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The question is not why the birth rate is falling – it’s why anyone has kids at all
The New Statesman ^ | 4 July 2022 | John Allege

Posted on 07/05/2022 6:17:50 PM PDT by anthropocene_x

The mysterious thing is not that people are having fewer kids. It’s that they’re still having as many as they are.

Numbers first. In late January the Office for National Statistics noted, in an “ooh that’s interesting” kind of a way, that in 2020, for the first time, half of women in England and Wales remained childless by their 30th birthday.

In economy in which wages barely rise, a huge pile of debt if they’re a graduate and a housing market in which the only way to attain secure housing is to buy but the only way of buying is to inherit money, move a long way from the best jobs markets or, preferably, both. Throw in the cost of childcare, often compared to a second mortgage — which, given the size of mortgages these days, is no small deal — and the whole venture seems prohibitively, terrifyingly expensive.

Is it any wonder that people might not want to have children when they’re living in a shared flat, or don’t have room for them, or know they can be evicted at almost no notice? Or when they can’t see how they can afford a kid if they don’t keep working, but don’t see how they can afford to keep working if they have a kid?

(Excerpt) Read more at newstatesman.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: biden; birthrate; economy; millennials
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To: EvilCapitalist

You realize that 1926 was during the Roaring 20’s, not the Great Depression, right? And the birthrate in 1925 was 3.13 children.


21 posted on 07/05/2022 7:18:20 PM PDT by Valpal1 (Not even the police are safe from the police!!!)
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To: sunny bonobo; Deaf Smith

The birth rate was declining long, long before 2020.


22 posted on 07/05/2022 7:19:33 PM PDT by CatHerd (Whoever said "All's fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: China Clipper

“Kids these days have four legs
————____________——————

I see them all the time bagging poop and tossing it in the weeds and spending thousands on little doggie and kittie gifts. Good for them I guess.
Some do the same for cats.
I don’t understand the irresponsibility and non commitment. Everyone appears to have some support animal or medical needs pet for THEM! Have a kid it’s for the child. Children are not support animals, they are the needs. It’s opposite.

Maybe love is leaving the world for a little while soon?


23 posted on 07/05/2022 7:23:43 PM PDT by Karliner (Heb 4:12 Rom 8:28 Rev 3, "...This is the end of the beginning." Churchill)
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To: anthropocene_x

There are many good kids.

I am at times astounded by their quality.

But life will be tough for many.

My former neighbor Jacquie is a lovely woman, but her life has been very difficult for many years.


24 posted on 07/05/2022 7:27:24 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: anthropocene_x

Must be someone who has never had a child


25 posted on 07/05/2022 7:28:09 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: EvilCapitalist

There are other ways to prevent pregnancy


26 posted on 07/05/2022 7:29:14 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: anthropocene_x

If people stop having kids, who are Democrats going to have sex with?


27 posted on 07/05/2022 7:32:37 PM PDT by dead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_vFiUUcBkc)
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To: CatHerd

The birth rate was declining long, long before 2020.

Of course you’re right. It was just my crude attempt at making a joke.


28 posted on 07/05/2022 7:33:21 PM PDT by sunny bonobo
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To: anthropocene_x

Hopefully libs and leftists won’t have any kids.


29 posted on 07/05/2022 7:36:47 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: AnthonySoprano

some of Thomas Jefferson’s thoughts on slavery:

“The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future & general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even to this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government....It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.

page 51
Thomas Jefferson Redivivus


30 posted on 07/05/2022 7:38:13 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: anthropocene_x

My winter season neighbors’ son Kyle and his wife
had a child a few months back.

He’s a firefighter and she’s a nurse.

They are good people and life will go on.


31 posted on 07/05/2022 7:40:45 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: anthropocene_x

this wonderful smart doctor was saying that she didn’t think she would have anymore kids...she had one....I thought to myself that people like her should be the ones having lots of kids....


32 posted on 07/05/2022 7:41:17 PM PDT by cherry (;)
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To: plain talk
"Failure of successful people(s) to multiply could be our peril over the long term"

this....

33 posted on 07/05/2022 7:42:12 PM PDT by cherry (;)
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To: anthropocene_x

I think ultimately it is about the religious mindset vs the secular one


34 posted on 07/05/2022 7:42:50 PM PDT by Stingray51 ( )
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To: anthropocene_x

If like me and many fellow Christians you believe in God’s prophetic warning in Revelations are already coming true it would be foolish to have children now.


35 posted on 07/05/2022 7:43:37 PM PDT by TonyM (Score Event)
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To: Valpal1
"Women actually keep their knees together when food scarcity, economic woes and social anxiety all occur at once."

as if women can make babies all by themselves....just a miracle!

36 posted on 07/05/2022 7:45:19 PM PDT by cherry (;)
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To: TonyM

How about you believe the creation mandate?

“Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it.” - God


37 posted on 07/05/2022 7:51:37 PM PDT by Persevero (You cannot comply your way out of tyranny. )
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To: anthropocene_x

“The population of the Amish is projected to be greater than the current population of the United States in 215 years if the Amish growth rate, which has held constant for more than 100 years, remains the same. Over the past 100 years, the Amish population has doubled every 19.63 years on average, according to data from Elizabethtown College.”


38 posted on 07/05/2022 7:52:48 PM PDT by Persevero (You cannot comply your way out of tyranny. )
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To: anthropocene_x

We can all tell stories of family and friends, and their experiences.

One family I know, parents married in 1960, had four children. Of the four children, only two married, and only 1 had children. The married daughter with children had only 2 children. So their four children had only two in the next generation.

Another family I know, parents married in 1962, had three children. Two married, but only 1 grandchild from those three children.

Another family, parents married in 1950, had three children. All three children married,and produced 7 grandchildren among them. But of those 7 grandchildren, all between ages of 30 and 38, only 3 are married. And of the 3 married, there is only 1 child among those three marriages. So the generation of 7 children produced only 1 for the next generation.

I know this is just anecdotal evidence. But many people I know tell similar stories, that current generations are having fewer children, and some in the older generation are resigned to never being grandparents.


39 posted on 07/05/2022 8:03:03 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: anthropocene_x

after you infect the populace with a sterility agent, and before they realize it, change the discussion in order to push the realization further down the line...


40 posted on 07/05/2022 8:09:09 PM PDT by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
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