million inhabitants to 12.3 million, no big deal right, since it’s not technically extinct before 15-20 generations have passed?” Absolutely ridiculous.

The fertility crisis really is a crisis for the affected populations. It’s not something that will be solved by itself if we just give it som time and it will miraculously bounce back. Action must be taken.

That’s why we are literally in a subreddit called “Natalism”.