Why is Europe losing the will to breed?

AnGaelach

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I'm not reading the whole thread, just adding my 2 cents. Why should we have children? I'm 33 and sick to the teeth of explaining to people that i don't want kids. My mind hasn't changed with the years, and the look on my siblings faces is enough to put anyone off kids. They love them and all, but they're not for me. There are less kids being born because people now realise that having a child is not the be all and end all. Yes, it's stupid money to raise a child today. I have no kids, i'm selling my house, and i still can't afford holidays, i cannot even imagine how depressed i'd get if i threw a kid into the mix.

If nobody has kids, who do you think is going to wipe your ass when you're 75? You personally don't have to have kids, but society does. Otherwise the entire system falls apart.

Before you give me that "immigrants will do it" nonsense, look at Germany or Japan now and tell me if you think they're optimistic at all.

Hexen

AnGaelach wrote: »

If nobody has kids, who do you think is going to wipe your ass when you're 75? You personally don't have to have kids, but society does. Otherwise the entire system falls apart.

Before you give me that "immigrants will do it" nonsense, look at Germany or Japan now and tell me if you think they're optimistic at all.

Robots!

Look, even with pro-natalist policies - which are very costly may have to run for decades to have even nominal effects (e.g. France) - and increased immigration, the birth-rate will continue to fall and the population will continue to age and decline.

We're in the second demographic transition:

The second demographic transition (SDT) viewpoint, jointly formulated by Lesthaeghe and van de Kaa in 1986 (1, 2), in contrast, sees no such equilibrium as the end point. Rather, they argue that new developments from the 1970s onward can be expected to bring about sustained subreplacement fertility, a multitude of living arrangements other than marriage, a disconnection between marriage and procreation, and no stationary population (3, 4). Furthermore, populations will face declining sizes if not complemented by new migrants (i.e., “replacement migration”), and they will also be much older than envisaged by the FDT as a result of lower fertility and considerable additional gains in longevity. Migration streams will not be capable of stemming aging altogether, however, because migrants also age and lower their own fertility with time spent in receiving nations.

In the long run, mass immigration might stabilize population sizes; but this outcome would still involve the further growth of “multicultural societies.” On the whole, the SDT brings a variety of new social challenges, including those associated with further aging, the integration of immigrants, adaptation to other cultures, less stability in partnerships, more complex households, and high levels of poverty or exclusion among certain household types (e.g., single persons of all ages and lone mothers).

The second demographic transition: A concise overview of its development