The common opinion amongst parents is, they dont know how they’d raise children without WFH. Its not that you spend your workhours doing childcare but saving 2-3 hours a day in traffic is golden. Otherwise the kindergarden would see the child more than us. Now with bad economy we have RTO trend. Wages not keeping up with inflation, job insecurity, grandparents working themselves until they are not fit enough to help out. It makes no sense for the middle to get children. Never made sense financially but also doesnt make sense emotionally to just yeet your offspring into childcare.
Plus the current chancellor/ruling parties cut parental support further while touting longer workdays. More children is simply NOT a goal of the german government.
The common opinion amongst parents is,
I think it would be good to also ask non-parents as they are the main reason for low birthrates. I saw data indicating that most childless people simply don’t want to have kids. No amount of WFH and childcare is going to change this.
Parents who struggle with their first child wont get a second.
Even the most wealthy parents don’t have birthrates above replacement levels. Poor parents have more kids than middle class.
Sure, some just don’t want them, there’s been a culture shift there, but a lot don’t want kids because of all the stress imposed on them by the current systems. They can’t afford it, be it with money and/or time.
This is how most countries are going to start collapsing in the coming decades. Fertility rates are all below replacement.
No, the data I saw specifically distinguished between people who think they don’t need kids and people who can’t afford them or think it’s too hard to raise them because they don’t have enough support from the government. “I don’t like kids” was the most common response (~30% overall).
On top of that, notice that even people who do like kids and start family usually have only 1-2 kids. If you fix all the housing and childcare issues, people that will decide to have kids will still have only 1 or 2. Big families are gone and not coming back. Having 4-5 kids is seen as kind of weird now. Without very big families you will never compensate for the 30% of people who simply don’t like kids.
So yes, countries are deciding now between smaller populations or migration. Either way it doesn’t look good for the future. I just hope it will collapse after I die and I’m sure as hell not having kids to postpone it a little big.
Now THAT is too much integration, when even migrants follow this trend. [/s]
Have more babies!
