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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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At least around me, there are four broad classes of people who don't have kids. Some people are in more than one group.

  • "I can't possibly afford this"
  • "We're all going to die due to global climate change and that's not fair to my children."
  • "I or my partner is either unable to have kids or has a dangerous genetic disorder that would end up with a child being at risk of a miserable life."
  • "I don't like children."

I think all four of those cases have different solutions, and to be honest, I don't know if I know what those solutions are.

For the first case, I think several Eastern European countries have tried fairly generous tax credits to have children. I'm sure there are people here who are far more interested in this topic than I am, but if memory serves, it didn't do too much to move the needle. I vaguely recall it causing people who had two kids to consider a third, but it didn't make people who had zero kids more likely to have one.

For the second case, it's going to take a lot of work. There are a lot of variations on this - I simply used AGC as a simple example that I see a lot. Trump and the fact that every C-level executive in the country seems to be all but publicly pleasuring themselves over the idea of an impending jobpocalypse ushering in a new era of feudalism fit as well. Fundamentally, it's a problem of hope. There are an increasing number of people who have essentially zero hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today. I'm not sure how you fix that when a lot of powerful people seem to have a vested interest in keeping people scared and hopeless.

The third option is difficult. As somebody in this bucket, I hope to adopt one day. Accessible CRISPR or cheap genetic screening would also be nice.

I have no idea about the fourth option.

Money seems to work in the States but at levels the government can’t fund. >750k a year seems to have a big boost in fertility. Blue cities it seems impossible to have kids below this. 50% tax rate + expensive real estate + blue states have a bad reputation on public schools.

I think you made the simple mistake of taking those arguments seriously.

I was about to post a version of this.

There are an increasing number of people who have essentially zero hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today.

This is just online dorks. They only vaguely mean it.

Also, such people are probably just selfish and don't care for any suggestions that would upend their existing lifestyle.

For the first case, I think several Eastern European countries have tried fairly generous tax credits to have children. I'm sure there are people here who are far more interested in this topic than I am, but if memory serves, it didn't do too much to move the needle. I vaguely recall it causing people who had two kids to consider a third, but it didn't make people who had zero kids more likely to have one.

From what I've learned, it makes people have their next children quicker, but doesn't make them have more of them. Basically, it makes people switch from "we want two kids, but we can't really afford two pregnancies in a row, we need a few years of double income to rebuild our savings" to "okay, we can try for the second one".

From what I've learned, it makes people have their next children quicker, but doesn't make them have more of them

Which is not to say it isn't helpful. Moving births earlier still improves a country's demographic situation, because children born earlier will come to childbearing age earlier.

For a toy example, imagine two countries with a completed fertility rate (CFR) of exactly two, but one country has the children at ages 18 and 20, and the other has them at 38 and 40. Two parents who live to 80 in country one will have 16 great great grandchildren, while their equivalents in country two will only have four grandchildren.

I think "I don't like children." is covering a lot of ground between "I dislike being around children generally" and "I yearn to be a parent but am anxious about whether I'd be bad at it and ruin their childhoods so I won't risk it" (with mid-range options being things like "I like children fine, but there's so much more to life and they're such a time-sink - I'd rather be an uncle!").

I yearn to be a parent feels to me like it fits in the lack of hope box, rather than the don't want to box.

I'll admit that the categories are imperfect, but I think they roughly capture what I've seen. For every one aspiring fun uncles, there are at least five people who disdainfully talk about "breeders".

I don't have any statistics to prove you wrong, but this doesn't describe my experience at all. Even if you back off from "sneer at breeders" to just "actively dislike kids", my perception is that this group is still vastly outnumbered by people whose objection falls into the "too much effort" bucket.

I yearn to be a parent feels to me like it fits in the lack of hope box, rather than the don't want to box.

Perhaps, but the way you'd phrased it seemed to be focused on people who are doomers about the world as a whole, whereas I'm talking about people with self-confidence issues/therapy-culture-induced paranoia about their personal ability to do justice by a child.

I never really believe that money is the factor. Take for example if someone walked up to me and asked me "Hey Daguerrean, why don't you buy a new car?" I suppose I would answer that money was the reason. But let's say they then asked me, "So what car would you want to buy?" Suppose I answered and on-the-spot that person cut me a check for X dollars, X being exactly the price of the car I named. So am I going to go out and buy that car? Of course not! Obviously not! Only if buying a new car is top on my list of priorities of "What I would do if I had X dollars", which presumably it isn't. Maybe I would get some repair done on my house or landscaping. Maybe I would save the X dollars because "Having 10X dollars saved" is a higher priority for me than "Having the new car". In reality, even if the car costs X and money is the reason I don't buy the car, you might have to give me 20*X dollars before I actually go out and buy that new car today. I'm not lying that cost is the reason I don't buy the new car, if the car cost $1 or I had unlimited money I would go buy it today. But it's obviously not the whole story, and a check for $X won't make me buy it.And if buying the car actually were the top of my list of financial priorities I would already have bought it as I routinely make and spend $X.

I think children work the same. I don't think people are lying, and if they had unlimited time and money they probably would have children, but I don't think we can just assume money will fix it. Even if we calculated the cost of raising a child for the first 4 years of life and gave that check to every newly married couple, I imagine the effect would be minimal. It is about the priority of having children. If having children is low priority behind vacations to Europe, new cars, bigger houses, luxury goods and cosmetic surgery then the quantity of money it would take to get them to have children would be absolutely massive. You'd have to pay for the cosmetic surgeries before the dollars had anything to do with children.

It's almost certainly true that the marginal dollar of aid wouldn't go directly to having a child. But why do you think it's going to luxury consumption? How many of their higher priorities are boring, responsible things like house repairs? How many are outright virtuous? There's some number of couples out there who are prioritizing their sick or aging parents over having their own kids.

Sure, sneer at the avocado toast. That doesn't apply to everyone.

You'd have to pay for the cosmetic surgeries before the dollars had anything to do with children.

Not necessarily. If our only option was to cut people a fully fungible check then sure that wouldn't work. But we could either have accounts that you have to spend on child associated costs, like a healthcare spending account, or more straightforwardly and better give them money if and only if they have a kid. That'd be equivalent to making the car cost $0.

There's definitely a chance that what they say is not what they believe, but I can only report on what they say. It would be interesting to come up with some kind of questioning line that could tease out any discrepancies between their word and their secret heart.

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