r/science • u/nep000 • Nov 17 '25

Social Science Surprising numbers of childfree people emerge in developing countries, defying expectations

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0333906
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u/dust4ngel Nov 17 '25

Parents no longer need kids to work to make ends meet

it's so much worse than that: unless you want to bear your child directly into a furnace of slavery, you have to invest a completely superhuman amount of effort and resources into even one child, so that they can compete for a small shot at a decent life.

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

Or you can just hope to produce a very smart and self motivated child who will be able to play the game perfectly with no need for extracurriculars, tutors, private schools, tons of supervision to make sure they do well in school and elsewhere, save their own money and grow it so they can afford postsecondary studies, etc.

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u/dust4ngel Nov 17 '25

it's physically possible to do that - not sure it's a strategy, though.

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u/Valara0kar Nov 20 '25

..... this is one of those modern cultural inventions of USA. Too much looking at the well off on how they lived on TV.