I don’t need children, I have a dog.
Kids get in the way of my awesome public education, sex life, vacation, career, cost to much, make me look fat, and make me have to commit to someone (usually, even that’s not true anymore).
I would rather stretch out my earlobes, get another tattoo, and buy an EV with my same sex partner.
Did I sum it up?
I have a different take on the demographic “crisis” and it comes from of all places a comedian
In his bit he talked about how in the past, esp in an agrarian economy children were an asset, labor to work the farm…, early manufacturing was labor intensive
In an urban environment children become more of an expense than an asset in a purely academic thought experiment.
As the world becomes more automated, and I will add AI, though not really sure how that will all play out, do we really need to have as many people?
Many years ago it took 14 people to paint one car and it took weeks. Paint, sand, polish…. The automobile industry used to employ millions to produce cars, now it is hundreds of thousands.
A few farmers with a GPS controlled piece of farm equipment can plant and harvest hundreds of acres, sonething that would have taken dozens just a few years ago and hundreds many years ago.
I often hear the argument that we need more children to support the elderly and a consumer economy and agree to a point.
There will come a time, relatively soon when time will take care of the inverted pyramid of demographics, the elderly bubble, of which I am one, will die off. As for consumer economy the amount of goods and services needed will change, they always have. Used to be a blacksmith in the community was a necessity and there was a thriving buggy whip industry (credit to rush Limbaugh), and thousands were employed to place calls, few exist today and yet we still exist.
If populations continue to grow, and automation continues to advance, what are all these people going to do for jobs.
As an aside, looking at all the “creative” and mostly useless degrees coming out of our universities we are trying awfully hard to create something for people to do
lol, just my 2 cents