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My children are still very young, but oh are they happy!
They are enjoying their life and no future suffering will ever take that away from them.
I wouldn't want to deny those awesome humans their right to play as merrily as they do. To create, to enjoy life. They exist right now as well, in 2025 and 2026.
The end of life is always painful. Life is still worth it.
It's a very personal decision and I'm glad about every human that's not born on this crowded planet. But collectively not having children feels pretty bleak to me. Are we as a species already giving up, rolling on our backs and wait to go extinct? Come on! There is so much beauty and so much to do in this world.
My children are having a great time, they bring joy, purpose and chaos to my life. I love having them around, even though their future scares me. That has always been part of becoming a parent.
I feel like some doomer lemmings need to go outside a little more, instead of telling themselves and their screens how awful everything is. Life was brutal a century ago.
I think that, no matter when you were born in history, there were trials and tribulations.
Yes, but there were definitely parts of history where we looked towards the future and wanted to make something awesome. Where we were hopeful.
Today it seems we already know we're on a completely fucked trajectory. That time is running out, but the people who care don't have the power, and the people with power think nothing can touch them.
It’s the main reason I’m not having children. While there are other reasons the main one is a combination of global warming made worse by late stage capitalism and the resulting political instability that comes with that.
While I refuse to make the choice to bring someone new into this world myself I do see it as my duty to help as many of the kids around me who were brought into this world regardless. The world they were bron into is not their fault and I appreciate being able to use my resources to help them and their parents.
Absolutely I do. And I don’t understand what makes a person think that bringing a new life into this disaster is a good idea.
Climate change is the only true existential reason to feel that way.
Everything else is just over focusing on a short term dip. On average things are getting better over the long term. The British Empire collapsed, and so will the American one, and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
Hell kids born these days may have legitimate cures for most forms of cancer by the time they're old. We won't.
Windows 11 laptops requires a webcam. The internet now wants selfies to prove that you are a certain age.
The kids now will grow up thinking that this is normal. That is what I am worried about.
That and the impending societal collapse from Climate Change lol
I think the next generation is going to start feeling it hard. Current generation will slip by but barely. I'm not pressuring my kids to have their own. Just do you fam.
If you were born 20 years earlier you'd get to destroy the planet and die before there was any consequences?
The kids will be fine, they are smarter and more capable than those that came before them, every time. The real problem is people living so long they aren't making room for the young people. Think turnover at a restaurant, and all the diners finished eating and paid but won't leave.
Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuels were the only affordable energy sources that could meet the demand of industrialized countries. Until 5-10 years ago.
We're now in a situation where most people can still pretend that climate change isn't serious, and the fossil fuel lobby is stronger than ever. And yet over 90% of new electricity generation is already renewable, because it has simply become cheaper than coal and gas power in the last years.
As climate impacts worsen, the pressure to decarbonize will only get larger. The lobbies have been fighting tooth and nail against the energy transition for over 40 years, but they are rapidly loosing ground now in most countries.
It's right to be alarmed about climate change, there will be serious long-term impacts, but it seems irrational to be completely fatalistic. Just comparing the battery prices and solar panel prices and ev market with 10 years ago reveals a truly massive shift. And this is just the beginning of the energy transition.
I was born in the 90s and I feel sad about being born to this day, can't imagine the poor kids who are gonna grow up now
I mean, I made a conscious decision not to have children, so...
VERY specific people would have been better off born 20 years ago.
The vast majority of people would be better off today.
You can imagine in another 20 years that would be different, but almost everyone is better off today than they were 20 years ago, and they will be even better 20 years from now than today.
Specific groups may have a harder time in one time period or another, but society at large is getting better at the world scale over the long term. Hope still exists.
Maybe when it comes to social issues but when I read OP’s post I think of climate change and how it seems to be worsening at an increasing pace.
That and personal privacy and freedom from despotic and fascist government
I agree with almost all of this, but I think factoring in the imminent catastrophes we know are coming (and actively doing nothing about) will make a sizeable balance of this 'better off vast majority' of today.
The heaps of plastic tell a different story and define 'getting better' in a daunting light for those just now being born
I think we are in for a very hard 30-50 years politically and economically speaking.
Current young people are already poorer than their parents, and that's not getting solved. Next generation will be poorer and we will have to factor in a lot of tensions and unsolved problems that I think will derive in violence, a lot of violence. And very heavy societal collapses.
Maybe I'm dramatic, but the other day I thought that's not unlikely that a "western" country will experience a famine in the next 50 years. Many don't produce enough food for themselves by far, the moment they don't have the money or the possibility to buy it from other countries... Starvation it is. And with a growing population getting near the 10 billion humans, a few years of globally bad crops could devastate humankind.
So, yep, I think kids today are in for really hard times.
Maybe I'm dramatic, but the other day I thought that's not unlikely that a "western" country will experience a famine in the next 50 years.
Drought and famine are coming for everyone in the next 50 years.
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030, experts warn
All the time. I fake being happy for the parents and on the inside think What the fuck is wrong with you?
I think things will make a turn in about ten years. Yes, climate is very critical, but the kids of today will have a better shot at shaping the world in a time when the last old ideas from the fossil fueled age have finally died.
It's going to get rough, but at least they have a chance of changing it. We never did get a chance, because the boomers were kept alive with improved healthcare. It's the same people who have all the wealth and power today as it was in 1980s.
So maybe Gen-X and millennials will be the next old assholes, but at least they're better educated and their views are much better aligned with younger generations than the old ones. We might finally be able to work together across generations politically in just a few years time. It's much needed, and it's hard work, but I envy the kids who get to be the creators of the post-boomer society.
We need more optimism, for sure. But I can't get my head around the idea that the new generation will be better than us.
The 70 years of relative stability has been exchanged by a few dickheads to make as much money over the expense of everyone as possible. Those people mean to keep it that way.
Even if I am being pessimistic, social media has made everything so depressing. We used to believe in continuous progress, we used to be excited about the future.
No, we have to funnel money to that lizard bot so he and his buddies can build their private bunkers because they know what they're doing is fucked up, but the money is too enticing.
Yeah the problem is with all the deregulation on generational wealth and workarounds for rich people to stockpile and keep their money, the offspring of the ruling class will be the same kind of assholes. Look at Sam Altman, he’s not old. Look at mark whateverthefuck. He’s not old. Now, those people didn’t exactly inherent their money, but you can’t tell me these guys won’t be around for the next 40 years fucking shit up. And their kids? And the kids of all the Murdochs, the bush kids, the Koch offspring…there are a lot of shitty families able to reproduce and spread their sickness. This isn’t going to wind down and give us a fresh start. These rich people will be protected by an increasingly violent state and they will all burn it down before they let it change. They’re not weakening over time. They’re amassing even more wealth and the regulations and ideas around capitalism are only getting more virulent and violent. We aren’t about to ride off into the sunset on the backs of a new generation. They are going to be focusing on surviving, more than we ever were.
No. I think that things have pretty steadily gotten better over time, and that a great deal of people being upset about now for any given now comes from a tendency to focus on negatives. Could be social media or news media tending to bring negatives to the surface because it drives engagement, political activists aiming to drive or leverage upset, or so forth.
Politics, economics and war are all hard to predict for long term, but just on the count of climate change kids born today are screwed.
Very. I already dont see a bright future. People born today dont know anything but a broken world. Me being born 2003 atleast saw a slight bit of it
Yes
I feel like most people today have kids just because they feel that's what they should be doing or because they just want a kid. I feel having kids is almost, incredibly selfish? If that makes sense.
What an odd take. Reproducing is arguably the #1 motivation, and purpose, of all life on this planet. Biologically anyway. You're taking issue with a fundamental trait of life that's baked into our DNA.
May as well deem people selfish for wanting food and shelter too.
Yeah, I don't get how people can think like this but not want nukes to take out everything. Like you're living this shit, too, if you are willing to keep living this shit, why do you assume it's a bad thing for anyone to bring someone else into it? Anti-natalism is pro-extinction from my pov.
Not that I have an issue with people taking themselves out of the gene pool or anything, I just find the position wildly inconsistent with anyone who wants to continue living themselves.
And to be clear, I mean specifically the "if you choose to have a kid, you are bad" position, I can understand "having kids is not for me, I don't want to do parenting".
Hey there, I’ll try to clear things up a bit. At this point in time, here’s a list of things going on in the world:
1.) Collapse of world democracies- the US is fascist now with several countries on their way. It’s a reasonable assumption that a child born today will experience less freedom than you ever have.
2.) Collapse of the environment. - The planet is becoming uninhabitable. 60% of insect species are gone. Temperatures are rising. There’s more than a few inferences that can be made from this…
3.) Collapse of the middle class - it kinda ties into #1, and a lot of people have seen this coming for a while too. We’re being split into an ownership class and a working class. If that divide continues growing (like graphs would indicate) we’re heading towards a neo-feudalist state. That’s not a pleasant experience for anyone other than those at the top. I’m not at the top, you probably aren’t either.
4.) Idiocracy Effect - the beginning part of idiocracy, where it’s explained that dumb people are popping out 10 kids while intelligent people are spending years planning their first. If you are one of the smart people, you’d be forcing a new version of yourself to live in a world with exponentially more dumb people than the world you live in today. If you’re one of the dumb people, well….
The last one doesn’t get a #, but I also have questions surrounding consent for existence. I won’t get into that because I don’t have a fully formulated opinion on that specific area yet. I’m still working it out for myself.
Might want to add resource depletion to your list.
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030, experts warn and 90 per cent of Earth’s topsoil at risk by 2050
Fresh water is already low in many places and with no water or arable land to grow food in, that's not a future that anyone is surviving.
Very much so. I honestly think it's at least a little cruel and selfish to have a child in a dying world.
That said, I remain supportive of the parents in my life and I try to keep that feeling to myself--unless the parent brings it up (my cousin has two very young children whom he adores, but he also worries for their futures due to climate change and political instability, and he'll talk pretty openly with me about it).
Climate change is the number one thing. The past had fascism, tools, slavery - but it didn't have an Extinction level event looming just cresting over the horizon. I'm not having any kids until there is actual meaningful progress towards fixing that... So it looks like I'm not having kids.
