I genitori nordici lo hanno grandioso, ma i tassi di natalità stanno ancora diminuendo
https://www.newsweek.com/norway-birth-rate-fertility-rate-parental-leave-childcare-2080996
di newsweek
I genitori nordici lo hanno grandioso, ma i tassi di natalità stanno ancora diminuendo
https://www.newsweek.com/norway-birth-rate-fertility-rate-parental-leave-childcare-2080996
di newsweek
37 commenti
By Jordan King – US News Reporter:
Much of the world is facing a birth rate crisis, and Norway is no exception despite implementing many of the policies governments, activists, and experts have touted. Newsweek has broken down why.
Many trying to tackle this global issue have called for public health policies and financial plans to help make it easier for couples to have children in society.
Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/nato-ally-reveals-mass-act-unexplained-sabotage-2081784](https://www.newsweek.com/nato-ally-reveals-mass-act-unexplained-sabotage-2081784)
Having children doesn’t make much sense apart from purely emotional reasons. In older times more children meant more helping hands. In some cultures children are expected to take care of old parents.
But in developed countries neither are true. Children are more independent from a young age. Parents are expected to save for their own retirement and own old age care. And raising a children is a huge amount of work and costs a lot. So honestly unless you’re like very emotionally invested in children then there’s little to no incentive to have one.
Yeah, people will point to leave from work, housing etc. as the issue either birth rates, and they may well be for individual people making family planning decisions, but at an aggregate level, there seems to be very little correlation between better conditions and higher fertility rates. I mean, the US has a higher fertility rate than any of the Nordics.
Widespread female education and employment probably shifted things in a way that will never be reversed.
We can break the taboo around this subject and just admit we’re heading either into a very automated future or experiment with lab-grown babies on a massive scale (or both).
You can’t lure people into having babies through generous policies (they should be in place anyway). It’s a very personal decision that’ll disrupt decades of your life.
Don’t forget the unemployment rates.
“Work more! You have to work more hours, you’re lazy!”
Said the government and various industri leaders when a study showed that Danes didn’t want to work more than 32 hours or commute for longer than 45 minutes.
At the same time:
“Have more kids!”
With what time? Maybe people want to enjoy life too, not be locked down caring for another human being for 18 years.
we’ve chosen to not have kids, what, wait till we retire at 75 or whatever, to be able to enjoy life? No way. We do it now.
It may sound stupid but in 1800 and earlier people had babies not for them to succeed in life and give education but to increase labour availability if boy in family and if girl marriage in exchange for goods and services with other families . Thats why even if you are poor you had 7 kids and so on becouse they brought wealth to family and now kids are families expenses but kids get to be (by design – happy)
More great than many in other countries but it’s not as easy as older generations of Swedes had it. Housing market is fucked because of letting it be treated as a market rather than a need met with affordable public housing.
Wages have been halting to a stagnant growth since right wing governments attacked unions and decimated union organizing especially in the service sectors such as hospitality. High unemployment due to neoliberal economic ideas hindering investment has held wages back as well.
Our schools are fucked due to letting for profit corporations mess the system up from one of the worlds most equitable systems to one where 15% of kids each year don’t make it to high school.
Decades of solidarity with migrant seekers not matched with economic policies to integrate them in to Swedish society created a large recruitment pool of antisocial immigrants kids with macho culture for criminal gangs to exploit.
Who would have guessed that placing a lot of immigrants in a few neighborhoods and allowing for profit schools to siphon of a lot of the resources meant to give them the means to fit in to Swedish society would end up in a disaster. Especially when at the same time allowing in countries in to the EU where a lot of illegal guns are imported.
So yea swedish parents now have much more to think about when caring for their kids than before. Housing, school choices, the labor market and much more is a lot harder.
I’d argue that we as a species are fairly incompatible with the western nuclear family and 2 earner model.
Parents barely get help to have time for themselves (and daycare only help them with returning to work, not with free time, which would be sorely needed), and even the grandparents are increasingly withdrawing from this helper role.
Also, raising a child to be competent and competitive is just an immense money and time investment today, and it destroys most of your free time, social connections and income. Also, the expected standard of raising children is skyrocketed in the past 2 decades (which is a good thing in itself, but makes the parents sacrifice much more for every child for them to be raised on the same level as their peers.)
I’d argue that raising multiple children today in the western world just became too much of an opportunity cost for the parents. Why have multiple childrentoa risk your relationships (both romantical and others), your economic status and your sanity when you can have 0 or 1 without much drawbacks, and can spend the freed up money and time either on yourselves, or some part of it on the remaining children.
When I was a child, here a lot of families lived in multi generational houses with grandparents living there who massively took part of raising the children, so the parents could have time for themselves. Of course this came with its own (severe) drawbacks, but you get the picture.
Two working parents wont be able to comfortably raise multiple children without severe outside help, and most people realised that a large family just doesnt worth the needed investment if you want every of your children to be raised competitively.
A lot has to do because of mismatch between what women and men expect from long-term relationships. The male traditional script of being provider/protector is no longer working for men and society/parents are slow to accommodate to this paradigm shift.
Women today generally expect more emotional support, equality, communication, and shared responsibilities in a relationship than previous generations, so many men haven’t kept up because society hasn’t prepared them well for modern emotional labor and mutual caregiving.
So now, women want stable, emotionally rich connections **before** they consider children, but men in their 20s and early 30s still often delay emotional maturity because they still are okay with unfulfilling dynamics in LTR if the surface-level needs are met (sex, loyalty, etc..)
In modern society, If a guy wants to have children with a women he **has** to bring emotional depth, willingness to grow alongside them and to truly show up as partner, not just as provider or companion.
From a young age, girls are encouraged (even expected) to talk about their feelings, build close friendships through vulnerability and be empathetic, society needs to encourage boys the same.
Why are we expected to care? Not that long ago they were writing books about overpopulation, that were to result in massive food shortages. And without the invention of fertilisers, we would not be able to sustain the current world population. But we did invent modern fertilisers. Why should we assume we cannot deal with lowering populations in a similar way, but this time replacing labour shortages with technology, which is currently happening? Of course, not all effects can be mitigated like this – but it doesn’t have to be a massive catastrophe some articles and videos seem to predict.
It’s a hard sell you know, having kids to keep the wheels of the economy turning. We should be thrilled about the human population stabilizing or perhaps shrinking a little. If it was up to me we would focus a bit more on making our time here sustainable.
All the extra incentives provided to parents are eaten up by increased living costs (especially housing) and increased expectations on parents to put effort into their individual kids.
Since women now have a choice, it isn’t exactly strange many chose to not have children. And among the families that do, both parents are part of reducing the number to about two.
Sometimes I see all these explanations on falling birth rates and they all seem to have some sense to it.
But if I look around me as a thirty yo, lots of people just have really great lives. They have lots of freedom to travel, go to restaurants, explore hobbies, etc. A kid but certainly multiple children just kind of ruin that freedom. Now you’re bound to school hours and vacations, everything becomes more expensive, you’ve got less time for hobbies, travel becomes less fun and a lot more hassle if you have to take care of kids. A lot of people in my environment just don’t really see the big benefit of it. They aren’t necessarily looking forward to it at all. It’s got nothing to do with careers, free time or not having access to housing. It’s more that life is fun as it is and having children is just a big risk that life will get a lot less fun.
Now if you live in a less rich country, you’ve got less hobbies and travel isn’t an option a kid makes sense. You experience a lot of joy through a family and life just gets more interesting.
In my opinion this just doesn’t get stated enough in the search for an explanation.
Tldr: if you’re (relatively) rich and have free time kids don’t necessarily make life better. If your poor it can make life a lot better.
Something that does not get talked enough when discussing falling birth rates is health. People around me have no children or gave birth to only one child because of disease/medical PTSP and the fear and uncertainty it brings.
Before, in our parent’s generatios, it was unhead of such illness to be so widespread among the 25-40 age group. I am talking cancers and long-term disabling conditions with no cure.
Then you factor in the money and how much care/rehabilitation for such conditions cost – despite our healthcare, most of it you need to pay out of your own pocket.
Ofcourse it means your job is hanging on by a thread, and if you godforbid stay unemployed bc you are unable to work the only thing saving you from the streets is the charity of your own family.
Without existential dread the average will never reach 2,1 children. There has to be some kind of feedbackloop of the headcount of children in the personal security. I read a reddit post who proclaims a new share of the pension payment. 40% for the own parents, 40% for own capital fund and 20% for the public fund. The numbers can vary, but in the end something like this will rise the opportunistic interest of getting children instead of just as a personal hobby.
a) People used to have nothing better to do. Think about how many people in the past barely left their own village. Having lots of kids was a way to pass the time for them. Nowadays there are too many distractions.
b) Kids in the past used to be more useful. They were expected to respect their parents and assist them in various ways. Nowadays, there are 0 expectations placed on the kids and a million expectations placed on parents.
c) Even those who do want kids, only have one. This way they get a taste of family life and can still have a lot of free time. Families with 4-5 kids have basically gone extinct whereas they used to be fairly common in the past.
d) Parenting standards are a lot stricter now than in the past. In the past you could beat your kid or let it play outside the whole day. Nowadays you would be charged with neglect if you did that.
e) People have kids later in life which usually means they have less time to have a lot of kids.
Having kids that don’t contribute anything significant to the household for up to 2 decades is expensive. Especially in a society where both parents are expected to have full time jobs. We get the society we entice for.
People compare themselves to other people around them. It doesn’t make sense to expect people in one country to have more kids because they get a better social system than in another country.
**You have to look at what people miss out on by having kids in comparison to those who don’t.**
In all these countries having kids means a lot of sacrifices, financially and in free time, in comparison to your child free peers. For women it still means a huge loss in career chances.
At that point, the wheel turns itself: you have a rich country with ample of opportunities. Being without children means more access to these opportunities. People witness their peers without children having more access. More people decide against children. And so on.
Oswald Spengler had this to say
>And then, when being is sufficiently uprooted and waking-being sufficiently strained, there suddenly emerges into the bright light of history a phenomenon that has long been preparing itself underground and now steps forward to make an end of the drama—the sterility of civilized man. This is not something that can be grasped as a plain matter of causality (as modern science naturally enough has tried to grasp it); it is to be understood as an essentially metaphysical turn towards death. The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live—he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no, for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death. That which strikes the true peasant with a deep and inexplicable fear, the notion that the family and the name may be extinguished, has now lost its meaning. The continuance of the blood-relation in the visible world is no longer a duty of the blood, and the destiny of being the last of the line is no longer felt as a doom. **Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible, but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no longer find any reason for their existence.**
>**When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard “having children” as a question of** ***pros*** **and** ***cons***, the great turning-point has come.
Pretty prescient for a book writtein in 1911.
High birth rates were the result of uneducated populations and a lack of access to birth control, and in more collectivist societies this was compounded with the idea that kids were supposed to support their parents in the future.
Now a days none of the three three things apply anymore, men and women are educated, have access to birth control and children are seen by many as major burden (less: free time, vacations, entertainment, leisure, material possessions,etc) without any direct material return.
Theoretically, children are supposed to pay for our pensions thorium employment and social security contributions, but the prevalent high unemployment rates, chronic housing crisis, economic stagnation, and ongoing automation make that premise look unrealistic at best.
Clearly current amounts of daycare, parental leave and subsidies are not enough to make the case for reproduction even in Scandinavia.
Teen pregnancy in the US is down. It heavily skews the data here. Are we sure it isn’t the same case with the nordics?
In the past, the cost of having children was largely spread within a broader community, also the standards for what was considered good parenting was fairly low. The economic benefit of the children was largely used up by the parents or other family members, i.e. children were expected to help at home once they were old enough and take care of their parents when the parents became old.
Nowadays the standards for parenting are much higher, the cost is largely carried by the parents only (fewer and fewer people get any help with childcare from their family), and the economic benefit is now used by the whole society via the pension system, as opposed to the parents, i.e. the kids are obliged to pay into the pension system for all the pensioners, they are not obliged to provide specifically for their parents in their old age.
Obviously there is more to it than just this, people don’t decide on having kids just from a rational cost-to-benefit point of view, but it’s clear that in the past society was structured so that it made sense to have kids. Nowadays it makes (economically) more sense to stay childless, save up money and profit from other peoples’ kids when old.
Because it isn’t a cost of living issue, it is a cultural issue.
>The financial crisis and its impact on housing, inflation and pay is generally cited a major contributor to people’s decisions to delay having children, to have fewer children or not to have them at all.
>Norway is considered a global leader in parental leave and childcare policies, with the [United Nations](https://www.newsweek.com/topic/united-nations) International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) [ranking](https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/sweden-norway-iceland-estonia-and-portugal-rank-highest-for-family-friendly-policies-in-oecd-and-eu-countries/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) it among the top countries for family-friendly policies.
does the parental leave and childcare policies include the financial crisis? or housing, inflation and pay?
also in Norway the 1% is owning 27% of the entire wealth of the country and top10% of the wealthiest are owning 60%
I can’t help thinking that on top of all the other factors people have listed, uncertainty about the world we live in drives some people to question the morality of bringing a child into the world. Does anyone get a warm and fuzzy feeling about the world let’s say 50 years from now? This is a major difference between the current generation of young and middle-aged adults and their parents, previous generations generally had a feeling of hopefulness about the future, i.e. things might fluctuate but the world is always on a trajectory of getting better.
It might seem that everybody has always been stressed about the state of the world regardless of the decade, but every person over 50 whom I’ve asked has told me that they feel that the world is definitely getting worse.
> “One may also wonder whether young adults to an increasing extent are being exposed to overwhelming expectations about how ‘intensely’ one should care for a child to be a responsible parent,” he told Newsweek.
I think this is an excellent point. Ever since we were expecting our first child, the volume and breadth of “advice” we received was insane. We were told to play classical music to the foetus as studies show this could improve cognitive abilities. The list of foods one must eat and must not eat while pregnant, breastfeeding, and for children is absurd and often conflicting. “Eat this or they’ll be deformed.” “Don’t eat that or they’ll be deformed.” Don’t even get me started on sleep. The modern parent is told to dedicate every waking second of their life to their child, and it’s just not healthy. It’s ruining marriages and causing far more harm to children than if they just let them wander around a bit and make their own fun.
As Jonathan Haidt frequently explains, children need lots of unsupervised play time together. Yes, they require a lot of attention in the first 1-2 years, but this should quickly diminish. We tendency to wrap children in cotton wool and prevent them learning critical social, mental, physical, and emotional skills is not a kindness to anyone. We are robbing them of the ability to grow and develop. We are ruining our own lives. And we are clearly signalling to would-be parents that it sucks and they should not do it.
I’m blazing a trail with my wife. We provide a safe and warm home, but we aren’t their entertainment. We make time for ourselves. This is actually quite nice. I think if other parents had the balls to reject “intensive parenting,” they’d have a pretty good time too.
We want a house before a kid, and if we got one before the bank cuts nearly 20% off the loan amount. We can afford a nice house, but at the moment there’s barely anything on the market worth considering without extensive renovation or many potential buyers pushing up the price.
It requires two full time average incomes, median can forget anything nice where the population lives.
Basically getting a kid squeeze you out of the housing market, the market where families should be able to afford.
They mention parental leave and daycare, but my god, look at housing prices anywhere. Everything is expensive as fuck and if you have kids you definitely need to rent something bigger. And, if you want some actual space for yourself (like a home office) then an even bigger place.
Add to that rising cost of groceries, cost of diapers, etc.
You’ll definitely lose your lifestyle unless you fucking double your salary.
It’s always economical, it’s not the 1700 I can’t have 10 children and make them work on the farm. I don’t have a farm.
Having kids is so underrated these days…
It’s a problem with how children operate in the modern world entirely. They’re seen as a burden in a world where, frankly, we have better things to do than have children. Rich countries have less children because they’re rich, and they have better things to do, and poor countries have more children because they’re poor, and they have nothing better to do. It’s (almost) as simple as that.
Although, given that the “shit to do” index has a ceiling that isn’t THAT different from “wealthy” and “super wealthy”, better economic conditions would probably improve birthrates, yeah.
Being able to afford a Home changes drastically if you live in the city. You can be content in a 2 room 65sqm flat easily as two persons, its impossible with a kid almost. Then the prices just explode and lets not talk about renting.
It’s cause the people who are nordic but aren’t yet parents do not live above the material needed to give the most basic of care to a child. We can barely afford to live by ourselves anymore, how the hell are we supposed to raise children?
I have a few kids. But. Here in Scandinavia I mainly see three reasons why ppl don have children, apart from not being able to.
1. People can live free fullfilling lives in our part of the world. Children will remove much of that wonderful freedome. Both in regards to time and finance. Completely valid and I respect that.
2. Housing. Is. A. Bitch. Even though many can support one more child. Finding and being able to buy/rent a big enough home. Not so easy.
3. There is no stigma around choosing not to have children. As there are in many regions and cultures. There was before and might be still in some degree within families EG. Parents wanting grandchildren. But not engrained in society.
Side note. I think many of us living today are terrified of how the future will look, many feel As they are not prepared to put a child in this world based on those fears. Totally understandable.
Looking at the world today. Maybe continous growth is not sustainable. Perhaps we need to scale back naturally by not pumping out new humans in the billions to support man made and flawed systems.
Maybe in the end this is a good thing. Coupled with technological and scientific advances ofc.
But what do I know.
Late to the party, but nobody actually read the linked article.
The real reason is a later couple formation than in the past. The actual rate which couples want children has been more or less the same since the mid seventies. Fertility rates in the Nordic countries were more or less the same(1,8-1,9) from the mid 70’s to around 2012. Then it has plummeted in every country.
The problem is that nowadays most people form meaningful relationships in their 30’s and after a few years start to actually think about having children.
When you’re a 33-35 year old couple and start to think having your first child, having two or three children becomes quite difficult. Doing the same around as a 27-29 year old is much probable.
So why are people forming meaningful relationships later than before? It’s the change in how we communicate and get to know each other nowadays. It’s social media and the rise of dating apps. Is there anything that can be done about this? Can we ban social media from adults? Probably not.
Well duh.. Food prices are through the roof, so is house prices, and only expensive rentals. How tf are you supposed to have kids too!