Well, yes, of course. This is basic math. Human beings are themselves a finite resource, and if the population peaks and then later shrinks, you will in fact end up with an aging population that will be hard pressed to manage the tremendous demand for care that old people need. Japan is already worried about this.
I didn’t say people had control over their desire to have children.
I know you have a bad reputation around here, but I do empathize with you here.
My brother has a kid, and my parents have rarely talked to me about this sort of thing, though I think they think that I must be asexual, since I never seem to be dating anyone. I’m thankful to not feel this pressure, all things considered.
They say that in Victorian days, women were told to tolerate sex by lying back and “thinking of England” (which presumably needed a steady source of offspring to serve the needs of the Empire).
In a modern version of this sacrificial spirit, it appears that some Dopers engage in intercourse while telling each other “Dear, we must procreate so that our children can care for tomorrow’s elderly.”
Your altruism does not go unnoticed.
It’s a pyramid scheme to suggest that larger and larger generations will be necessary to care for previous generations. The planet’s population will have to stop growing some day. As for Japan, besides all the robots we’re hearing about these days, if they have serious labor shortages, the dam will break, and finally the Japanese business community will get the foreign workers (many temporary, some permanent) they have been clamoring for for years. A bloc of legislators in the Diet have been on their side, since after all there are communities of people from other (mostly Asian) countries in Japan for a long time now, and these have been slowly growing, so it’s not a new phenomenon. (When people from these communities complete the arduous task of gaining Japanese citizenship, they are counted among the ethnic Japanese majority, and this statistical oversight results in under-counting foreign communities.)
If fertility rates decline, an aging population is inevitable, but it can be slowed and eased until things reach an equilibrium. Even if the general public in a country doesn’t want this solution, they may not have a choice. Consider 1950s-60s Britain. Consider how many opportunities for poorer Asians (among others) will open up in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The situation is already something like this in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau. In this regard at least, the future looks bright, thanks to low fertility.
There are lots of things that should be done about this demographic issue, as Lemmytheseal2 already noted, but IMO exerting any sort of procreational pressure on people who genuinely don’t want children is not one of them.
It’s true that, for one thing, the younger and healthier elderly will spend more years in the workforce than they otherwise would. For another, the older and more ill elderly will, not to put too fine a point on it, die somewhat sooner than they otherwise would.
Both of those things will undoubtedly have negative impacts on aging societies, but realistically speaking, it’s not as though they’re actually going to destroy civilization or something. (And I’m saying this as someone who’s going to enter old age in the next 20 years, right around the time of predicted peak total dependency (PDF—do we have to warn about that anymore?) in US demographics.)
Moreover, it’s also not as though a continually growing population wouldn’t have its own negative impacts. As already noted, there’s no currently realistic and sustainable way for the human population of the earth to go on growing indefinitely.
Nobody here is advocating anything of the sort. It’s the child-free (especially the OP and curlcoat) who are bemoaning the fact that children exist at all.
Let’s face it. Plenty of people want to have kids. Plenty of people don’t want to have kids. I don’t give two shits what choices people make. I expect others to not give a toss what MY choices have been either.
That seems to elude some in this thread.
Quite a broad brush you’ve got there.
Who around here is giving a toss about your choices? I don’t think anybody has suggested that people who want kids shouldn’t have kids.
Maybe if you got yourself a narrower brush…
Nobody has suggested such a ridiculous thing.
What “ridiculous thing”? I can’t figure out what both you and kambucta seem to think I believe is being “suggested” or “advocated”.
I think self-righteously lecturing childless people on the importance of the existence of future generations counts as “procreational pressure” to some extent, and I wish fewer parents would do it, but I don’t think anybody’s trying to force the childless into parenthood or anything.
The only ‘lecturing’ taking place here, is to challenge the likes of Cat Whisperer, curlcoat, and Dread Pirate Jimbo who claim that ‘breeders’ have a sense of entitlement, and that their freedoms (social and financial) are curtailed by other people having children.
Pointing out to them that children are somewhat necessary in any civil society in order to continue the comfortable lifestyles we’ve come to take for granted sends them into yet another hissy fit.
Set aside the idiotic idea that parents think what they’re doing is noble and commands respect. While there are undoubtedly some parents who get off on demanding respect and perks for being parents, and while they’re nowhere near as crazy as curlcoat, they’re still pretty silly and pretty rare.
At the same time, set aside the idea that society deliberately gives benefits to parents just because they have kids. Society doesn’t.
What society does do is give benefits to kids, because the non-crazy sector of society has a vested, generational, existential interest in taking reasonable measures to ensure that tomorrow’s adults are raised in an environment reasonably free from want, instability, and suffering. Currently a huge number of kids in our society live in poverty; we’re failing to provide them with exactly the conditions we know will lead to a better society tomorrow. Those kids who live in poverty aren’t doomed, but we statistically know that they’re likelier to end up in prison, to suffer from substance abuse or other problems, and to have a lower level of education than their peers who don’t grow up in poverty.
The “sneaky” part (only sneaky for folks who really don’t understand how kids work) is that we can’t give those benefits directly to kids, for the most part, as kids are incompetent at managing finances, at taking care of themselves when they’re infants, taking care of themselves when they’re sick, etc. In order to get those benefits to kids, we have to channel them through the kids’ primary caregivers.
Stupid people look at that and think we’re rewarding the caregivers for being kids. But that’s not what we’re doing.
As far as I can see, you are both nuts, at least on this subject. Comparing this video to “blackface” really sets the capper on it.
I do not think that history is going to look back on this woman’s video and see it as a terrible example of bigotry like “blackface”. The fact that you do is frankly a trifle concerning.
It is a rare thread in which Curlcoat is beaten at her own game - reminding the rest of us that some people out there are quite mad. :eek:
Assuming you meant “having kids,” it’s the same as the people who can’t understand child support, or who want parents to waive any right to future child support.
Er, yes, “having kids.” If the caregivers are being kids, we have even bigger problems.
Sorry I haven’t been back here in a while. I was busy, among other things, volunteering my time to coach kids. Because I’m a big proponent of giving back to society and helping educate the young. Just not mine. 
The thread was specifically started with regards to the dickish behavior of the mom in the video. The fact that you disagree doesn’t change the theme, no matter how much you protest.
P.S. I didn’t like Seinfeld either, so it seems we have something in common. Hope that doesn’t keep you up at night. 
Not at this time, thanks. I have to do some housekeeping in my home that wasn’t taken away from us during the market collapse in 2007-2008 (and which has continued to increase in value all along), then visit my bank that wasn’t bailed out by the government during the collapse.
I have never complained about paying my taxes, nor what percentage of those taxes pay for schools. In fact, I’m firmly in the camp that schools in my part of the world are chronically underfunded and that my taxes should go up to cover that cost. So I’m now unclear on what it is you think I’m being weird about.
When I wind up in a nursing home, it’ll be one that was funded by my tax dollars throughout my working career, which will be funded while I’m in there by the taxes off my pension plan and it will be staffed by people whose education was funded by my tax dollars. Alternatively, if the staff aren’t people whose education was paid for by me, it’ll be one of the other 7 billion people on this planet—I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to run out of them in the next 40 years, my procreative choices notwithstanding. So I really am not sure what point you’re trying to make by insisting that I somehow owe the system a child who must then become a health care worker.
I don’t think it was you I was talking about.
To elaborate…
I said the following:
[QUOTE=me]
Yeah, there’s something weird to me about the childfree movement…the idea that for whatever reason that generation is the last one with the right to exist. It’s not like all of us adults weren’t children at one time, but suddenly children are too much trouble.
[/QUOTE]
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t consider you part of the “movement,” in the sense that I thought you had just made a personal decision not to have children. I was referring to an attitude that children in general are too much of a burden on society, which I don’t think was necessarily relevant to your personal choice. You jumped on my use of the word “weird” as though it refers to everyone in the world who for whatever reason has decided not to have kids (which it wasn’t), and here we are still discussing it as if that was what I said (which I didn’t) and as if it was referring to your personal life and opinions (which it wasn’t).
Wow, you’re right. Who cares that the US economy is stronger than Canada’s by virtually every known measure. Some guy in Calgary didn’t get kicked out of his house!! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m totally convinced that Jimbo isn’t talking out of his ass at all.
[QUOTE=Dread Pirate Jimbo]
So I really am not sure what point you’re trying to make by insisting that I somehow owe the system a child who must then become a health care worker.
[/QUOTE]
Nobody said you owed the system a child, you loon.
I guess it’s up to me again to speak truth to power.
Cat, Dread and curlcoat you do owe the system a child. Because when your old ass is being taken care of by the system you should have a child and not neccessarily to be a health care worker but at least to pay into the system for your old asses.