- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
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I just don’t want kids. Knew I never wanted to be a parent ever since I was a kid having to help my parents raise my nephews and niece. I could be a billionaire and every problem on Earth could be solved, I still wouldn’t have kids.
I would like to have kids, and that’s as far as that joke is allowed to go. I just want little people to clean my house while I get drunk, that’s the joke.
Implying the politicians in the government are capable of feeling shame?
Don’t forget about the economy :(
Yeah, I was gonna say that’s probably the biggest factor. All of these are environmental, which I support but I know many who don’t care. It’s money…
I… Look, can we be real for a minute? None of these are why people aren’t having kids.
Climate change is primarily affecting the global south, countries that have had the slowest drop in birth rates. Air quality globally has been increasing for decades. Yes, the current generation has less attainability than their parents, but modern life quality is still higher than any point in history. Even if you were to attribute it to that decrease, there have been decreases in resources between generations before without anywhere near the dropoff of births. Sumerian peasants didn’t have this level of decrease during concurrent wars and famine, both demonstrably worse conditions than most people alive will ever face.
Current studies point to one correlative factor: Smartphones. Now, we can discuss why: Personally I believe it is a mix of several reasons, including beneficial ones. I would argue that smartphone have made people more aware than ever of the unfairness of life in modern society, as an example of a beneficial cause. 30 years ago, a woman in Nebraska wouldn’t know intimately the firsthand account of a modern genocide, for example. Let me be clear: This is undoubtedly, unequivocally a good thing.
But we also need to address the sheer amount of slop content and unending access. Shortform content is proven to inflict users with symptoms reflective of ADHD and anxiety. Social media is built to make us not just dependent but addicted. The rise of smartphones has been part and parcel to the loss of third spaces; it’s not just that people lost community, it’s that we have also replaced it with instant access to online communities that cannot and will never be a viable replacement. We let the rich finally build the ultimate circus. And fixing that will not just require a fundamental restructuring of society, but also tough conversations about our responsibility to escape these systems.
Climate collapse, resource depletion, the enshittification of everything and my ever growing misanthropy, are exactly why I’m refusing to procreate.
And no, climate collapse and resource depletion are not just affecting the global south. Not by a long shot.
90% of earths topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030
Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity.
Global carbon emissions are still rising
The arctic sea ice extent is declining rapidly and we’re likely headed into a Blue Ocean Event later this year, and potentially a double BOE depending on how the El Nino and summer in the southern hemisphere go.
The world is likely to exceed a key global warming target soon but the earths alebedo with the declining sea ice and lack of cloud cover will impact these numbers massively and isn’t being predicted for, which means that 4.5c above the baseline by 2060 is now possible.
I never said just affecting the south, I said disproportionately. And you’re kind of proving my point: Before widespread information access, you probably wouldn’t even know. And yes, that is a good thing, as I stressed repeatedly in my post; not all reasons to blame the smartphone are bad, many are even good. It is a good thing people know about climate change. About the human cost of imperialism. About genocide. But that alone doesn’t account for the sheer drop, either, and there are negatives to this technology that need to be addressed.
There’s more people alive now than ever before. This insane need for infinite increases on a finite planet is why the world is ending.
Smart phones and short form content aren’t causing birth rates to decrease, that started decades ago when western women started getting access to contraception and gaining human rights.
A) we don’t need infinite growth; what we need is a tapering down so we don’t end up with an entire generation spending their golden years in a ditch. B) As I’ve stated to another user, you’re equivocating. Stop that. We’ve had the same percentile decrease in the last 20 years as we did throughout the previous century; you’re looking at two different rates of decrease and calling them the same because they both happen to be decreases. That’s not how math works.
Lmao, don’t worry about your pension, the water wars will get you long before you’re old enough to retire. Billions upon billions of us will die in the next 50 years.
It’s more important to you to hold some personal sense of moral superiority than engage with the death of millions; your blasé attitude speaks volumes towards your privilege. I have no doubt that the reason you don’t want kids has far less to do with climate change than being able to say you won’t because of climate change.
Did that make you feel better? I bet it did. Go on, let it all out. Tell me all the shitty things you’ve assumed about me because being angry at me is easier than accepting the world is ending.
Yeah I agree that smartphones have a huge role to play in lower birth rates all over the globe.
There is a correlation between the adoption of certain entertainment technologies and birth rates, such as TVs becoming widespread causing a small decrease in births, simply because people are spending more free time not being bored. Same thing happened with smartphones, but with a much more drastic impact.
More recently, during 2020 and 2021 the birth rates increased drastically due to the pandemic lockdowns making people bored and with far more free time on their hands.
The demograpic downturn started decades before that, but in the west it was (and to some extent still is) hidden by immigration.
You’re obfuscating: It’s been well documented that the availability of resources is inversely correlated to birthrates. We’ve had as much dropoff since the phone as we did since the industrial revolution. You’re calling two different rates of drop the same because they’re both drops; that’s not how math works.
In the US you can’t even buy vegetables right now without worrying about getting explosive diarrhea. Just the thing you want for your children.
The rest of the world feels for you Americans right now, hopefully you get through this very soon! lets hope the CDC and the WHO can prevent the spread of the cyclosporiasis parasite soon.
Our government is just trying to help the people of America by tackling the obesity crisis with this all natural ozempic alternative!
/s (if it wasn’t obvious)
You slash s, but real talk. Make sure your food is up to temperature. A lot of people are about to find out why past us made the FDA in the first place.
I was looking at the costs of raising a child the other day and I don’t know how anyone does it. My job pays garbage with trash health insurance.
I’m just so mad at the management class with their high pay and not doing any actual work. My boss seems fine - I think he knows this is bullshit and goes a little out of his way to make it easier for me. But everyone above him? If I saw them drowning I’d have to think a long time before throwing a life vest.
I could totally afford a child, but if I chose to do that, I wouldn’t be able to afford anything else fun, so I haven’t chosen to. By all means, I make a pretty decent living and would’ve probably been in the upper middle class 20 years ago.
They don’t want to make it more affordable to have children so that women are forced to drop out of the workforce to stay home and raise them.
But they also don’t pay enough to be able to raise a kid without both parents working too, I take it?
Keep them poor and distracted.
But imagine if your kid would be so special they could invent solution to all these problems!
/s
Twist: the solution is communism
They have lowering birth rates, too, though, I thought.
More propaganda so it’s easier to strip women of their autonomy and access to contraception.
It’s not a crisis that the birth rate is falling.
I get the feeling people read your comment and didn’t actually understand it so they think you mean the comic is propaganda.
I also have some dedicated manosphere types that stalk my account frequently. Doesn’t bother me, but thank you for your comment :)
So true
And this people from Lemmy/reddit are… Well, you know what
Kids are pure love and happiness
Everyone should have the choice to have children or not.
Pushing propaganda that it’s a crisis that the birth rate is falling is to help strip women of their autonomy over when and how many children they have.
Governments should support families more than they do because it’s the right thing to do and not to force women to have more babies than they want.
So what does it mean that I’ve held these same beliefs for over 20 years now and didn’t need a comic? What does it mean that my wife holds the same beliefs, and that we’re both pro choice? Am I brainwashed? Have I been for decades now?
Or have I looked around and known I do not believe there is a moral way for me personally to bring life into this world. Adopt maybe, but not new life.
Heck, you don’t even have to go into morals. There are so many people who can barely take care of themselves. I wouldn’t entrust them to take care of another human being as well, and certainly not force them to do so.
As a parent, I will defend your right and choice to not have children every single day. People should only have children if they really want to and have the mental capacity to guide a child to relatively stable adulthood.
One of those things I don’t get, with all if the news on bad parents, why are we so eager to force people who obviously don’t want a child to have them? Obviously it’s not good for the child or the parent.
Of course then you realize it’s not about the child or the parent, but the person picketing and screaming and their own personal emotions. They think they are thinking of the children, but it’s much more selfish.
I was educated not to leave trash around when I visited nature.
I was educated to not leave trash around whatsoever.
“Abortion is green.”
Not to mention the clear financial aspect
This is a much better reason, frankly.
“I couldn’t bring a child into a world like this” is a bit of mental gymnastics that people use to convince themselves that they’re being noble and selfless with this decision, when in reality it’s neither noble nor ignoble, neither selfless nor selfish. Every child eventually hits their parents with the classic “I never asked to be born!”, and while it’s certainly true, NOBODY asks to be born, and life has ALWAYS sucked in some way or another. Should pre-humans have refused to have kids because it would be cruel to bring them into a world where they have to kill to eat? Nonsense.
If people simply don’t want to have kids, they should simply say that and own it. They don’t OWE it to anybody to have kids - but they don’t owe it to anybody to not have kids, either. It’s not a moral decision in either direction. It’s simply a case that some people don’t feel up to the responsibility, and that’s fine: not superior, just fine.
And before anyone says that not having kids helps to keep the surplus population down: no problem on Earth is a result of the population being too high. There’s enough food for everyone; the problem is distribution. There’s enough land for everyone; the problem is that some people are hoarding. If the population starts using renewables and just generally going green, corporations build more data centers and invent other novel ways to waste resources.
My selfishness pushes me to not make life anyone else’s problem.
Every child eventually hits their parents with the classic “I never asked to be born!”, and while it’s certainly true, NOBODY asks to be born, and life has ALWAYS sucked in some way or another
Just because something has always been bad or worse and for everyone, that doesn’t make it ok.
no problem on Earth is a result of the population being too high.
Pre-industrial humans caused mass habitat loss, species extinction, and even climate change, and that was with their relatively miniscule populations and emissions. What quality of life are you imagining over eight billion people having such that we somehow don’t continue wrecking the environment? And how do you plan on putting the genie back in the bottle regarding all our polluting technological “advancements” that require fossil fuels and/or intensive mining? Who’s declaring to the world that plastics, electricity, and all forms of motorized technology are over, and how do you imagine this would be enforced?
Even completely stripped of all our technology, humans are still animals, and any animal species will wreak havoc on their environment when overpopulated. Hell you don’t even have to be an animal; go look up the Great Oxygenation Event or what happened when trees first evolved. What do you suppose Earth is going to be like for the millions of years required for it to adapt to the changes we’re making? Unlike monocellular organisms and plants, however, we are sapient creatures; if we can observe this is happening and know we’re the ones causing it, how is it not in any way a moral issue?
Why not? Pre-humans were not smart enough to recognise that having children would cause the children to suffer. Perhaps it would be better to simply die out as a species. It all depends on how you view morality and how you weigh non-existence
If it depends on how you view it, then it’s not a moral obligation, it’s a personal preference. Which is fine, but just acknowledge that.
maybe pay us more
Idk how you’d draw lower wages and less fulfilling jobs, but that too.
There are a whole lot more reasons to NOT have kids imo.
all true, but…
we enjoy our free time, hobbies, and traveling the world? want more of that not zero.
