(This is from Feb. 8th, in the New York Times - and I saw a letter to the editor yesterday, pointing out that many women just plain don't WANT that many kids - if ANY, since most of the burden typically falls on the mother. Also, that as women become more educated, birth rates inevitably fall.)

https://archive.is/9zIo5#selection-287.0-287.62

By Jessica Grose.

Excerpt:

....In December, the political director for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tweeted, “women who become mothers before turning 30 will be exempt from paying personal income tax!” That’s on top of a raft of other initiatives meant to boost the number of Hungarian babies, including allowing mothers of four or more children to be permanently exempt from paying taxes, a mortgage repayment plan for families with two or more children, a subsidy program for larger families buying seven-passenger cars and allowing grandparents to be eligible for payment for caring for their grandchildren.

....In her newsletter Sciubba notes that even with the extra benefits, while Hungary raised its fertility rate from 1.2 to 1.5, it still hasn’t boosted its fertility rate to anywhere near population replacement level. As she put it: The country merely “managed to raise its super low fertility to just regular ole low fertility.”

When Sciubba and I spoke, she said it almost seems that when a country falls below replacement level, no matter how many family-friendly policies are enacted, it can’t get back up again. “I think we need to learn a lot more about that, but that’s fascinating,” she said. The reason is probably a complicated mix of social and cultural forces that are unique to individual countries. But at its core, it seems to me that no amount of additional financial support would make a person want to be a parent without an intrinsic desire for children that goes beyond any realistic level of compensation. Some people just don’t want to be parents when they’re allowed to make that choice, and that isn’t something that should be or can be changed...
_______________________________________________-

And, from Jan. 30th:

https://archive.is/rtgDn

"The Alternative, Optimistic Story of Population Decline"

By Wang Feng.

I was telling someone, the other day, about dilemmas like this...

Btw, the previous letter is also food-related - more so.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/family/2015/06/26/miss-manners-wishes-for-better/23898787007/

"Dear Miss Manners: Whether dining out with friends and their families or joining in a congregational dinner where you might be dining with folks you are just meeting, many parents allow their children to be on their hand-held devices during the entire dinner while my grade-school son tries to make conversation with the kids — to his credit but mostly to no avail.

"Granted, some of these are teenagers.

"Is there anything polite we can say when this happens?"

"Gentle Reader: You did such a good job of teaching your child to make conversation instead of Bitcoin deals that it is a shame you cannot politely issue instructions to other people’s children.

"It is also a shame that he gets stuck with mannerless teenagers. You might try asking the hosts loudly where they want the young people to park their devices.

"If this fails to encourage other parents to direct their children to do as your son will do, you should draw him into the adult conversation. (This is presuming that there is electronic-less adult conversation and that these dinner parties are not like study halls.) That will serve him well in future situations, such as college interviews.

"And, if it annoys the other parents to listen to his opinions or have him listen to theirs, then perhaps they will think more about instructing their children on how to behave in company."
_____________________________________________

Regarding my earlier words:

I was telling someone that one not-so-minor reason I never wanted kids is the following.

Imagine this. You spend five years slowly and patiently putting your small kids through the motions of:

-Outdoor activities or at least vigorous daily physical activity

-Face-to-face conversations and all the etiquette that goes into them - if you hope to make friends

-Creative play

-Doing chores and other unwanted duties without complaining about them

-Lots of reading aloud - and learning to enjoy reading alone

-Above all, putting other people first in general, within reason

You then have to send them to school, where...

....they're suddenly surrounded by classmates who don't do ANY of those things - or if they do, it's pretty seldom. What's more, even if they're not that nice to be around, chances are they're quite self-satisfied not to do those "boomer" things - and they're not exactly depressed (yet) by having five or more hours of screen time every day. They're only unhappy that they don't have MORE hours.

How can that turn out well for YOUR kids?

After all, the golden rule in conversation is to talk about what other people are interested in, not what you're interested in - or you're not acting like a good friend.

(I was a teen before I even heard of VCRs, so of course the idea of reading the book version before seeing the movie - such as "Mary Poppins" - was more or less normal among my classmates, and no one would have thought of anyone as a nerd just for doing that. At any rate, I can only imagine how much less of a reader I would have been had it been normal, in the schools I attended, for kids to put down kids who read books without pictures for fun.)

On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 5:23:36 AM UTC-8, Lenona wrote:
> (This is from Feb. 8th, in the New York Times - and I saw a letter to the editor yesterday, pointing out that many women just plain don't WANT that many kids - if ANY, since most of the burden typically falls on the mother. Also, that as women become more educated, birth rates inevitably fall.)
>
> https://archive.is/9zIo5#selection-287.0-287.62
>
> By Jessica Grose.
>
> Excerpt:
>
> ...In December, the political director for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tweeted, “women who become mothers before turning 30 will be exempt from paying personal income tax!” That’s on top of a raft of other initiatives meant to boost the number of Hungarian babies, including allowing mothers of four or more children to be permanently exempt from paying taxes, a mortgage repayment plan for families with two or more children, a subsidy program for larger families buying seven-passenger cars and allowing grandparents to be eligible for payment for caring for their grandchildren.
>
> ...In her newsletter Sciubba notes that even with the extra benefits, while Hungary raised its fertility rate from 1.2 to 1.5, it still hasn’t boosted its fertility rate to anywhere near population replacement level. As she put it: The country merely “managed to raise its super low fertility to just regular ole low fertility.”
>
> When Sciubba and I spoke, she said it almost seems that when a country falls below replacement level, no matter how many family-friendly policies are enacted, it can’t get back up again. “I think we need to learn a lot more about that, but that’s fascinating,” she said. The reason is probably a complicated mix of social and cultural forces that are unique to individual countries. But at its core, it seems to me that no amount of additional financial support would make a person want to be a parent without an intrinsic desire for children that goes beyond any realistic level of compensation. Some people just don’t want to be parents when they’re allowed to make that choice, and that isn’t something that should be or can be changed...
> _______________________________________________-
>
> And, from Jan. 30th:
>
> https://archive.is/rtgDn
>
> "The Alternative, Optimistic Story of Population Decline"
>
> By Wang Feng.

(2023 Youtube upload):

"Is it worth having kids?"