Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.
A bit off-topic, but it’s interesting how this became the de-facto answer to any question related to “meaning of life” in the last 2-3 years in HN/tech circles. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s a bit weird. Like I’m sure everyone knows that? If a person isn’t having a child in their 30s, they either can’t because of multitude of different reasons, or they decided they don’t want to.
Disclaimer: I’m as pro-kid as you can get, just haven’t met a partner who would be on the same page as me yet.
When I was talking about it with my friends, our guess is, people with kids are getting worried. If others aren’t having kids, then their kids might suffer big time in a long run, thus the renewed pressure to keep suggesting the idea to others. Obviously this doesn’t relate to you, just weird how it started in the last few years.
I'd have to guess the demographics of HN lean rather Millennial, and I don't have to guess that they lean heavily male. I think it's probably just a collective biological clock thing; it's something I've started to feel myself. Intellectually, I want kids less than ever (so it's for the best I never had any), but emotionally, I do sort of understand the urge.
Could be! I share the same emotional feeling as well, but the ones telling others to have kids, already have them. They keep going above and beyond trying to portray the idea of “everything is amazing when you have a kid!”, when it’s objectively not true. It’s just a bit off-putting when you have all the information readily available and try to push an ideology to a circle that’s commonly known as skeptics. Anyone who has close girl friends in their late 20s/30s have heard the issues they’re facing and why they’re not having kids either. But then, bunch of seemingly smart people, just keep yelling “just have children!!!” looks a bit dumb. And from the guy’s side we have different sets of problems.
A bit personal, but throughout my life, I’ve met more dead-beat fathers than caring ones. So, I’m incredibly jaded when it comes to giving advice. Statistically, I wouldn’t try to change one’s mind to have a child, because I’d feel bad for the kid if things go south.
Once again, I’m still pro-having kids, but I don’t get why it became such a major discourse compared to 2010s.
Perhaps it is becoming more clear that the current reproduction rates are unsustainable if they persist.
Anyway, I have a bunch of kids, and I think from a motivational perspective, yes, kids give you meaning for some years.
But they can also help you with something else due to the necessary self-sacrifices, which is getting a out of egocentric thoughts, such as what you're going to do with your life. Read a book on biology. You are a bunch of cells put in the world to cooperate to feed and reproduce before they self-terminate to leave space for the offspring. That's it. Stop fretting. :)
(Helping society and thereby the offspring of other bunches of cells is pretty noble too, by the way.)
I think it's a pushback against the emphasis on individualism in our culture, which many find does not lead to real fulfillment. When you start a family, you're giving up your own glory, but in doing so you become deeply integrated into something greater than yourself, which makes you greater by extension.
And I say this as someone who doesn't have kids either, and as someone who used to not be so excited by the prospect, but I've witnessed how it's transformed my friends and family members.
But why now, and not like 5 years ago? That’s the weirdness I don’t understand. Is it just very loud people had a bunch of kids and trying to push the same on others? Trying to change the culture from the start? “Meaning of life” is like the oldest question that has ever existed. Both people with and without children have pondered about it for eternity. It just looks funny when you see a sudden shift in the discourse.
I think there's two shifts that play a major role in explaining the timing that you're referencing:
- The 2010s represented a progressivist left-ward shift in America and the excesses of that movement are provoking a reactionary conservative shift in the populace in the 2020s: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/seven-reasons-america-is-heade.... This is cyclical is the same thing happened from 1960s to 1970s.
- The concept of population collapse entered mainstream discourse in the early 2020s and is now being accepted as the major concern for humanity moving forward, a 180-degree turn from the previous concern of overpopulation. This is something unprecedented in human history as no human has ever existed in an economy or society where the population was decreasing so all the "rules" we know about life are suddenly subject to change unless birth patterns change significantly.
It’s a product of the rise in white nationalist/supremacist movements and white replacement theory. Pro-natalism with the explicitly racial content omitted (though even their often tied to overt appeals to eugenics and/or framing it as intra-societal/cultural competition, which is itself only a shade different from racial/ethnic competition, but for some reason doesn’t produce nearly as strong a negative reaction) is a face that can be shown to audiences that aren’t ready for the full-strength message.
I’m not saying every vocal pro-natalist is a white supremacist (most of the high profile ones are, though), but that the rise in white supremacy and the prominence of white replacement theory within the rising white supremacy is a big part of the explanation of why pro-natalism is a lot more prominent right now than in the recent past.
I've seen the sentiment building over the last several years. Though I think part of why it's such a prevalent sentiment now as opposed to a few years ago, is very obvious signs of cultural breakdown started to show strongly in maybe 2017 or so, and people started questioning the prominent messages in our culture and seeking answers, and for many, finding those answers takes time.
There are probably other related factors too, like increased awareness of population decline, but I think both reasons are intertwined.
2017 is actually a great reference point wrt cultural changes! I think that is the year when bubble and echo-chamber creations accelerated to the T, so people who ponder about the same things just talk to each other. And they never really get to talk to the outsider groups or hear their opinions as often. 2020s was probably the only couple of years when everyone got to talk about the same topic, but that was for unfortunate reasons. I think “have lots of kids!” idea pushers are just screaming into the void right now, because they offer no solutions to people in other chambers.
There may be some screaming into the void, but at least some of it breaks through. I was someone who, for years, bought into the idea that being idiosyncratic and self-expressive and following my passions and self-interested dreams would lead to fulfillment. I was the last person you would have expected to have been receptive to the idea that starting a family could be a means to a meaningful life. Nonetheless, I started to see the cracks in my worldview, and that made me more open to listen, and here we are.
Also there is a biological urge, so it's probably not that much of an uphill battle. Though unfortunately people also contend with biological clocks and realize that they want kids when it's already too late. I feel very bad for those people, and so if you can re-normalize the idea of starting a family, then maybe you can reach those sorts of people while they still have time.
By far most likely is that the loudest cohort of HN users (or people in your social circle) has aged to the point where they want families. Younger people are on other social networks.
I find this interesting as one of the individualist characteristics of our society is 'my children > everyone else'. I don't see the emphasis on having children as anti-individualist at all.
Many parents are completely unwilling to hold their children to account/tell them no/let them fail/etc. The experience of the people around their children means nothing to them. Teaching their children to be a part of society does not matter: All that matters is their children get what they want because their children are extensions of themselves.
In my case this is probably partly true, but more because I think many people are actively deluding themselves and trying to reject their own mortality with fantasies of digitally transferring ones conscience, bio/medical immortality a la Kurzweil, singularity stuff, and so on endlessly.
But if people look at these things objectively, there is essentially 0% chance of any of this happening, let alone in our lifetimes or anytime remotely near it.
And when you look at the people spreading/making such predictions the timelines always coincidentally come just before their expected end of life.
When you accept the fact that you, and near to every other person alive today, will be dead in 80 years (and mostly far sooner) it rather significantly changes your perspective on life. Want to transfer your consciousness? Not gonna happen, but having a few children is at least a reasonable second.
I don’t think people who don’t have kids are thinking about sci-fi stuff. Other than my dad, I genuinely have never met a person who ever thinks about it, and well, he had me and my siblings.
Some people just believe in (and sometimes achieve!) fulfilment through other means. Problem is, that is objectively bad for economical and cultural growth of the humanity. No single country has been able to resolve that problem without religious beliefs or kinda forcing women to have children (by either taking all their opportunities away or them not having any by default).
Yes, I've noticed it too. The most blaring example was DHH going on a "Just have some kids you'll be happier than you've ever been!" rant in some zoom talk ostensibly about coding that he gave in the past year. it's gross and condescending and not someone speaking as a public figure should be advocating for. IMO, We need better parents, not necessarily more parents, and if you're having kids because you're sad with life then IMO you should reconsider the ramifications of having a kid and then fucking up the parenting process. It's incredibly selfish
Because it's not only extremely fulfilling (well beyond what one might expect) on a personal level but also required on a social level for a culture to persist.
And this is in the context of ever more people complaining of loneliness, lack of fulfillment/meaning, and more. These issues are almost certainly causally related.
Help yourself, help society, and even have a voice (of sorts) in the future of humanity.
There are literal hundreds (thousands?) of philosophical schools for “meaning of life”. It’s really not a new question, and there won’t be a right answer, ever. Trying to convince someone that it is the only route to find a meaning just sounds a bit funny for anyone who watches it from the sidelines.
My question, once again, is why tech circles started focusing on this and pushing it as ideology just recently? Wasn’t a thing in 2010s, people more or less respected personal choices as long as it doesn’t harm others directly.
Interesting point in the timing. In general I think it's probably just growing awareness of the issue, also combined with a growing number of people in tech starting families (often quite late) and being like 'zomg why didn't I do this earlier.' Many people in tech are also fascinated with countries like Japan which are acting like a living warning to the rest of the world about fertility.
In general though I think cultural shifts often lack any clear reason. People like Musk or Gates chiming in on the issue are almost certainly effects rather than causes.
I guess that makes sense. Someone else commented how “maybe HN demographics just happened to be people who just had kids, thus the echo-chamber”. Which, would explain a lot.
Re: Musk — no real opinions about him wrt other ventures, but surely no sane person can look at him as a decent father figure, no? It just sounds like a “populate Earth for populating reasons!” completely disregarding the well being of the kids part. Which, I find, fairly sad.
I think it's more about concern for society and Western civilization in particular. Low fertility will cause nations, and cultures, to contract and eventually collapse. 'Eventually' not being some excessively distant reference - South Korea may well become a failed state within our lifetimes if nothing radically changes, seouly due to fertility. And most other nations will be right behind them.
As for anybody's parenting - I have certainly raised my children in ways that would offend the sensibilities of this group or that. But it's what I think is right. So under this mindset, and a bit of the Golden Rule, I do not criticize other's parenting outside of obvious extremes.
It is interesting that people have such strong views about South Korea or Japan's declining birth rate, but have very little to say about rich countries in Europe. Why is this? I never once heard anyone saw that Italy will become a failed states in X years in the future due to population decline. Recently, I saw a chart from Financial Times (here: https://www.ft.com/content/1b139d1a-07ea-4612-9c2b-62c430119...) that showed birth rates in Italy, Germany, Finland, and Spain are ultra low (less than 1.5). More likely: These countries will import more and more temporary, and possibly, permanent labour, to help in their industries. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are already doing it extensively, but it doesn't get very much press coverage.
>My question, once again, is why tech circles started focusing (emphasis mine)
One answer nobody else is willing to broach is that Elon Musk and friends are hyper-breeder crazies who think the white race will die out if white men don't all pump out as many babies with as many women as possible, and they literally own multiple tech and social media companies to push such a narrative.
HN is more influenced by chud ideology than it should be.
I agree it’s becoming a common sentiment among the online pseudo-intelligentsia, but it’s still rare on a population level, so I will keep spreading the sentiment. I think it’s important, mainly on an economic level (I believe economic growth is impossible without population growth), but I speculate the decline of family-having is at the root of some of our other social-psychological malaises: loneliness, substance abuse, mental illness, increasing interest in extreme politics. Tech people should be most interested in family as an answer to social woes because currently people are blaming either social media and tech for social dysfunction,or the collapse in family-having, or both. If family is the answer then lots of tech will be exonerated.
Frankly, I don’t buy the malaises argument. It obviously has some effect, but even the countries that are known for not being lonely has dropping fertility rates. And there’s almost no good argument for having more than 2 kids, which is basically a requirement for increasing population.
People just have more stuff to do, and convincing a woman they should sacrifice at the bare minimum 6 years to give birth to 3 kids is just… yeah, good luck. The only argument is “do it for the greater good!”, and as a society, we have shown that most people don’t care about the greater good the second times become a bit hard.
Some tech circles have been entertaining the whole “trad life” idea, but it’s pretty laughable the second you start talking to real people. Not all women want to be depended on others if they have a choice.
Every single woman needs to, on average, have a bit more than 2 children to have a stable population. Fewer than that and your population (once it shares the same fertility rate across generations) will begin changing at a scalar of fertility_rate/2 each ~20 years. So a fertility rate of 1 = 50% decline every 20 years. And it's exponential - that decline never stops or slows until you go extinct or start having children again.
But in this case one frustrating thing is people don't know what they don't know. My wife was quite lukewarm on having children but shortly after our first she wanted at least two more. They really change you in ways that are impossible to describe without cliche, and I think this is, by nature, even more true for the mother.
I agree with you, and you’re probably right! My parents said the same thing. Both my siblings have children as well.
But if the argument starts with “you’ll understand when you have kids!” to convince people to have kids… well, it’s like blindly trusting people. And again, it is coming from a person who will have children when the time comes. And relatively speaking, I’m doing ok financially, and it’s one of the problems I can take care of for the future of my children.
For every good parental story, there are quite a few unfortunate ones as well. The problem with the information access is, people tend to realize that chances of it happening is not 0. So you have all the opportunity loss, combined with the potential regrets and problems that add up for every new child… the math doesn’t add up for having multiple children. Also, doesn’t help that the average age of having the first child is already at 30s.
Anyways, I think I’m just generally angry that pseudo-intellectuals (including ourselves) are scared to propose other solutions. Because they will always be very unethical (lab babies, taking rights away and etc.) or very uneconomical.
Yes evolution selects for having children survive to reproduce, but that’s not a purpose, that’s just “that which continues, continues”.
> and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.
Plenty of species have evolved such that when they sufficiently saturafe their environment and resource carrying capacity, reproduction rates drop through behavior changes based on various signals.
>Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.
I doubt it, that's because to most people it does not feel purposeful, it's a chore. Most people who say it's purposeful are generally the most vocal ones, and I suspect the minority.
Chores are a great way to make you feel a sense of purpose. You can directly observe the fruits of your labor. Your kitchen is shinier after a deep clean. Your baby is no longer crying of hunger after a feeding. The same can't be said for scrolling through TikTok for hours or even a lot of employment. Sure your livelihood may depend on moving items from big boxes into little boxes, but it's hard to feel any sort of accomplishment for that.
There is a difference between considering a task a chore i.e a drudgerous task and 2) doing a chore (a mundane task, which may/may not be drudgerous). Same word but different connotations.
As someone with a young child, it definitely feels purposeful. Also the opposite of a chore, it's lots of fun and what I look forward to after a day of work.
And I'm someone who, for most of my adult life, thought I'd be childfree...
Well I've heard people say this. What about the ones that regret it? I know of one personal acquaintance of mine who confided that he regrets having his kid. He would under normal social circumstances not mention it, for obvious reasons.
The problem is that it's a one-way street if you decide to have a child. Now if only one had an option to 'trial-run-before-one-commits' that would be ideal. I suspect (but not sure) that most people will still opt not to have them.
Well, I do think children is maybe idealized a little. I'm probably pretty happy because I went into it having heard all of the negatives, decided I was ok with it and came out pleasantly surprised. Also too many people do it because of societal or family pressure.
Also some people will just always be unhappy. The grass is always greener syndrome.
Traditionally people would get a trial run by babysitting for relatives. Now that's becoming less common because families are smaller and more geographically distributed.
You can always give away the kid, the whole adoption industry is here to help. In some countries you can even sell your kids, but it is frowned upon in many Western societies. Finally, fostering is the trial run you are looking for.
a child is not a goddamn pet or a commodity that you can just give away
> In some countries you can even sell your kids, but it is frowned upon in many Western societies
A common country where that happens is Pakistan/Afghanistan where young boys are sold to be prostitutes. I am GLAD it's frowned upon as it should be everywhere in the modern world.
> fostering is the trial run you are looking for
Again, children are not pets, fostering is the same as raising a biological child, if you're doing it any different and treating the child differently, in my opinion, it's tantamount to child abuse.
Frankly this comment lacks any humanity, and hopefully you choose not to have or foster children.
The replies are bit harsh. It is a solution to meaningless of life. I am reminded constantly by some of my friends.
But it's also a problem for some. For example, it means moving out of expensive cities, it means worrying about making lots of money (if you live in the U.S.), it means child care is thousands a month, it means health care is thousands a month. It means you have to be responsible and not drink every day. It means potentially not sleeping for a year.
Personally, seeing the stress of my workmates, and how they became more dependent on their jobs, on the shit of the jobs, and how now they're more competitive on the job, and worried... I'd personally choose to write that off.
But I know people who found meaning through child-rearing, as you say!
This is the best answer. From a strictly rational perspective, parenthood makes little sense. The negatives are obvious and intimidating, while the benefits (which are not rational but instinctual) are less clear. Happily, oxytocin is a helluva drug. It will rearrange your universe in the course of an hour, such that all of its substance revolves around a splotchy, squinty little ape.
It's not tautological because it's objectively wrong.
There is no biological purpose. We are just a multitude of chemical reactions falling down the entropy slope in a slightly odd way.
"Purpose" is a concept entirely made up out of whole cloth for hairless apes who accidentally invented language and that allowed them to do a lot of thinking outside the confines of their biological processes.
We are perfectly free to CHOOSE reproduction as a "purpose", but nothing about biology actually cares. If you don't reproduce, oh well, something else will take that spot in the ecosystem.
That's the most plausible gloss I've heard. The new generation must be capable of framing a question at least as sophisticated as its parents can if there's to be hope of progress in the world. Otherwise we're on the way to "Idiocracy".
It’s pretty easy to find high birth rate countries with low life expectancy.
While it’s much more difficult to find countries with high life expectancy with low birth rates (assuming we define “low” as any birth rate lower than necessary for the society to not die out)
I agree with you the 2 need to be balanced, but I assume any society with high life expectancy would also have a sustainable birth rate.
Are Japan and Korea not both high life expectancy but low birth rate. Along with a by other developed countries birth rates dropping while life expectancy is increasing?
