Hippie gives a solid treatise on why birth rates and relationships are broken. . .based

Men date across and down.

Women date up.

SM gives women a very inaccurate assessment of themselves, artificially inflating their value in their minds.

The extension of this warped perception is that very few men are "up."

In reality, they're a 5-6 and there are many 5-6 men who would be great husbands and fathers, but those guys are invisible to them.

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Maybe not spread out worldwide but we tend to gather in socioeconomic centers where the density hits a lot harder. Nobody wants kids when they feel like they are already overwhelmed.

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Completely disagree.

I don’t think that is a factor at all, not even in the top 50 reasons.

IMO, it is due to the social marketing and economic systems we currently reside in.

The younger generations are growing up and becoming adults later and later. It used to be that you were an adult at 18, maybe after college at the latest. You had to grow up to survive.

Now, you are essentially a child until your mid-20s to early 30s.

Society has allowed that for economic reasons. We tell young men and women to go out an have fun in their 20s, their prime years.

You don’t have to “grow up” until later. You can have kids later.

Children are tough, time consuming, and force you to set aside your own wants and pleasures.

Our social system tells us not to do that. Live your life for you. You are the most important being in the universe.

Why would anyone have children when society is telling them to not reproduce and put it off?

Then there is the cost, but that plays into what I already said.

Having kids is expensive, but doable, but you have to sacrifice to do it.

Why would anyone in modern society want to sacrifice for the future?

He's not wrong in the beginning, but like every other dirty hippy, the argument always comes around to a desire for more government control.

I wouldn't call that guy a hippie.

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Why would anyone in modern society want to sacrifice for the future?

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Is this a rhetorical question?

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It's simpler than technology: there are just too many people in the world.

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That's called "behavioral sink" (google: Universe 25 experiments) and I think it's part of the issue but more a symptom than a root cause.

When basic needs (food, water, clothing shelter) are met, we focus on higher order needs. Once those basic needs are met, it may well be that other needs are skewed (procreation, predominantly) out of the basics category to one of those higher order levels (and in doing so it goes from procreation to non-procreational, or recreational, sex).



Another part of that skewing is that with our basic needs pretty much met as a default (to the point where we no longer wonder "will I eat today?" but rather "how much of which food will I be bothered to eat today?" as an example) we take that time and energy which was once used in pursuit of those basic needs and focus them on the higher order needs. In other words, social issues become more of a focus even to the point where they are considered priorities over basic needs (since those are met as a default, think of it as "perceived needs").

As technology allows for more and more of those more basic needs to be met (sometimes just artificially, like with robot sex dolls, AI girlfriends, whatever), more and more of that energy goes into focusing on social issues and social issues create strife because social issue stances are seen increasingly as a part of Self. This means the strife comes more and more from disagreements on social issues taken in as being personal attacks (attacks on the Self).

As that increases, we become more and more disconnected. That's the foundation for my belief that we are nowhere near ready for the post-scarcity society AI and robots could bring.

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Because raising kids is quite possibly the greatest experience one can have! Not a sacrifice for the future!

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Tell that to the younger generations who are being told to “live for me” and put off growing up.

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Society didn't tell me jack shite! I lived my life based on choices and the consequences of those choices not some overwhelming pressure from society telling or guiding me in certain direction. This mindset is a load of narrative horseshite based on the need to explain the results of collective actions of individuals making the decision based on whats best for them.

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Some of you are incapable of accepting that outside voices, social pressures, social marketing, economics, etc., have impacts on social norms.

For decades, people have been stating that women should not have kids and put it off until later. Are you denying that that has had an impact?

Average age of marriage and first pregnancy was in the low 20s just 50 years ago.

Now it is 30 years old or higher, and steadily increasing.

Why aren’t we constantly telling the younger generations to build families, have children, etc.?

Hell, Musk was laughed at when he said people should have more kids.

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I would be willing to bet that many of the couples that are publicly stating they don't want kids are having trouble conceiving and use the myriad of the "society says excuses that you spewed as cover up for the root cause because it is mentally extremely painful for women that can't have kids to admit their struggles. I watched it first hand for 5 years.

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The younger generations are not having children in their most fertile years.

Why not?