so here's why I'm never having kids it doesn't seem that fun my mom had like a very Britney Spears moment she grabbed me by the shoulders and she was like don't have kids okay first off kids are expensive some people want kids some people don't want kids I think a lot of people have kids before they even think about it from what I've seen honestly it's true less people are having kids today but I don't think it's necessarily A Bad Thing hi guys welcome back we're here for another commentary video about another touchy subject the child free movement as a 29-year-old I've got some good insights on this because it is more of a topic amongst my friends people my age these days whether or not they want to have kids whether or not you have a child is a very personal decision but the amount of people who are not having kids could have implications on our entire society today I want to talk about why I think less people are deciding to have kids there's quite an argument in terms of happiness and fulfillment that you can't be happy or fulfilled if you don't have kids and also the implications that it can have on our economy and our society as a whole all right so let's let's get into it with some stats so first of all it is a fact that less people are having kids we can see from this graph from usafacts.org the US fertility rate has dropped significantly since the baby boomer generation obviously the Baby Boomers was a time where there were more people born than normal and then it sharply declined we have seen in the last 10 years when you look at the graph there has been you know a slight decline but it's not as dramatic as from the baby boomer time to now so yes less people are having kids but it's really not a whole lot different than how many people were having kids in the ' 80s and '90s however things are trending downwards still and from what we're seeing Jen Z say about having kids I I don't think it's going to recover I don't think there's going to be another baby boom I mean who knows but the birth rate is probably going to continue to just kind of go down today the average woman has 1.6 kids which is below the replacement level of 2.1 so basically our population is slowly declining the birth rate at this point isn't crazy low but it still is below the replacement level so in order for the population to stay the same like replace itself each couple needs to have 2.1 kids this is not uniquely a US problem actually Japan already has an aging population in South Korea the birth rate is only8 children per women and in Taiwan the birth rate is .87 it's interesting though when you look at the worldwide birth rate it's actually at 2.3 so the total worldwide population is not declining but it is declining the most amongst countries in Asia and then also the US and Europe basically all the developed countries the birth rate is lower the birth rate is the highest among countries in Africa you can see the average woman is having anywhere from four to six kids so there have been some surveys on people today on whether not they plan to have kids so this is from Pew Research Center and this first study is on people who have never had kids on How likely they are to have them at all and what we can find from this study is that about half of all people think that they will have kids so 26% say they're very likely to have kids 29% say they're somewhat likely and then a little less than half say that they're not too likely or not likely at all and these numbers for the not too likely and not likely at all are up a little bit since 2018 so more people are kind of I don't know if I want to have kids we can see most people still want to have kids but there's a good share of people who who don't and I think that's actually always been the case it's just not as taboo to say it now and what I found interesting is the reasoning the majority of childless adults say the reason they don't want to have kids is that they just don't want to I mean there's a lot of reasons right economic environmental there are all these things that people feel like they need to come up with a valid reason you know the economy the environment but the truth is a lot of people just don't have that calling but they don't really like kids enough to want to really dedicate a large chunk of their life to raising them there are a lot of reasons but I do think it's interesting that the main reason is that a lot of people just don't want to so I think one of the biggest reasons people are not having kids now is really because it's okay not to it there's been a cultural shift really back in the day I just don't even think people thought about the option of not having kids the societal pressure was so much stronger back in even the'80s that it was almost not like you had a choice from what I've heard and even from talking to my own parents I asked my mom like did you guys think you know why did you have kids when you did and you know she said they didn't it wasn't really something you even thought about people just did it people got married a lot younger back then sometimes right out of college or high school and jumped into having kids so they didn't have a lot of time to explore adult life on their own and what it's like to be really as free as a lot of us experience now this is a theory of mine but I think there's probably a lot of people back then who also didn't really like love kids maybe but it was just what you did so they had them whereas now people have a lot more time to themselves people get married a lot later as you can see from this graph the median age of marriage is now closer to 30 so that means both men and women have a lot of time to travel to be very free to live their life and also to build a career to build an entire fulfilling life before even having kids so that actually makes it so when you get to that age of around 30 when you know more people are having kids you actually would have to give up a lot more things in order to do that General there's a lot less stigma around it in the cultural shift of waiting longer to even get married allows people to just get a taste of what life can be like without having kids as an adult our parents generation which is often times Baby Boomers were having kids because nobody wasn't having kids like it's just what you were supposed to do I don't think there's a lot of critical thinking that even went into decisions like marriage and like having kids another part of the cultural shift being a little bit later in life that people are having kids is it does affect fertility so by the time people are 30 and they're getting married and like really seriously think about having kids they don't have time to have as many it's harder to some people unfortunately that want to have kids are not going to be able to that is an unfortunate reality another big reason I hear people talking about a lot is economic reasons it's really expensive to have kids and you know people are having a hard time even just supporting themselves now Millennials and gen Z are living with their parents for longer they have more student loans it's harder to buy a house like I talked about in my last video the economic inequality is now worse than ever harder to be able to afford things that previous generations did and I think a lot of people just don't feel comfortable financially having kids yet because they want to have like a stable home first they want to have a house that they own and many people that want kids sadly can't afford it yet everything is more expensive but especially Child Care the cost of child care has inflated significantly this study found that since 1990 it's outpaced other expenses even housing and groceries so it's actually gone up over 200% in cost I've seen Tik Tok of people talking about this and I was also shocked at the price of child care they're not even in school and you're already paying 25,000 I head find you a free summer camp it does cost $25,000 a year to send your kids to daycare here in the United States of America and it never ceases to amaz me how out of touch some people are with the lived experiences of parents here in the United States Child Care is the number one rising cost for families here in our country it is more expensive and going up at a faster rate than our mortgages then groceries then gas it is is the fastest rising cost for most families the average cost here in my state I'm in Massachusetts is $220,000 but depending on what county you're in it goes up as high as $26,000 I've even looked into just getting a dog a Doggy Daycare in La is $60 for a day so imagine an an actual human child which has a lot more needs it's going to be at least double right side note what a great business to get into obviously there's demand for child care if they're able to charge that much um and actually my parents did this back in the day when they just had recently had my brother they opened a very small little daycare in their neighborhood and so my mom would watch my brother and a few other kids and get paid for it kind of Genius when you think about it cuz then she's not having to pay for child care but she's getting paid to watch her own kid and a few other kids of course watching multiple kids that's way more work than just one kid I thought that was kind of Genius of my parents for doing that so shout out to that a lot of people are still in a place where both parents need to work so a lot of people they're paying what 24,000 a year per child until they are able to go to public school another cost that comes into play is IVF since people are waiting longer to have kids more of them might have to go the IVF route I I know some people that have actually and from what I found online it's not cheap it's $15 to $30,000 per round you know sometimes people need multiple rounds so even before having a kid the cost just to make that happen can be quite expensive and again that's like really sad because those are people who usually like really want to have kids so economic reasons are a big one because I think a lot of people know that once you have a kid it is significantly harder to get ahead in your career to have a side hustle start a new business it's not impossible but it is harder you have less time to do it it is risky to start a new business and it's a lot easier to do so when you only need to provide for yourself when you have to think about kids it's a lot more pressure I don't blame people at all for wanting to wait to have kids or not having them at all for economic reasons because truthfully it's it's harder if you don't have the money for it the quality of life that you and your potential kid would have whether you have money or not is very different one thing people don't talk about is their kids would be born into worse economic inequality as well for example the boomer generation easier to buy house Gen X a little harder Millennials a little harder jenzy a little harder it just continues to get harder and harder for the Next Generation to get a head unless they have generational wealth I do think there's an argument where some people are going you know it's going to be really hard for my kid to be able to buy a house if it's hard for me it's going to be harder for them and the cost of everything continuing to go up it it's not looking good for them and so I think a lot of people just go you know what maybe I'll opt out economic reasons they're definitely valid they're very real I think another reason we're seeing less people have kids is because women in general just have more options birth control wasn't even invented until the' 60s that alone was the beginning of deciding whether or not you could have a kid but still women couldn't have a bank account without their husband's permission until 1974 and just over time we've seen women make more money more have college degrees more of them even than men do there actually is kind of an epidemic of women that just can't find a partner that's worthy of having kids with we women have higher standards as we should and because of that we're realizing that the majority of men that exist we should not have children with in my 20s I would have said absolutely must have kids I want them at 30 I started questioning if that was just something that society's told me that I've wanted I there's not a lot of men I meet that I think they'd be great fathers and so I I kind of don't have that instinct to like procreate with them CU I'm like oh I don't know if this would be an equal parenting relationship they are not going to settle for some man that makes their life harder women have more power and money than they did before so often times they want a partner that will actually help but it's not always easy to find that so I think it's harder for a lot of women to just find someone that is on their level I've seen some older men talk about this men crisis where like gen Z men are not even asking girls on dates as much another big reason no one talks about is the fact that we see the reality of motherhood now there was so much stuff I had no no idea about until Tik Tok the girl with the list you guys feel like back in the early 2000s it was just the romanticization of motherhood of like families we only saw like the sugarcoated version in ads in movies even on Facebook people just posting their family photos but now you go on Tik Tok oh no people are peeling back the curtain and it's a lot a lot of you guys know of the Tik Tok account the girl with the list basically a list of hundreds of reasons to remain childree it ranges from everything from Scary medical things that can happen in pregnancy and child birth itself to things that your kids can actually do it's all kinds of reasons everything you can think of here's one of them it's also opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of moms are very lonely who am I anymore I can't remember the last time somebody used my name and not Mom I love being Mom most of the time I love these kids all of the time but I forgotten what it means to have fun I forgotten what it feels like to have energy at the end of the day or even the beginning of it what happened to my hopes and dreams and fears and uniqueness sometimes all it's left are my triggers but a lot of them you know they're stuck at home with a kid that can't really talk that does sound pretty lonely actually from what I've seen on Tik Tok it seems very chaotic it seems very overwhelming it seems like you have to really really want that in order for it to be worth it because it's not easy I give a lot of props to all the parents out there because it seems hard I don't want this video to come off like you shouldn't have kids because I really do feel like some people are meant to like some people are so good at it and like shout out to them I'm all for that I think that's great if you want to have kids um but if you don't want to have kids let's not pressure people into it Tik Tok has really opened my eyes to a lot of the negatives of parenting that you know a lot of people I think didn't even realize before there's also the regretful parents Reddit phenomenon I've always had this theory that there probably are a lot of people that regret having kids but it's too shameful to admit it so they just don't tell anyone that's proven to be kind of true because now that we have anonymous online forums people are like bursting at the seams to tell someone Reddit has this forum of parents who have regretted it and it's it's quite sad honestly has over a 100,000 people a part of it I've read through a number of them many of them are situations that seem very difficult you know partner left them didn't really want to have a kid to begin with but they were pressured into it so they regret it it's honestly reasons that make sense some every now and then where people thought they were going to like being a parent but they actually don't like this one for example is it just me I'm 39 female a first- time mom to a 5-month-old who is truly wonderful smart and loving my husband who is much older than me has taken to fatherhood like a duck to water however I am not the amount of sacrifices I've had to make as a mostly stay-at-home mom has been ridiculous I used to be Freer happier businesswoman and now I'm just existing day-to-day as a shell of a human person okay so that is pretty sad I'm just making the point that more people now are seeing the reality of how hard it really is to raise kids truly people are just thinking it through more whether or not they want to put themselves through that just popping in here while I'm editing to say that well there are definitely regretful parents out there that we can see now I do think this is the minority of people this is just the first time we're seeing people admit to it so it's kind of crazy to see it but if you look there are a ton of people who are happy with their decision to have kids so I don't think it's that there are more regretful parents than there are non- regretful parents it's just that before it was way too taboo to say anything about it so now for the first time we're just seeing some people speak up about it I don't want to make it sound like you know everyone's going to regret having kids or anything like that I think truly most people do not but I do think it's interesting now that we do see that there are some people that have found that it wasn't the right choice for them and it is unfortunate and I think a lot of them are the ones that felt pressured into doing it be for societal reasons a lot of the stigma of not having kids Falls onto women but I have seen more men talking about it now too which I think is interesting um I love what Seth Rogan has to say about being childfree just check it out you reference S you don't have any kids I do not that has helped me succeed as well definitely really oh yeah there's a whole huge thing I'm not doing which is raising children would it people obviously someone listening but yeah but it would make you happier you know someone might say that I'm trying to rebuttal I don't think it would I've been around obviously a lot of children I'm not I'm not ignorant to what it's like to I've I've seen everyone I know has kids I I see I'm a you know I'm 40 again you know like it's not I I know you know I some people want kids some people don't want kids I think a lot of people have kids before they even think about it from what I've seen honestly you just are told you go through life you get married you have kids it's what happens and me and my wife were just neither of us were like that you know and honestly the older we get the more happy and reaffirmed we are with our choice to not have kids okay looking to the Future years um you've been open about not wanting kids so is this still a thing okay I still I still don't want kids yeah uh why why like you just never saw yourself as that you just like your time it doesn't seem that fun I can see how it seems that way people describe having kids yeah as like brief glimmering moments of beauty amongst a sea of pain it it kind of whereas not having kids is just it's just lovely all the time I think it's great to see people that are childfree in midlife and don't regret it you are though like me childree by choice you have decided that that is not the life for is it because you come from a family of five is it maybe I mean I just don't ever I knew right away that I just I just felt childhood was so insulting you know I didn't feel like a child I didn't relate to being a child I went to Disney World and I was like this is insulting and I and I feel very I feel very vehement about you know all women really taking it into consideration you know you don't have to do that you don't have to get married you don't have to have a baby but there are a lot of people now who are are older and didn't have kids and are talking about it and a lot of them honestly seem pretty happy with that decision so here are some people that are a bit older in their life who have spoken about this one being Oprah she said I have not had one regret about that Betty White I didn't realize this until I started Googling it she actually never had kids and she said she did not regret it Miley Cyrus has cited environmental reasons for why she doesn't want to have a kid in an interview and I think a lot of people relate to this one on the flip side there are definitely cases of people who got older and regretted never having kids but a study in Australia showed that's the minority of child-free people in this study only a quarter of child-free women regretted the decision I think in general though there's not that many studies on this kind of thing and the truth is some people are going to regret it and some people aren't but a lot of the studies say that people don't regret it it's human nature there's just always going to be people who feel like that instinct to have kids but I also think it's it's pretty normal for people to not have that as well it was just stigmatized a lot before and now it's a little more accepted not completely but a little bit more but people are not happy about this decline in birth rate and it's really because it's not great for how our economic system is set up so let's talk about the implications that this will have on the economy a lot of people say there won't be enough workers young workers to support the workforce needed and a lot of people point out the irony of this because capitalism needs more people to survive but at the same time it's making it harder and harder for people to afford to have kids in the first place so the system is basically killing itself another big one is social security the way that Social Security is set up is that the younger generation pays for the older generation that is currently withdrawing Social Security the misconception about social security people often think that the money they're paying in for rep payroll taxes every month is their personal fund they're going to draw from in retirement but reality the money that you're paying in payroll taxes every month is paying for current retirees benefits so that's fine if you have enough workers supporting retirees so let's say there's 100 million people withdrawing Social Security but only 20 million that are now working and paying into that the math isn't mathing Social Security really is set up for a population that can replace itself it is an issue it is something that I am not really banking on I remember even when I was in Middle School having this science teacher who was kind of laughing about it he was like haha my generation is going to be the last to get Social Security you guys are screwed and at that time we didn't even have a population decline issue it's just the Baby Boomers like there's so many of them the good news though is if you are child free you're likely saving so much money that you don't have to spend on kids that you can set aside that for your own retirement and maybe not have to rely on Social Security I do think Social Security is something that we might not be able to bank on you know especially if the population is declining this is why we see people like Elon Musk really speak out about it and being like we need to have more kids and while Elon might be controversial I know a lot of you guys do not like him but he is putting his money where his mouth is at least and making changes at his companies to support people having families which is a good thing it's true it's important for our society to continue for some people to have kids but the only reason that it's important to like replace the amount of people or have the population grow significantly is for capitalism the economy grows when there's more people buying into it we can even see with Japan now that they have more of an aging population less of a Workforce the population's declining in general it has had an impact on their economy you can see their GDP has stayed pretty much the same it hasn't grown in the way that the US has and I've seen some people say this is because the older population doesn't spend as much money it's younger people who are more of consumers as an older population presents a challenge for its economy they already have houses they know need to change their cars they married already so the expenditures and the expenses on consumption is much lower and no need to travel for one it would need to increase its birth rate or bring in foreigners to work if you don't have enough working population you don't have enough taxpayers to finance the government budget to pay for the government budget and then government find problem for paying for the Social Security pension and so on where come more foreigners and uh to encourage them to stay much longer and enjoy their culture food Japan is kind of a foreshadowing for what can happen everywhere else and I'm not going to lie you guys it is kind of concerning it's quite an eerie feeling to walk through these streets because you don't see anybody you don't hear any cars you don't see anything and most of the places have just been closed way more people are dying in this country than being born a country that is closing up kindergartens and housing cares are increasing and if nothing changes Japan could eventually just not exist if you kind of extrapolate on the numbers it's going to happen when you actually look at these numbers you see why they say that Japan could disappear just look at this chart which shows Japan's population projected decline the country will go from being the 11th most populous country in the world to one day there will be less people in Japan than the state of New Jersey so this is a reason that a lot of people get upset or worried about it is because you know it probably will have some economic consequences but I think pressuring people to have kids when it's it's too expensive too largely doesn't really make sense either but I think there is something kind of dystopian telling people like you need to have kids cuz we need more taxpayers if anything a slower birth rate for the next decade might just be the thing that resets the housing market if there's less demand than Supply then housing price should go down and maybe more people will want to have kids again and also people have argued that just because the birth rate is lower right now does not mean that it always will be if you look at this chart in the early 1900s there was a decline then too but then there was the baby boomer generation we might just be in a period of decline but that doesn't mean that it can't go up again so while economically the childfree movement does pose some issues we can't deny that if there is a mostly aging population and not much of a Workforce that would cause problems with the government budget with the amount of people that can care for that older population but I do think that technology could compensate for a lot of it AI is getting better so fast I think that a lot of jobs won't be necessary anymore it'll be mostly essential ones really the in-person jobs will still probably need doctors firefighters stuff like that but the self-driving CS are so good I don't think we'll need Uber drivers I actually think we probably won't need as many people working because Less jobs will even be necessary if you think about the early 1900s when people were having like eight kids part of the reason for that was they needed people to work on the farm you know if you only had say four kids who was going to tend to the farm but technology took care of that problem another Point I've seen people make to counteract the economic issues is having a better legal immigration system I mean immigration could be a whole video in itself we're not going to get fully into it but the fact of the matter is the birth rate is really only low in certain countries the global birth rate is still above the replacement level so in some of these other countries that are already struggling with an elderly population they are encouraging immigration so that they have some younger people to work but it is up to each country to have a system of legal immigration that is efficient and really works I feel like here in the US we don't really have that but if it came down to it they probably would so while economically the childree movement does pose some issues environmentally I think it's actually a good thing humans we really are an invasive species like we create so much waste I saw stat that on average In Our Lifetime we each create 990,000 lb of garbage that's insane that's not even to mention how much we each consume in fossil fuels even if you try your hardest to be environmentally friendly like you still are consuming a lot of fossil fuels like I have an electric car but the reality is a lot of the time I go to a supercharger that electricity is still generated by coal so we are finding more environmentally friendly ways to generate energy but we're still not totally there yet so each of us is generating a lot of waste and consuming a lot of energy in the form of fossil fuels I think if the population just cut in half and then stayed in the replacement level after that that probably would be good for the planet the only issue is when it cuts in half generation after generation after generation because that would exponentially decline to zero like pretty quick actually I think it is possible that this decline Trend isn't going to stay forever it could could just be for a little while and then we level out to a more balanced area I mean that is kind of what happened in the early 1900s it was going down then too as well but that Trend didn't last very shortly after was the baby boomer generation so I think a decline for a little bit honestly isn't that bad of a thing so I think there are benefits to a smaller population for sure it's just we have to figure out the economic piece of it so what are some good solutions to the declining birth rate I think it would be really supporting people that want to have kids and making it easier for them to do so in Taiwan they're already doing this in the form of subsidizing the cost of IVF people are having kids later and I think that's a trend that's here to stay our biology hasn't really caught up with it but science has and if it's too expensive for people then they're probably not going to have kids I think subsidizing IVF for people that want it is probably a good move if we want to encourage people to still have kids and especially people that want to have kids to have kids although that ruling in Al Alabama is not really making that easy but that's only Alabama so let's hope it doesn't go anywhere else and then I think also the cost of child care needs to come down the reality is in most situations both parents need to be working to afford the life in America now and I just was shocked to learn that child care costs have risen so much I don't know what the answer is I don't know if the government would do a good job subsidizing Child Care maybe some kind of credits for it or more tax credits I'm not really sure I think in general there probably just needs to be more support for the people that actually want to have kids to make it possible for them to do so and a lot of that is going to come down to supporting them financially and then just leaving the people who want to be childfree alone because in reality it is the minority still Yes more people are talking about it so we have this bias like it's becoming a big thing but in reality like go on Facebook most people still want to have kids most people are still having kids like when I talk to my friends I know that most of them want to but there are some of us that just don't really want to and have never really wanted to and the interesting thing is a lot of the people who I talk to who are childfree and want to continue to be childree they've known it since a young age like some people just know that that is not their calling it is not for them our society just used to push it on everyone and now it's okay for people to be like actually I don't want to do that I actually think it's a good thing for people to just to feel okay doing what feels right to them because truthfully I feel like people that don't want to be parents are probably not going to make the best parents let's talk about fulfillment because this is a big thing that people Ponder when they think of whether they want to have kids or not there's this big idea that you haven't fully lived if you haven't had kids but there's also an argument that children are not there to fulfill you having kids for your own fulfillment is argued to be a selfish reason because there's a lot of pain in the world it's not like you're bringing in a child to have all good experiences like The Human Experience is is great but it's also difficult children alone are not going to fulfill someone I know I don't have kids but I'm thinking of like my own parents and like older uh Generations that I know you know they may have children but those kids leave and have their own life and if you're banking on your kids to fulfill you what are you going to do when they move out I think largely like having kids keeps people really busy and distracts them from finding fulfillment in other ways that ultimately they're going to need to figure out later on and this is going to be in personal relationships friendships Community giving back passions having a career you love there are all these things and just having kids is not going to fulfill you necessarily and I do think it depends on whether you want them or not if you really want kids it's probably going to be a more fulfilling experience than if you don't really want kids and you're just doing it because of societal pressures I think that fulfillment is actually a lot more subjective than what we've been led to believe people act like there's this one path to fulfill M but I personally think that it's very different for everyone for some people that's going to be having a family they're going to find a lot of fulfillment in that and for some people they're not going to find fulfillment in that they might have kids but they find more fulfillment in their career and other passions and relationships I think it's dependent on each person so after all this is the childree movement a good thing I actually think the childree movement is a good thing because it just gets rid of some of the stigma the pressure for people that never wanted to have kids anyway I actually my theory my own personal Theory I don't think it means that more people don't want to have kids than before I think it's the same amount it's just the people who never wanted to feel free to not do that which I think is good in conclusion it needs to be more affordable for people that want to have kids to do so because it is true that for a society for our economy it's important for some people to have kids if if no one had them like that would be an issue let's be real but a lot of people are finding that the economic environment the physical environment is not conducive for having kids and that's a reason they're not doing it okay so that's the video that's my take on the childfree movement let me know what you guys think especially if you have kids or if you are childfree what has your experience been like I would love to know everything why you chose to have kids why you chose to be childfree what it's been like please comment down below so we can have a discussion and I'll see you guys in my next video bye
