Hi everyone, I’m only interested in hearing from comrades so that’s why I thought this could be a good community to post, but if you think this is the wrong community please direct me somewhere else!
Today I was talking to someone somewhat close to me, he mentioned countries like Germany have an aging population and a falling birth rate and I pointed out that I believe it’s connected to the cost of living crisis (especially with the expensive energy imports and with governments happily destroying the welfare state) and my friend said that he doesn’t buy it and that in his opinion it’s hedonism (?).
I find that kind of argument unprovable and moralistic, but it caught me off guard and I figured I’d take this as a learning opportunity. Have you heard this kind of argumentation? Am I right to assume it’s just a reactionary thing? Is this worth engaging with, even if it’s just for criticism, and if so how? Or should I just move on? I can’t cut contact with him but I can just change the topic again if it comes to that lol.
The counter to the cost of living explanation is that people were poorer a hundred years ago and still had kids. This does not factor in that those people 100 years ago were mostly doing slightly better than their parents. Having children while being downwardly mobile feels irresponsible, like you’re betraying those children by being unable to provide for them the advantages and experiences that you had.
Also, as others have pointed out, the current generation crop of young adults is objectively less hedonistic than the previous three. Less sex, less booze, less friends, less partying, less dancing, less music.
Could this not be because addictive social media overindulgence is the norm? I think this plays some small part tbh. No time or motivation for parties, alcohol, etc if you’re getting everything you need being terminally online, which is hedonism all the same.
I don’t have any data to back this up, but I think social media addiction is a symptom, and the root cause is real estate prices. Younger adults have been priced out of cities, so they don’t go out as much for the same reason that previous generations stopped going out as much after they would move back to the suburbs to buy a house. Where are you gonna go to meet your partner or party with friends? The Applebee’s? Cant drink too much cause you gotta drive to get anywhere, cant take anyone home with you because there’s a good chance you live with your parent, cant even go have a kegger in the woods because even small wooded areas have been cleared for more investment housing. So the only private space available to these young adults is digital.
Social behaviour follows the path of least resistance and our societal infrastructure funnels young people into online spaces instead of real world spaces where they would meet someone they wanna have a kid with.
They also didn’t have contraceptions, child labor was normalized, the agricultural sector employed a larger section of the populace and social pressure was higher to conceive, in contrast the communal aspect was also higher.
I don’t believe kids nowadays get taken care of by their neighbors if the parents are working. Stranger Danger and Kidnapping mass panic blew up since the 80s-90s.
The demand for child labour and the simple fact that sex is fun seem far more likely as reasons for the massive quantities of children people had a hundred years ago.
If you’re poor, and can barely afford necessities, let alone entertainment or luxuries, what else are you going to do for fun other than have sex?