I would love to pump some baby batter into my gf and start having a kids, can't do that while we're stuck living paycheque to paycheque on a combined 130k in my parents basement.
I hate the beginning of this comment
I hate that I can't do it so I guess we're even?
Yeah fair XP. Apologies for totally disregarding the larger issue, bud. Didn't mean to minimize one of our generational issues
All good man lol, just trying to add a little humour to the devastating reality of maybe never having kids.
Sorry but how are you living paycheck to paycheck with that income and little to no rent?
Without writing out my whole life story: student loans, unexpected vehicle issues (public transit isn't an option where I live), out of pocket medical costs not covered by benefits or gov't, long commutes with expensive gas and no feasible alternatives and few job opportunities closer to home in my field. Can't afford to move due to high rents so I'm stuck driving.
There's more but I'm hungry and wanna eat dinner and don't feel like going into it. We save everything that isn't essential and barely go out for fun, anything extra goes towards a down payment but the way things are going right not it doesn't look like we'll be able to buy for years unless we can put away like 2k a month.
When people say pay cheque to pay cheque in this type of situation they're still putting money away into savings typically but are out of reach of where they need to be. There's usually large debts, medical costs or other financial burdens that aren't mentioned like maybe taking care of a family member. Their pay cheque to pay cheque situation is a bit different than someone working minimum wage and will be out on the streets as they still have money going into some sort of savings
Oh hey! It's literally describing my current situation.
Got engaged, got a promotion, have solid long term housing ("renting" from family)
Still can't keep more than 1.5k in savings month over month. No way in hell in having a baby in these conditions... and i feel like I'm better off than most
There’s too many people on this planet anyways.
By what measure? Industry and a small minority of extremely wealthy people are setting the agenda to destroy the planet, not average people.
By just about every measure? Would you rather have a smaller population and the same standard of living, or a larger population and a considerably lower standard of living? The earth's resources and abilities to heal itself are finite. The more people we have, the more restrictive our quality of life needs to be. Instead of having a house on some usable land, a garden, and some chickens, you're forced into a stacked box, with one window, and no yard, surrounded by other stacked boxes. Plus the impact of everything you do is magnified. Oh, you want to drive to the store? Better walk 20 blocks instead, because we're already at our carbon capacity. That last example was hyperbole, but it's not that far fetched. Basically a lower population gives us a lot more leeway to live our lives comfortably.
The fact the nearest store is 20 blocks away is a consequence of bad urban planning
Look at what we did to the planet with the current (and smaller) population sizes. You think adding MORE people isn’t going to become an issue?
We are, in the near future, going to have a mass migration of people away from no longer inhabitable land.
Those people you’re talking about aren’t going to give up power and let “average people” right the ship. And those same “average people” have been placated and conditioned to buy shiny trinkets and celebrate touchdowns and home runs instead of organizing and uprooting the real problem makers.
Tax domestic speculators. It's such an easy solution. It's going to be painful because it's been allowed to happen for so long. Canadians are doing this to other Canadians but no politician wants to do this to help end this gross cycle of exploitation, add in the fact provinces like Ontario that remove things like rent control and things become even further out of reach.
but no politician wants to do this
Because it's political suicide. They have a Silver Tsunami coming up, and thanks to a) many companies weakening retirement plans (defined benefit? LOL), b) recessions wiping out people's savings, there's been a concerted shift to using home-ownership to bandage over old-age income security.
Prior to this, moderate investment and company pensions were enough to see you through, but that's largely gone--just another part of our society that we sold off so that the rich can get more tax breaks. The cherry-on-top? We sold off LTCs to private companies, so elder-care is now a for-profit luxury.
The only way Boomers can retire is home equity. Heck, it's the only thing fuelling our economy in general.
Of course, this is fixable: tax the rich. Pay for a society that works for everyone, not just Galen Weston or David Thompson. It would have been easier to do this back in the 1990s (before the problem really started in earnest) or before 2018 (when it got fully out of control) but it's still possible.
Who the fuck is financially prepared for having children?
As a father of two, I sure as shit wasn't.
We were. We started a bit later than average though. I regret that, tbh.
I wasn't expecting child care to be quite so expensive, but the tax refunds in the first few years were helpful.
This is quickly becoming a crisis for the next twenty years but nobody is doing a god damned thing to actually fix the cost of living issue.
We need to vote in people affected by this, not benefitting from it.
Imagine wanting to have a child in times where the only way to afford a house is to never purchase a single thing with your next 4 decades worth of pay cheques from a high paying job.
Then come find out you get to finally own a single square foot of land because everyone else comes in and swoops up everywhere else or the bar rises quicker than you could ever hope to catch up with or some other dumb reason.
I have long speculated that the reason why birthrate goes down in societies with a higher standard of living is because a higher standard of living effectively reduces the "carrying capacity" of the environment for humans. Which is not a bad thing, IMO, it's just the underlying explanatory reason for why we see this pattern. Access to family planning and such is just part of the mechanism this operates by.
A common pattern in population dynamics is the S-curve, where population initially grows in an exponential-like pattern and then flattens back out again as it approaches the environment's carrying capacity. I think we'll see that with the human population too, and we are in the unique position as a species of being able to somewhat control where that carrying capacity will be. In this specific case here, we could boost our capacity for population growth by making housing more affordable.
Unless something happens - like, say, running out of manufactured fertilizers - that reduces the carrying capacity. Then we'll have a bell curve.
I wonder how much of the cost of living crisis is due to our shitty productivity?
It seems like regulations and government programs favour incumbents, be it telecoms who don't want to deal with upstarts, fish plant owners who don't want to automate, Tims franchises who don't want to pay their workers, or NIMBYs.
I get that there were supply chain issues due to COVID-19, but did those cause problems, or exacerbate existing issues?
The Competition Act was weakly designed with the purpose of allowing a few Canadian companies to grow large. It was thought at the time that this would mean Canada could be a big player on the global stage, but instead it just trapped Canadians in the inevitable consequences of a marketplace dominated by monopolies-- high prices and little choice. You can thank Chicago school economics acolytes and leaders like Mulroney, Reagan, and Thatcher for htis.
Good! Maybe we can get back to sane population levels and half of these problems with the housing market and global warming will just resolve themselves. The earth's population has more than doubled since I was born, and let me tell ya, it's noticeable. It's noticeable everywhere I look.
LoL no. Let's import people to continue Canada's growth and keep providing cheap labor to Canada's corporations.
There are a few people in my family that are married with good jobs and own their own homes and they are not having children. They are focusing on other things. I am proud of them as I am proud of those in my family who have chosen to have children. This does not need to be one more point of division. It is OK to have kids and it is OK to not have kids.
Considering that if you aren't making a lot, you can get quite a bit of money every month for each kid through child benefits until they are 18, I don't think the cost of housing is the issue.
Here's a radical thought: Maybe people simply don't want to be burdened by kids.
Perhaps if we stopped pressuring mothers into believing that they NEED to have kids, or that couples can't be complete without a real family.
Maybe then we can start normalizing the fact that not everyone actually wants (or needs) kids.
EDIT: For you idiots downvoting, could you at least read the study? It agrees with what I wrote!
That's a joke, right? When I looked it was only 500 to 620 a month per kid.
You have baby items to worry about, needing a crap ton of clothes (kids grow a LOT), having adequate nutrition (growth spurts too), school supplies, and more. If you're already barely making ends meet, of COURSE you'll struggle if you add another human being. Of course, cost of living also varies by area, as well as public transportation. Without that, you'd have to hope that you live near essentials like a family doctor, or you'd have to pony up even more money for a car and child seat.
If that's not enough, you also get the fun of society looking down on your for "having kids before you were ready". Many of us heard that from adults throughout the entire time we grew up. Why voluntarily walk into that? Nah. IF I ever have a kid, it won't be untilI can guarantee that that doesn't happen.
I can attest from personal experience, finances are 100% the reason me and my partner can't have kids right now. Its very hard to justify brining a kid into this world when its hard to maintain stability for 2 adults, let alone with the costs required to raise a child.
We were evicted from our last home for no other reason than the greed of our landlord. That stress would have been tenfold if we had to go through that with kids.
It's not a radical thought, it's just wrong.
Desired fertility is higher than actual fertility. https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-canadian-women-arent-having-the-children-they-desire
I have three kids, and if money wasn't a factor my wife and I would probably have 4 or 5
As the oldest of six, having grown up quite poor, thank you for stopping while still in your means.
"I'm comfortable, surely everyone else is then."
Here's a radical thought: Maybe people simply don't want to be burdened by kids.
The studies cited in the op-ed show many people who want kids aren't having them due to the cost of living.
Maybe then we can start normalizing the fact that not everyone actually wants (or needs) kids.
Definitely, that would be healthy for people and more environmentally sustainable.
The op-ed is not referring to people who don't want kids, however, it's looking at surveys where people say they can't afford to have kids.
Oh wow, so where everything else is pointing to an idiocracy type apocalyptic future, the movie got the birth rate thing wrong.
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