Inspired by the ‘children haters’ pit thread, I’d like to start a more reasonable discussion of some of the issues involved.
It seems obvious that any particular level of technology there is a minimum sustainable ratio between productive workers and ‘dependents’ (non-workers), where I’m applying a very broad brush to productive workers. There are two primary classes of dependents: children and retirees. As life spans increase there is a pressure towards an increased ratio of retirees.
There are several possible ways to counter this graying of the population:
Population growth. More children means more future workers. This is an unending cycle (barring decreasing lifespans).
Increased productivity. Dependent on the continual progression of technology.
Increase age of retirement. Maintain a constant ratio of time as worker vs. time as dependent for each individual.
To make a debate out of this, I’ll stake out the position that choosing to be childless is an antisocial decision that can only be mitigated by voluntarily pursuing option 3. (I guess another possibility is aiding in raising others’ children.)
I’ll pre-emptively counter the argument that having adequate retirement savings is equally socially responsible by pointing out that many necessary goods do not have a shelf life. If nearly everyone chose to be childless short term goods (food, health care, etc.) would decline in availability causing massive inflation.
Additional discussion topics:
Are there detailed studies of sustainable birth/death rates and productivity levels? Seems like it might be an area of study for sociology.
Are the declining/graying populations in industrial nations a recipe for disaster?
I don’t think saying, “if everyone did that, then…” is a valid argument in this case. Not everyone is going to choose to be childless. The great majority of people want to have children, and for instinctual / biological reasons. There’s no fear of that changing.
Good point. I guess that’s a secondary topic - at what point is a behavior ‘free-loading?’ I think that relying on a strategy that is individually beneficial but unsustainable if the majority of the population follows it is a form of mooching. I think the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ is related.
A childless person also doesn’t eat up the resources that someone with a child does. And as well, many people ( like me )we simply have far to many people; we are already over our long term sustainability limit. Especially as the rest of the world industrializes and wants a fair share of the world’s resources, and as the world’s fertile soil decreases, and so on. We need fewer people; and not having children is the most ethical and painless means of achieving that. Especially because of :
That’s likely to be the best long term solution. And slowing population growth, or lowering our population somewhat will help ensure that our population doesn’t outstrip our technology’s ability to provide.
And then there’s life extension. I consider life extension to be almost certainly achievable; but it won’t do us any good if living longer will push the world over it’s carrying capacity.
Speaking as someone who is childless (though not by choice), I’m well aware that I’m subsidising those with children through the taxes I pay. I have been most definitely a net contributor. And I accept that. I also get to be an uncle, which has been the best thing in my life for the past 6.5 years, and hopefully a benefit to my brother and his family.
I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison. You need to either compare resources per person including the child, or look at the fact that raising a child is applying resource to a societal good (raising a worker of the future). But this is mostly my knee-jerk reaction as a new parent, based on how much I’ve had to cut back on ‘wasteful’ activities :).
The dilemma is that it is unethical to deliberately shorten someone’s life and also to deny them life-extending technology. That means that the only way to slow (or reverse) population growth is to reduce the birth rate, which will significantly shift the population ‘gray.’
There are many necessary jobs that cannot be performed by most people over 50 (60, 70), and I think the historical trend of life-extending technology has been to increase people’s twilight years, not their most productive years. Maintaining a constant population in the face of inevitable life extension will end up reducing the productive capacity of society.
If I get the chance I’ll try to build some hypothetical population distribution models to illustrate what I’m getting at.
Breeding until we have a famine and mass death isn’t ethical either. Neither is continuing to exploit the rest of the world for our own profit.
But medical technology is getting better, and opposition to research into true life extension is weakening. Historical arguments don’t hold up well when we are speaking of a change that will change the thing history in question is based on; in this case, the past limits of medicine.
But breeding until famine will lead to outright disaster. We have the choice between a period of economic strain, or famine.
Much as my racist side hates to admit it, I think the solution is to allow more immigration rather than to maintain a high birth rate. There is no shortage of young people in the world at large.
Nevertheless, there should be a lot more emphasis on family planning in the Third World as well as poverty-stricken communities in the US. There will still be plenty of children, and we don’t want to overwhelm the process of transforming them into the kind of productive workers we’re talking about.
I’m not sure that’s entirely ethical either, really. Those other countries complain about brain drain when their best-educated and most talented youngsters head out to well-paying jobs in countries that can’t be bothered to raise their own future doctors.
And even third-world countries are experiencing severe declines in their birthrates. They’re a generation behind us, maybe, but in 30 years they’ll be looking at the same dilemma.
I have no problem with immigration, but it’s not like that doesn’t come with its own problems.
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
That’s a good point, I agree that unbounded population growth will likely lead to disastrous famine. But I still think that very low birth rates will also lead to catastrophe.
Which are we more likely to hit first? I think there are harsh natural pressures at either extreme to self-correct the problem, but we’d rather avoid either outcome.
Is it possible to determine an ‘ideal’ birth rate, and if so, should anything be done to encourage it? Or are our population levels inherently stable?
I didn’t see this thread before posting my own, but they are definitely relevant to one another. I’d rather not see them combined though as this thread is about the larger issue and mine is related specifically to Russia.
Please present evidence that a person with a child eats more resources than a childless person. I don’t believe it is true. A child is not an extension of the parent but an individual person unto themselves, so maybe the TWO of them together consume more but I doubt individually they do. Likely they consume less as a family can benefit from economies of scale.
And when you are retired the children you help with today will be net contributors while you are a net consumer. It all balances out in the end. Unless…There are too many retirees for the younger generation to support.
I don’t know if we can determine it without knowing things like what future technology will be, what resources we will find and be able to tap into, whether any new plagues will come along, and so forth.
But it does make sense to me that there would be problems either with too many people altogether or with an imbalance in the kids-to-working-adults-to-retirees proportions.
It’s interesting how probably the greatest issue of our time hardly gets any love on the SDMB. Demographic decline is a huge issue. I have a friend at the state department trying to get people to study demographic decline but a lot of those institutions view it as next year’s problem as he puts it.
How about people who have an inheritable medical condition? Is it antisocial to try to be childless if you know that your child is at risk for being ill enough to require a lot of medical care?
And how about people like my brother? He has a severe case of Crohn’s, and frequently has to take time off of work in order to be treated. If he became a parent, his child would suffer as Daddy can’t be a daddy all the time, and a lot of resources, financial and otherwise, would have to go to Daddy’s care and treatment. My brother probably won’t be able to work until he’s 65, let alone work past that date, as his condition deteriorates.
Last, and most importantly, some people just don’t like kids and don’t want to be around them. I would say that simply by not having and raising kids, these people are making a socially responsible choice, no matter what else they do.
I started to add a bunch of disclaimers related to hereditary diseases, etc. to the OP, but it started to look a bit packed. I agree with your point entirely, there are some excellent reasons not to have children. I think it’s in the spirit of the OP if you allow me to be wishy-washy on the word ‘choose’ in ‘choosing to be childless.’ There are people for whom the choice is really no choice at all.
These are the socially irresponsible people I was castigating in the OP :). You can cast it as socially responsible in the sense that they would make terrible parents, but with adequate cynicism one could counter argue that they are likely to be just as good parents as many that choose to have children.
I should probably soften the stance of the OP - I agree that no good will come of forcing children on the unwilling/uninterested, but I think there’s a strong case for social policies/attitudes that encourage people to reproduce.
I think that most people have kids because they want them, even the accidents.
As for social policies, how about addressing the corporate policies of moving their top workers here and there on what seem to be whims? I think that uprooting families is Not Good for the kids (and adults) involved. How about the policies that pretty much require some managers/employees to work insane hours? I will point out that medical students and doctors and lawyers at the beginning of their careers are expected to work most of the time that they’re awake. These folks are at their prime reproductive years, and they’re lucky to have enough time to boink occasionally, much less have time to be a parent.
There is a difference, by the way, between reproducing and being a parent. I will concede that society needs parents. I will NOT concede that society needs more people reproducing, without being proper parents.