> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones.

It's funny to me that of all the crazy crackpot theories on fertility Twitter, you picked the craziest and crackpotiest.

I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic about the future, and what you think rich countries should be learning from them!

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phainopepla2 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's possible that the things that would motivate people to have children in poor undeveloped countries are very different from the things that would motivate people to have kids in wealthy developed countries. So OP's take could be right for the US but wrong for Chad.

Of course, it could also be true that a certain level of affluence and freedom for women simply results in a strong downward pressure on birth rates, which is what I think is most likely. (I am not advocating for rolling back women's rights).

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j16sdiz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Their life are pretty stable - consistently bad, you can say. They know what their kid have is more or less same as what they did - not improving, but not getting worse either

Can you say the the same in a city where housing is getting less and less affordable,?

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tshaddox 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you truly so confident that people in those countries don’t feel optimistic that their children will have better opportunities than their parents did?

I’d be shocked if they didn’t feel that, and even more shocked if it didn’t end up being the case.

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krona 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or Israel?

It's simply a matter of the social position of mothers, or, what defines the social status of women in a given society. In much of the world it's educational attainment and professional status, so it surprises me very little that most women in these countries don't want children, or can easily find an excuse to not to.

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macintux 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Population growth has rarely been a problem in poorer societies. Every fully developed country (afaik) has seen birth rates decline; that's the context.

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alephnerd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic about the future, and what you think rich countries should be learning from them!

Why not ask Israelis?

Even ignoring Haredim and Arab Israelis (both whose fertility rate has fallen dramatically), secular Israelis tend to have 2 kids on average [0]. Israelis also work much longer hours than Americans (South Korea is the only developed OECD country tied with Israel in hours spent working) [1], live primarily in 2-3 bedrooms low rise brutalist apartment blocks built in the 1960s-90s, earn less than Americans, pay San Francisco level prices for everything, and have almost nonexistent government benefits.

But society as a whole is very children friendly. If you have a baby crying in the background of a zoom call, it's not a faux pas to care for them. If your kids are running around in a mall no one gives you stink eye. Setting up a playdate in the office while parents are working is viewed as completely normal.

Western Europeans and North Americans are much less friendly and more individualistic veering on self-centered.

[0] - https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona...

[1] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html

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steveBK123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It really is cultural. The economics don't help at all, but in the US kids are largely seen as some sort of annoyance, burden, interruption, etc.

I barely know my coworkers kids names half the time. I certainly don't see photos of them or see them popping into zoom backgrounds. Growing up my dads company had picnics and his coworkers had parties and I'd meet his coworkers & their kids.

And while theres obvious things children limit.. like 4am clubbing on a Tuesday... a lot of public spaces are less child-friendly than in the past.

Parenting has become increasingly a home-bound activity over time, with a reduced social life for both parents and children. Or the outside-home activities involving kids are specifically kids focussed and a time commitment, like spending all your weekend mornings at children's sports leagues.

There's very little overlap in 20-30 something singles & family public spaces anymore. It's like the entire world has self segregated.

I also wonder about the extra burden of some of the over the top car seat rules in US (up to 12 years old!?) also causing challenges for parents. Both parents probably need a bigger car, especially if you have 2-3 kids. If you have grandparents that help out, they need the same.

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cosmic_cheese 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I also wonder about the extra burden of some of the over the top car seat rules in US (up to 12 years old!?) also causing challenges for parents. Both parents probably need a bigger car, especially if you have 2-3 kids. If you have grandparents that help out, they need the same.

If nothing else, it's yet another area of increased expense.

In the early 90s when I was a child, it was pretty normal to shuttle 3 kids + parents around in a cheap little late 80s used sedan or station wagon. These days 3 kids + parents looks more like a big expensive 4Runner or Highlander.

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steveBK123 an hour ago | parent [-]

Similar 80s/90s upbringing for me.

The car thing is also limiting on who can perform extra childcare, and how/where.

As a kid, I used to hang out with my 10+ years older cousins who could drive - taking me to mall/movies/arcade/sports games with them in their little 2 door coupe.

Sure they were babysitting me, it wasn't some tremendous chore of being stuck in some kids-only space. They were doing stuff that they might have done without me, and probably got $20 from my parents.

We'd go see a Jim Carrey PG-13 film, not some Disney movie with they boyfriend/girlfriend/buddy, and they'd cover my eyes when their were tits on the screen. Or I'd sit in an older cousins lap at a ballgame while they drank beer (and smoked) and shouted at the players.

Can't imagine this is acceptable or normal now, lol. But it meant different generations commingled in ways that they just don't now.

	▲	cosmic_cheese an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I hadn't even thought about this angle, but you're right. Furthermore, not only is it not acceptable or normal today, it's largely not even possible. Cheap econobox starter cars have disappeared from the market, used car prices are through the roof for anything that's reasonably safe and not basically dead already, and there's nowhere for young people to go anymore even if cheap cars did exist.

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alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> but in the US kids are largely seen as some sort of annoyance, burden, interruption, etc

Pretty much!

> Parenting has become increasingly a home-bound activity over time, with a reduced social life for both parents and children. Or the outside-home activities involving kids are specifically kids focussed and a time commitment, like spending all your weekend mornings at children's sports leagues.

This isn't bad if there are other parents doing the same thing too. Increasingly there are not (or at least not among the demographic who uses HN).

I don't think so. I'm from around that generation, and that didn't stop Asian, Eastern European, and Israeli American parents from having multiple kids here in the Bay Area when growing up in the 2000s.

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daymanstep 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids?

You seem to be supposing a model where most people naturally want kids, but are just discouraged from having kids because...other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.

In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.

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steveBK123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think in atomic families in the US, more and more people are brought up without really interacting with children much once they are a teen and stop being a child themselves.

What used to be normal teen rights of passage like hanging out with your younger extended family, holding a baby, babysitting the neighbors kids, being a summer camp counselor, helping with youth sports, etc.. are less common.

Teens are busy cramming SATs, doing homework, and polishing up their resume for college.

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porridgeraisin 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, this is closer to my take:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44098431

	▲	steveBK123 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed with your take. The lifestyle choices lead to the costs, and it's sort of a circular problem in the end. My dad's (European immigrant) family lived in one of those multi-generational homes you mentioned, and so there was just far less of this self enforced age segregation you see in atomic families. From when I was young, I'd see my extended family at least every 2-3 weeks or more, every other holiday was hanging out with people from newborn to 90 years old. Babies and elderly were pretty regular fixtures of my regular life. By comparison my mom's side which had been here a few generations, I never really saw kids other than when I was a kid myself. I don't think my wife ever held a baby until she was an aunt in her 30s.

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alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Teens are busy cramming SATs, doing homework, and polishing up their resume for college

So are Israelis. Getting into the best IDF units is much more difficult and stressful than getting into an Ivy - it's both academic and physical. But if you get into those units, you will be set for life financially.

Otherwise, your just an infantry grunt who wasted a couple years with no discernible skills and facing a future of (best case) working a dead end job that pays $40k a year in a country with a CoL similar to the Bay Area.

This is why immigrating abroad is still somewhat popular amongst non-techie Israelis (Zohran's electronics store [0] still hits somewhat close to home).

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSdIAajX_sI

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alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids

Yes.

They are much more tolerant about having kids and making sure to give space to people planning to have kids.

> In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.

The more likely you and your peers are to have kids, the more likely you are to live in a society which will accommodate you.

---

Heck, Germany gives significantly more monetary and subsidized childcare benefits than Israel (which gives almost nothing), and Israel remains significantly more expensive than much of Germany, yet secular Israelis continues to sustain a much higher fertility rate than similar Germans.

It is hard to describe how kid unfriendly Western society has become.

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malux85 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Im no expert but my gut feeling is that theres more than 1 reason people have kids.

In "richer" western countries one of the strongest factors in that decision is "will my child have a good life" - that seems pretty sane to me, I wouldn't say that was the craziest and crackpotiest.

But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance"

Very different things

	▲	thewebguyd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance" Also, in poorer countries, having kids becomes a necessity for survival. Places without safety nets, elder care, etc. You have kids to both take care of you as you age, and also as labor to help with survival. That pressure/need doesn't exist in most of the west, so that incentive is gone.