Post #3605483
2026-06-27 19:44 UTC
Replies (2)
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@isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-06-27 20:52
A lot of what people miss is the importance of safety and security. People don’t have kids when they reach a certain income level. They have kids when they are reasonably confident they can give their children a decent living. A subsistence farmer in Subsaharan Africa can have a much more secure existence than the working poor of countries like the US. People are poor, but they live on land they own or at least have assured access to through shared community rights. They may not have much money, but they have security. They can have kids, and at the very least, the kids can always take over the farm from their parents. The parents probably want the kids to go get an education and be more successful than themselves, but at the very least, the kids will have no worse a life than the parents do. Compare that to developed countries. You pay monthly for rent that can skyrocket at any time, paid for with a job that can disappear at any time. And I would say raising kids in a rural African village is probably feels a lot more reasonable than trying to raise kids in a studio apartment built in a car-dependent American suburb.
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@calcopiritus@lemmy.world 2026-06-28 06:30
Poorer regions usually are more conservative too. Which means that women are more likely to stay at home taking care of the kids. And if they do work, they do so part time. Which still leaves time to take care of the kids. The regions with low birthrates usually have women working full time. And full time means 8h+. I bet people would be having more kids if people that can work from home, worked from home. And if full time meant 6h instead of 8h+. That way, instead of working husband + stay at home mom, we could have commuting parent and WFH parent. With the added benefit of commuting parent having a shorter commute since there would be a lot less people commuting.