Hello you savages. Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - chriswillx.com/books/ Here's the timestamps: 00:00 Fertility Rates Over the Last Few Years 05:51 Lessons We Can Take From the 1900s 09:22 The Impact of Finances on Having Kids 16:44 Our Modern Obsession With Parenting 27:23 New Research on Universal Basic Income 37:16 How Many Kids People Want Today 43:28 Why Lyman Remains Positive 53:09 Does Marriage Have an Impact on Fertility? 59:21 Shifting Attitudes Towards Contraception 1:08:43 Political Tension in Mate Selection 1:21:30 The Future of Western Birth Rates 1:30:46 What Lyman is Studying Next 1:31:59 Where to Find Lyman
22:00 something you guys missed. The reason the cultural transmission ended was also because before this kids were forced by the environment to learn everything they could from their parents just to survive. During the 50s with the new found safety there was no incentive for kids to hover close to their parents and learn everything they could.
the university down the street from me has a women's business center. Amazon has preferential treatment for women owned businesses. the school I attended has special scholarships for women. women are eligible for no bid contracts that men are not eligible for at both the state and county level. google has a women's startup accelerator but men are forbidden from organizing in the same fashion. women can join the police, the military or firefighting with lowered standards. women in the aggregate are net tax recipients, men are net tax payers. men are forced to serve in the selective service in order to vote, but women are exempt from the draft. there are a lot more men than women who are homeless but there is no effort to equalize that. the average man pays anywhere between 25 to 65 percent of his income to pay for social entitlements, which is more than serfs were made to pay during feudalism. Social security and medicare are insanely bad investments for men both because men pay more in taxes and don't live as long. women complain about the pay gap but fail to note that men are much more likely to be injured on the job.
I'm a millennial mother and I totally agree that as a parent today you have to do your homework on EVERYTHING. You cannot just trust that your morals and values are at the doctors office, schools or television unlike previous generations-which is absolutely a consequence of diversity. Also, I know I personally struggle with a lack of a "village" and we all hear "it takes a village to raise a child" ... so yeah, very few people have them which makes having more children difficult.
I don't have children. But I'm a Millennial as well, and I was having this same conversation with a married friend who has 2 kids. I was telling him I think it's crazy how my parents were just like "Ok, sign up for kindergarten. Hand you off to the public school and trust them with your child. Ok, drop you off here at this camp. Ok, drop you off here. I'll be back in two hours". He agreed. Then we talked about his daughter's birthday party. I pointed out to him how all the parents stayed. When I was younger, a birthday party was a free babysitter for half the day and the parents would leave. You see it more now that there is a very broad lack of trust in these institutions and social "norms" now versus in the 90s.
@@timothy8142 this is a great point! And the other hand, it seems nice that a lot more parties are for the entire family rather than just like 10 or 12 kids. As a generation, we are so much more aware of how quickly really negative things can happen to our children. I think everybody knows what I am referring to, although, if I said, the UA-cam algorithm will probably hide this comment. But you really have to keep an eye on the kids and no sleepovers ever.
I believe the data shows that it's not 'people are having fewer children', but rather 'fewer people are having children'. The average number of children a 'mother' has is the same, but fewer women are choosing to be 'mothers'. Also, the primary reason seems to be 'I want children, but not now.... oops, it's too late', versus 'I don't want kids'.
Source; trust me bro. Hindsight is 20/20, most under 25yr old women probably shouldn't be having kids unless they have a strong community, strong and healthy partnership/marriage and ideally skills to work decently. Most young adults in our societies are just kids and shouldn't be parents.
@@martinthegiraffe7924 Capitalism/modernity is the best contraceptive. Materialism, atomization and population collapse or duty,community and high fertility rates. There is no middle ground.
@@botidobra6221 capitalism is the reason youre replying to me and modernity is the reason why women have a freedom to live how they want to. We re not going to start forcing people or shame people for not wanting to become parents, its not realistic and against freedom.
My grandparents had working class salaries and could afford a home in Palos Verdes, CA back in the day. My parents got priced out of SoCal and moved to Seattle but could afford a nice home in a suburb of Seattle with working class salaries. Now the home I grew up in is $1.5M. I have an engineering salary and can't afford to live where I grew up. It's becoming increasingly difficult for future generations to live and buy homes in major cities. Now I live in Huntsville, Alabama and it feels like the only major city with good jobs I can afford a home. Until the country has many empty homes and apartments waiting to be filled and that are cheap to live in, I'm not gonna worry about people not having kids. Why should we if there's not enough housing in this country? It's simply a supply and demand issue. And that developers only build luxury apartments these days as far as new housing.
Birthrates have been below replacement level. Here in Australia we had very affordable housing in the 1970s. If it wasn't for mass immigration we would have a housing surplus.
That is a huge reason for the open borders. Oligarch landlords need to inflate rent year over year, month over month. They could care less how many commoners must be crushed. LIne go up!
There are many millions of empty homes in the US already. So it’s not about supply. The problem is economic inequality driving up prices and driving down wages. This is the root issue. An economist like Gary Stevenson is worth hearing from.
@@terranceramirez4816 We have more wars than that now. In the Middle Ages war and childbirth were seen as equal. It was when both men and women bravely faced what could be their death.
Can someone correct me, but did he say we live in a better society but we should have lower expectation for our children? What's the fucking point of having children if you won't be able to give them a better life that you had??
Well I think kids should be taught to start working early and to figure out what they actually want to do, rather than have schools and family force them into college because that’s what “smart people” do or for “the experience.” Half these kids shouldn’t be in college.
This guy doesn't care about quality of life for people. His religious dogma drives him to support mass-producing people who will be used as feed for the oligarchs. Really sucks, because he's able to articulate the problem. Better than most people
It's not "going to be a problem", it's a problem now. But the consequences won't be felt until the pressure of childlessness can no longer be contained by the existing system.
Meh. That's just a talking scare tactic that economists want you to believe. They see less economic growth in their projections, so they are trying to scare us all about what they see. All they care about is money and not the actual support of families and their livelihoods.
This is what people don't seem to understand. We are far enough into the problem already that we may currently be past the point of no return. The problem is that there's a time delay of at least one full generation before the repercussions start to show, and they will only intensify from that point forward.
Brilliant discussion Excellent Analysis Thank you Sir I agree!! Thanks for having him on, great guest I love your work, and I always love listening to you Chris Thank you gentlemen Thank you both
Paying parents to have kids is the as stimi checks. It creates inflation and house price increases because this money isn't coming from tax but from debt. Every 10% houses gain birth rate drops by 1.3%
Right, which is why i always maintained economic factors aren't really the main causes here. Its cultural. Look at developing countries like india, although their trend shows its declining, but relatively far more people have children than developed countries.
That is because couples still have the huge cost of paying for childcare after the women returns back to full time work, after the parental leave is over.
People often respond "welfare queens have 8 kids, why don't you bro!?" yeah but I don't want my kids to go to shitty public schools, keep them in daycares where abuse is common, live in a crime-ridden neighborhood or feeding them HFCS slop. What's really expensive is giving your child the same childhood you had. Assuming I keep my current job, that means finding a new, further place to live with better school choices (perhaps private), more security, while still having access to health resources. This is what's expensive.
@powerovercorrupt me and my brother were abused in a daycare when at 4, and 5 years old. My earliest memory is being chokeslamed onto a cot by a divorced middle aged woman. I've hated people ever since.
Hmmmm yeah I have 4 kids and they go to a pretty good public school actually, no daycare because I stay home with them and take care of them, we live in a quiet small town neighborhood where there's almost zero crime and cost of living is incredibly low compared to many places in the country today, and my kids eat good food that I cook for them almost every day. My husband makes decent money working at a furniture factory about 3 minutes away from our house so the kids have all of their needs met and many of their wants. Idk. Seems to me like if it's important to you then you'll make it work. And if not, then you won't. Every one is different. It's as simple as that.
@@marsmotion Nah, I don't live my life based on "what ifs". If it happens then we'll deal with it as a family like we do everything else. Life is always going to knock you down at certain points. It's how you handle it that matters.
Sure standards of living have gone up but if you’ve ever lived paycheck to paycheck like the vast majority of Americans, you know how hard it is. When you’re on the verge of homelessness every month it’s impossible to think about adding an entire other human being to your budget. Also younger Americans have seen what happens to children when their parents are working all of the time and can’t give them the attention they need. It causes a SLEW of mental health issues. Normal people aren’t worried about declining birth rates, we’re worried about making rent. The only people worrying about this issue is the managerial class because they are afraid they won’t have enough employees to replace the old ones.
Goodness, where to start. People, the world round, have more children in extreme poverty. Everything's relative. Those commenting have a phone, internet access, likely a place where they can post (aka lodging of some kind), social networks that support, governmental help, and either personal or public transport. Yeah, hogwash to this very privileged and condescending tone. Your struggles are real but people all around the world make it work with much much much much less.
@@smallzinc And raising children in extreme poverty knowing that you’re in extreme poverty seems like an ethical thing to do? I’d rather not subject my child to the possibility of being homeless everyday. I was raised that way. It wasn’t a fun childhood. And you expect the government to raise our children? They aren’t even competent enough to run the postal service let alone raise millions of children. Our education system has proved that.
Standards of living have gone up for the top 10%. They've plummeted for the working class. I've had my wages outrun by inflation, and my Standard of living has been cut in half compared to 5 years ago.
We’ve had two children, two boys. It has been the most wonderful journey. They are both amazing people and I have enjoyed and loved the experience of being with them, even the low/crises points of the journey has brought us closer together. Being a “Boomer” I recognise the “out sourcing” of my childhood and even today it has had a significant impact on the relationship with my own parents. I was absolutely determined that I would “parent” my children in a different way I was raised myself. I believe our children have achieved a greater degree of success and happiness a lot earlier than myself because of the investment we made in their raising. Having children has been a wonderful experience for us and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!
"living in the richest society in the world" is such a tiresome comment. Sure, Bezos and Musk are uber-wealthy, but strip those wealthy people out, and you have a country that offers its workers zero paid time off; they have to pay for health insurance that adds deductibles and shit, an extremely high cost of rent, food that is constantly being recalled, and inequality on par with the Gilded Age. It's a hollow comment.
I agree 100%! I would be over the moon if I could afford a mortgage on a tiny 1-2 bedroom house in the town I grew up in. I'm really not expecting or asking for much at all and yet it feels completely out of reach.
When my dad was in Iran right before the revolution there was the well off and then there was the women feeding their children from dumpsters. Haven't seen myself or heard of that here
34-year-old father of three small kids here. This was spot on regarding why parenting feels so hard today. I was put in childcare at two weeks old and when I asked my Baby Boomer parents the first time my infant daughter threw up what it could be, they were just as clueless as I was. Later, as we began potty training, I asked them for advice again, and they also couldn’t remember what they did, but they said “your daycare just handled that”. There is no cultural transmission of how to do any of the basics. My wife and I are choosing to homeschool because we can’t trust the schools. We feel like we are in someways stuck in the 1890s figuring out how to raise and educate kids without any help, even though our parents are still around.
This is a time and history where grandparents need to lean in and firm parents intuition and hold strong family ties support and help families cannot pay anyone to love their children🙏
Sadly in the 1890s you wouldn't be experiencing this unless you lived in the wilderness or something. Extended family living was still common, and your parents would have raised their child, not the daycare.
Outsourcing early childhood care leads to bad life outcomes. I am starting with unschooling, due to the kids having to socialize, but might switch to homeschooling. Our parents are still around, but they are old, and can not take part in raising the kids. As a kid I spent a lot of time with grandparents, cousins, aunts, neighbors. Parents these days have no "village" to rely on. My kids have exactly 1 cousin, I had almost 10. Aunts are self-absorbed garbage who have no time for kids due to all the partying, tiktok, and such. Neighbors are extremely old. And so on. There is no "village" anymore, man. It sucks.
I understand that not everyone lives in California but here’s my experience. Every home or apartment in my area is at least $2,200/month for a studio. I make 87k a year gross. 60k net. Well there goes 50% of my net income on housing alone. I drive a piece of sh%t car with no payment and insurance is still $2k a year. Gas is probably close to $4k a year. Maintenance costs about $2k a year. Food is about $8k a year ($150 a week if I don’t want to eat poisonous food). Throw in utilities (gas, electricity, trash and internet) it’s about $3.5k a year. If i did absolutely NOTHING except stay home and go to work then id have about $10k a year in savings. Google says it’s about $25k a year to take care of child (probably wrong) that has me falling $15k short. Well let’s add another person (my wife) to contribute to income. Well now we need a bigger place than a studio. How about a 2 bedroom so we can have a baby room? That’ll be $3k a month along with the cost of everything else going up. Now it looks more like $5k a year in credit debt to raise our child and no prospect to retire or own a home. Sounds like the American dream to me!!
In Oklahoma a 1 bedroom apartment is like 1500, butwages are lower here so basically it's the same. It doesn't matter where you are on the ship when it's sinking fast without any lifeboats.
@@tkfortThe privately owned federal reserve has/continues to hyperinflate the U.S. out of having class mobility and the ability for the working class to have families, and you think people should "get over it"? We need to transform the nature of the U.S. dollar, return to being commodity backed like the BRICS nations, and cancel the debt owed to the fed.
Another perception problem which keeps us in the postwar mentality is that before 1945 there were large categories of adults who did not reproduce: soldiers who died at 18-30, sailors and fishermen, young workers who died or became crippled/infertile due to work conditions, nuns, priests, women without dowries, younger sons. The large majority of premodern men did not reproduce (65%). For women it is around 20%. Only some people had most of the kids who surived to reproduce.
I see a lot of people on her saying money which is understandable, but for me it was my experience with COVID. When I saw our government talking about the possibility of forcing kids in school to have to take COVID vaccine. I was always on edge about protecting my daughter. So I said one and done
Boy you just can't please people. I'm in my 50s and have spent my entire life hearing about how we're having too many kids and need to stop. Now suddenly it's not enough kids. There's just no winning.
Breastfeeding rates were not at their lowest in the 40s and 50s in the USA. It was in the 60s and 70s that they reached rock bottom; they have been increasing since the 80s.
This is the most depressing video I've ever seen. I guess I'll just keep working for nothing so richer people can have kids while I maintain a world that determines I'm "just not skilled" enough to deserve a family.
@@gajorg69 That’s a very common retort to grievances I express. I appreciate the sentiment but unless you’re willing to listen to a pretty long spew about something that very probably doesn’t affect you at all, you won’t understand why. Just know that I, and many people like me are doing everything we can within reason and some, including myself, beyond reason.
@@gajorg69 I should also point out that this video isn’t revealing to me why things are bad but rather, people best poised to fix the problem are signaling disinterest in addressing what I find to be the cause. To give a hint to add some legitimacy to the claim, the problem I’m describing comes from well natured public policy having externalities that chronically negatively affect a certain demographic of which I am a part of.
@@nathancourtney94 No man go for the explanation, I am curious and don't mind at all. I'm very concerned with the plight of younger men, and any insight is appreciated. I'm not much older than you, but I've had my share of extreme difficulties but I've managed to pull things together okay all things considered.
REPARENTING was a parenting type that I didn't hear mentioned..this has taken up a good portion of my "healthy egg" years. Gotta get yourself right so you dont pass on old trauma to those babies.
Born into small-town 1966 to very young, married parents. People thought it was disgusting to breast feed (modern formula, modern canned food is better - right?) but my teenaged mom thought natural seemed better. "Benign neglect" had us kids running wild with packs of children till it got dark...was a pleasure I cannot explain. We were incredibly independent and "gritty" doing so much independently. Pollution and "population bomb" was drilled into our heads all thru school. Many, many of us did our part to save the planet - we did NOT have children. I was lucky enough to help raise someone else's kids and it was wonderful!!! I've been free to do tons of volunteer work and have a career I enjoy. Now I have plenty of time (and some money!) to help my parents and the adult kids - and even do exciting travel. I do NOT think schools taught us wrong - most humans on this planet live in violence and pollution and overcrowding. If we wisely ramp-down birth rates everywhere and focus on raising fewer children to be good people (and healthy)...this will work out. This also means many of us older folks will HAVE to keep helping the older people - there will not be so many young adults to do that care. I am blessed to be healthy so far - and 25+ years older than my entire work team. I plan to keep doing regular job AND keep helping older folks. We can lighten the load on our planet by extracting fewer resources for fewer people.
This is one of the most important pod to date by my man, even though I’m a papa! Share across the political sphere. Man! Good data captured by scientific method and analysis is so critical in our society where intelligent discussion is antithetical to the broad populace. Good job…
The problem is people know the future is going to be bad, you can't hide it or change there mind with smoke and mirrors. We can feel it in our bones the winds of change are coming
If your young my best advice to you is appreciate that the things you're worried about A) Won't happen at all. B) You won't care when they do happen. C) If they do happen you realize it's because you're really attached to 1 bad idea. When I was young I thought owning a car was important, I built my entire early life around that premise(while also knowing wages were going down). Then I became an epileptic at 23. All of a sudden having a car was never an option. All of a sudden I needed substantially less money to reach my goals. It was a snow ball effect. If you don't have a car you can't shop at Ikea. If you don't have a car the chance you marry someone who doesn't have or want a car goes way up. Marrying someone who doesn't want a car when you also can't drive is a huge economic benefit. So while yes all young me's worries were validated by economic decline and covid, they really where never that big of a problem. Most of my current year problems were caused by excessive worry.
@@katethomas1519 who of you by being anxious can add a cubit onto his lifespan. So never be anxious about anything for every day brings with it its own anxieties, or somthing to that effect. Words of Jesus, thank you for your insight and sorry for your misfortune
I feel that Mr. Stone is the single most knowledgeable, optimistic and practical expert iI've heard talk on this issue. A post-production editorial decision would have deleted the speaker's nervous verbal tic to the benefit of listeners. Surely an easy task in the days of AI? My advice to listeners is to play at 1.5x. Credit to the host for steering this conversation to achieve the maximum impact.
People seem to forget that the entire government of our parents and grandparents supported families and the idea of family with legislation, social programs, advertisements, entertainment, education, etc,. millennials and younger have no clue what that’s like. We lost out on our inter-generational link and the older generation proceeded through life reaping the benefits of our ignorance. This was done by slowly but surely draining each subsequent generation of their inherited wealth and cultural circumstances. In other words, we’re drowning in the deep end and we weren’t taught how to swim, and our parent is there with floaties on saying “just swim harder!”
Cost and time available to raise children. Having children isn't the issue. Raising them and being an active parent is a significant consideration, apart from the cost burden.
Yeah because in the good old days on the farm, parents had time to parent according to all the latest trends in books. No, there's more time now, even if you're working three jobs, than in antiquity.
@@smallzincif you're working 3 jobs then you're working anywhere from 16-24 hours.. you claim this is more time than a farmer but farmers work about that much daily sooo we're all confuzzled
@@LonelyTreeSunset yeah I see people do much more every day around the world in person. You're very privileged and ahev way more resources than most to be able to raise children. I know it feels impossible but come live where I live or travel where I travel and I'll show you difficult. And you'll likely grow in appreciation for what you have and how it would be quite possible to have children in your conditions compared to billions others (yes, billions).
It used to be you absolutely had no choice. You needed help on the farm and there wasnt birth control like we have now. Now that we have a choice, we have analysis paralysis just like we do with every other decision. Too many variables to consider, this math problem can take as long as you let it
I would like to see the “control group” for UBI be expanded across people toward the middle income ranges and higher educational backgrounds. The “control groups” of low income and homeless people may skew the results one direction.
Society is unstable. Relationships are breaking up. And nobody wants to raise a child alone in most cases. The future looks bleak. And people are reacting to the craziness of our time. This has happened before. Usually at the end times of a civilization.
Why should we be choosing to have children and currently sacrificing our actual lives and children’s lives out of some concern for who gets elected president in 80 years? I’ll be dead and if I don’t have any kids I don’t have any skin in that game.
Yes. He is not so much lying with statistics as he is completely incapable of grasping the meaning behind the statistics. If the numbers don't aid your comprehension, what use were the numbers?
That is an unfair judgement of this man's presentation. He is being asked statistical questions. This is not a conversation on esoteric analysis. It is up to you extract what you can from these stats. Stretch your tiny minds people! You have an inability to think based on your education that robbed you of learning critical thinking.
This all comes back to capitalism. If there's no growth, then the system dies. It seems like mostly rich people who have benefited from capitalism are most concerned about the population drop. I get the other points about social safety net systems being a Ponzi scheme and having enough soldiers to fight a conventional war, but it's mostly the capitalists who seem freaked out.
That's who are really ringing the alarm bells. Capitalist oligarchs that see their pyramid schemes is going to fall on them. We had an economy where the corpos made more out of having kids than the patents did. The corpos assumed people would continue to accept the deal and keep squirting out cannon fodder. Now they won't, getting Jeff Bezos's and Uncle Sams's panties in a twist.
In my observation, lot of guys would love to start a family and have children, but what can they do if they can't a willing woman to fall in love with? I have guys in my social circle who are financially well off, traditional, Christians with good personalities.. but almost everyone is 30+ age and still single. They talk about how they get rejected every time they ask out a girl. A while ago, one of them was saying how he got rejected by 8 girls continuously in 48 hours.
This guy is really discounting how much the increase in people who want zero kids is. He brushed that off, but our pop culture has been pushing people in that direction for decades.
@@hungrybadgerr Yeah. And here in Sweden it's more important to agree with the *Feminist* doctrines than being good at math in today's education system. Also heterosexual acts became semi-criminalized. But there are a 100 more things. I could go on and on.
@@sinesaii THANK YOU. That is the real underlying reason that no one wants to talk about. People just want to live their lives obsessed with themselves. And they don’t want to make even small sacrifices for anyone, even their own kids.
I actually enjoyed this conversation! As a religious woman, there is a lot of pressure to have tons and tons of kids. Guilt regarding how many kids people had in the past is often weaponized against modern religious women. Hearing that while women did give birth to more children, but they only RAISED 3-4 children to adulthood is helpful
@@ChrisWillx I remember the Stephen Shaw interview. It was one of maybe three interviews that turned me into a regular viewer. I'll watch it again some time. This one is the similar in the sense that it "fills many of the gaps" in the data about a very important topic. There's a lot of YT content on this topic that's useful, but clearly incomplete. Difficult topics require more data, more time & real experts. FWIW, I watch these long videos because so many of them, like this, cover important topics in depth. And for the most part, even when you slide off topic, it's at least adjacent & interesting :) _Maybe_ on point: IMO your interviews are usually better than the seeing same people being interviewed on similar channels. The difference (for me) is that it's more time-effective and complete coverage of complex and/or difficult topics. Some topics, of which this is a good example, are only half as useful with 20% less coverage. BTW - I rarely watch your "self improvement" videos. Suum cuique :)
It's simple. Why would many adults want to bring a child into this world to simply work a dead-end job with fewer access to what their grandparents had growing up, such as buying property at an affordable rate on a single income, etc. Why would responsible adults want their kids to grow up in poverty?
@@FDE4L The lack of empathy is astounding. I'm retired now, but my mentor when I started work could buy a house at 21 and start a family at 22. He was 16 years older than me and it took me 9 more years to get into that same position. It's only gotten harder for every generation since. This issue isn't about attitude, it's about opportunity. It's being hoarded by My generation and the one before. If you don't see that, you're part of the problem.
@@FDE4L I just understand WHY, and I feel for young people. You clearly don't get how bad it is. I'm quite pro-natalist and encourage my younger friends to have kids IF they have a real job (not common anymore).
We have to look at reasons that are explanatory across multiple countries, especially those that don't have the issues commonly cited. And the data demonstrates that economic factors are not predictive. So, expensive housing or lack or good jobs don't explain things. I think the key factors are social connection, urbanization, lack of cultural/ religious belief in the importance of kids, and increasing importance on resources - time and money - spent per child. We see those factors in virtually every country with lower fertility rates.
I debunk the argument on that whenever someone says "ban adult entertainment because it crashes birth rates." I then show how Japan has few bans. South Korea and Singapore have lots of bans. Japan somehow outbreeds those two.
I am one of the highest wage classifications at the mine I work at. I’m a crane operator making $35 an hr and the only people who get paid higher than me are management. I have two children and mortgage and utilities is 50% of my income. We’re thinking about stopping having kids because any more children will take more time or money and I’m not willing to have kids and not be there for them. 2 seems like our threshold without sacrificing my children or my future. Money is the problem.
Wow talk about behind the curve. This has been common knowledge for YEARS now. fyi, my paternal grandmother had 12 kids, of which 10 survived to adulthood.
That's certainly an issue for a portion of the population, but a skim even through these comments will show that Starbucks & avocado toast aren't the problem for many who'd like more kids. I firmly believe you can be a great parent without putting your kid in pricey extracurricular sports, summer camps, etc. But it's gotten reallly expensive to afford even modest homes in a safe areas with halfway decent schools. And rent is so expensive that you don't save meaningfully by "just renting for a few years" either. None of my friends are having zero kids because of these costs, but many are having fewer than they'd like. Food prices, gas prices, used car prices, insurance costs, housing costs...affording even the basics isn't easy.
It’s actually that people have the choice and less cultural pressure and far better critical thinking and opportunities. People question social norms and want career growth and consider what’s best for them. Many people have children because they want them rather than out of mere duty or obligation.
This is very true. In the past, things like travel, large houses, expensive cars, interesting restaurants, luxury clothing etc were not available or atleast seemingly available for the average person. Now they seem like they are, when in reality they aren't and people put all their effort into attempting to achieve them.
@@Coastpsych_fi99 The problem is that not having children is not whats best for anyone. You cant have a sizable percentage of the population having no kids because eventually that population collapses, but more importantly, the infrastructure/services cease to become available to the new generations and the old.
That definitely has something to do with it but it’s important to understand that the “luxuries of modern life” are living alone in an apartment and having just enough money to do that and have a tiny bit of disposable income, for the majority of people. It’s not much luxury.
A higher survival rate doesn't do enough to account for a child per woman rate below 2.0. Mathmatically a society must shrink once the rate falls below 2.
I had 2 children in the 80s. I was lucky to be able to stay home with them when they were little. But then I had to go to work when they entered school. I would have loved to have more, but we couldn't afford it. My now adult children have made the choice not to have children. And I see many of my friends' children not having children. Something has happened to the world. Let's hope for another Renaissance.
Can I ask what you felt like having a third child would have cost you? Were you saving for college for two kids, and you felt like you couldn't save any more money for a third? Most Baby Boomers had only two kids (I was born in 1990 and raised by Boomers), and I think the implicit message we all received was children aren't worth having. My mother came from a family of four kids and my dad came from a family of six kids. But they only desired two kids as well. I can't figure out what happened to make two children the norm for baby boomers.
I have 4 young adult grandchildren. NONE of them are married or want children. So different than my generation of the 70s and 80s. But I respect their choices.
If you like that, ypu will love my family. Im the third eldest (45 years old) of 9 grandsons. You read that right, no granddaughters. Moving forward, take a guess how many have a kid of their own.
@@tailgunner2 how many? 18 would be replacement rate. I'd guess if you're a normal family these days the nine of you would end up around 11-14 children.
I really agree with his point on anxiety influencing fertility. But also, I would add, relationships are really fickle now often with people just wanting to "sleep around" which makes it difficult to even feel like starting a family if you can't find someone stable. I have tried my whole life and most men I met didn't want anything serious, the ones that did already had a GF from high school pretty much.
Not everyone has a start that promotes success early on, Chris. This video is coming off as almost extremely out of touch. Not just this, but have you actually tried to romantically pursue any woman at all recently? The number one thing they always ask is what you do for a living(how much you make). If it's not the amount they want, you don't get a shot. You wouldn't get it.
For a man to have kids, he has to consider the risk that he will be forced, at gunpoint, to pay for those kids to live in two houses. Once a couple splits up and lives in two houses, the total expense is far greater and that expense very often falls on the man. If a man makes any complaint about the nature / amount of child support; he is chastised for not wanting to take responsibility for his kids. For me, I have enough income to afford kids living with me and their mom, in one house. I cannot afford to buy myself a house and then pay $3,000 a month in child support for their mom to buy another house. Since I can't afford this $3,000 a month, I cannot afford kids, on a 6 figure income. (I went to a child support calculator in my state and ran it for having weekend custody of 3 kids) I'm willing and able to feed, clothe, and house my future kids in my one house, where I live. I'm unwilling / able to pay for them to also live in a 2nd house with their mom. I cannot afford two houses. Since I don't get a choice on this. I cannot afford kids. To afford kids means a man must be able to afford two houses.
If your wife or ex wife has a career of her own you wouldn't be paying much at all, and she could end up paying you childsupport if you're the custodial person or if you have 50/50 custody. If you want a tradwife, then get ready to pay for her whether she divorces you or not.
Despite the overly used "uhm" after each sentence, I feel that Mr. Stone is a very warm and sensible character. He does not just assume things and scream out personal opinions like some right wing pro-natalists; instead, he always tries to analyze each proposition with rationales and caveats. This is the guest we need more for rational and friendly conversations.
If this guy wants to continue public speaking in a way that does not turn off an audience, he should practice replacing his "ummms" with a pause. A few umms is normal during speech but this just sounds like a bad habit that stuck and it's a distraction to the flow of a conversation.
Not true. The rate of childfree or childlessness has remained steady for decades now. There has been a slight increase in women choosing to only have one child. Women are just having fewer kids and later in life. The rate of no children never really gets above 20% historically and this trend has continued for years now. Women are more likely than ever to have children because they can be infertile or have genetic defects and still have kids via ART.
I guarantee the amount of "UM AH"s in this conversation has to be more than 1,000. I was really keen on hearing the information but 17min in and I couldn't take it anymore. Good lord please do something to edit them out. It was so bad, I came all the way from Spotify to say this.
If children aren’t allowed to work to make money to help to contribute to the family, then it doesn’t make sense to have a lot of children in a lousy economy. It is impossible.
I enjoyed hearing the very specific breakdowns based on age, income, etc. it’s so easy to paint with broad strokes but this really helped me go beyond that.
I think that the last 20 years marketing companies have introduced the symbol of a child as a big problem and hardship. In general, the image of the family as a whole is mocking. Now they advertise single life, or being gay and traveling.
Part of me would like to be a father and have my own family, but unfortunately I made the grave mistake of trying to get by in life by working a full time job. My nextdoor neighbor who doesn't work and plays video games all day has 5 children (with another one on the way) while claiming state benefits which is worth more than what I work for...
As someone who has had state benefits at one point in my life, I can tell you that they are NOT worth more than what someone makes working a fulltime job lol. Which is why I don't understand why anyone would try to depend on that instead of getting a decent job.
Well I don't know which country you're based in, but here in the UK we have a huge welfare culture. I personally know people who have never worked for decades and get entitlements such as free prescriptions, dental care, rent paid, etc despite contributing less to the system
Also I've seen study after study that marital happiness drops after having children during the childbearing years but rebounds in older age when the kids are older, but so much not the happiness marriage but in marital satisfaction for having kids
Its funny people have to have conversations about this topic when the whole current social and economic fabric that would encourage family growth is horrendous.
Can’t afford kids is probably related to decline in quality of life (due to higher expenses) and losses hurting more than gains and we have lost the ability to appreciate things beyond the material in many ways.
The thing about the UBI studies is that none of them will ever replicate what it looks like for an entire population to 1) believe it will be permanent, and 2) have the exact same amount of incoming flows of money. Comparison is a very important human instinct that, I think, will vastly change the results of the studies
Children have always been expensive and actually we have more resources now than we’ve ever had in human history. People aren’t having as many children because abortion and birth control exists and go figure people will choose not to have responsibilities if they can.
Father of two here. I sincerely never even considered not having kids. Having kids was like working; in my mind there was no alternative. The thought of growing old without kids or grandkids is unfathomable because I saw how empty my grandparents life would have been if they had chosen not to have kids. Basically, having kids is a trade off as in you trade in some of your youth in order to have pleasant golden years.
In general, I've noticed this attitude was *more* true among people born significantly before 1987/1988. I might be wrong about an exact year, but I was born in 1990 and almost everyone I know born before 1987/88 always assumed they'd have kids and people I know born after that date were much more on the fence. So it's like it used to be culturally assumed and then it became optional. It's anyone's guess as to why this might be the case, but I think it may have something to do with the types of shows on TV in the 1980s and early 1990s that showed adults with children (the Cosby show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Full House, etc) versus the shows many of us Millenials watched later like Friends, Seinfeld, Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, etc. I know all of those shows had some overlap in time, but there was a cultural vibe shift by the late-1990s where adults raising children disappeared from television.
@@Alexxx492 If your kids and grandkids are never around, you never have to work that hard. You get to know your legacy is secured while enjoying your independence. I never saw my grandmother much when she was in a seniors home, But I'm pretty sure she was more happy with me being content, than me coming in to complain about dorm-life.
I completely agree that mental health is hugely correlated, my early years of uni I was super depressed and promised not to have kids, now I’m getting married and doing research on how to raise my eventual first
Housing costs, dispersed and distant parental.and family support, careers and the cost of child care, the relegation of motherhood to a 2nd class role rather than something to celebrate - the giver of life.
Wrong, double the labor force, double the taxable income and double the consumer base of which woman make of 80% of consumer spending. 2/3 rd of 1.6 trillion dollar student loan debt is woman of which majority is not in STEM fields, all the while 80% of woman on dating apps are selecting the top 10% of guys who they think is their market value all at their peak fertility age. Medicare Part A is set to be insolvent in two years and social security by 2034. The whole second class role is simply brainwashing by the media. Different roles is now unequal roles as the media narrative suggests. So no one can cook, but eat out at corporate restaurants, and now they take out loans on education that does not pay, all the while child care is also outsourced, all because of career to corporations that really don’t care all at the expense of starting a family. Now with inflation, because nobody is having kids to build society and there is no future labor capital. 80% of money that as been printing since 1776 as been printed in last two years. You’re looking at a societal implosion. The root cause is because domestic duties is oppressive or it is second class people.
@@theredknight9314 no, there are more reasons including exogenous hormones and their analogues in the environment and our diets, the changing nature of social interaction and online life, people putting off having kids younger because they can't afford it and put it off and then it is too late. What else ya got?
@@theredknight9314 I'm talking about fertility rates which is the number of babies a woman has. That isn't quite the same as birthrates. I think that many people I know who have one kid but want two would disagree with you.
@@theredknight9314 no, no it isn't. Fertility rate refers to the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime, while birth rate is the number of live births per 1,000 people in a population per year. I'm trained in this shit. Don't try to play games Mr Dunning-Kruger.
@@theredknight9314 yeah sure, check again. They aren't exactly the same thing, but you tell yourself that if it makes you happy. It is interesting that you have only come with negatives, you haven't said what you think the causes are. You don't even seem to think that they are multifactorial. I don't think you have anything to offer do you?
It's like the costs just keep climbing every year - rent, repayments, food, bills, taxes... It feels like the government should cut us some slack on taxes; it's getting harder to manage everything.
This guy disclosed that he is funded by baby formula companies. I'm not saying what he's saying isn't accurate, but he is financially incentivized to want ppl to have more kids. It's important to look at all of his statements with that lens in mind
Everyone is financially incentivized to want people to have more kids. Money is useless if you can't spend it and there isn't going to be an economy if there are no people.
I hope Chris can find a healthy woman to mother his children. Time is on his side. Aside my Christian practice, my marriage and children have been the most challenging, life giving, joyful and refining aspects of my life and I grieve my friends who will never know this kind of life because of how they prioritized their life values. I’m 33 and have friends on the outside killing it in careers and life experience but cry on the phone to me because they’re lonely and the only single at weddings. It breaks my heart. I don’t want that for them.
You need to look at disposable income not gross income. Childcare is astronomically expensive - previous generations could let their kids play outside all day and were more likely to have both sets of parents and extended family nearby. Also, jobs are more specialised and less secure - people need to live near to their work, they can’t just move somewhere cheaper to live. Here in London it is normal for middle class families to be living in tiny flats. I know families where their kids are sharing beds or parents are sleeping on sofas. Look at the mass exodus from London caused by the change to companies allowing working from home.
If you have two people working 5 days a week you only need 3 days of child care if one or both work weekends. That rate can be further reduced if you work different shift times. It can really be like 3 4 hour morning a week where you need child care. If you got money shift work isn't a great option, if you don't it's often your only option. Those 3 4 hour shifts are where the grandparents kick in. Also just a reminder if the grandparents can't give a few hours a week, call their bluff, threaten to cut them off from ever seeing them. Sounds brutal, but if they aren't willing to contribute to your kids why on earth should they have access to them? FYI London was a horrible place to live for most of the last 2,000 years, in fact there was a 30ish year span after it was rebuilt post nazis destruction where it was good. The other 1,970 years were awful, get out while you can.
UBI doesn't change how people live. Winning the lottery doesn't teach you how to handle money. If a person knew how to handle money, they wouldn't be gambling on a ticket.
For real having kids is more likely to lead to losing friendships because your time is suddenly taken up by a more important relationship. Who now comes with pressures from the newer expectations that come with parenting. That was a big adjustment for me, I thought all my friends and I would all hang out on the weekends with all our kids, because that’s what my parents did with their friends when I was a little kid. In reality that just doesn’t happen today. We are all too busy.
Living in the richest society in the world is a funny thing to say when the bottom 50% of people hold ~2.5% of all wealth in America. If half (it's way more than that but for ease of argument) the population is living paycheck to paycheck already, adding a kid to that is certainly a no-go. It's simple math
I think finances causes two problems. One there are not enough financially stable men for women to have kids with. And 2. the lack of financially stable men makes it harder for women to have multiple kids.
Hello you savages. Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - chriswillx.com/books/ Here's the timestamps:
00:00 Fertility Rates Over the Last Few Years
05:51 Lessons We Can Take From the 1900s
09:22 The Impact of Finances on Having Kids
16:44 Our Modern Obsession With Parenting
27:23 New Research on Universal Basic Income
37:16 How Many Kids People Want Today
43:28 Why Lyman Remains Positive
53:09 Does Marriage Have an Impact on Fertility?
59:21 Shifting Attitudes Towards Contraception
1:08:43 Political Tension in Mate Selection
1:21:30 The Future of Western Birth Rates
1:30:46 What Lyman is Studying Next
1:31:59 Where to Find Lyman
Ever been to the grocery store; private education; college; car; help with housing.... my grandmom had 9....
22:00 something you guys missed. The reason the cultural transmission ended was also because before this kids were forced by the environment to learn everything they could from their parents just to survive. During the 50s with the new found safety there was no incentive for kids to hover close to their parents and learn everything they could.
So fascinating that expectation for how much a parent wants to provide has risen so much
Also best pod on Fertility decline yet!
It’s interesting that I can’t find data on how many children the average or median man is having, by income, religion, race, urban/ rural etc.
the university down the street from me has a women's business center. Amazon has preferential treatment for women owned businesses. the school I attended has special scholarships for women. women are eligible for no bid contracts that men are not eligible for at both the state and county level. google has a women's startup accelerator but men are forbidden from organizing in the same fashion. women can join the police, the military or firefighting with lowered standards. women in the aggregate are net tax recipients, men are net tax payers. men are forced to serve in the selective service in order to vote, but women are exempt from the draft. there are a lot more men than women who are homeless but there is no effort to equalize that. the average man pays anywhere between 25 to 65 percent of his income to pay for social entitlements, which is more than serfs were made to pay during feudalism. Social security and medicare are insanely bad investments for men both because men pay more in taxes and don't live as long. women complain about the pay gap but fail to note that men are much more likely to be injured on the job.
I'm a millennial mother and I totally agree that as a parent today you have to do your homework on EVERYTHING. You cannot just trust that your morals and values are at the doctors office, schools or television unlike previous generations-which is absolutely a consequence of diversity. Also, I know I personally struggle with a lack of a "village" and we all hear "it takes a village to raise a child" ... so yeah, very few people have them which makes having more children difficult.
I don't have children. But I'm a Millennial as well, and I was having this same conversation with a married friend who has 2 kids. I was telling him I think it's crazy how my parents were just like "Ok, sign up for kindergarten. Hand you off to the public school and trust them with your child. Ok, drop you off here at this camp. Ok, drop you off here. I'll be back in two hours". He agreed. Then we talked about his daughter's birthday party. I pointed out to him how all the parents stayed. When I was younger, a birthday party was a free babysitter for half the day and the parents would leave. You see it more now that there is a very broad lack of trust in these institutions and social "norms" now versus in the 90s.
1000%
The vast majority of millennials are in the same boat. “We are all in this together… but separately!”
@@timothy8142 this is a great point! And the other hand, it seems nice that a lot more parties are for the entire family rather than just like 10 or 12 kids. As a generation, we are so much more aware of how quickly really negative things can happen to our children. I think everybody knows what I am referring to, although, if I said, the UA-cam algorithm will probably hide this comment. But you really have to keep an eye on the kids and no sleepovers ever.
I believe the data shows that it's not 'people are having fewer children', but rather 'fewer people are having children'. The average number of children a 'mother' has is the same, but fewer women are choosing to be 'mothers'. Also, the primary reason seems to be 'I want children, but not now.... oops, it's too late', versus 'I don't want kids'.
Yes. After looking at the data a few months ago (when I was obsessed with the topic) I came to the same conclusion.
Spot on.
Source; trust me bro. Hindsight is 20/20, most under 25yr old women probably shouldn't be having kids unless they have a strong community, strong and healthy partnership/marriage and ideally skills to work decently. Most young adults in our societies are just kids and shouldn't be parents.
@@martinthegiraffe7924 Capitalism/modernity is the best contraceptive. Materialism, atomization and population collapse or duty,community and high fertility rates. There is no middle ground.
@@botidobra6221 capitalism is the reason youre replying to me and modernity is the reason why women have a freedom to live how they want to. We re not going to start forcing people or shame people for not wanting to become parents, its not realistic and against freedom.
Because most people born to poor people are finally realizing that it’s not worth repeating the vicious cycle.
But poor ppl have most of the kids...
My grandparents had working class salaries and could afford a home in Palos Verdes, CA back in the day. My parents got priced out of SoCal and moved to Seattle but could afford a nice home in a suburb of Seattle with working class salaries. Now the home I grew up in is $1.5M. I have an engineering salary and can't afford to live where I grew up. It's becoming increasingly difficult for future generations to live and buy homes in major cities. Now I live in Huntsville, Alabama and it feels like the only major city with good jobs I can afford a home. Until the country has many empty homes and apartments waiting to be filled and that are cheap to live in, I'm not gonna worry about people not having kids. Why should we if there's not enough housing in this country? It's simply a supply and demand issue. And that developers only build luxury apartments these days as far as new housing.
Birthrates have been below replacement level. Here in Australia we had very affordable housing in the 1970s. If it wasn't for mass immigration we would have a housing surplus.
That is a huge reason for the open borders. Oligarch landlords need to inflate rent year over year, month over month. They could care less how many commoners must be crushed. LIne go up!
@@grannyannie2948 Correct 100%
There are many millions of empty homes in the US already. So it’s not about supply.
The problem is economic inequality driving up prices and driving down wages. This is the root issue. An economist like Gary Stevenson is worth hearing from.
Life expectancy in the 1800s was low because of so many infant deaths - not because people only lived to 30 or 40. Lots of assumptions here.
Absolutely, most people who survived into adulthood survived into old sge
Exactly!
Exactly, once you got past the age of 4 or 5 you were basically fine.
That and the fact that there was a war every 15-20 years
@@terranceramirez4816 We have more wars than that now. In the Middle Ages war and childbirth were seen as equal. It was when both men and women bravely faced what could be their death.
Can someone correct me, but did he say we live in a better society but we should have lower expectation for our children? What's the fucking point of having children if you won't be able to give them a better life that you had??
Well I think kids should be taught to start working early and to figure out what they actually want to do, rather than have schools and family force them into college because that’s what “smart people” do or for “the experience.” Half these kids shouldn’t be in college.
This guy doesn't care about quality of life for people. His religious dogma drives him to support mass-producing people who will be used as feed for the oligarchs.
Really sucks, because he's able to articulate the problem. Better than most people
@@jorgetinoco3574 "better" is a matter of opinion.
It's not "going to be a problem", it's a problem now. But the consequences won't be felt until the pressure of childlessness can no longer be contained by the existing system.
Meh. That's just a talking scare tactic that economists want you to believe. They see less economic growth in their projections, so they are trying to scare us all about what they see. All they care about is money and not the actual support of families and their livelihoods.
Fix the root of the problem. Don't put a bandaid on and blame them for being poor.
@@Anthony-ju6ch People in poor countries are having more children
This is what people don't seem to understand. We are far enough into the problem already that we may currently be past the point of no return. The problem is that there's a time delay of at least one full generation before the repercussions start to show, and they will only intensify from that point forward.
that is EXACTLY right
Brilliant discussion
Excellent Analysis
Thank you Sir
I agree!!
Thanks for having him on, great guest
I love your work, and I always love listening to you Chris
Thank you gentlemen
Thank you both
The fertility rate is also decreasing in countries with excellent parental paid leave.
The excellent parental paid leave is a response to the declining birth rate. It doesn't address the underlying root cause.
Government can't solve a spiritual ailment.
Paying parents to have kids is the as stimi checks. It creates inflation and house price increases because this money isn't coming from tax but from debt. Every 10% houses gain birth rate drops by 1.3%
Right, which is why i always maintained economic factors aren't really the main causes here. Its cultural. Look at developing countries like india, although their trend shows its declining, but relatively far more people have children than developed countries.
That is because couples still have the huge cost of paying for childcare after the women returns back to full time work, after the parental leave is over.
Taxing the young to give to the old can only increase the number of elderly people in proportion to younger people.
People often respond "welfare queens have 8 kids, why don't you bro!?" yeah but I don't want my kids to go to shitty public schools, keep them in daycares where abuse is common, live in a crime-ridden neighborhood or feeding them HFCS slop.
What's really expensive is giving your child the same childhood you had. Assuming I keep my current job, that means finding a new, further place to live with better school choices (perhaps private), more security, while still having access to health resources. This is what's expensive.
@powerovercorrupt me and my brother were abused in a daycare when at 4, and 5 years old. My earliest memory is being chokeslamed onto a cot by a divorced middle aged woman. I've hated people ever since.
You have standards and expectations? How dare you.
Hmmmm yeah I have 4 kids and they go to a pretty good public school actually, no daycare because I stay home with them and take care of them, we live in a quiet small town neighborhood where there's almost zero crime and cost of living is incredibly low compared to many places in the country today, and my kids eat good food that I cook for them almost every day. My husband makes decent money working at a furniture factory about 3 minutes away from our house so the kids have all of their needs met and many of their wants. Idk. Seems to me like if it's important to you then you'll make it work. And if not, then you won't. Every one is different. It's as simple as that.
@@madsquishy3410 WAIT till the factory gets outsourced to mexico,....lets see how you feel then
@@marsmotion Nah, I don't live my life based on "what ifs". If it happens then we'll deal with it as a family like we do everything else. Life is always going to knock you down at certain points. It's how you handle it that matters.
Sure standards of living have gone up but if you’ve ever lived paycheck to paycheck like the vast majority of Americans, you know how hard it is. When you’re on the verge of homelessness every month it’s impossible to think about adding an entire other human being to your budget. Also younger Americans have seen what happens to children when their parents are working all of the time and can’t give them the attention they need. It causes a SLEW of mental health issues. Normal people aren’t worried about declining birth rates, we’re worried about making rent. The only people worrying about this issue is the managerial class because they are afraid they won’t have enough employees to replace the old ones.
Goodness, where to start. People, the world round, have more children in extreme poverty. Everything's relative. Those commenting have a phone, internet access, likely a place where they can post (aka lodging of some kind), social networks that support, governmental help, and either personal or public transport. Yeah, hogwash to this very privileged and condescending tone. Your struggles are real but people all around the world make it work with much much much much less.
@@smallzinc And raising children in extreme poverty knowing that you’re in extreme poverty seems like an ethical thing to do? I’d rather not subject my child to the possibility of being homeless everyday. I was raised that way. It wasn’t a fun childhood. And you expect the government to raise our children? They aren’t even competent enough to run the postal service let alone raise millions of children. Our education system has proved that.
Standards of living have gone up for the top 10%. They've plummeted for the working class. I've had my wages outrun by inflation, and my Standard of living has been cut in half compared to 5 years ago.
@@smallzincjust because they do it doesn't mean it's healthy.
@@TheGrimFoot and yet you are far far far more privileged than most of the world who still manage to have children and make it work.
We’ve had two children, two boys. It has been the most wonderful journey. They are both amazing people and I have enjoyed and loved the experience of being with them, even the low/crises points of the journey has brought us closer together. Being a “Boomer” I recognise the “out sourcing” of my childhood and even today it has had a significant impact on the relationship with my own parents. I was absolutely determined that I would “parent” my children in a different way I was raised myself. I believe our children have achieved a greater degree of success and happiness a lot earlier than myself because of the investment we made in their raising. Having children has been a wonderful experience for us and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!
"living in the richest society in the world" is such a tiresome comment. Sure, Bezos and Musk are uber-wealthy, but strip those wealthy people out, and you have a country that offers its workers zero paid time off; they have to pay for health insurance that adds deductibles and shit, an extremely high cost of rent, food that is constantly being recalled, and inequality on par with the Gilded Age. It's a hollow comment.
bingo. agree totally. averages lie...wealth distrabution is way out of wack. its so far most people cant even comprehend it.
Thank you,someone else finally said it.
Yes, it acts like because the oligarchs do better, we all get a decent cut. Bullshit. We are being crushed.
I agree 100%! I would be over the moon if I could afford a mortgage on a tiny 1-2 bedroom house in the town I grew up in. I'm really not expecting or asking for much at all and yet it feels completely out of reach.
When my dad was in Iran right before the revolution there was the well off and then there was the women feeding their children from dumpsters. Haven't seen myself or heard of that here
34-year-old father of three small kids here. This was spot on regarding why parenting feels so hard today. I was put in childcare at two weeks old and when I asked my Baby Boomer parents the first time my infant daughter threw up what it could be, they were just as clueless as I was. Later, as we began potty training, I asked them for advice again, and they also couldn’t remember what they did, but they said “your daycare just handled that”.
There is no cultural transmission of how to do any of the basics.
My wife and I are choosing to homeschool because we can’t trust the schools.
We feel like we are in someways stuck in the 1890s figuring out how to raise and educate kids without any help, even though our parents are still around.
This is a time and history where grandparents need to lean in and firm parents intuition and hold strong family ties support and help families cannot pay anyone to love their children🙏
I'm in the same boat. It's like having to reinvent the wheel sometimes.
I've always been a hands on grandparent.
Sadly in the 1890s you wouldn't be experiencing this unless you lived in the wilderness or something. Extended family living was still common, and your parents would have raised their child, not the daycare.
Outsourcing early childhood care leads to bad life outcomes.
I am starting with unschooling, due to the kids having to socialize, but might switch to homeschooling.
Our parents are still around, but they are old, and can not take part in raising the kids. As a kid I spent a lot of time with grandparents, cousins, aunts, neighbors. Parents these days have no "village" to rely on. My kids have exactly 1 cousin, I had almost 10. Aunts are self-absorbed garbage who have no time for kids due to all the partying, tiktok, and such. Neighbors are extremely old. And so on. There is no "village" anymore, man. It sucks.
4 minutes in, seems like really good salient information I want to digest, but good lord how many UMS do I have to sit through!
For real 😭 hard to focus on the actual content
Same here ..I guess we have been spoiled by speakers who have worked on their ums. It's also a reminder to me to check my own ums ))
I can’t make it through!
I gave up!!! It's actually fucked. Who says um like this?
I gave up on the 746th UM
Its just like Idiocracy, the people that should be having kids are not that ones that are.
That’s high and mighty of you to determine who is fit to have kids. Anything else we should get your permission on your majesty
@@pbrown0829😂 cringe , he’s quoting a film, you are literally becoming a meme from the film. You need a hug.
@@AdamWeatherall the same people who affirm natural selection also affirm the Idiocracy film theory.
@@pbrown0829 you are definitely one of the ones who shouldn't.
@@pbrown0829 If you can't feed them, don't breed them.
Personally speaking it can be summed up as... We're not buying what humanity are selling
@@SimonTmte oh good I'm glad you didn't say it then
I understand that not everyone lives in California but here’s my experience. Every home or apartment in my area is at least $2,200/month for a studio. I make 87k a year gross. 60k net. Well there goes 50% of my net income on housing alone. I drive a piece of sh%t car with no payment and insurance is still $2k a year. Gas is probably close to $4k a year. Maintenance costs about $2k a year. Food is about $8k a year ($150 a week if I don’t want to eat poisonous food). Throw in utilities (gas, electricity, trash and internet) it’s about $3.5k a year. If i did absolutely NOTHING except stay home and go to work then id have about $10k a year in savings. Google says it’s about $25k a year to take care of child (probably wrong) that has me falling $15k short. Well let’s add another person (my wife) to contribute to income. Well now we need a bigger place than a studio. How about a 2 bedroom so we can have a baby room? That’ll be $3k a month along with the cost of everything else going up. Now it looks more like $5k a year in credit debt to raise our child and no prospect to retire or own a home. Sounds like the American dream to me!!
In Oklahoma a 1 bedroom apartment is like 1500, butwages are lower here so basically it's the same. It doesn't matter where you are on the ship when it's sinking fast without any lifeboats.
@@TheGrimFoot yep, exactly.
You just explained living get over it
@@tkfort “just get over it” is a sad mentality to have. sorry you feel that way. I’d like a better future for my family.
@@tkfortThe privately owned federal reserve has/continues to hyperinflate the U.S. out of having class mobility and the ability for the working class to have families, and you think people should "get over it"? We need to transform the nature of the U.S. dollar, return to being commodity backed like the BRICS nations, and cancel the debt owed to the fed.
Another perception problem which keeps us in the postwar mentality is that before 1945 there were large categories of adults who did not reproduce: soldiers who died at 18-30, sailors and fishermen, young workers who died or became crippled/infertile due to work conditions, nuns, priests, women without dowries, younger sons. The large majority of premodern men did not reproduce (65%). For women it is around 20%. Only some people had most of the kids who surived to reproduce.
That deep ‘UHM’ in every other sentence is really distracting.
I listened at 1.5x speed and it seems to help me with listening to his irritating verbal tick.
It’s the male equivalent of saying “like” in every sentence.
I had to turn it off because it was so annoying, and I really wanted to listen to this episode.
Good lord I didn't notice until I read this. Thanks. Also, no thanks. Lol
@@0oohnegativehe also says ‘like’ a bunch too
Women who lived into their teens lived as long as they do now. Infant mortality was just super high.
They did die in childbirth more often than they do now though so that was also a factor
@@13zaphikel It was like 10/1000. Not good but hardly what Lyman is claiming.
I see a lot of people on her saying money which is understandable, but for me it was my experience with COVID. When I saw our government talking about the possibility of forcing kids in school to have to take COVID vaccine. I was always on edge about protecting my daughter. So I said one and done
Great point to bring up
@@brettmandli3914 I often joke about not feeding cannon fodder to a war machine.
For a better listener experience, is there a tool that can umm remove umm all the umm many umm instances of "umm" ?
Yes for God sakes please! 😂
Omg soooooooooo many
I'm so glad I didn't read this comment until a few minutes before the the of the video. I couldn't focus on anything else after you pointed it out!
Good lord... stopped watching
That's a great idea for an AI model
Boy you just can't please people. I'm in my 50s and have spent my entire life hearing about how we're having too many kids and need to stop. Now suddenly it's not enough kids. There's just no winning.
The people saying that were effectively lying, it was never true, and never backed up by any evidence.
Sorry bro you got lied to in your youth. My father believes similar propaganda.
Breastfeeding rates were not at their lowest in the 40s and 50s in the USA. It was in the 60s and 70s that they reached rock bottom; they have been increasing since the 80s.
This guy's numbers are all wrong lmao
This is the most depressing video I've ever seen. I guess I'll just keep working for nothing so richer people can have kids while I maintain a world that determines I'm "just not skilled" enough to deserve a family.
Do you not see potential to grow your knowledge, skills, etc? We all started somewhere!
@@gajorg69 That’s a very common retort to grievances I express. I appreciate the sentiment but unless you’re willing to listen to a pretty long spew about something that very probably doesn’t affect you at all, you won’t understand why.
Just know that I, and many people like me are doing everything we can within reason and some, including myself, beyond reason.
@@gajorg69 I should also point out that this video isn’t revealing to me why things are bad but rather, people best poised to fix the problem are signaling disinterest in addressing what I find to be the cause.
To give a hint to add some legitimacy to the claim, the problem I’m describing comes from well natured public policy having externalities that chronically negatively affect a certain demographic of which I am a part of.
Look on the bright side, at least you know your place in the order of things. Try to find comfort and purpose in that clarity.
@@nathancourtney94 No man go for the explanation, I am curious and don't mind at all. I'm very concerned with the plight of younger men, and any insight is appreciated. I'm not much older than you, but I've had my share of extreme difficulties but I've managed to pull things together okay all things considered.
REPARENTING was a parenting type that I didn't hear mentioned..this has taken up a good portion of my "healthy egg" years. Gotta get yourself right so you dont pass on old trauma to those babies.
Born into small-town 1966 to very young, married parents. People thought it was disgusting to breast feed (modern formula, modern canned food is better - right?) but my teenaged mom thought natural seemed better. "Benign neglect" had us kids running wild with packs of children till it got dark...was a pleasure I cannot explain. We were incredibly independent and "gritty" doing so much independently. Pollution and "population bomb" was drilled into our heads all thru school. Many, many of us did our part to save the planet - we did NOT have children. I was lucky enough to help raise someone else's kids and it was wonderful!!! I've been free to do tons of volunteer work and have a career I enjoy. Now I have plenty of time (and some money!) to help my parents and the adult kids - and even do exciting travel. I do NOT think schools taught us wrong - most humans on this planet live in violence and pollution and overcrowding. If we wisely ramp-down birth rates everywhere and focus on raising fewer children to be good people (and healthy)...this will work out. This also means many of us older folks will HAVE to keep helping the older people - there will not be so many young adults to do that care. I am blessed to be healthy so far - and 25+ years older than my entire work team. I plan to keep doing regular job AND keep helping older folks. We can lighten the load on our planet by extracting fewer resources for fewer people.
This is one of the most important pod to date by my man, even though I’m a papa! Share across the political sphere. Man! Good data captured by scientific method and analysis is so critical in our society where intelligent discussion is antithetical to the broad populace. Good job…
Exactly. Women weren't dropping dead at thirty
The problem is people know the future is going to be bad, you can't hide it or change there mind with smoke and mirrors. We can feel it in our bones the winds of change are coming
Fr fr homie was literally advocating gaslighting on a mass scale
I agree. Why have children that will live under an authoritarian regime similar to North Korea.
If your young my best advice to you is appreciate that the things you're worried about A) Won't happen at all. B) You won't care when they do happen. C) If they do happen you realize it's because you're really attached to 1 bad idea. When I was young I thought owning a car was important, I built my entire early life around that premise(while also knowing wages were going down). Then I became an epileptic at 23. All of a sudden having a car was never an option. All of a sudden I needed substantially less money to reach my goals. It was a snow ball effect. If you don't have a car you can't shop at Ikea. If you don't have a car the chance you marry someone who doesn't have or want a car goes way up. Marrying someone who doesn't want a car when you also can't drive is a huge economic benefit. So while yes all young me's worries were validated by economic decline and covid, they really where never that big of a problem. Most of my current year problems were caused by excessive worry.
@@katethomas1519 who of you by being anxious can add a cubit onto his lifespan. So never be anxious about anything for every day brings with it its own anxieties, or somthing to that effect. Words of Jesus, thank you for your insight and sorry for your misfortune
I feel that Mr. Stone is the single most knowledgeable, optimistic and practical expert iI've heard talk on this issue. A post-production editorial decision would have deleted the speaker's nervous verbal tic to the benefit of listeners. Surely an easy task in the days of AI? My advice to listeners is to play at 1.5x. Credit to the host for steering this conversation to achieve the maximum impact.
I LOVE that your podcast starts the second I hit play. Without gibs of intro commercials and bullshit. You're the best.
I read an article in the newspaper, equating a single parent household, to child abuse.
Why are so many people so obsessed with the birth rate?
Women decide what do do with their bodies. Pregnancy is a huge stress for us. Man, stop asking why women are afraid of giving birth....
People seem to forget that the entire government of our parents and grandparents supported families and the idea of family with legislation, social programs, advertisements, entertainment, education, etc,. millennials and younger have no clue what that’s like. We lost out on our inter-generational link and the older generation proceeded through life reaping the benefits of our ignorance. This was done by slowly but surely draining each subsequent generation of their inherited wealth and cultural circumstances. In other words, we’re drowning in the deep end and we weren’t taught how to swim, and our parent is there with floaties on saying “just swim harder!”
You got a lousy parent
True
This is a very fascinating conversation, I’m really glad I clicked on this today
Cost and time available to raise children. Having children isn't the issue. Raising them and being an active parent is a significant consideration, apart from the cost burden.
Yeah because in the good old days on the farm, parents had time to parent according to all the latest trends in books. No, there's more time now, even if you're working three jobs, than in antiquity.
@@smallzincif you're working 3 jobs then you're working anywhere from 16-24 hours.. you claim this is more time than a farmer but farmers work about that much daily sooo we're all confuzzled
@@smallzinc Try raising a child while working 60 plus hours a week, with post graduate studies on top of that. I barely have time to feed myself.
@@LonelyTreeSunset yeah I see people do much more every day around the world in person. You're very privileged and ahev way more resources than most to be able to raise children. I know it feels impossible but come live where I live or travel where I travel and I'll show you difficult. And you'll likely grow in appreciation for what you have and how it would be quite possible to have children in your conditions compared to billions others (yes, billions).
It used to be raise the eldest and the eldest raises the rest.
I can’t finish this due to the UMMS but bottom line is I’ve never liked life enough to give it to someone else.
Possible the saddest thing I’ve read on the internet. Ever. Period.
- I can relate to the constant uhm uhm uhm’s. It’s a no thank you, from me.
It used to be you absolutely had no choice. You needed help on the farm and there wasnt birth control like we have now. Now that we have a choice, we have analysis paralysis just like we do with every other decision. Too many variables to consider, this math problem can take as long as you let it
True!
I would like to see the “control group” for UBI be expanded across people toward the middle income ranges and higher educational backgrounds. The “control groups” of low income and homeless people may skew the results one direction.
No thank you. I’m not interested in eating insects.
Society is unstable. Relationships are breaking up. And nobody wants to raise a child alone in most cases. The future looks bleak. And people are reacting to the craziness of our time. This has happened before. Usually at the end times of a civilization.
Or end of an ideology that has expired
Why should we be choosing to have children and currently sacrificing our actual lives and children’s lives out of some concern for who gets elected president in 80 years? I’ll be dead and if I don’t have any kids I don’t have any skin in that game.
The Ponzi scheme of entitlements requires it?
This guy is full of stats but no understanding or real comprehension of what's actually happening.
“Stats are for losers” -Bill Belichick
Yes. He is not so much lying with statistics as he is completely incapable of grasping the meaning behind the statistics. If the numbers don't aid your comprehension, what use were the numbers?
That is an unfair judgement of this man's presentation. He is being asked statistical questions. This is not a conversation on esoteric analysis. It is up to you extract what you can from these stats. Stretch your tiny minds people! You have an inability to think based on your education that robbed you of learning critical thinking.
Such an interesting conservation. I really enjoyed someone putting together the reduction in birth rate to longevity. It’s an interesting thought.
This all comes back to capitalism. If there's no growth, then the system dies. It seems like mostly rich people who have benefited from capitalism are most concerned about the population drop. I get the other points about social safety net systems being a Ponzi scheme and having enough soldiers to fight a conventional war, but it's mostly the capitalists who seem freaked out.
That's who are really ringing the alarm bells. Capitalist oligarchs that see their pyramid schemes is going to fall on them.
We had an economy where the corpos made more out of having kids than the patents did. The corpos assumed people would continue to accept the deal and keep squirting out cannon fodder.
Now they won't, getting Jeff Bezos's and Uncle Sams's panties in a twist.
Bc were fuckin broke and everyones gay now. Id love to have 10 kids but fuck, im barely above water now.
I fail to see how some people being gay is a leading cause when they statistically make up a small portion of the population.
everyones gay now...😂😂
LMAO!
In my observation, lot of guys would love to start a family and have children, but what can they do if they can't a willing woman to fall in love with? I have guys in my social circle who are financially well off, traditional, Christians with good personalities.. but almost everyone is 30+ age and still single. They talk about how they get rejected every time they ask out a girl. A while ago, one of them was saying how he got rejected by 8 girls continuously in 48 hours.
@@Ghostrider-ul7xn "8 girls in 48 hours" Desperation can be seen in a man and many women don't like that.
This guy is really discounting how much the increase in people who want zero kids is. He brushed that off, but our pop culture has been pushing people in that direction for decades.
spot on, and promiscuity and hormonal birth control have smashed everything to pieces
Yup, the decline in birthrates, at least in the present day West, is primarily a cultural phenomenon.
@@hungrybadgerr Yeah. And here in Sweden it's more important to agree with the *Feminist* doctrines than being good at math in today's education system. Also heterosexual acts became semi-criminalized. But there are a 100 more things. I could go on and on.
Yes. True cultural suicide. People have become selfish to the core.
@@sinesaii THANK YOU. That is the real underlying reason that no one wants to talk about. People just want to live their lives obsessed with themselves. And they don’t want to make even small sacrifices for anyone, even their own kids.
I actually enjoyed this conversation! As a religious woman, there is a lot of pressure to have tons and tons of kids. Guilt regarding how many kids people had in the past is often weaponized against modern religious women. Hearing that while women did give birth to more children, but they only RAISED 3-4 children to adulthood is helpful
Anyone under 40 thinking they might be able to retire one day - forget it! it’s going to be impossible.
You really need to interview Stephen Shaw. His data and analysis on fertility is excellent. He was interview by Louise Perry a few times.
Pretty sure I was the first person on UA-cam to speak to Stephen - ua-cam.com/video/KfBL_Qn9jug/v-deo.html
@@ChrisWillx I remember the Stephen Shaw interview. It was one of maybe three interviews that turned me into a regular viewer. I'll watch it again some time.
This one is the similar in the sense that it "fills many of the gaps" in the data about a very important topic. There's a lot of YT content on this topic that's useful, but clearly incomplete. Difficult topics require more data, more time & real experts.
FWIW, I watch these long videos because so many of them, like this, cover important topics in depth. And for the most part, even when you slide off topic, it's at least adjacent & interesting :)
_Maybe_ on point: IMO your interviews are usually better than the seeing same people being interviewed on similar channels. The difference (for me) is that it's more time-effective and complete coverage of complex and/or difficult topics.
Some topics, of which this is a good example, are only half as useful with 20% less coverage.
BTW - I rarely watch your "self improvement" videos. Suum cuique :)
It's simple. Why would many adults want to bring a child into this world to simply work a dead-end job with fewer access to what their grandparents had growing up, such as buying property at an affordable rate on a single income, etc. Why would responsible adults want their kids to grow up in poverty?
A responsible parent doesn’t have to even worry about their kids growing up in poverty. And fucking American poverty is like being a millionaire
@@FDE4L The lack of empathy is astounding.
I'm retired now, but my mentor when I started work could buy a house at 21 and start a family at 22. He was 16 years older than me and it took me 9 more years to get into that same position. It's only gotten harder for every generation since.
This issue isn't about attitude, it's about opportunity. It's being hoarded by My generation and the one before. If you don't see that, you're part of the problem.
@@tonkashouse quite frankly, your whole worldview has no empathy. You want people to give up
@@FDE4L I just understand WHY, and I feel for young people. You clearly don't get how bad it is. I'm quite pro-natalist and encourage my younger friends to have kids IF they have a real job (not common anymore).
@@tonkashouse my limited use of the English vocabulary, has me using a lot of swearing for almost any point
Nice to get the facts about such a heated topic.
We have to look at reasons that are explanatory across multiple countries, especially those that don't have the issues commonly cited.
And the data demonstrates that economic factors are not predictive. So, expensive housing or lack or good jobs don't explain things.
I think the key factors are social connection, urbanization, lack of cultural/ religious belief in the importance of kids, and increasing importance on resources - time and money - spent per child.
We see those factors in virtually every country with lower fertility rates.
I debunk the argument on that whenever someone says "ban adult entertainment because it crashes birth rates." I then show how Japan has few bans. South Korea and Singapore have lots of bans. Japan somehow outbreeds those two.
@@skylinefever okay, and? I haven't said anything about adult entertainment.
@@MatthewRonaldWiebe I am trying to back your point that the puzzle is complex and no one fix exists.
I am one of the highest wage classifications at the mine I work at. I’m a crane operator making $35 an hr and the only people who get paid higher than me are management. I have two children and mortgage and utilities is 50% of my income. We’re thinking about stopping having kids because any more children will take more time or money and I’m not willing to have kids and not be there for them. 2 seems like our threshold without sacrificing my children or my future. Money is the problem.
Wow talk about behind the curve. This has been common knowledge for YEARS now. fyi, my paternal grandmother had 12 kids, of which 10 survived to adulthood.
The luxuries of modern life entice people away from the responsibilities of raising children.
That's certainly an issue for a portion of the population, but a skim even through these comments will show that Starbucks & avocado toast aren't the problem for many who'd like more kids.
I firmly believe you can be a great parent without putting your kid in pricey extracurricular sports, summer camps, etc. But it's gotten reallly expensive to afford even modest homes in a safe areas with halfway decent schools. And rent is so expensive that you don't save meaningfully by "just renting for a few years" either. None of my friends are having zero kids because of these costs, but many are having fewer than they'd like. Food prices, gas prices, used car prices, insurance costs, housing costs...affording even the basics isn't easy.
It’s actually that people have the choice and less cultural pressure and far better critical thinking and opportunities. People question social norms and want career growth and consider what’s best for them. Many people have children because they want them rather than out of mere duty or obligation.
This is very true. In the past, things like travel, large houses, expensive cars, interesting restaurants, luxury clothing etc were not available or atleast seemingly available for the average person. Now they seem like they are, when in reality they aren't and people put all their effort into attempting to achieve them.
@@Coastpsych_fi99 The problem is that not having children is not whats best for anyone. You cant have a sizable percentage of the population having no kids because eventually that population collapses, but more importantly, the infrastructure/services cease to become available to the new generations and the old.
That definitely has something to do with it but it’s important to understand that the “luxuries of modern life” are living alone in an apartment and having just enough money to do that and have a tiny bit of disposable income, for the majority of people. It’s not much luxury.
Drinking game:
- Take a shot every time he say "uh" or "um"
Winner:
Dies
A higher survival rate doesn't do enough to account for a child per woman rate below 2.0. Mathmatically a society must shrink once the rate falls below 2.
I had 2 children in the 80s. I was lucky to be able to stay home with them when they were little. But then I had to go to work when they entered school. I would have loved to have more, but we couldn't afford it. My now adult children have made the choice not to have children. And I see many of my friends' children not having children. Something has happened to the world. Let's hope for another Renaissance.
Can I ask what you felt like having a third child would have cost you? Were you saving for college for two kids, and you felt like you couldn't save any more money for a third? Most Baby Boomers had only two kids (I was born in 1990 and raised by Boomers), and I think the implicit message we all received was children aren't worth having. My mother came from a family of four kids and my dad came from a family of six kids. But they only desired two kids as well. I can't figure out what happened to make two children the norm for baby boomers.
I have 4 young adult grandchildren. NONE of them are married or want children. So different than my generation of the 70s and 80s.
But I respect their choices.
If you like that, ypu will love my family.
Im the third eldest (45 years old) of 9 grandsons. You read that right, no granddaughters. Moving forward, take a guess how many have a kid of their own.
@@tailgunner2 how many? 18 would be replacement rate. I'd guess if you're a normal family these days the nine of you would end up around 11-14 children.
@derek4412 only one of us has a kid. And that was a few weeks ago.
I really agree with his point on anxiety influencing fertility. But also, I would add, relationships are really fickle now often with people just wanting to "sleep around" which makes it difficult to even feel like starting a family if you can't find someone stable. I have tried my whole life and most men I met didn't want anything serious, the ones that did already had a GF from high school pretty much.
Kids need shit. I don't have shit?
They really don’t need that much and once you have one it’s then easier to have more because you already have the basics.
It’s normal for humans to use laughter to stage off the negativity one just expressed. Don’t feel bad. .
Kackles Harris is living proof of this
Great episode! Extremely high 'ummm count' by Lyman.
If I had a baby for everytime he said "ummm", this whole population collapse issue would be resolved
@@ghazin7970 hahahah bang on
Because we watch the news.
Not everyone has a start that promotes success early on, Chris. This video is coming off as almost extremely out of touch. Not just this, but have you actually tried to romantically pursue any woman at all recently? The number one thing they always ask is what you do for a living(how much you make). If it's not the amount they want, you don't get a shot. You wouldn't get it.
@dylanlyos5492 it can't not be out of touch. their both rich, and absolutely will not say what the actual problems are because they'll be canceled
@@TheGrimFoot Maybe, or another construction of false narrative. Either way, these are neither good, nor accurate takes.
For a man to have kids, he has to consider the risk that he will be forced, at gunpoint, to pay for those kids to live in two houses. Once a couple splits up and lives in two houses, the total expense is far greater and that expense very often falls on the man. If a man makes any complaint about the nature / amount of child support; he is chastised for not wanting to take responsibility for his kids.
For me, I have enough income to afford kids living with me and their mom, in one house. I cannot afford to buy myself a house and then pay $3,000 a month in child support for their mom to buy another house. Since I can't afford this $3,000 a month, I cannot afford kids, on a 6 figure income. (I went to a child support calculator in my state and ran it for having weekend custody of 3 kids)
I'm willing and able to feed, clothe, and house my future kids in my one house, where I live. I'm unwilling / able to pay for them to also live in a 2nd house with their mom. I cannot afford two houses. Since I don't get a choice on this. I cannot afford kids. To afford kids means a man must be able to afford two houses.
If your wife or ex wife has a career of her own you wouldn't be paying much at all, and she could end up paying you childsupport if you're the custodial person or if you have 50/50 custody. If you want a tradwife, then get ready to pay for her whether she divorces you or not.
You can't trust a guy sponsored by formula companies.
Despite the overly used "uhm" after each sentence, I feel that Mr. Stone is a very warm and sensible character.
He does not just assume things and scream out personal opinions like some right wing pro-natalists;
instead, he always tries to analyze each proposition with rationales and caveats.
This is the guest we need more for rational and friendly conversations.
If this guy wants to continue public speaking in a way that does not turn off an audience, he should practice replacing his "ummms" with a pause. A few umms is normal during speech but this just sounds like a bad habit that stuck and it's a distraction to the flow of a conversation.
The women who have children are making about as many children as ever. Fewer women are having children.
Not true. The rate of childfree or childlessness has remained steady for decades now. There has been a slight increase in women choosing to only have one child. Women are just having fewer kids and later in life. The rate of no children never really gets above 20% historically and this trend has continued for years now. Women are more likely than ever to have children because they can be infertile or have genetic defects and still have kids via ART.
I guarantee the amount of "UM AH"s in this conversation has to be more than 1,000. I was really keen on hearing the information but 17min in and I couldn't take it anymore. Good lord please do something to edit them out. It was so bad, I came all the way from Spotify to say this.
This Guy is good! Very balanced and grounded!
If children aren’t allowed to work to make money to help to contribute to the family, then it doesn’t make sense to have a lot of children in a lousy economy. It is impossible.
I enjoyed hearing the very specific breakdowns based on age, income, etc. it’s so easy to paint with broad strokes but this really helped me go beyond that.
Simple... Cost. We have two and want another, but we can't afford another one.
I think that the last 20 years marketing companies have introduced the symbol of a child as a big problem and hardship. In general, the image of the family as a whole is mocking. Now they advertise single life, or being gay and traveling.
Part of me would like to be a father and have my own family, but unfortunately I made the grave mistake of trying to get by in life by working a full time job. My nextdoor neighbor who doesn't work and plays video games all day has 5 children (with another one on the way) while claiming state benefits which is worth more than what I work for...
@@shelbzillathrilla My excuse is that I work full time. Congratulations for you I suppose
As someone who has had state benefits at one point in my life, I can tell you that they are NOT worth more than what someone makes working a fulltime job lol. Which is why I don't understand why anyone would try to depend on that instead of getting a decent job.
@@madsquishy3410 He's mad because he perceives it as an advantage. It isn't.
@@sailirish7 Exactly right. It's barely enough to scrape by on and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Well I don't know which country you're based in, but here in the UK we have a huge welfare culture. I personally know people who have never worked for decades and get entitlements such as free prescriptions, dental care, rent paid, etc despite contributing less to the system
Also I've seen study after study that marital happiness drops after having children during the childbearing years but rebounds in older age when the kids are older, but so much not the happiness marriage but in marital satisfaction for having kids
I've seen studies that happiness in general decreases after having children and doesn't go back up until they move out lol
Its funny people have to have conversations about this topic when the whole current social and economic fabric that would encourage family growth is horrendous.
@beachdweller3378 it's designed to reduce population, not increase it.
Modern society may be wealthier, but the base structural instability has increased significantly since industrialisation.
This has biological reasons, far more then people think. Things have changed.
Maybe a biological "reset" to smaller communities?
Can’t afford kids is probably related to decline in quality of life (due to higher expenses) and losses hurting more than gains and we have lost the ability to appreciate things beyond the material in many ways.
The thing about the UBI studies is that none of them will ever replicate what it looks like for an entire population to 1) believe it will be permanent, and 2) have the exact same amount of incoming flows of money.
Comparison is a very important human instinct that, I think, will vastly change the results of the studies
"because it's expensive"
In the richest society in history?
No. Because people are worried about the future. And relationships are not stable. Nobody wants to raise a child alone. It's scary out there.
@@em3sis 🙄🙄🙄
Children have always been expensive and actually we have more resources now than we’ve ever had in human history. People aren’t having as many children because abortion and birth control exists and go figure people will choose not to have responsibilities if they can.
"it's expensive" is just cope. The poorest nations have incredible birth rates despite their poverty.
I wish Lyman would stop that dreadful verbalised pause! So annoying!
Father of two here. I sincerely never even considered not having kids. Having kids was like working; in my mind there was no alternative. The thought of growing old without kids or grandkids is unfathomable because I saw how empty my grandparents life would have been if they had chosen not to have kids. Basically, having kids is a trade off as in you trade in some of your youth in order to have pleasant golden years.
I work at a hospital, and many older adults have kids who only visit them at Christmas. Hopefully, your kids see you 😅
I don't thinking having kids just so you're not alone when you're old is a good enough justification
In general, I've noticed this attitude was *more* true among people born significantly before 1987/1988. I might be wrong about an exact year, but I was born in 1990 and almost everyone I know born before 1987/88 always assumed they'd have kids and people I know born after that date were much more on the fence. So it's like it used to be culturally assumed and then it became optional.
It's anyone's guess as to why this might be the case, but I think it may have something to do with the types of shows on TV in the 1980s and early 1990s that showed adults with children (the Cosby show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Full House, etc) versus the shows many of us Millenials watched later like Friends, Seinfeld, Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, etc.
I know all of those shows had some overlap in time, but there was a cultural vibe shift by the late-1990s where adults raising children disappeared from television.
@@Alexxx492 If your kids and grandkids are never around, you never have to work that hard. You get to know your legacy is secured while enjoying your independence. I never saw my grandmother much when she was in a seniors home, But I'm pretty sure she was more happy with me being content, than me coming in to complain about dorm-life.
I completely agree that mental health is hugely correlated, my early years of uni I was super depressed and promised not to have kids, now I’m getting married and doing research on how to raise my eventual first
Housing costs, dispersed and distant parental.and family support, careers and the cost of child care, the relegation of motherhood to a 2nd class role rather than something to celebrate - the giver of life.
Wrong, double the labor force, double the taxable income and double the consumer base of which woman make of 80% of consumer spending. 2/3 rd of 1.6 trillion dollar student loan debt is woman of which majority is not in STEM fields, all the while 80% of woman on dating apps are selecting the top 10% of guys who they think is their market value all at their peak fertility age. Medicare Part A is set to be insolvent in two years and social security by 2034. The whole second class role is simply brainwashing by the media. Different roles is now unequal roles as the media narrative suggests. So no one can cook, but eat out at corporate restaurants, and now they take out loans on education that does not pay, all the while child care is also outsourced, all because of career to corporations that really don’t care all at the expense of starting a family. Now with inflation, because nobody is having kids to build society and there is no future labor capital. 80% of money that as been printing since 1776 as been printed in last two years. You’re looking at a societal implosion. The root cause is because domestic duties is oppressive or it is second class people.
@@theredknight9314 no, there are more reasons including exogenous hormones and their analogues in the environment and our diets, the changing nature of social interaction and online life, people putting off having kids younger because they can't afford it and put it off and then it is too late.
What else ya got?
@@theredknight9314 I'm talking about fertility rates which is the number of babies a woman has.
That isn't quite the same as birthrates.
I think that many people I know who have one kid but want two would disagree with you.
@@theredknight9314 no, no it isn't. Fertility rate refers to the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime, while birth rate is the number of live births per 1,000 people in a population per year.
I'm trained in this shit. Don't try to play games Mr Dunning-Kruger.
@@theredknight9314 yeah sure, check again. They aren't exactly the same thing, but you tell yourself that if it makes you happy.
It is interesting that you have only come with negatives, you haven't said what you think the causes are.
You don't even seem to think that they are multifactorial. I don't think you have anything to offer do you?
It's like the costs just keep climbing every year - rent, repayments, food, bills, taxes... It feels like the government should cut us some slack on taxes; it's getting harder to manage everything.
This guy disclosed that he is funded by baby formula companies. I'm not saying what he's saying isn't accurate, but he is financially incentivized to want ppl to have more kids. It's important to look at all of his statements with that lens in mind
Everyone is financially incentivized to want people to have more kids. Money is useless if you can't spend it and there isn't going to be an economy if there are no people.
Not just more kids, more kids whose mothers aren’t in a position to breastfeed
I hope Chris can find a healthy woman to mother his children. Time is on his side.
Aside my Christian practice, my marriage and children have been the most challenging, life giving, joyful and refining aspects of my life and I grieve my friends who will never know this kind of life because of how they prioritized their life values.
I’m 33 and have friends on the outside killing it in careers and life experience but cry on the phone to me because they’re lonely and the only single at weddings. It breaks my heart. I don’t want that for them.
You need to look at disposable income not gross income. Childcare is astronomically expensive - previous generations could let their kids play outside all day and were more likely to have both sets of parents and extended family nearby. Also, jobs are more specialised and less secure - people need to live near to their work, they can’t just move somewhere cheaper to live.
Here in London it is normal for middle class families to be living in tiny flats. I know families where their kids are sharing beds or parents are sleeping on sofas. Look at the mass exodus from London caused by the change to companies allowing working from home.
If you have two people working 5 days a week you only need 3 days of child care if one or both work weekends. That rate can be further reduced if you work different shift times. It can really be like 3 4 hour morning a week where you need child care. If you got money shift work isn't a great option, if you don't it's often your only option. Those 3 4 hour shifts are where the grandparents kick in. Also just a reminder if the grandparents can't give a few hours a week, call their bluff, threaten to cut them off from ever seeing them. Sounds brutal, but if they aren't willing to contribute to your kids why on earth should they have access to them?
FYI London was a horrible place to live for most of the last 2,000 years, in fact there was a 30ish year span after it was rebuilt post nazis destruction where it was good. The other 1,970 years were awful, get out while you can.
UBI doesn't change how people live. Winning the lottery doesn't teach you how to handle money. If a person knew how to handle money, they wouldn't be gambling on a ticket.
Yeah I’d have 3 or 4 kids. But it costs a lot to live. I would do it if I made $500k-1m per year for at least a decade
😂😂😂
For real having kids is more likely to lead to losing friendships because your time is suddenly taken up by a more important relationship. Who now comes with pressures from the newer expectations that come with parenting. That was a big adjustment for me, I thought all my friends and I would all hang out on the weekends with all our kids, because that’s what my parents did with their friends when I was a little kid. In reality that just doesn’t happen today. We are all too busy.
Living in the richest society in the world is a funny thing to say when the bottom 50% of people hold ~2.5% of all wealth in America. If half (it's way more than that but for ease of argument) the population is living paycheck to paycheck already, adding a kid to that is certainly a no-go. It's simple math
I think finances causes two problems. One there are not enough financially stable men for women to have kids with. And 2. the lack of financially stable men makes it harder for women to have multiple kids.
@@TheGrimFoot i'm not angry. i'm too busy counting my money on my yacht.
You're not wrong but was the working class better off 200 years ago 😂😂😂
CHRIS you need to get Eric Bugenhagen on the show