politics

Anyone that is swayed by $5000 to have a kid probably should not be having a kid

This is a good list. 

Caveat though. We have many of these things in Australia (I’ll get 6 months of paternity leave when our second is born in September, our daughter’s childcare is heavily subsidised by the federal government and 3 and 4 year old kindergarten is free in my state) and our birthrate is still declining.

I think the issue is tied more fundamentally to an increasingly global culture of atomised self interest. 

Raising children is a fundamentally altruistic act, you’re caring for someone who can’t care for themselves. Especially in a post agrarian society there is no economic benefit to having children.

So if having a kids is about benefit to society and self actualisation; you need to cultivate more community so that people care about society, and allow people to spend time with their kids & enjoy being with them not merely ferry them from institution to institution.

TLDR; We need more free time. We work too much and don’t have enough time to spend with our neighbours and kids.

Horticulturalist. Environmental hand wringer. Open source enthusiast. 

mfer #9187

Incidentally, spending more time with neighbors, reducing work, and cultivating communities would solve not only societal problems like declining birth rate, environmental crises, inequality; but also individual problems like loneliness epidemic, anxiety, depression.

Capitalism is killing us.