>which is the central thesis here

No, not exactly. We're dealing with a historical confluence of long term changes in humanity. Before 1900 or so and some people had a lot of kids survive and others had a lot of kids die. The population rate increased very slowly, and not from a lack of trying. Then around the time I stated people figured out germs were real, chlorine in water was good, and washing ones hands was a swell idea. The population exploded.

Then you couple this with the technological revolution and the necessity of training huge amounts of the population for specialists jobs if they want to make a living and suddenly a boat load of kids doesn't make any sense at all. And it's getting to the point of the squeeze that having any kids doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of people.

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inigyou an hour ago | parent [-]

There is no meaning of life if you don't have kids. Childless people realize this when they're around 50 and it's too late to have kids.

	▲	swatcoder 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And likewise plenty of people raised into modernism arrive at 50 and resent that having kids interfered with their personal fulfillment or experiences. The reality is that people in middle-age just tend to look backwards and reflect on what could have been. Some prove happy with what they have, and others are sure the grass would have been greener some other way. What they decide has more to do with the moods their personality gravitates towards and the current state of their life as they start reflecting. Specific details of the road there -- like kids vs not -- are not all that determinative.
	▲	amanaplanacanal 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		As has been pointed out by philosophers for a long time, there is no inherent meaning, beside what you yourself create. For some people, children. For others, art of some sort, or building a business that creates value. For some, pure hedonism, or building relationships and helping the people around them. I'm way older than 50, and don't miss having kids at all.
	▲	antonyt 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		My impression is that voluntarily child-free people have a very low regret rate, but there are dozens of conflicting studies on this. Interested if you have anything concrete to link to.
	▲	pixl97 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>There is no meaning of life Don't half ass it, brace the full absurdity of the universe. The only purpose why we are here is to take entropy from an ordered state to one of maximum disorder.