[voshond]

I guess a bit of both?

We live in such a capitalistic world by now, that most people’s happiness is, if they want it or not, tied to money. And I think society is moving further towards this.

Having kids would be a large financial burden and given my projection, would mean I wouldn’t be able to guarantee a decent living and the mental stability, because kids are brutal and societal pressures are very hard to free yourself from.

I grew up very poor and only very recently I was able to get out of debt i racked up just to survive (and sheer ignorance/living above my means, because I had nothing to lose and no perspective). I would hate myself of putting a child in that position myself.

If money wouldn’t be such a dominant force in current society, I’d very much consider having children.

[TylerLives]

>We live in such a capitalistic world by now, that most people’s happiness is, if they want it or not, tied to money.

This is how people feel, but that feeling has to be wrong. We know from history that people lived with much less and they were much more mentally stable than we are today. To be fair, if everyone is poor, it's probably very different than just you being poor in a rich society.

[whimsicalism]

social media means people have realized how poor they are relatively. otherwise we are not in a substantially more capitalist world in the west and people are only more affluent than in the past.

obviously social media cannot explain everything about fertility, but i suspect it explains a significant portion of modern economic discontent among the professional/middle+ classes

[voshond]

I tend to disagree, I think a lot more in our society has changed due to the commodification of basically everything combined with the capitalist tendencies to pervert and corrupt anything, as there is no limit to greed. I think the housing market, food pricing and many more aspects of live have started to outpace the average workers wage to a point where it’s hard to be optimistic about a brighter future. The dream of ownership, a car, a family has gotten significantly more expensive in relation to incomes. At least from the POV of an European