Honestly yeah. I’m here so I’m gonna try my best, but why would I want to drag another being into this shit?
Gen-X here (the ones immediately after the boomers but before the Millenials), it is amazing how many of my school mates ended up having no children. Yes many did, but a surprising number did not. In my circle (childhood neighbors, classmates, family) it’s almost half.
Anecdotal
Roughly the same amount of people want children and roughly the same amount of people have children
What has changed is when they start having children and how many they have
In the past if you had 100 women, maybe 90 of them would become mothers with 3 children
Now 85 women become parents but they only 1 or 2 children each
So yeah, fewer people are having children but not enough to really matters. The big issue is that we settle down, get married, and start families later in life, giving us less time to produce more children. So family size is shrinking.
Take every family with kids and add 2 kids, there’s your missing numbers.
It’s not that money isn’t an issue, but it’s not the driving force you would assume it is
Of course it’s money related? I would love to have another child but can’t afford to. Anecdotal yes, but it’s the similar situation for others.
Yes, money is a factor, but it’s not the only factor and it’s not necessarily the largest factor
People want to be younger longer. Graduate, go to college, drink, party, sleep around, get a job, focus on their career, go to concerts, hang out a breweries, travel, etc…
Tying yourself down with kids by the age of 20 or 23 is no longer a common dream. So the same amount of people have kids in life, they just star having kids later and end up with less of them.
There are less accidental pregnancies thanks to better sex education and access to contraceptives and when it comes to doomer-ism, young people are worried about climate change, over population, and like you saw from an earlier response, stupid cry-baby shit like, “I don’t want to make another wage slave”
I keep thinking about the beginning to the movie Idiocracy. Yes, it’s just a movie but the picture it paints remains somewhat valid. While money was an issue to the middle class family, the trashy poor family in the trailer park ended up with six kids.
So yeah, maybe money is an issue to you but it’s not to everyone.
And don’t get it twisted. Being poor and having kids doesn’t make you a bad person. Lots of people grow up poor to hard working, intelligent, loving parents who give them a pretty good life overall. PS5s and new cars don’t make you a good parent. A soccer ball and a tent can do wonders
Do people want to stay young longer or is it that people used to be able to afford to save for a house on an entry level wage. Now, until you’re on a decent wage it’s going to take 10 to 15 years of hard saving to get a house deposit. Faced with that unsurmountable task people say fuck it and just spend for now.
They want to stay younger longer
The dream is to be young and rich so you can travel and go to nightclubs and shit… not be young, rich, and a mother of 6 children
Eventually you get tired of the nightclubs and that’s when you want kids… but influencers like MrBeast, IShowSpeed, even the Kardashians didn’t rush out with their money and have kids
Do you have some surveys you can point me to that backs that up?
https://time.com/6965267/women-having-kids-later/
In 1970, the average woman in the U.S. had her first baby at around 21 years old. That’s hard to imagine now: new federal data published in April show that in 2022, the average first-time mother was a little older than 27
The foundation for this trend was laid in the 1960s, when the birth control pill came onto the scene
it has become increasingly common for people to have children later in life for a range of reasons, including concerns about finances and child care, waiting longer to get married or find a partner, and prioritizing education, career, or leisure time during young adulthood.
it’s still far more common for people to want children than to plan to stay child-free, and that most prospective parents want more than one baby. What’s different from decades past, Guzzo says, is that people are increasingly pushing back the ages at which they have those kids, often into their 30s and beyond.
Money is big, but no amount of money will convince me to make a kid whose future is either wage slave or wage slave master.
It’s not that money isn’t an issue, but it’s not the driving force you would assume it is
Do you not think that people settling down and starting families later is related to money? In the 70s the average age for getting on the property ladder was mid 20s, now it’s mid 30s. If you don’t feel settled and financially secure you’ll delay things like starting a family.
Not to defend Boomers, but let’s not let the “Greatest Generation” off the hook that easy…
They get a pass for the horror they lived through
Boomers lived through plenty of horrors. Vietnam, deindustrialization, the Volcker Shock, leaded gasoline/paint, AIDS…
The 1970s was a fucked decade.
Sure they get a pass for that, then they squandered it with their epic entitlement.
The 20th century in general is kind of unfathomably different from most of the rest of history. It was a wild time to be alive.
You could say, humanity learned how to REALLY fuck around.
We are now REALLY finding out.
Thanks, grampa
We have made absolutely massive technological strides in fucking around.
Thankfully, we will be dead from the last centuries fucking around and won’t get the chance to use most of it.
You’re saying that as if we haven’t been adding even more ways to fuck around since 2000.
The rate certainly increased post Industrial Revolution.
Yeah not too far off. The post WW2 generation are the most successful ladder pullers of all time.
I have a boomer on my wife’s side that just remortgaged his house at 84 to buy an $80,000 Toyota Tacoma with all the custom add-on bullshit. They are not only intent on spending every cent they have, but also signing loans they never intend to pay off.
I have a boomer on my wife’s side that just remortgaged his house at 84
Why attribute to dementia what can be attributed to malice of forethought?
Boomers are also falling for phone scams and online phishing attacks in record numbers. Almost as though they’re old af, living alone, and incapable of taking care of themselves.
No no he has a boomer 2nd wife intent on leaving nothing behind to the kids from his first marriage. It’s 100% petty spending.
I’ll never give a boomer the benefit of the doubt when a situation can be explained by selfishness.
Just stop expecting things from them, and write them off.
Family nowadays are the last people you should trust.
We can change that.
Let me introduce you to Madame La Guillotine. She will be taking care of this.
Boomers were called “the me” generation by their parents, they rewrote the narrative to call themselves boomers.
The problem is have with the term “ladder pullers” is that it implies the ladder is still around and functional, just waiting to be lowered.
We sold the ladder for scrap metal.
We didn’t sell it. They sold it because it wasn’t to be used by anyone else after them and they kept their ladder money until it gets funneled into the medical system because their kids “didn’t earn it”.
What is a ladder puller?
Someone who uses a ladder to reach a higher spot (uses privileged situations to improve their life standards) and pulls the ladder up from behind them so those that follow can’t use it.
For example: taking advantage of government subsidised secondary education to reach a higher income without loads of debt and then voting to get rid of the subsidies so you can pay slightly less in taxes because “you don’t want to pay for someone else’s schooling”
See my formerly poor father who got a pell grant and used it to get out of poverty to comfortable middle class but is a conservative who generally does not want the government helping people because it could be abused.
On the bright side he became disillusioned with MAGA and now just generally hates all politicians which I will consider a win for him
Ah! So irony can be a noun.
Wow almost full circle. Uneducated—> college —> ladder pull —> far right maga —> hates all politicians.
Now maybe if he went back to school one more time he might actually understand what a stupid path he took.
Thanks! Great metaphor.
Clarence Thomas
A boomer /s
Greg fucking Abbott, governor of Texas had an accident when he was younger that paralyzed him. He sued the fuck out of those responsible, and then proceeded to pass a law that caps penalties to those responsible for accidents.
That’s a ladder pull.
Wow I didn’t know that, thank you
At this point I’m genuinely considering the only way to convince them to put the ladder back down is to ask them if they want more than 1/10 of their retirement care nurses to be white.
Similar to how I think the only real solution to MAGA is to start a psyopp that all citrus fruits make you queer.
I know I’m going to end up caregiver for another entitled boomer I just know it.
You get to choose how much you actually care, don’t ever forget that.
They won’t be willingly lowering any ladders. We’re gonna have to dilute their political power and pull the ladder back down. Of course, the later generations still have too many rich assholes that will try to prevent that, so it’ll be a fight either way.
We’re going to have to build a new ladder
Really we’re just running the clock until their vote doesn’t hold enough swing.
A race to see which happens first: Boomers dying off or irreversible global climate catastrophe. Place your bets.
Uhhhh…
The problem is there are plenty of ads hole genX that took all the wrong lessons from the Boomers.
I fear that the lauded “Boomers dead golden age” just leaves a bunch of bitter latch-key genX that want to “get theirs” because daddy wasn’t around enough.
There will be but the millennials outnumber them so readily and are much more apt to have the gumption to affect change without Gen X.
As if there aren’t plenty of asshole millenials and gen zs. It is not a thing that dies out with generations, otherwise it would have died off a million years ago. It perpetuates itself through societal and structural conditions.
Am i allowed to bet now that the outcome is certain?
At which point the Millennials will be in charge.
Can’t wait for JD Vance, Pete Buttigieg, and Mark Zuckerberg to hold the keys to the castle. Hope all y’all are excited to start a shooting war with China.
Why lump Buttigieg in with those assholes?
But he’s been a corporate plant and a soulless climber within the Democratic Party since his mayoral days. The absolute worst that the party has to offer.
Your article says Pete started work in his 20’s as a consultant for McKinsey. Some people blame his work for contributing to price fixing bread at Canadian grocery store(s) 6 years before he started working there.
This doesn’t feel like a big deal to me or your average American. This feels like a campaign to run the career of a young and potentially effective Dem politician through the mud. Like had been done to Hilary and and now AOC. This doesn’t mean that Pete Buttigieg is perfect, but let’s not pretend he’s the same as JD Fucking Vance.
Yeah, South Bend is doing fine last I checked
We’re running out the clock until climate change starves half the global population to death and then water shortages and war kill the other half.
Gen X carry the torch, then our generation, then Gen Z.
Each grown under the system of selfishness, the rest are discarded.
Do not believe that we are special.
You are not factoring in the world wars.
The boomers were raised by people with ptsd who were raised by people with ptsd.
Has nothing to do with being special and everything to do with millennials being the first generation not raised by collectively traumatized parents.
You know as well as I do those types of people would just say “why do you think I want to deport 1/3 of the country?”
They can say whatever they want. Their work visa philipino care aid isn’t gonna give any more fucks cathing them when they have 20 other geriatrics in their care. If they want white people they can talk and relate to than they’d better make healthcare a viable profession for their grandchildren.
Damn, Grandma is getting fucking roasted next Thanksgiving
And fruits and vegetables. Vitamin C sneaks in in a lot of places if you aren’t living off preserved food
lol vitamin C. Yes gran, I’ve had vitamin C enrichment for years and it made me the cunning linguist I am today.
Ah, the Epstein Generation.
Tate Generation exists too. In fact, raping children/women isn’t a generational thing. It’s pervasive.
Yeah cool, which generation holds disproportionate political power even now as congress turns into the most expensive nursing home?
Which generation raped the living world and its childrens’ futures as increasingly more evidence came in of their effect on the world itself?
Which generation, holding political power, refused to release the Epstein files or prosecute anyone related to him even as detached as the banking industry that allowed him to launder millions at the least?
Feel free to fucking vote, homeslice. Not just the big ticket elections, but the state elections, too. In fact state legislatures are just as important as Congress. We’re not going to gripe our way out this mess….
In your manic obsession with age you completely forget to look at the actual deciding factor of wealth instead for the people who holds power.
Which generation disproportionately hoards the most wealth?
Let’s divide into 6 generations, 2 or optionaly more genders (depending on if we have more or less fascism), and let’s also add classism on top of that, vs everyone but the top.
The “fuck you, I got mine” generation.
Next time, we spare no Nazi.
No scientists, no business exception, no common soldier excuse.
Nooses for everyone.
Things would be very different if there were no billionaires. But they do exist, and that’s why we live in a world where children have no future.
It’s so easy to turn billionaires into the main villains of the story, but it’s a lazy thing to do. The real evil is the unregulated and unchecked system that allowed billionaires to be a thing. Keep that in place and grifter billionaires will just keep on popping up.
Billionaires are the capitalists that maintain capitalism.
Nah. Billionaires didn’t force Reagan and Clinton to deregulate the US and set the stage for what we have today. Capitalism existed while FDR implemented the new deal, etc.
I think you’re confused. Do billionaires own the means of production, or don’t they?
I am not confused, and I don’t think we are necessarily disagreeing. My point isn’t that billionaires are faultless or good. My point is that they are not the root of the evil. We cannot just rid ourselves of the billionaires, pat ourselves on the back and call it a day. We have to do that, and then go further. We have to, at the very least, put the guardrails back in place to ensure a new crop doesn’t pop right back up.
The great crash and the following great depression took care of the robber barons. We regulated in order to avoid them again, but eventually forgot our lesson. I suspect that the AI crash will take care of this current batch of rich fucks, and we will once again regulate and focus on people like FDR did. I just wish we would stop forgetting the lessons of the not so distant past.
Ok, I think I see what you’re getting at. Billionaires constitute the capitalist class, but individual capitalists aren’t the problem; it’s the capitalist class that needs to be abolished
Exactly! We need to set checks in place to make sure the mega rich are not allowed to be a thing. I am sorry but nobody should be rich enough to set up space tourism as a side hobby while his employees piss in bottles at the warehouse. That’s fucking insane!
Right… The people at the top weren’t billionaires, but they were the wealthy elite, who had hundreds of millions of dollars, and before that, tens, and before that just millionaires.
The wealthy elite are always the ones that pull the strings in a capitalist organization of the economy…
There weren’t as many billionaires influencing politicians because there were vastly fewer billionaires, and the value of the dollar was way higher. A 100millionare in the 80’s would have, I imagine, had similar influence to today’s billionaires.
Hell, Reagan had the “Kitchen Cabinet” that was all wealthy business owners.
Billionaires are a symptom, not the sickness. Yes, we need to rid ourselves of billionaires the way we rid ourselves of the robber barons, but they are not the problem no matter how hard you wish them to be. The problem is the system that allowed them to exist. Rich fucks were always around to exhert influence, but not like this. We had guard rails in place to limit their political influence, to break up monopolies, to set limits on political donations, to set limits on campaign finance, to set limits on media influence, etc.
By all means, break out the guillotine, but you cannot stop there. Saying “billionaire bad” is not enough. You have to have wholesale reform or you are going to end up in the same place, or much worse.
I can’t even tell what point you’re trying to make anymore…
I genuinely do not understand why my point was so hard to grasp. Billionaires are bad, yes I agree, but billionaires are the end product of a system that allow billionaires to exist. Do not only focus on symptom, focus on the cause.
Yes but the point is that billionaires/the 1% has been pushing the system that way. It didn’t come out of thin air.
I think you are GREATLY, GREATLY misunderstanding the level of lobbying the rich do to keep and expand their power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book) gives you a peek behind the curtains of just a few billionaires. Its scary how deep their roots run through society. Now imagine that times 1000’s of billionaires. They litterally control how 95% of the population, eat, sleep, think, pray, and vote.
Yes, that’s right. But the responsibility for this lies with none other than the American people.
This is by no means a law of nature, but the failure of what is called democracy in the U.S.
Gee I wonder who would have been motivated to create such a system. Perhaps people like Smedly Butler would know
I’m stressed about how the warping and corrupting of an already problematic society is effecting me and my existing loved ones. I don’t think I can actively create additional even more dearly loved people that I have to then introduce to this civilisation and convince them not to go insane looking at it. I would never feel a moment’s peace again until I or they were dead.
ageism alienates allies; no war but class war
Yeah, this inter-generational blaming is really the most effective propaganda method applied by the ruling classes to make people forget about class war.
Current generation: “yo (llm Ai) are we cooked?!”
Oh, I didn’t have kids simply because I don’t like them, never had any desire to be a parent, and there is literally nothing in my life that children wouldn’t ruin
The important thing about not having children is that any reason is all the reason that is needed. I’ve heard so many people want an explenation, instead of just accepting that to some people, children just straight up suck.
My life would also get infinitely worse by having children, because how I wanna live my life, and what I dream of, is completely incompatible with taking care of someone.
I have kids and absolutely love it. In fact there’s not much that my kids haven’t made better. Of course there’s day where I wanna smash my head against a brick, but most days are wonderful.
I’ve never heard someone say they don’t want kids and thought really anything of it. If someone doesn’t want kids that’s nobodies business but their own and I think for most people it makes sense to not. They’re a lot of responsibility, they cost a lot of money, and take up all your time. It just so happens that if I had no responsibilities, nothing but free time and more money I’d be shooting up and sleeping in a ditch somewhere.
I have kids, but I don’t understand how some people feel like it’s an obligation to have them.
Nobody should feel obligated to do so. It’s damn hard to do more or less properly and requires quite a bit of sacrifice.
Oh, and if society as a whole complains about a low birth rate, maybe let’s focus more on the hardships the new generations have to face: hard to find and keep a job, unfair pay, costly rent, and the nearly impossible cost of homeownership.
Let’s tackle those and see what happens instead of pressuring people into parenthood.
I can’t speak for everywhere, but in my community and among my family members, the number one reason they want everyone to have kids is religion. Their god(s) tell them to have children, and so they do (my FIL has five!!!) They see fecundity as godliness, and so at best they see childless adults as confused or misguided, and at worst they see them as heathens and heretics. Most of my family are good people and understand the value of self-determination, even if they don’t understand my reasons. But there are outliers; someone once told me that they were glad I wasn’t having more children because I live a “pagan” life and my children would be punished by god unless I raised them into the church… No clue why they thought I was pagan, as I’ve always been clear about my personal dismissal of religion.
Wild.
I have one kid, and everyone asks when Im having another. Some people just expect you to keep breeding.
For me the one kid is fine. Two would be a substantial downgrade in quality of life for my wife and I AND our kid. Three is right out.
Plenty of people just don’t want kids, but they feel pressured to come up with reasons such as money, the environment, or whatever else, because people can’t accept “I don’t wanna” as a reason
I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard “that’s selfish” when I say that I am child-free
Always from fucking morons.
If they are very insistent and won’t keep bugging me with such a (i feel) personal question, I feel that I am right in giving them too much information.
“We aren’t having kids because I keep busting on her tits and face” something like that.
I’m sterile and so is my partner
I’ve had plenty of people get nasty and say “what would you do if she got pregnant?”
I always respond “oh, that’s not possible, especially the way we do it” and see how long it takes to click
You don’t own morons an explenation. They won’t accept it anyway.
I usually respond with a hearty “fuck off”
I have been doing this for a long time
Thank you fistingenthusiast for not letting kids get near your entertainment lol
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I work in hospice, and was recently made aware of a child who was contacted as their parent’s emergency contact (parent in the hospital signing into hospice, but rapidly deteriorating.) She said she’d sign papers if needed to make sure her parent didn’t end up on the street, but otherwise wasn’t interested in updates/contact till her parent passed.
There’s many flavors of ways this will come back to bite people.
Survival bias, where the ones who lived long enoughh to stereotype are not the ones who suffered similar to the next generation
I want better world for children but I’m not bringing any into this hell hole.
It has been a hellhole and im afraid but it always will be.
ITT: people blame anyone and everyone but themselves for their poor financial decisions.
And here you are blaming individuals for a broken system. Very helpful
Grow up.
Got’em
Actually, now that I think about it, why would I want these people to reproduce? Please carry on playing the victim in your parents basement, gambling, getting high, wasting money, and having zero ambition.
Actually, now that I think about it, why would I want these people to reproduce?
Starting to sound a little eugenics-y don’t you think?
I guarantee that they’re a racist
You’ll never be a billionaire, and that makes me happy.
I don’t agree at all with the person you are answering to, but the meme blames a whole class of people based on a birthdate they never chose nor cannot change.
I’ve seen plenty of compassionate boomers, that’s why it makes me sad to see so many memes stirring intergenerational division on Lemmy. They feel like a carte blanche to blanket hate someone.
Also people seem to forget that eventually they will be next on the generational chopping block.
Youre right, I should have bought more ammo.
My parents bought a house in the late 80s for less than $100,000. My dad worked, my mom didn’t. We vacationed every year, sometimes multiple times a year. We owned brand new cars. My dad made then what I make now, roughly $65-70k a year.
People making 6-figures now a days, dual income, no kids, still can’t afford a home. I’m married with a single income (my partner is disabled) and we might order out once every two weeks if we can afford it after all our bills.
But it’s poor financial decisions and totally not reality. When that same house my parents bought in 1989 for under 100k, sells for nearly $1 million… It might not be the younger generation’s decisions that are the problem.
You might want to look into some reality before blowing your nose on the Internet.
Damn, you suck
Which poor financial decisions exactly?
When we were all born, our parents handed us a recurring expense that only escalates in price. Our cost of living. We are living a life that was forced upon us without our consent.
Raped into life, forced into wage slavery. Thanks mom and dad. Hope they just inject drugs for dopamine next life and leave me out of it.
Says a dude who will never have even a quarter of what the average baby boomer had at their age, like 7+ children, a home at 19 years old, economic stability, or at least a happy family of four without a college degree. Why? Are they smarter, work harder, or what?
🤏🫵🏿😂🤡
It is not people’s fault inflation keeps increasing but wages do not. It is not people’s fault things like the Iron River or the unnecessary blockades and tariffs exist. It is your fault though, that the Jeffrey Epstein Class keeps winning and raping children. You are literally a Jeffrey Epstein Class Suppoter for helping those pedophiles continue to worsen and abuse the system.
You are not a Mega Donor. You have never donated more than a million dollars to the politician you wanted. Their ads, campaigns. You were always forced to elect politicians chosen by people richer than you, and very soon, even if you are rich, you will be eaten. Keep it up. You create the friction people need.
You forgot the OG
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children
Which Millennials of a certain economic cohort are still far too willing to say in private, nevermind in public.
