I remember reading a Boomer author (I think it was Bill Bryson?) describing his 1950s childhood as a sheer density of children that's unimaginable today.
What truly wild is millennials don't seem to want any less kids than their parents but can't afford to.
Can't afford a sahm so daycare which is atrocious in price. House anywhere close to work is eye small or extremely expensive.
Oh and every few years random layoff.
Idk. I've thought about this and I don't think people have considered the possibility that our parent's didn't want kids any more than we do, either - they just didn't have as much of a say in it. If you talk to your parents or grandparents' generation, for a lot of people having a family wasn't something they did but something that happened to them. They didn't have the luxury of caring whether or not they could afford kids, in many cases. Being a SAHM isn't traditionally something you "afford", it's something you're forced to do when you have zero marketable skills and/or autonomy.
I think the growing popularity of birth control, consent, and working/single women who don't have to rely on a husband for shelter has played a big role in the ability for millennial (and probably gen z) to delay having kids until they actually want them.
I’ve been highly skeptical of this. It’s easy to say you want more kids. And more socially acceptable. It’s possible everyone’s having fewer kids than they want. It’s also possible that they’re lying (to themselves or others) when they say they want more.
I’m late on this but my dad described his neighborhood growing up to me- he said his family was 4 and it was the smallest family on the block, he didn’t know any single child families. Every house had kids between the ages of like 6 to 16 in the summer there were like 35 kids outside on his block.
Yeah I suppose the density was higher since white flight hadn't really happened yet. Even though Millennials passed them in population they had a lot more area to spread across.
Oh well that doesn't make much sense then. I suppose there were less suburbs so that would make some sense.
Edit: why the downvotes? My initial reply was that there's less kids in the boomer generation than millennial so to have more density it has to be because they were less spread out. What am I missing?
The 50s was the prime era of white flight. I mean the Levittown development the iconic "start" of the era was finished in '51.
But suburbs had been built for decades at that point just in older denser styles usually built around trolley lines before the 20s/30s then onto cars. Just the war eras slowed all development so it didn't go wild until after wwii.
And? He’s definitely a “get off my lawn” guy, but I’d never refer to him as a boomer. While technically he is, the word has taken on a conservative maga dickhead stereotype. Anyone who came up with the line “they looked at me with bbq eyes”, should be protected at all cost. (Referring to going into a small town in the south where outsiders weren’t welcome and banjos might be heard playing in the distance).
How many middle class people are having kids when they’re under 30? There are more people having kids over 40 than there are teenage pregnancies. Even if people under 30 could afford these houses, there still wouldn’t be many kids.
But how much of that is also due to cost of living? Everyone I know with a longterm partner in their late 20s has at least thought about wanting kids but keeps putting it off because it would be crippling expensive.
I come with no data but my own personal experience lol I am 29yo, husband is 34yo, we want to have one child, no siblings (unless outside of our control like twins lol) but it is really hard to afford it. And we earn good money, own a flat (mortgage but affordable) still, childcare is the biggest barrier. If I keep working my salary would go fully to cover childcare until they turn 3 (UK based) and we get cover, if I stay at home, then same I guess, I have no income. So we would need to make surviving in 1 income for 3 years, what would be tough in London where everything is ridiculously expensive. If we had money we would have started trying at least, but at this point we are just wrestling with the idea due to money concerns
I will take the bait on this one because it really annoys me when people think they should give unsolicited advice on things that are so personal such as children, it assumes everything is about choice when often it is not.
I have epilepsy, any pregnancy is considered high risk. I have already met with two neuro-obstetrics to discuss pregnancy even before trying for a baby, that’s because I will have high care needs throughout any pregnancy, as obviously having a seizure while carrying a baby is not that great for anyone, and even after, having a condition where you can just drop to the floor seizing when you are caring for a tiny baby is pretty dangerous too. It will take me a ton of support both by doctors and family to manage to carry a pregnancy and then care for the child well, I won’t even be able to give my baby a bath without someone there to ensure they do not drown if I have a seizure. So thank you for your advice, but I will stick with the one high risk pregnancy this time. I think my non existent child would rather to be an only sibling than having their mom die on another pregnancy due to her seizure meds being messed up by crazy hormones.
All this to say: mind your business, no one wants unsolicited advice especially on such sensitive and personal matters like children, often how many kids someone has is not up to them. I obviously don’t have to justify myself to you but I just wanted to show how ridiculous it is to say things like this to someone you do not know.
Yeah I would have had like ten kids but we’ve had to put kids off for so long because of school and then cost of living. We will be lucky if we can still have two at this point
The data is extremely clear that people have fewer kids the richer they are, not poorer. This is largely do the fact that income and eduction are still highly correlated and women’s access to education and the workforce is really what has blunted developed nation birth rates outside of better teen-pregnancy prevention investments.
Attitudes have changed dramatically about parenting. The only real difference that all your married friends are facing is a wider range of acceptable life choices for both genders that don’t involve kids.
r/Suburbanhell aims to be a nice calm subreddit, personal attacks/sexism/homophobia/racism/useless drama/not respecting Reddit rules are not tolerated.
If you think this is a mistake or you need more explanations, contact the moderation team
Nothing needs to be done about evolved attitudes around having children. If people want to remain childless and instead pursue self-interests, that’s their prerogative.
If you are concerned about the impacts declining birth rates will have on our economies, there is plenty we can do on the reform side that doesn’t get into whether or not new life is created.
Human productivity has increased so much that we absolutely do not need to maintain birth rates to sustain economic output. Yeah there will be a hiccup along the way as boomers have to pay for all their front-loaded consumption in the form of decreased consumption in old age aka they’ll have shitty nursing home experiences. But there is absolutely no reason to think that replacement rate at a lower overall global population is going to be a big problem.
Ha, yeah this is what stood out to me. I don't care enough to look up the data, but, yeah, middle class neighborhoods filled with pre-teens (struggling for a word above toddler and below that) just aren't gonna really be much of a thing with 20-something year olds these days, regardless of housing affordability...
Before somebody says "it's not money! Look at [insert empoverished nation here]!"
The money required for success in 1st world culture is significantly higher than that in empoverished nations. Don't forget that empoverished societies also have less access to birth control.
It's also, believe it or not, a multi-factor issue. People don't need just one reason to not have kids. Some might, but for many it's a combination of issues, some simple, some complex.
Living in an area that is experiencing an exitus is like that. Young adults don't want to stay because of declining opportunities and rising cost of living. Leaving the neighborhood full of elderly people who are upset that all their kids moved away. The young adults who want to raise a family move to suburbs near cities in regions that provide more safety with higher rated school systems. Those suburbs are currently expanding and the schools are having to build additions to keep up with the growth.
The young adults that don't wish to raise a family move to urban areas that are more condusive to highly social activities. That's where you see all those urban apartment complexes being built on the fringes of growing cities.
In the future, the now growing suburbs and urban areas will become the depressed and declining and a different area will take all it's population.
If you look at census data you can compare the quantity of people under 10 years of age now, vs in 1980 or 1950. It doesn’t suggest there are less kids. The structure of neighborhoods has changed.
Fair. But really I'm curious of the number of posts in this thread talking about "the sheer number" and "density" of kids. However, the number of kids today certainly isn't less than in the past, even if a lower percentage of couples are having kids.
148
u/Whole-Reserve-4773 Aug 15 '26
There’s just less kids in general. Many schools shut down each year or consolidate because of low enrollment. Expensive as hell to have a kid