Why is Europe losing the will to breed?

Finnaninho · 21-01-2017 01:30AM #1

Why is Europe losing the will to breed? http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/why-is-europe-losing-the-will-to-breed-1.2644169

Children are now a luxury. The average cost to raise a child to adulthood is upwards of £200,000. It's nearly impossible for the middle classes to live and work in a European city without drastically sacrificing quality of life and comfort.

What we're doing now isn't enough and we need to change something fast. Preferably before our public budgets collapse under public spending on healthcare and pensions.

21-01-2017 02:00AM

I read that early this morning; it was an excellent, especially thought-provoking article.

When two incomes are needed to buy a house that one income would have bought in 1970 you know our priorities are so messed up. How are we supposed to have 4 kids or such when both parents must work outside home simply to pay for the property/mortgage? In my local crèche it's over €1,000 per child per month. This is on top of the mortgage. The sums do not add up, to put it mildly.

Parents across Europe are not given the basic infrastructure by their government to make it practicable for us to have more children - and our government with its refusal to act on the housing supply crisis, its dogged determination to make it worse by building up Dublin rather than regional cities, and its wholesale inability to look to continental Europe/ challenge free market mantra for solutions to the crèche issue is almost certainly the worst offender in all 27 EU states.

worded · 21-01-2017 02:04AM

Financial castration

Johnboner · 21-01-2017 02:06AM

Europe is one of the most overpopulated regions in the world in terms of density. Of course they are stopping breeding due to not enough space. Ireland is exempt as millions died during the famine, but other countries kept breeding and breeding non stop until ridiculous levels of density. So why being less populated is a bad thing I have no idea.

Atlantic Dawn · 21-01-2017 02:10AM

Try buying a house in Ireland, the only people I know breading are the entitled to a free house gang like their people before them.

Stigura · 21-01-2017 02:12AM

Eiristan.

Permabear · 21-01-2017 02:17AM

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Finnaninho · 21-01-2017 02:24AM

Quit your jobs, have 10 kids, and demand that they all be raised, housed, and otherwise cared for by the state. Forget about this whole working and mortgaging lark, keep pumping out kids, and you'll soon be on benefits comparable to the take-home pay for a six-figure job.

Yeah, that's not viable. Try looking after so many kids. Anyway, surely there's a middle ground. People should be able to work and afford to look after a few kids themselves.

Permabear · 21-01-2017 02:35AM

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doolox · 21-01-2017 02:40AM

It is salutory to note that the rise of freedom for the masses, ie the peasantry in Europe started in 1347 with the Black Death and its resultant fall by 1/3 in the population of Europe, a consequent scarcity in the availability of labour and better treatment of serfs and peasants by the ruling classes when faced with discontent and possible flight from bad landlords by the remaining peasants and serfs to people who would treat them better.

It is reckoned that some 2 BILLION jobs will be lost in our lifetime all over the world and these jobs will not be replaced, due to automation and globalised displacement to cheaper sources of labour.

The means by which the poorer masses had secured their livelihoods from the rich are becoming more difficult and uncertain, leading to the creation of a large body of people known as the precariat. Basically people on temporary contracts separated by increasingly longer periods of unemployment.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to raise children and increasingly undesireable to do so as the religious, tribal and family impulses to do so become weaker in the face of mass entertainment, advertising and the building up of aspirations to enjoy consumer driven activities. People are more inclined to put the foreign holidays, the latest styles, the bigger car etc before the 2nd or 3rd child and now have the medical means to do so.

In addition there is for the first time in history a global awareness of the finite nature of our home planet, the increasing unsustainability of uncontrolled growth in population and the need to match finite resources to a stable population across all the nations of the Earth.

A global solution to this problem is needed but is unlikely to happen until some big disaster undeniably linked to uncontrolled population growth occurs to goad ALL the nations of the Earth to come together and devise a governance and set of laws to allow this necessary control of population to happen.

UN predictions show that education and womens labour rights causes fertility rates to drop to manageable proportions and this will probably stabilise the planet at 10 billion or so by 2050 with a drop to about 9 billion after that.

A huge increase in knowledge about food housing and transport will need to be made to allow this to happen.

21-01-2017 02:49AM

Finnaninho wrote: »

Children are now a luxury. The average cost to raise a child to adulthood is upwards of £200,000. It's nearly impossible for the middle classes to live and work in a European city without drastically sacrificing quality of life and comfort.

What we're doing now isn't enough and we need to change something fast. Preferably before our public budgets collapse under public spending on healthcare and pensions.

Why change anything isn't it fine the way it is, do we really need all those people. I'm in my twenties, I would see my career as the main deterrent from having kids though not money, maybe that will change with time. 200k? If I envisage myself having 200k to spend I'll be buying a villa.

sawduster · 21-01-2017 02:56AM

I don't buy it -- the only evidence or argument he's given are declining birth rates and there could be many reasons for that. I'd hazard a guess that we're losing the means to replace ourselves rather than our will. As mentioned already it now takes two incomes buy a house and childcare is almost another mortgage. Add to that decreased job security, a marginal rate of tax over 50% in return for poor services and it isn't hard to see why people might be a little hesitant to have three kids.

Hector Bellend · 21-01-2017 03:16AM

Could this be an explanaton for why I like **** and porn so much.

red ears · 21-01-2017 03:23AM

Working people can barely afford more than 1 or 2 children.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 21-01-2017 03:57AM

People are holding off on starting families these days.

Couples put their careers first before thinking about starting a family.

In years gone by this wasn't the case, as people got married younger, and women had babies earlier. Prime years for childbirth are between 20 and 30.

Big families were a thing in Catholic Ireland as we all know. The family unit was held up as being something vital for society. Being a mother was the most important job in the country.

It's still very much a thing in other cultures, but obviously not anymore in most western countries

Irish Praetorian · 21-01-2017 04:38AM

Johnboner wrote: »

Europe is one of the most overpopulated regions in the world in terms of density. Of course they are stopping breeding due to not enough space. Ireland is exempt as millions died during the famine, but other countries kept breeding and breeding non stop until ridiculous levels of density. So why being less populated is a bad thing I have no idea.

Few problems with this, Europe might be densely populated but it's also one of the wealthier parts of the planet which ideally is where population growth is the least damaging, as compared with more poverty ridden parts of the world, where high birth rates have an incredibly retrogressive effect on societal development. Same problem with outsourcing childbirth to an underclass surviving only on state support. In the ideal scenario we ensure that anyone able to provide a decent standard of living for themselves and a child can do so, whilst those who can't aren't encouraged to see a child as a meal ticket.

Also brief foray into the point of population decline; a decline in population is not some overnight affair where suddenly houses become cheap and there's jobs for all (except with a plague maybe). Population ageing in the manner we're seeing looks like it's going to involve an increasingly large population of old age retired persons needing increasing medical and other support, which would need to be paid for with a smaller and smaller working age population - think working 8 hours a day, sending half of that to the government and needing to rush home to change grandma. This is of course before we bring in the genius idea of mass importing people from an alien culture who will dutifully content themselves to 'pay our pensions' and have the decency to kill themselves before ever becoming a burden on the state.

darkpagandeath · 21-01-2017 04:46AM

worded wrote: »

Financial castration

Aye pretty much, Huge cost involved in having a child. I would wager as well women taking on professional jobs. Women having those kinds of jobs is great don't get me wrong. But I think it does massively have a negative on wanting to have children.

Wheeliebin30 · 21-01-2017 04:51AM

When I look at what kids have nowadays to when I was growing up are people been sensible with their money?

1 day a month if you were brought to bray for chips on the dart you were delighted with life.

Compared to nowadays it just seems more pressure to constantly give the kids something to keep them happy. Ipads for 4 and 5 year olds, it's ridiculous.

That's just one example. I think spending and the need for material goods has gotten out of hand.

darkpagandeath · 21-01-2017 04:53AM

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

When I look at what kids have nowadays to when I was growing up are people been sensible with their money?

1 day a month if you were brought to bray for chips on the dart you were delighted with life.

Compared to nowadays it just seems more pressure to constantly give the kids something to keep them happy. Ipads for 4 and 5 year olds, it's ridiculous.

That's just one example. I think spending and the need for material goods has gotten out of hand.

Lol Wheelie. Happy to go to Bray :P

Wheeliebin30 · 21-01-2017 04:55AM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Lol Wheelie. Happy to go to Bray :P

I was too:)

Nothing against bray or its people by the way!

darkpagandeath · 21-01-2017 04:56AM

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

I was too:)

Nothing against bray or its people by the way!

Me neither it's just well... It's Bray :P Best of it was the waltzers and the arcade ?

Wheeliebin30 · 21-01-2017 05:04AM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Me neither it's just well... It's Bray :P Best of it was the waltzers and the arcade ?

Ah yeah, the arcade with the smell of greasy chips and burgers. But mostly people brought packed lunches.

You wouldn't see that nowadays, kids wouldn't be happy having to eat ham sandwiches and drink tk lemonade:)

darkpagandeath · 21-01-2017 05:07AM

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

Ah yeah, the arcade with the smell of greasy chips and burgers. But mostly people brought packed lunches.

You wouldn't see that nowadays, kids wouldn't be happy having to eat ham sandwiches and drink tk lemonade:)

I dunno do the travellers still fight on the beach ? Used to be pretty entertaining.

worded · 21-01-2017 05:11AM

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Try buying a house in Ireland, the only people I know breading are the entitled to a free house gang like their people before them.

The Ill breed them, you feed them brigade

Only fools and horses work ...

That's not my way of life but I see it.

R.D. aka MR.D · 21-01-2017 07:19AM

What a bizarre article. It sounds like so many arguments you see online about how proud Europeans are being ruined by immigration.

The world changes. Countries change.

It was also superficial when it came to women's roles. Their careers are blamed but no solution is offered. Why is the argument always framed around the assumption that women need to primary care givers. Yes women need to physically take time to have the baby but as some prominent examples have shown, they are auite capable of getting right back to work in a week or two. The argument could centre on how society doesn't expect men to be the ones to give care. It's entirely possible these days (i admit it would have been more difficult in the past). Or is that idea too modern and new to be accepted by Euorpeans who should be focusing on maintaining their traditiona by adding to an already very populated earth?

The consumption and therefore damage to the earth of a european child is far greater than that of those born in less wealthy places. So is it really so terrible that there are fewer of us?

I think it's terrible if people want children and feel that they can't have them because of money but I've never met one childfree person who would LOVE a child but chooses not to have one because of money. I've met people who don't have more children because of money but do people really need more than one or two? Children are a want and not a need.

JupiterKid · 21-01-2017 09:09AM

There is definitely a disconnect between the consumerist culture we now live in where having several holidays a year, a fancy car, a bigger house, spa breaks etc. are clashing with the possibility of raising a family. Having two large incomes to afford a house is a major problem.

But the world is already overpopulated. It's just that the population excess tends to be in poor, third world countries that can't afford to absorb big population increases. Seeing children as a liability and a luxury is also a problem. People in the developed world should be encouraged to have more children, but 8 or 9 children per family is also not the answer. 2 or 3 children is enough. And those in the developed world having the most children are the most deprived. The underclass is breeding but the middle class is not. The system is broken and needs radical change if having families is to be seen as a priority for society.

But Ireland's birth rate is actually in rude health, despite the alarmist media articles. It is countries such as Italy, Germany, France and Japan that are in serious trouble in terms of very low birth rates.

The key thing is to allow women have successful careers whilst supporting them to have children. That's not happening at the moment. The culture of work is not family friendly and this needs addressing.

adocholiday · 21-01-2017 09:12AM

I'm 30 now and married. My wife and I would be the 'ideal candidates' for having kids because we both work professional jobs and contribute a fair chunk of our salaries to the state. The 'problem' is that we are currently saving for a mortgage, while trying to actually live and enjoy life at the same time.

Living in Dublin it's not possible to fit a child into that equation. Between rent, savings, car payments, bills, a few nights out per month etc. there isn't a whole lot of money left for rearing a child.

Meanwhile many of our non working counterparts are having 2 or 3 kids by their mid 20's, who are being raised with the perpetual hand out for their entitlements. They're not concerned with saving for a mortgage or paying the bills so it's easier (and more financially beneficial) for them to have kids.

Working people need to be incentivised to have kids, and non-contributing people discouraged from having them. The balance is wrong and it will lead to problems down the road.

pickarooney · 21-01-2017 09:52AM

How does it make sense for couples with two jobs to have more children when they have no time to look after them, or couples with no income to do so when they have no money to do so. Surely one income between two people, split evenly, is the ideal balance yet nobody ever does anything to make this a reality.

Finnaninho · 21-01-2017 09:56AM

The world changes. Countries change.

Not all change is good and I would suggest that native people being replaced in their own nation is definitely not a good thing. Be it in Europe or elsewhere.

somesoldiers · 21-01-2017 10:02AM

Not surprised by this at all. I earn what I always thought was a good wage, until I went looking for a mortgage of 250k. As I have "two drains on my income" (is how one bank put it) a wife who has decided to take a few years out to raise the other "drain on income", I would need to be earning over 100k to get this. I darent tell them we have another "drain on income" on the way....

listermint · 21-01-2017 10:05AM

Isn't the world over populated anyway.

We are due a global disaster at some point

Why is Europe losing the will to breed?

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