Why is a declining marriage and birth rates bad?

[Anonymous]

People say it's women's fault, it's men's fault, it's economy fault, it's the end of society it will ruin everything... why? Why is lower marriage and birth rates so bad in themself?

People are still in relationship and getting married, and people are still having and raising kids, just not as often. Society won't collapse just because less people have a special ceremony or have 6 kids they can't afford.

Besides, if you really think it's a problem, why not try to fix the actual problems that most directly caused them? Things like over-working culture, climate disasters and culture of violence making people scared to date and have kids. Excessive expense of hospital and medical bills making people scared to get pregnant and give birth. Etc...

Why not fix those things instead of trying to artificially force marriage and birth rates to go up without changing any part of the environment that led to them declining in the first place? Trying to "fix" it this way will only cause or make worse real problems like unhappy or abusive marriages and unhappy or abusive households turning out criminal-prone kids.

[Cormac995]

The reason this is bad is because yes it actually will in fact destroy the country. This is actually happening in a number of places other than America most notably recently France, but this is a massive, massive problem. To clarify let's look at social security. SS is provided to the elderly and disabled but it's funded largely through taxes which is why most people that dip into it have to spend years working before they can retire because what you recieve is based on what you paid in.

The problem is we have a large aging population, but not nearly enough young people be born and going into the workforce, so we are about to have a massive number of people pulling SS and not even half as many people paying into it. So, if more people are taking more money from SS than paying into its money is going to run out eventually.

It's a very real possibility that the majority of millennials and generations after us will not ever be able to retire in America soon because SS might just stop existing before long. We're basically about to go from having kids because we want them to having them because if you don't, you're homeless at 80 and die in the street so you need offspring to take care of you.

As for people getting still getting in relationships and having kids yes "Some" people still are but the numbers of people dating and married have never been this low in America than ever before and even worse the divorce rate has never been higher in America than it is now too.

You don't have to like it but things like life partners and having families are a necessity for society as a whole because without it society falls apart. Marriage and having families have always been one of the most important things in having a functioning culture and society. Further kids NEED a two-parent household if you're not 100% sure you and your life partner are going to stay together then you shouldn't be having kids or adopting.

Also, this isn't some anti-gay only straight couples rant I said a two-parent household. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day if you're gay. If you have or adopt a kid you need 2 parents it doesn't matter if it's two moms, two dads or a normal husband and wife the kid needs both. Parents are where children learn most of their social skills as wells as how to show affection and form bonds so if you and your partner have a crap relationship you're going to break the kids brain.

As for people having kids, they can't afford it might surprise you to know that the more successful someone is in America on average the less likely they are to have kids. The majority of children born from my generation has actually been birthed by the lower class. People in poverty are actually statistically more likely to have children then people who are actually in a position to do it with stable finances.

This has had really negative effects on the kids increasing the chances they end up in trouble or turn to a life of crime because they were raised in an environment of desperation and see no other way out. Also, poor homes are statistically more likely to get divorces then ones that are financially stable.

As for changing those things in America to fix this problem are you freaking joking? Yea I'll go do that right now I can't believe it never occurred to me that I could just go to the government and tell them to knock off the bullshit and stop robbing the people of everything we have. I'm sure if I appeal to congress, Trump and the senate's better nature, they'll fix everything! It's not like people have been protesting and trying to change these things since the 70s! XD

[Asker]

I don't see why that is the case. All the people drawing out SS have already paid in, so why are their funds not there? They already paid it. New people young people paying in would not pay enough for old people sure, but it would pay enough for the young people when they get old. That's how it's supposed to work you pay in and then you take out. So new population sizes shouldn't ruin social security because each generation pays for itself.

As for marriage being necessary for society and functioning culture, why? Why does society fall apart without marriage? Has this actually happened anywhere? I've never seen it. The same for kids needing 2 parents, why do those parents have to be married? And why can't a single parent also show their kids how to show affection and social skills? Nobody has a perfect childhood, there are many things making kids lives harder much more severely than their parents not being married or one parent not being there, although I agree missing a parent can have very big effects. It is not a death sentence though, unlike for many kids living in abuse, poverty, or with serious medical conditions their family cannot afford. I'm not saying that being poor makes people not have kids, I'm saying being poor can hurt kids just as much or more than having divorced parents. So can abuse.

I don't understand why marriage is this huge issue and birth rates are this huge issue, when there are so many actual issues that actually hurt kids and society a lot. I'm not saying you can fix everything, I'm asking why are you making this an issue of marriage and birthrates, when at most those are just symptoms of much bigger problems, and more often they are not even problems at all? Why are you mad at people for not getting married and having kids, when they aren't even hurting anyone?

[Cormac995]

Ok so when I say marriage is necessary for society, I'm not referring to a ceremony and she sheet of paper I'm referring to a pair that have agreed to permanently form a family that's part of why I used the term "Life partners" as well.

Free love societies always fall apart eventually, they spread STDs they worsen depression in many cases and studies have shown the more partners you have the harder forming genuine bonds are. This is why there are tons and tons of porn stars that have come out after retiring saying they ruined their lives by doing that work and can't be in functioning relationships anymore.

Again, like I said it's the dynamic BETWEEN parents is where kids learn their earliest social skills and it's incredibly important for their early development. How can you learn how a couple are supposed to interact if you don't see that from the source you are biologically designed to learn it from? You can't show your kid how to treat a partner if you don't have a partner. The best you can do is tell them and that is not good enough.

[Cormac995]

Your kid can't learn how to express themselves and connect with people emotionally if they never see you do it yourself and it fucks them up in the head. Things like this are how mental and social issues are developed at a young age, and it effects their whole life making it hard for them to make friends or find a partner.

Also, you clearly have no idea how taxes work either. It's not like a bank where you get out what you put into social security a tiny portion of the money you pay in taxes goes into SS. If you put 100 dollars into social security, you're not getting 100 dollars back, you're getting a fraction of it. The way the system works is by having everyone pay taxes they are able to take those funds and spend them on things the government needs.

Part of that is SS they use a portion of the taxes to fund the SS but it's not YOUR money you're getting back its coming from a pool of EVERYONE that pays taxes. When you retire you are then provided a monthly stipend of income based around how much SS you put into it, but you'll never even see half of the money you paid into taxes back by the time you die after retiring.

[Cormac995]

So, since SS is pulled from a fund made of a collective tax of the population what happens when there is no working class to pay taxes and a shit ton of people taking money out? Further abuse is never going to go away anyways, and you don't have to be married to be abused by your partner.

People don't deserve to be abused but common sense is when someone hits you, ya break up with them. It's a pretty clear and basic thing that a lot of people apparently are too stupid to process. Marriage and long-term relationships don't correlate to abuse any more than anything else. Abusers will always abuse people the problem is the abuser not the system there is no direct connection between the two.

[Cormac995]

Also, I'm not mad at people not having kids that's their right but a problem doesn't have to be someone's fault for there to be a problem. This is math if you pull more money out then you pay back in you run out this is grade school stuff.

Also, as someone who has come from a home that broke halfway through my childhood the fact you think abuse is worse and not equal in damage to divorce is ridiculous. You don't have to be beaten to be abused there are plenty of other ways that are just as severe. The mental damage you can do by creating these environments will fuck you up just as much as getting beat because you won't be able to function in society because you do not know how to engage with people properly. My crap mother and her divorce from my dad was one of the worst things that ever happened in my life, and it did years of mental damage I'm only just now starting to unpack with my therapist and my god is there a shit ton of baggage.

Growing up in an unstable home was a big part of what ruined my life and destroyed my ability to connect with people and I have social anxiety so bad I can't even look my own dad in the eyes when we're talking. I have neck and back problems because I've adjusted my body posture in a bad way so that I'm always looking slightly down with a craned neck because I don't want to connect eyes with people because it makes me uncomfortable and nervous.

[Cormac995]

It's also largely part of what affected my abbilty to recieve touch from other people. I get maybe 2 hugs a month almost always from my dad on rare occasions my mom. She moved out and bailed on the fam, ily under the guise of work. In hindsight she'd been checked out for years and didn't want to be a mom anymore.

I know she loves me, but my mom is a selfish bitch just like her mom and dad and I know she's ashamed of me too because she always looked embarrassed and away from me when I was having an episode and crying in public like she was embarrassed and ashamed of me. She also resents that I wasn't successful in life and keeps trying to push me to do things that aren't an option for a ton of reasons because she wants me to live the life she wants me to live not the one I have.

The idea that an unstable home enviorment with divorced parents that didn't fucntion propperly is less bad than abuse is offensive to me as someone who basically hates their entire life and can trace a shit ton of my problems back to my parents' toxic dynamic. It ruined my life so don't you dare say it's not as bad as abuse because it certainly can be. If you'd said that to my face I'd have been tempted to deck you on the spot.

[Asker]

Emotional and mental abuse is also abuse, and I'm sorry that happened to you. However you should understand that you don't have to get divorced to abuse your kids any more than you have to get married to abuse your partner. The problem obviously isn't the official status of the relationship, it's the abuse.

If you only think relationships are important and not marriage, then why do you care about declining marriage rates? If you only think kids seeing relationship between parent is important and not specifically that they be married, then why can't they learn this from the parent and a new partner, or their grandparents or another role model, or the parent and a close friend? You don't only have relationship when romance is involved, there are also very strong friend relationships and family relationships like a parent and their sibling, which can show affection and emotion to a child or neice/nephew. Children aren't stupid, they don't need their parent to have every kind of relationship and do it perfectly for them to learn how to do it themself. I'd say a married couple with no friends or other relation would do more damage to a childs ability to socialize and find a partner than having a single parent with good friends and family and other examples of happy marriage they see.

There are plenty of actual problems like abuse and neglect and isolation, but none of that is caused by people not getting married or not having kids. So why do you focus on those "problems" instead of the actual problems?

[Cormac995]

I care about marriage rates because it's a statistic that help indicate the problem of long-term relationships dying out. The marriage part is irrelevant it's the statist about those split rates that are providing the info further since life partnerships are just a couple that don't sign papers would be included in this demographic largely if you applied it across all long-term relationships because functionally a long-term exclusive partnership is the same thing ultimately. and also, the whole thing about swapping in someone else to fill the role of the missing parent most of the time that's bullshit and makes things worse for the kid not better. It's already confusing and now your parents are trying to shove new parental figures into your life.

It's stressful and confusing for the kid and study after study after study have confirmed over and over that kids that grow up in broken homes struggle more in life regardless of the void being filled by someone else. Even orphans who were given to loving families can have massive development issues because they feel rejected and useless because they were given up at birth even if they never even knew their mother.

Kids are a responsibility and if you're not up to that responsibility including having a life partner that you plan to permanently settle down with then you shouldn't have kids because it's unethical it's that fucking simple. No parent is going to be perfect but there are standards that are within your control and your range of responsibility that you have to make or you're simply being a shit parent.

Aslo what point are you trying to make by saying "Emotional and mental abuse is also abuse, and I'm sorry that happened to you. However, you should understand that you don't have to get divorced to abuse your kids any more than you have to get married to abuse your partner. The problem obviously isn't the official status of the relationship, it's the abuse." I literally just said that above.

[Asker]

The case of "new parent" I was talking about when a single parent finds a new partner, not when they just pick someone and try to force them to fit in to be a "whole family" again. There are many step families that do great and as already stated, kids aren't stupid. The parent can have a talk with them so they know the new partner isn't just a replacement. Seeing their parent start and maintain a good relationship though, that is part of one of your big concerns here of the child learning to socialize and build relationships from their parents. Wouldn't it be a good thing for a single parent to find a new partner so that the kid can see their relationship work? And hopefully the new partner can be a parental role for the kid too, but I know that often takes more time for the kid to process and maybe agree to than for the parent who obviously has more of a say in when and who their new partner / kids potential "new parent" is.

I'm very confused why you are upset by birthrates declining, since you seem to think only very few people should have kids at all. I think I have an understanding now of why you are upset by marriage rates dropping, if it is a sign of less committed relationships then that could mean more kids being in less-than-ideal families, even if the rates of abuse stay the same or get lower. Do you think it would be better if birth rates still went down, but marriage rates went up? Or do you really have a problem with birth rates dropping too?

[Anonymous]

Study after study has shown the harm done to young people raised in single parent circumstances, and that harms society as a whole. We are all paying the price for it, whether we realize it or not.

Marriage is the best thing for a healthy society. It produces better children who become better people and make society stronger, not weaker.

Declining birth rates mean when you and I are older, our country will not be able to care for us or protect us from bad actors in other countries.

[Asker]

So you think both are bad individually, but what about together? Wouldn't that cancel each other out somewhat?

[Opinion Owner]

How exactly would they cancel each other out?

[Asker]

If less people are having kids then why would it matter if those people aren't getting married?

[Opinion Owner]

Are you suggesting that fewer low quality people is better than more high quality people?

[Asker]

I'm saying that's only half as bad to have less people, than to have less people and worse people. No?

[Asker]

If I agreed with you that less people is a bad thing.

[LeatherDame]

It’s bad for the economy and a crashing economy is bad for everyone.


The real question is if rising productivity/efficiency can compensate for the loss of workers over time. It doesn’t look likely though from looking at Japan and other countries that are further down this path than we are.

[Asker]

Why is lower marriage and birth rates bad for the economy?

[LeatherDame]

Less births/reducing population means less producers and less consumers so a shrinking economy. The bigger the economy the more efficient it is so this also means rising costs to produce (less people= more competition for wages) so would mean things would get more expensive and be increasingly imported but if the economy isn’t producing enough to trade that means a deficit ie debt. Eventually the debt payments become more than the economy produces and it crashes.

That’s the worst case scenario, there’s strategies to soften the landing substantially like what happened in Japan/is still happening with leaning into specialty electronic production and stuff that requires a high level of training/infrastructure investment so was hard to compete with.

[Asker]

So declining birth rate is bad if it causes population to also decline, but what about marriage? Why is that decrease bad for economy?

[Anonymous]

People can't afford kids. They can't even afford rent.

A declining population is bad because there will be too many old people to look after. You might think but I have a pension and own your own home but that is all taxable and inflation will eat into it.

[Anonymous]

marriage creates healthier and higher quality children than out-of-wedlock

and the declining birth rate will result in a huge downward fall from a math standpoint

our smaller number of descendants will have to pay taxes to support a large number of old people some of whom they aren't even related to

[BMW_888]

This generation is fucked. No morals & values. Hookup Culture & infedility. Old School Gentleman is the best.

[Anonymous]

Declining marriage rates seems like a sad sign of the times

[Asker]

Why?

[Opinion Owner]

Seems like a lot of people in this generation don’t want serious relationships

[Asker]

Why is that sad?

[Opinion Owner]

Because it is , that means there’s not a ton of hope left for this generation

[Asker]

But why? I don't want a relationship, and I am happy. Why is this sad if it's what people want?

[Opinion Owner]

Because some people still believe in marriage

[Asker]

Some people don't. That doesn't make marriage sad.

[Opinion Owner]

True , it just leaves me little hope in humanity

[Asker]

But why?

[Opinion Owner]

Because some people want to be married?🫥

[Asker]

You can still be married. Declining marriage rates don't mean you aren't allowed to get married anymore..

[Opinion Owner]

I know that , It does mean that it’s harder for people to get married tho.

[Asker]

Oh I think I understand. So less people wanting to get married is sad not because of any big societal or moral problem, but because it means you will have a harder time finding someone who wants to marry you. Am I understanding you right?

[Opinion Owner]

It’s also sad , because it shows the state of the world rn

[Asker]

What state of the world does declining marriage rates show?

[Opinion Owner]

It shows people aren’t committed to relationships anymore , which in my opinion is a sign of a failing society.

[Asker]

Okay. So why is people not committing to relationships anymore the sign of a failing society? How is marriage tied to society as a whole?

[Asker]

I know I've asked a lot of questions, sorry about that. I'm trying to understand the connection people seem to make so often.

[Opinion Owner]

Because it’s a good thing for society when people are in committed realationships

[Asker]

I understand you think it's good, and you think people not wanting it is bad, but I want to know why you think that. How does people being in committed relationships like marriage benefit society?

[Opinion Owner]

Stability if they have kids benefits the kids and makes them happier and more successful

[Asker]

But there is also a decline in birthrate. So less people are getting married and less people are having kids, so doesn't this even itself out?

[Opinion Owner]

True , but if birth rates decline by a lot wouldn’t humans eventually die out?

[Asker]

And if they kept increasing we would overpopulate and eventually die out too. Decline now doesn't mean it will keep declining indefinitely, and we are a long long way from drying out from not having kids.

[Opinion Owner]

True

[DrPepper12]

We need about 4-7 billion people culled and things will be alright.

[Asker]

How would that help anything?

[DrPepper12]

Give the 🌍🌍 a chance to breathe and recover while we figure out a better way to organize ourselves.

[Asker]

We would still be here, be much less organized, and that's a LOT of corpses that have to go somewhere very fast...

[DrPepper12]

Trust the process. Mother nature solves all in the end.

[Asker]

So do not cull billions of people, instead let things take their natural course.

[DrPepper12]

Nah. I'm impatient. Let darwinism sort out the survivirs

[Asker]

I hope you're not so impatient on the roads or around other humans..

[DrPepper12]

I'm a NYer. GTF outta my way

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Rampant fornication leads to a lack of marriage.

[Asker]

And fornication is bad?

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Yes. The main purpose of marriage is to have sex.

When you have people just sleeping around then there's no purpose for marriage.

[Asker]

Is it bad for marriage to not have a purpose?

[Anonymous]

Nature attempting to stop stupid.