Young Americans Are Having Fewer Children - So Researchers Asked Them Why (soldier, independent)
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Pot meet kettle. Most hyperbolic poster of City-Data going to slam someone else about hyperbole. LOL
There's about 2 dozen career paths that legitimately have a need for a college education.
Get Walmart in bed with a college. They'll work and scheme together to make it a requirement to have a college degree to be a door greeter or cashier or shelf stocker.
College gets the kickback in tuition fees.
Walmart gets the kick back with intern wages.
Little lemmings who listened to the progressives in how a college degree is the end all be all winds up starting adulthood with a debt they can't default on.
Everyone wins but the lemming. From the college admin, to the limp wristed professor pushing BS humanities as a requirement to be working with the public.
Meanwhile I'll hire anyone who hasn't sat through college to be indoctrinated for I can teach them mold them shape them into great workers with critical thinking skills.
Rather than worry about their feelings.
And unlike their counter parts, they'll be making money out of the gate. Getting paid while working and learning. The way it should be.
I don't know about you. I'm actually being the change I seek. I'll tell the younger dudes. Screw going to college right away and start out up to your eyes in debt. Work for me for a few years. If you want to move on, fine, at least you'll have a paycheck to afford going to college for a better opportunity. Why throw yourself into debt right away? Why pizz money away pointlessly. Colleges don't have an age requirement for classes. There's no cut offs. Just cash. You have the money, they have the classes.
I tell them. Look you're 17 18 19 21 22 25 still at home with mom and dad? Why?
They say. Because housing.
Look up housing in our AO.
What's wrong with this house for 110k?
It doesn't have a granite kitchen. It doesn't have a pool. It doesn't have...
They've no idea what a starter home is! Even here in Florida they have unrealistic expectations because they live at home with mom and dad and have become accustomed to a 3/2 with 2 car garage a pool the marble and granite the top of the line appliances. But they dont see and don't appreciate the work their parents did to get where they are and have what they have.
The younger guys? I tell them. Don't pizz off mom and dad. Stay on their good side. Stack your cash wisely so you aren't stuck paying rent and never seeing that money. Stay on their good side. You make 18 19 20 22 25 an hour? In 2-3 years time you can be able to put considerable cash down on a house, walk in to the dealership and pay cash for that car/truck you want.
Never mind going here going there. Never mind having kids getting married. Do that after you've established yourself. Why put yourself in a compromising position?!
Besides, with divorce rates as high as they are, if you owned the house outright, you are safe. You can always protect your assests. So why follow a social norm that worked 40 years ago? Why even play that game?
You say folks need a college degree.
I say. Folks need more common sense and ambition. Neither of which are common commodities any more.
Those super cheap houses are becoming less and less common, as they're being increasingly renovated. And new houses built seem to be primarily expensive McMansions.
And if you do find a super cheap house, it will inevitably need extensive repairs and maintenance just to keep it habitable, and from what I've heard from home owning friends, the costs are . Many of them are in financial trouble because they only saved enough to buy a house, but didn't realize the constant financial drain the upkeep would be.
Birth rate is dropping worldwide in every single nation on the planet but two since the 1960s and people are blaming it on millenials. Clearly if it is a trend in every nation worldwide it is human nature. The world is becoming more developed and human nature for whatever reason leads to less kids in a developed world.
Exactly. "Kids these days are all lazy and stupid with no money!"
*Kids with no money decide not to have kids of their own for obvious reasons*
"Ah! Kids these days are horrible because they aren't having kids they can't afford!" Right...
Nah, it's just people HATE it when you challenge the social norms. Everyone is supposed to: have kids, get married, go to church every Sunday, hate the same things and people their parents hated, live a dull, soul-sucking existence until the kids are on their own, and then complain all day when their own kids aren't repeating the cycle. It angers people when you dare step outside the norms, such as by not having kids. So, they make up every insane excuse in the book to go after you, such as the "kids are actually very cheap" lunacy we've seen on this thread. Same with the "people are selfish for not having kids they can't afford with partners they can't trust" madness. Just excuses because they hate you for challenging their norms.
Two female friends of mine, who are also friends with each other (both married, both well off, one with kids, one without, both never divorced, both of their husbands also have never been divorced, both have husbands who are the primary breadwinners, and both women control their households). Both of them were after me for years to get married and have kids. I finally realized that it wasn't because they thought it would enhance my life. It was because they didn't like that no woman was controlling my money.
Pot meet kettle. Most hyperbolic poster of City-Data going to slam someone else about hyperbole. LOL
There's about 2 dozen career paths that legitimately have a need for a college education.
Get Walmart in bed with a college. They'll work and scheme together to make it a requirement to have a college degree to be a door greeter or cashier or shelf stocker.
College gets the kickback in tuition fees.
Walmart gets the kick back with intern wages.
Little lemmings who listened to the progressives in how a college degree is the end all be all winds up starting adulthood with a debt they can't default on.
Everyone wins but the lemming. From the college admin, to the limp wristed professor pushing BS humanities as a requirement to be working with the public.
Meanwhile I'll hire anyone who hasn't sat through college to be indoctrinated for I can teach them mold them shape them into great workers with critical thinking skills.
Rather than worry about their feelings.
And unlike their counter parts, they'll be making money out of the gate. Getting paid while working and learning. The way it should be.
I don't know about you. I'm actually being the change I seek. I'll tell the younger dudes. Screw going to college right away and start out up to your eyes in debt. Work for me for a few years. If you want to move on, fine, at least you'll have a paycheck to afford going to college for a better opportunity. Why throw yourself into debt right away? Why pizz money away pointlessly. Colleges don't have an age requirement for classes. There's no cut offs. Just cash. You have the money, they have the classes.
I tell them. Look you're 17 18 19 21 22 25 still at home with mom and dad? Why?
They say. Because housing.
Look up housing in our AO.
What's wrong with this house for 110k?
It doesn't have a granite kitchen. It doesn't have a pool. It doesn't have...
They've no idea what a starter home is! Even here in Florida they have unrealistic expectations because they live at home with mom and dad and have become accustomed to a 3/2 with 2 car garage a pool the marble and granite the top of the line appliances. But they dont see and don't appreciate the work their parents did to get where they are and have what they have.
The younger guys? I tell them. Don't pizz off mom and dad. Stay on their good side. Stack your cash wisely so you aren't stuck paying rent and never seeing that money. Stay on their good side. You make 18 19 20 22 25 an hour? In 2-3 years time you can be able to put considerable cash down on a house, walk in to the dealership and pay cash for that car/truck you want.
Never mind going here going there. Never mind having kids getting married. Do that after you've established yourself. Why put yourself in a compromising position?!
Besides, with divorce rates as high as they are, if you owned the house outright, you are safe. You can always protect your assests. So why follow a social norm that worked 40 years ago? Why even play that game?
You say folks need a college degree.
I say. Folks need more common sense and ambition. Neither of which are common commodities any more.
A seventeen-year-old and likely an eighteen-year-old are still in high school. Of course they're still at home. My kids went to college. We saved for it, so they either have attended or will attend mostly on our dime with some scholarship money on top. They live at home during the summer and work. It's what we expect, and there are caveats to our continued support while they are in school. The first is done and on his own, the second is well on her way, and the third is finishing high school and making his post-graduate plans. I would never have thrown any of them out just because they turned seventeen.
This is the norm in the entire Western world as well as Japan and South Korea.
Yes, it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
The declining fertility rate is not unique to the US.
The countries with the strongest safety nets/ social welfare have the lowest birth rates. The concept of student loans does not exist in these countries.
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
The global fertility rate is 2.4. The poorest countries, with no safety net/ social welfare have the highest birth rates in excess of 6, while wealthy countries with safety nets/ social welfare have the lowest fertility rates.
This is not unique to the US. The fertility rates within the developed world have plummeted to record lows.
Is there a need for a replacement level population , given technology substitution/ industrial robotics?
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
I don't know about that. The poorest countries with no social welfare have the highest fertility rates.
Fertility rates are a function of Affluence. The more Affluent a Society, the lower the birth-rate.
The poorest countries are 0 Level Economies (agrarian) and 1st Level (resource production).
Everyone works, and that includes children.
If children don't work, then people starve or die of disease.
About 2 Billion people spend 1 to 6 hours per day doing nothing but getting water.
When I was in Burkina Faso, the children ages 5 to 10 went with their mothers to the river to fetch water. It was about 50 minutes to the river, and then a little over an hour on the return trip, and everyone carried one or more containers of water (even me).
They did that twice each day.
The older children about 10-12 tended the goats, especially the young goats and the older children worked in the fields, tended herds of goats, or accompanied their fathers to other villages to trade goat-meat and crops for other crops and clothing or whatever they needed.
50% of the World's population have never made or received a phone call, and 2.5 Billion don't have electricity.
90% of the population of a 0 Level and 1st Level Economy are engaged in agriculture, and that includes children. When the economy starts to transition to the 2nd Level, everyone works, and that includes children, because of the massive demand for labor. As they start exporting goods, they'll import food, which means fewer agricultural workers, and those workers can now join the labor force, which forces children out. Children are now able to complete a couple of years of high school before joining the work-force.
As the economy continues to expand, and like China and Vietnam it will expand at rates of 8% to 12% GDP per year, it requires more educated workers, so children start completing high school, and then it requires advanced training to work in the increasingly complex work-place, until college graduates are needed.
So, instead of getting married at 18 years, they're going to college and getting married at 22-24 years, and that helps reduce the birth-rate, plus as their incomes increase, their wages will double about every 10 years until they transition to the 3rd Level Economy, their Affluence increases and they have fewer children.
That won't happen until the end of this Century, around 2080-2100.
By that time, those 2.5 Billion people will be 3.0 to 3.5 Billion, but nearly all of them, except for maybe 500 Million will have electricity, and they'll be taking American jobs and gobbling up resources, driving up the price of goods and services in the US/Canada and Western Europe.
The feminist bashing also falls apart because of the sheer idiocy of recommending women have kids FIRST and THEN worry about a career. Um, kids COST MONEY. You don't get the debt BEFORE you can pay for it. Heavens... imagine people saying you should buy a huge house or expensive car first and THEN worry about your career. Oh, brilliant!
Look, maybe "back in the day" when we all lived on farms and were basically married for life, having kids before career made sense for women - well, and they didn't really have career options then. But these days, there are no guarantees when comes to other people paying your bills, so if you want to be able to pay for them, you need to worry about your career FIRST. It's not like your husband is forced to be with you forever and will have a job to support the kids forever. Only after your career is in good shape and you're making steady money can you worry about "luxury expenses," which is what kids are, quite frankly.
You misunderstood my reply. I agree with you above ^^^^^.
Two female friends of mine, who are also friends with each other (both married, both well off, one with kids, one without, both never divorced, both of their husbands also have never been divorced, both have husbands who are the primary breadwinners, and both women control their households). Both of them were after me for years to get married and have kids. I finally realized that it wasn't because they thought it would enhance my life. It was because they didn't like that no woman was controlling my money.
How did you come to this realization? It sounds like some idea from certain male oriented web sites.
Everyone needs someone to look down on. It’s a fundamental human need. For bitter old people, young people have been the preferred objects of scorn since the beginning of time. It’s no different today.
You're awfully defensive. If you were 100% secure in your decision to be the perpetual bachelor with no kids, focusing on yourself, I don't think you'd be so viscerally offended by people who see having kids as a virtue.
I didn't want kids when I was younger. At around 30 I looked around and started to see the lameness of my peer group who were still acting like they were 20... pajama parties, extended adolescence.... and don't get me started about the 40s-50s guys you'd see in the club clinging to youth.
Now mid-30s, I have a 1 year old son and look forward to showing him the world and raising a productive adult.
Americans are so lazy they even have to outsource childbirth to the third world.... despite all the safety net available to people who *truly* can't afford to raise kids - such as WIC, state Medicaid, foodstamps, childcare tax credits, etc.
Until today, I always thought that poster = a woman .
After reading his last reply to me, I think he think's I'm a woman, and I'm a man.
How did you come to this realization? It sounds like some idea from certain male oriented web sites.
Re some somewhat related things other people who know both of them (but don't have another connection) said to me. I then very casually asked those two friends some questions (without tipping my hand), and it was obvious. This was also before any of that was part of the internet (at least re my online knowledge).
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. Many of them are in financial trouble because they only saved enough to buy a house, but didn't realize the constant financial drain the upkeep would be.
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