First US Census Bureau Report on Growing Childless Older Adult Population
census.gov
census.gov
I really don't know how much of this can be attributed to modernity or personality. A man not having children is apparently the norm throughout human history.
I do find it fascinating, though, that if I do not have children, I will be the end of a direct line that stretches back four billion years to the dawn of life itself. And, I will be the first in this direct line of descent NOT to have a son. It's simple, but amazing, to realize that I am the son of a father, his father, his father, ... etc all the way back to when sexual reproduction began.
Why focus on just the male side?
His X chromosome from the mother could have come from either her maternal or paternal lineage, so it seems less "direct".
Edit: I presume a biological focus given the other comment on how by not having children, he becomes a dead end of 4 billion years of reproduction.
I will hold my tongue on the romance point.
He has no chance of passing on his mitochondrial DNA, whether or not he has children. On the other hand, should he choose not to have children, he will represent a change of behavior that has lasted as long as the Y chromosome has- he is the end of the line.
The same would be true if by chance he only passed on his X chromosome, but at least then the attempt was made, and he could keep trying as long as he had willing partner(s).
What is the age range here?
And when they grow into high school, they'll actively drive the parents out of their social circles.
Finally in college, you are free...
Clearly HN commentators seldom read...
Only non parent can ask questions like this...
Edit: Kids are those things that you wholeheartedly want them never happen, but also wholeheartedly believe being the best possible in your life, often at different moments and switching so suddenly that one often questions their own sanity...
Am I bitter, sure, sometimes, I hate my kids like the the farmer hating the snake, who was bitten by the snake he just rescued.
But that is just a tiny part of the parenting life.
My social circle has quite a few children. One couple had children then met several other couples through childbirth classes and added them to the group.
Nevertheless, in the time and place I live, I doubt that my male ancestors would have done any better in my place. Narcissism and self-centeredness are so normalized that the kind of man I am doesn't really belong. I think there are many men and women like I am who simply aren't attracted to the opposite sex in the form that they tend to take in modern civilization. I was just recently talking to a female relative of mine who has a similar perspective.
People are also less visually attractive in general. I've been at the beach a few times recently, crowded ones, and I noticed that there were virtually no attractive, beautiful, or sexy people like I remember. My standards are not extraordinarily high, btw. Over half of people were overweight or obese and the minority that were even close to being in shape weren't wearing anything particularly flattering. By the way, this is in California, not the middle of nowhere. I've met foreigners who believe that Los Angeles is full of hot people, and that was somewhat true at one point. Now, I'm not so sure.
Believe me, I appreciate body diversity, but everyone being fat and slovenly (i.e. unhealthy) isn't diversity or a positive thing.
Anyway, I think that people are just less attracted to each other in general. They've either abused their bodies to the point where they look a decade or more older than they should or they just dress like slobs. Or they dress in ways that signal that they aren't interested in any sort of serious relationship.
There's also just the general perception of globalized craziness. On top of not being appealed by emotionally immature partners (with no useful skills), why would I want to bring a child into a world where their way of life is going to radically shift several times in their lifetime? Why would I want anyone to live under technological tyranny? Or the consequences of humans abusing the environment?
People point to the "mouse utopia" experiment, but I don't think it's that. Technological inertia is what is bringing us to this point. Besides a little bit of HN and the occasional episode of 80's TV, I've pretty much disconnected from it all, and more people I know are disengaging. It's both a good sign and a bad one. If people are disengaging, that doesn't really mean that society itself is correcting itself. We're wincing at the wall we are about to crash through.
It’s pretty crazy when your mood shifts and you are looking at the exact same situation and no longer feel the negative assessment of it. I’ve had lots of ups and downs as I learned to deal with difficult emotions and pain that apparently were hidden within me.
Edit: Of course, it is just an idea. I don’t know you or your situation. You might not be depressed at all :) It’s objectively true that there are more obese people nowadays, however I don’t think it is helpful to focus on that fact.
> I live in LA and, in my opinion, there are plenty of attractive people around.
It depends quite a bit on the neighborhood. You'll see more people on the Westside who are magazine material than say the Van Nuys. I still stand by my subjective experience that there has been an overall reduction in general attractiveness, but I'm totally open to counter-evidence. (yes, I mean men and women, and in ways that were at least once somewhat agreed upon)
> It’s objectively true that there are more obese people, however I don’t think it is helpful to focus on that fact.
Why? To discount that variable doesn't make sense to me. I used to be in the obese category and I've known other people who are or were. The way the public treats the obese and the skinny is like night and day. If the obesity rate continues to climb, that sure seems like something that would help the population. Beyond attractiveness, the obese are more at risk for having trouble conceiving.
> Why? To discount that variable doesn't make sense to me.
You remind me of myself. Your observations remind me of what my natural observations tend to be. I’m originally from LA and think I’d agree with what you’ve written above.
With that said, here’s a defense of the GP willfully ignoring data in this case (and possibly in general).
It’s attractive to be positive. Not just to romantic partners, but to friends, coworkers, managers, reportees, strangers, etc. I think it’s fine to have standards for physical attractiveness, but they should be in line with what you can achieve. Similarly, I think positivity is attractive and negativity not so much, though I naturally think critically. Over time I’ve learned that others perceive me as a negative person. So erring on the side of positive might mean ignoring data. It might mean being blind to trends, but if it also means being happier, it’s how I would prefer to live.
I don't appreciate your suggestion, though. Even though you i-don't-know-if-but it, what you say suggests that my viewpoint comes from a dark place of loneliness and pornography intake, which I don't think is fair unless you substantiate that somehow.
I also find fascinating that as our lineage: parents, grand parents etc, expands in powers of two as we go back, the historical pool of humanity grows ever smaller so that the likelihood of shared ancestry with any other person grows to near certainty.
Very true. It only applies to brotherless men and sisterless women.
> the historical pool of humanity grows ever smaller so that the likelihood of shared ancestry with any other person grows to near certainty.
Isn't there something like only 20 matrilineal lines in the world or something?
Point is, every individual entity “goes with their gut” and the final product is beauty. Too many try to meta-analyze it, maximize their own gains, etc, and the final product cripples.
Idk, maybe I’m just stoned at the nail salon. :)
IMO statements like these are meaningless platitudes. To you it may be beauty, to me it's arbitrary generations of reproduction. It's not good or bad, it just is. Some people go with their gut and rob or kill people, some people go with their gut and run charities. Is that beautiful? I don't think so, it's just reality.
You could do this kind of analysis for any mammal (and most animals) to be honest. Yet we still wage war, eat meat and destroy ecosystems.
There are many birth control options and views on abortion have changed significantly as well as education which has improved, which means much fewer people keep unplanned pregnancies. Simultaneously, working and middle classes in western developed nations have continuously been squeezed within our the lifetimes of people who should be settling down, 2 severe economic contractions combined with the pandemic on top of preexisting job, wage and other social insecurities makes the financial and social burden of having a child much more difficult to bear.
I was ambivalent about being a parent. I have one child and the experience has changed me more than I anticipated; shedding indulgent hobbies, valuing sleep more, going without more luxuries, being willing to just observe my surroundings, practicing perspective-taking (I readily do this with other animals, harder with people), singing more, feeling like I have a sense of purpose. I used to teach math and science to groups of students, and now with the one student who is also family I don’t know what the relative positive influence of on life on earth will be my actions. I suspect greater, given the changes that might have taken much longer to materialize, if at all.
I’d guess that adoption and fostering, relationships that increase one’s responsibility for others, would have had similar effects on my life.
>” Childless adults as a group were more educated than parents.”
A little surprised by this:
>”Poverty rates are higher among childless older adults than they are among older parents.”
It seems to me that not birthing children when one is not financially safe makes sense; having children is, in some ways, a luxury now that a two-incomes household is the norm.
Although a lot of those benefits punish the parents for being married, i.e. if you want to maximize benefits it's better to be unmarried and maybe also not living together.
Not surprising... Children won't let their parents become destitute
You may be confusing "in poverty" with merely "poor."
Having had kids really early in life forced me into taking steadier work than I might otherwise have. While I am grateful for that-- it's both easier to make money by programing computers than by playing music as well as all the goodness of having adult children-- it certainly pushed me into different situations.
I have a lot of friends in their late 20s and early 30s and they are in situations where they are, say, climbing rocks for 6 months at a time before settling briefly in a place. It's likely that they are going to have a much different professional situation when they are my age.
That seems to be the case with the 50-year-old former ski bums I know, at least.
Not in response to your post, but on the general topic, there is a persistent issue in US statistics of using income levels to declare wealthiness. To me, having poverty level income only implies poverty if the person also has no savings. If the person has a lot of savings/investments and can retire and live off return of capital from 55-70, that may look like 15+ years of poverty in an older adult to statisticians looking at income number, but could be a very nice early retirement. Income is an easy number to get, because of mandatory reporting in dollars, but a single annual value doesn't tell a complete story.
I make a good income doing what I do, but I have a six-figure student loan (which largely went to raising my step daughter and son). I don't expect any sympathy for that.
Nor do I expect sympathy for living in small town with a crazy real-estate market.
But between those, it's likely I'll never retire and will die in debt.
But hey, I do plan to take up paragliding and climbing bigger mountains, so whatever. I guess.
But hey, I also funnel a lot of cash to my kiddo who is getting all-As and is a Junior in a well-respected Mechanical Engineering program.
These are generational problems. I suspect that regardless of how you slice it, that fact about student loans (or lack of professional options for unsettled late-millenials) and real-estate is closer to the truth for most of the people I know who didn't settle down in their 20s and have kids.
My climbing partner, who just got priced out of this town, might look like he's living in poverty, as he's living in a car. But it's a lexus and he's climbing rocks full time... so maybe he's just "retired" temporarilly.
Who knows. I can't tell the difference between hobos and kings anymore.
Many of the politicians who rant about "personal responsibility" themselves didn't have to worry about an out of control real-estate market (that they probably voted in favor of) and $2k 1bdrm rents. Cost of college was cheaper back then too.
No one should have to die in debt.
But after a bit more thought, having someone 20-40 years younger than you who feels a strong obligation to you when you’re not quite as sharp as you used to be could make a lot of difference in your finances.
Eyeballing, it looks like 55-64 is more childless than 40-54, but I haven't done any deeper analysis to be able to project how the curve might change in the future.
Data from here:
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sipp/data/datasets/2...
Graph is made with their example pandas pandas code with the TCEB (total children ever born/fathered) column added, then:
(df[df['TCEB']==0].groupby('TAGE').size().div(df.groupby('TAGE').size())).plot(); plt.show()Even if I somehow managed to raise a healthy, well adjusted child, there is also the specter of climate change. Is it ethical to bring a child into the world, when they will slowly watch the world they live in be slowly decimated by heat, drought, and rising seas?
People have told me that I will regret my decision in old age. Maybe that's true, but if I ever get the urge to have kids, I'll simply volunteer, adopt or foster them. If they're already here on this earth, hopefully I can have a positive impact, and my conscience is clear.
I don't intend to have kids. I grew up in an abusive home, and I'm still working on attachment issues and CPTSD in my mid 30s. My rationale: this shit stops with me. Awareness and desire to address these issues isn't enough when I know I'm still exhibiting behaviors that I don't fully understand, and I won't propagate what my parents taught me.
While I haven't 100% closed myself to the possibility of kids, I've decided (and accepted) that I will not pursue it without major personal progress, which currently has its own timetable, meaning the door is probably closed.
This touches on a really important factor for people like me with families like mine. Their involvement in the parenting process could be nothing negative and stressful. I'd never feel comfortable leaving my kids in their care.
This is not just a pessimistic fear, but a reality I see in my siblings and their own interactions with our parents.
This further complicates things, because I think one could argue that people with my background need more support than average, but we're less likely to have access to that support given our origins.
The added benefit is, some of these folks in my circle will likely have kids and being an unofficial aunt sounds like a good deal to me.
This is a significant disparity based on race
I read a quote somewhere that people don't change mind they die. Kids are the future. They will change the world, they will bring new ideas, new technologies, explore new planets, advance the race. We should not shrink away from the work involved.
It is kind of selfish to be raised by past generation but not paying it back by raising the next generation.
Having kids used to be a positive economic decision as 150 years ago, most people were farmers. Extra children meant extra help on the farm and kids quickly provided a positive return on investment. Now having kids is a mostly privatized cost with socialized benefit.
I went to public school but other than that, the cost of raising me was put primarily on my mom's back. Now, as a 30 year old, I'm pretty sure I've paid enough taxes to pay back the public several times over. I'll never be able to payback my mom in any sense.
We absolutely need a future generation as our deaths are guaranteed. That being said, the self selection process may be filtering out some potentially awful parents as there's no longer money to be made by having kids.
What would you say to those who consider having children the selfish decision?
First, with both partner working & almost no one to support(from relatives/close family) during first 3-5 years of kids. It's super exhausting and one starts having second thoughts about having more kids.
Second, People want good future for kids. Daycare expenses, school, college etc. general thinking is if I can support one child really well and not two then its better to have just one.
In my experience I have not seen anyone who genuinely dont like kids or regretted having kid even at their emotionally lowest point. It just above two primary forces, pushing them towards not have anymore kids.
In the 60's when I grew up, there was one mother on our street who had a "great" job, some mothers worked full time jobs, some worked out of the house (ironing, babysitting, etc), but most with younger kids did not work.
Each decade, women shifted more toward working outside the house, full time, and having good jobs on par with men. This has continued to where potential grandmothers also work, so cannot help with kids like they used to.
Working has given women a lot more options than they used to have since they are not as financially dependent on men, but somebody still has to take care of houses and raise kids, and now that both parents usually work, this is a lot more difficult.
We used to be able to have a decent family life on one income. Not so much a possibility now.
It's possible that society has imposed ridiculously stringent "requirements" for raising children (apparently families are buying a second washing machine just for their baby's clothes) that raising children responsibly is viewed as financially unachievable for most.
In the last few decades, the primary determinant is whether or not you want children. Again, it's not the only reason, but it's the primary filter.
So, natural selection might be in the middle of producing a species of humans obsessed with children, and not that interested in sex (except as a means of getting children).
Of course, that's ridiculous; if that were true you would see declining self-reports of how often people are having sex. Don't look up the data on that, btw.
It's only been one generation. You'd need to wait a few 100 years before you see any change.
Why would you assume this? The only reason you'd assume this is that you have a preconceived notion that those of us who want lots of kids don't want sex. That's ridiculous.
I'm a pretty traditional catholic, and it's pretty clear from my own life and my interactions with other traditional catholic men that we really like sex. In fact, given the stats, we and our wives like sex more than most people [1]. We also like the babies that come out. That's part of the fun.
People like to group us religious people as sex-averse. It's quite the opposite. We just follow the normal ethics one would come up with (religious or not) if you viewed children as part of the natural results of sex (because.... they are). In that framework, religious exhortations like 'Don't have sex unless you're in a publicly recognized and blessed committed relationship (i.e., marriage)' become as obvious as 'don't have sex with people who don't want it'.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/paeekv/why-conservatives-hav...
https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(98)00103-4/full...
Once upon a time it might be normal to rely on neighbors or large extended families for support, but the more isolated we get, the less safety net there is.
If you didn’t work to build that network, you are pretty much handicapped in terms of giving the child the best chance possible.
In other words, this demographic group might be making an extremely responsible decision.
The social cost of supporting someone who is completely alone vs. someone who has a kid they can depend on, even if only infrequently across large geographies, is probably a lot higher.
"Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/childless..." on this server. Reference #18.ce7519b8.1630427505.a68f250"
The government should fix this in tax laws or directly assist if they want more kids (at a moderate salary, the child credit disappears and AMT calc essentially kills your deductions).
I can see this being adopted in the future as therapy for regular patients and then for everybody.
I'll take the problems caused by a shrinking population over that.
This assumes you can reach the same level of productivity. Not all immigration is created equal I'm afraid.
According to this linear trend the last child in America will be born in 2045 [1]
> Childfree is the term used generally for those who have chosen not to have kids while Childless is for those who would love them but can’t have them. [0]
This survey didn't ask if people chose to not have children. It merely asked if they didn't have biological children. The term "childfree" isn't accurate in this usage.
[0] https://womensagenda.com.au/life/why-terms-like-childless-vs...
The report is drawing no distinction, while you are saying both terms are a subset of “adults with no children”.
Just helping you notice that, since you made a distinction the the US Federal Government is not making a distinction on in an attempt to correct me
This has nothing to do with Australia[0]. But by trying to say all childless adults are "childfree", you're basically ignoring infertility, which I think is inconsiderate, at best.
I didn't try to say that at all
You did though, which is interesting
The point about talking about your source is the your entire response seemed haphazard and creating contexts that neither I or the report said, contexts that didn't fit at all while pretending to be consensus on terms. Which it isn't.
In any case, you did find my main point, where the language and adjectives used in the childless context assumes an affliction. It assumes there is a problem, such as the infertility that you care about and are sensitive to.
I think it is equally inconsiderate to not acknowledge people that just don't want children, as opposed to an explanation. Simply writing Childfree apparently illuminates that so well. So, its a two-way street, where everyone feels invalidated. Glad we could make that obvious.
Look at it this way, properly incentivizing children would mean that the average couple with two kids would pay zero net taxes over their life. With zero rates a non taxpayer who reproduces at replacement has the same equivalent fiscal value as a childless full taxpayer.
Punishing people for not having kids is obviously ridiculous.
It doesn’t seem like “promising my kids will pick up the tab at replacement rate” is enough to be stable.
Not getting dependent/child tax credits already does this.
That doesn't seem like a terribly effective "solution" unless the goal is to maintain the status quo, especially given the vicious cycle it introduces.
What was never set up as a savings account?
My comment was pointing out the absurdity of taxing a specific group of people more because in their old age they will become a greater burden on the state than another group. Consequently forcing them into becoming dependent on the state by reducing their ability to save and invest for themselves. It's a vicious cycle and the original commenter doesn't seem to recognize the absurdity of that position. In the OP's proposal, I'd have higher tax rates because I've not yet had children. But once I do have children, what, do I get it all back? Or am I just forced to suck up the unnecessarily reduced income for the past 20 years? What if my children (god forbid) don't survive to adulthood themselves. Will I start getting taxed more again due to this tragedy? Of course, this already happens now as you lose a dependent for tax purposes.
The position is absurdist unless the objective is to further reinforce dependence on the state.
I'll point out that the OP suggests increasing taxes on the childless over what they are already taxed now. Which suggests a greater swing than just the loss of a dependent on your taxes in the case of the death of your children. Adding insult to injury, as it were, for my last question.
We might also want to encourage some level of additional population growth. This is best done by providing support for parents.
It is better to incentivize behavior by providing services that help people do the things we want. Attempting to punish people will just cause anger, and even if the punishment is doled out for good reason (which, I'd say it isn't a good reason in this case), some level of misstargeting is inevitable.