Posted on 11/24/2022 2:50:05 AM PST by blueplum
...There are many like Yoo in South Korea who have chosen either not to have children or not to marry. Other advanced countries have similar trends, but South Korea’s demographic crisis is much worse.
South Korea’s statistics agency announced in September that the total fertility rate — the average number of babies born to each woman in their reproductive years — was 0.81 last year. That’s the world’s lowest for the third consecutive year....
...Lee Sung-jai, a 75-year-old Seoul resident, said...“These days, I see some (unmarried) young women walking with dogs in strollers and saying they are their moms. Did they give birth to those dogs? They are really crazy,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
IF nothing changes, within 25 years the population of those over 65 in SoKo will roughly equal the population of those under 65. Is a country so cavalier about their own human sustainability even worth other countries defending that country once that country reaches the tipping point? When do we draw the line on other countries spending their own treasure and manpower defending that country?
I don’t know about South Korea but over here we had decades warning us about over population . Guess some people actually believed it.
For some of us the term “I want to have kids” is describing eyesight to the blind.
Being child-free is a valid choice. I am not worried about my dotage as my wife and I have planned well.
And I hear and read many stories of how adult chikdren abuse and take advantage of their parents so the “kids will take care if you in your golden years” argument is fraught with pitfalls and peril,
Of course in the USA we have a robust legal immugration system so net native birth is not a crisis here (sidestepping the illegal alien invasion for argument purposes here). Asian countrues like NoKo and Japan tend to be insular and immigration difficult.
It’s funny how the left has things backwards. When poor countries industrialize and become wealthy, the birth rate declines. But the left is worried about overpopulation AND they are against industrialization and the increase of wealth for everyone under capitalism. They are concerned about the environment but they approve of inefficient, polluting industries in communist countries and they hate modern, less polluting industries in capitalist countries. Go figure.
With 8 billion people and rising, the world isn’t in any danger of people becoming extinct. And it won’t be in any danger of underpopulation anytime soon.
Further theres no reason population must always increase. There’s no rule it must always go up. History reports ebbs and flows.
American style feminism isn’t quite as popular in Asia, although the infection is present but you still get the same breakdown of the traditional family and sex roles that is driving the demographic decline in large part by the push to turn everybody into a direct consumer in the economy which ironically will strangle it in the long term with fewer babies.
People are power. The driving force of humanity is providing for its offspring. Science, technology, culture. Everything ultimately springs from this. You take it away and you get stagnation from which a species may never recover.
“Being child-free is a valid choice.”
We made that choice, and so far have no regrets. I’m not saying we won’t change our minds, but now in our mid-70s we’re good. We also have planned well.
And we have nieces and nephews who we treat almost as our own children.
These days, I see some (unmarried) young women walking with dogs in strollers and saying they are their moms. Did they give birth to those dogs? They are really crazy,” he said.
Of course in the USA we have a robust legal immugration system so net native birth is not a crisis here (sidestepping the illegal alien invasion for argument purposes here). Asian countrues like NoKo and Japan tend to be insular and immigration difficult
You are a fool to think these people will take care of you. You are not their tribe and they do not care for their own tribe members that well. Centuries of building social trust is gone.
Caretakers abuse.
You borrow others children.
How different if they were not there?
“How different if they were not there?”
Hard to say. I guess it’s something like “you can’t prove a negative”.
A couple years ago when my nephew was in his late 30s, he told me, “You’re really a mother. You just haven’t come out of the closet.” I thought was very sweet.
The Left is against people living high carbon lifestyles prattling on endlessly about how we should be concerned with our “carbon footprint”.
BUT
Simultaneously they are for poor people from 3rd world countries living low carbon emission lifestyles (ie they’re poor) moving to rich countries to live high carbon emission lifestyles (ie become wealthier).
Wouldn’t it be better for Earth Mother Gaia to just leave the millions who flock to the US and Europe in their 3rd world chit-holes to live poverty stricken low carbon lifestyles?
It is a trend I find creepy.
Women and Men calling animals their children.
It was always known pets were some women's child substitute; but calling animals children is creepy.
It's not difficult to see how bringing up a child there might be difficult. Also,Koreans work like dogs (no offense intended) very much like the Japanese do. A 60 hour work week is not unusual there.My girlfriend,for example,has been known to work 80 hours a week while in the US...mainly to enable her to pay her daughter's way through Columbia University.
What little I know about East Asia (I've spent time in Japan as well) suggests that people there are accustomed to very,*very* difficult lives.
Crisis? LOL!!!!
(unmarried) young women walking with dogs in strollers and saying they are their moms
Ban contraceptives and abortion, and homosexual marriage, but otherwise provide incentives to marry, and these alone would result in a positive social revolution.
“Being child-free is a valid choice.” We made that choice, and so far have no regrets. I’m not saying we won’t change our minds, but now in our mid-70s we’re good. We also have planned well. And we have nieces and nephews who we treat almost as our own children.Biblically perverse. If you are going to marry, then you both engage in procreation as God enables, and the women especially is uniquely enabled to do, which is to bear and raise children along with the husband, the head, who, the wife works together with and in mutual support. That is all part of one functional charge of God in enabling and instituting the martial union:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26-28)
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:20-24)
And in which being childless was seen as a curse (and could be), or cause of great distress, while children are called a blessing.
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. (Genesis 30:1)
Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: (Jeremiah 22:30)
Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death. (2 Samuel 6:23)
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. (Psalms 127:3-5)
The only birth control is temperance, and the only alternative is to be single, celibate and continent (but which is nowhere mandated for clergy).
The wrong people are increasing the global population.
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