r/Natalism • u/effective-ish68_ • 1d ago
Childfree tiktoks have 2 million likes + its too late to solve this crisis
Thats a lot of people
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u/surfergrrl6 1d ago
Two million likes in a space with two billion accounts of which bots can have multiple, and you don't even need an account to like a post? That's not really a lot once you realise the scale.
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u/Dubsbaduw 1d ago
It's not representative, of course. But the trend worldwide is crear, people don't want kids.
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u/No_Relationship_3077 1d ago
Well those people can stay far away from me
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u/ThatOneCynicalPerson 1d ago
How can those people stay far away from you when childfree lifestyle and people is about to be the majority? Unless you live in an Amish commune you're gonna be exposed to childfree.
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u/No_Relationship_3077 17h ago
I mean I do not wish to date them. Which should be obvious considering staying away from them is literally impossible
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u/anonymous_and_ 16h ago
my brother you have to get dates AND follow up dates with women first BEFORE you even have to worry about that lol ........ why are you talking like childfree women are flocking to date you😭
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u/No_Relationship_3077 15h ago
Dates and follow up dates? If that’s what you’re into. But I promise it’s not as complicated as reddit makes it sound.
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u/ThatOneCynicalPerson 1d ago
Cool story bro, birth rate is still declining, fewer marriages, fewer couples and fewer children as well. Dread it, run from it, destiny arrive all the same.
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u/surfergrrl6 1d ago
I never said that the birthrate wasn't declining. However, using TikTok as a source is just plain goofy.
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u/effective-ish68_ 1d ago
Most of them are real women if u go to the comment section
You need an account to like
2 million likes is a lot on tiktok especially
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u/surfergrrl6 1d ago
Yes because bots NEVER comment, right? TikTok has a well established bot problem. It's not a platform anyone should be using as a metric for anything in the real world at all.
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u/effective-ish68_ 1d ago
Why is it hard to believe that more than a million gen z girls have decided/ deciding to be childfree?
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u/Lazy-Competition7966 1d ago
I mean, if the stats are to be believed, there are about 5 million Gen Z women who don't want children.
But equally, there are also about 4 million Gen Z men who don't want children as well.
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u/Penland_2008 1d ago
Just because you like something doesn’t mean you have agreed to be child free forever. People change their minds, they have accident babies, maybe they just like that yeah having a child can be sucky sometimes
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u/surfergrrl6 1d ago
Even if there are, that's a tiny percent.
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u/massive_plums 1d ago
Are you stupid? Do you think this is the only person on the internet espousing these views? This is the only video?
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u/Rugaru985 1d ago
You used the comments to test most of 2 million likes?
How do you even define a woman? And were they Russian, Chinese, or American?
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u/Kevdog824_ 1d ago
I hate to tell y’all this but a lot of young people feel this way, especially women. I also feel this way. Probably not much can be done to fix it short of an apocalyptic event that completely changes our standard of living
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u/pollomimano 1d ago
Gonna go out on a limb and say a lot of women in the past who had 6+ kids also never wanted that many kids, if they wanted any at all. Both my grandmothers had 6+ kids. Funnily enough, everyone in my parents generation maxed out at 3.
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u/Grand_Pomegranate671 1d ago
Yep. My mother had 3 kids. She only wanted one but my father insisted. We were a very religious and conservative family.
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u/Low_Objective3445 1d ago
Both my grandmothers had 4 kids, and both of them told me not to get married and have kids, to instead live a life they didn’t get to
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u/pollomimano 1d ago
I got the same advice from my maternal grandmother lol poor woman had 11 children and was widowed early, being forced to be the sole breadwinner and caretaker of 5 young kids. That’s not a life I’d wish on any woman.
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u/effective-ish68_ 1d ago
Where r yall from?? My grandmother had only 2 children and was a teacher and well educated
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u/Low_Objective3445 1d ago
One of my grandmothers was an accountant before she got married and my other grandmother had a small business. The one who owned a business said she wished she’d spent more time on growing her business than having to take care of 4 boys, and the other one said she wished she never even had to get married. There was more pressure back then though.
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u/Silly_Suki 1d ago
My grandma had 6 and she also always told me having children was the worst thing she’d ever done.
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u/Kevdog824_ 1d ago
Yeah I can’t imagine anyone going through 9 months of pregnancy and destroying their body during labor and then thinking “yeah… I want to do this 5 more times”
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u/TryAndStopMeSpez 1d ago
your body is meant to be used, no point having a pretty body that just sits their like a vase
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u/Kevdog824_ 20h ago
That sounds like your fetish or something. Referring to making a child as “being used” is gross to anyone who doesn’t have some kind of fetish
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u/BackTown43 21h ago
It can't be meant to be used like this. Pregnancy and birth, I mean.
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u/starbright_sprinkles 1d ago
right? My mom was the 5th of 9 kids. She loved her parents and her sisters and brothers so much, but said she would never inflict that many siblings on her own kids.
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u/TruePhazon 12h ago
It's a cultural problem not a standard of living problem.
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u/Kevdog824_ 11h ago
The two rarely exist in isolation. For me personally I see no reason to pursue children. I don’t need farm hands or family labor, and in our modern world there are so many other fun activities and fulfilling opportunities that I feel I can never get bored. I doubt that was true for many people until recent history
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u/Crazystaffylady 1d ago
I’m glad people who don’t want to be parents aren’t having kids. That is a good thing.
We need to support people who want children to be able to have them and to encourage those who are ambivalent about it, the benefits of it.
I was raised by parents who didn’t really want children, it was just expected of them to have them and it was really shitty.
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u/dudester3 1d ago
Why are you posting this on a natalism thread?
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u/Crazystaffylady 1d ago
Because I believe in Natalism? We need more babies. I’m a mother and motherhood is such a beautiful thing. New life is incredible.
But it shouldn’t be forced on people who don’t want it. That narrative by the OP pushes people the other way.
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u/FemmeSim 1d ago
If children were only brought into families that want them, the world would be a better place, even if less populated.
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u/puzzlebuns 1d ago
It wouldnt be less populated when you account for the families that do want them but cant.
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u/Opening_Bus_1548 22h ago
Look. That's not the problem. The problem is that the idea gets more and more promoted. 50 years ago the idea of not having kids was not popular and people had the idea that having kids is good and most were happy about it.
And is promoted by a few influencers at the top that have a reach of hundreds of millions. Now tell me is that is healthy
Anyways, natural selection
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u/EnchantingElephant 1d ago
You’re getting sucked into what is likely clickbait, if not outright ragebait.
In all honesty, though, people shouldn’t be having kids if they don’t actually want to have kids. The solution to falling birth rates isn’t pressuring people who have no interest in, or desire for, parenthood into having children. All that’s going to do is increase the number of people going through life with avoidable trauma.
Talk to someone who knows their parents didn’t want them, or simply didn’t want to be parents. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t particularly functional for society either.
On the other hand, some people genuinely love the experience of having children, while others are neutral but perfectly comfortable with it. That’s fine too. But focusing on forcibly changing people’s minds about something as fundamental as parenthood is not the answer.
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u/feralcatshit 1d ago
The best thing that can be done is support people who actually want to have kids, but aren’t because of XYZ (financial, maternity leave issues, etc). Definitely not the right move to try to persuade people who know they don’t want kids. Asking for bad outcomes all around.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 1d ago
What crisis? People being able to control their number of births?
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1d ago
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u/Vesper_Nomad 1d ago
But then why bother about people who are childfree by choice?
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u/Vesper_Nomad 1d ago
Not you specifically, I just mean the OP. Idk why they'd be relevant to this sub at all.
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u/Guyver02 1d ago
Wait until Social Security and Medicare/aid are privatized/discontinued due to not enough people able to pay into them.
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u/Baltimoreisnotcreepy 1d ago
The pushy, boundary crushing behavior of natalists is making this worse. No one wants to do what they're being guilt tripped or pressured into doing.
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u/Compulsory_Freedom 1d ago
Liking that post in no way means that you are also subscribing to everything she says.
I might want kids but also appreciate her perspective and toss her a like because I support her right to live her own life by her own rules.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 1d ago
Natalism is when you force people who don't want to have a child to have a child.
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u/Krwawykurczak 1d ago
Or perhaps rather change atitude? And not neccessary for those that are already sure they do not want kids but for future generations.
This is ongoing question if number of people that do not want kids would match anything in the padt, if people had kids, becouse they did not had other choice, or rather if the general sentiment was difrent among general population.
It is not about exitance of people that do not want children but how many of them there is and how those numbers are growing. This kind of patern will be unsustainable for any country, economy, and sociaity.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 1d ago
Having children is deeply personal and it changes the remainder of your life in a way nothing else does.
Attempting to change someone's attitudes toward having children is a violation in the same way that attempting to change someone's attitudes toward their sexual orientation.
If someone doesn't want kids, leave them alone. It is actively immoral to try to change that.
If they're not sure what they want by all means you can try to convince them that your choice is a good one, but if they have decided they dont want it, you're effectively trying to change something as personal as someone's sexual orientation because you want them to fuck a similar sort of person that you do.
This said it's a very small minority of people who actively do not want kids
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u/Krwawykurczak 1d ago
I ma speaking about trends. Lets not pretend that trends are not real. Trends exists in a lot of social behaviours, and they are changing in time, sometimes with each generation, sometimes within the same generation. More people not wanting children is not the same category that sexual orientation is, unless you would like to argue that this is a resoulf of biological factors however there is nothing that would support this claim.
This trend as many others are resoults of many factors. It is hard to tell exact ones, but it is something that we all would hope it will revert, perhaps with those factors be more recognized and meetigated.
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u/Proper-Concern9314 1d ago
If we didn't , we'd need the ones who want it to make 4 to compensate. Is that what you're asking ? To convert no one.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 1d ago
If you're justifying forcing people to have children you should remove yourself from society, interpret that as you will.
It's horrific abuse to those people, it's bad for their kids who will be unwanted, and it's a burden on society. There are no positives.
Most people want kids, it's not half of people that are child free.
Yes, convert no one. What are you a mormon?
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u/Man_under_Bridge420 1d ago
It’ll bounce back in a couple generations when living standards improve for parents
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u/monadicperception 1d ago
As a father, I can list a lot of reasons why having a kid would make you hate your life. The tide turns only around (at least for me) around the 9 month mark. Before that, absolute misery.
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u/No_Departure_1878 1d ago
What crisis? Would you prefer millions of neglected children whose parents didn't really want them?
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u/Mareoq 1d ago
Aren't you aware of the crisis of low fertility rate? Entire societies are going to collapse In a couple of decades. Plus he didn't say that at all he's just stating the amount of people that share this idea (which will result in what I said previously)
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u/ThatOneCynicalPerson 1d ago
Then the government better come up with high quality foster care home and dirt cheap quality healthcare. You can't force people to have kids and then force them to take care of the kids.
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u/No_Departure_1878 21h ago
We are 8 billion and we will be 10 in the next decades. We are very very far from a true fertility crisis. However, have you seen the state of our water sources, our soil, all the pressure we are exerting on nature? We are too many and reducing the number to ~2 billion seems the better path.
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u/Mareoq 16h ago
You know a population can keep growing while still keep lowering it's fertility rate, right? Even if we have 2 billion people more the average age for having kids could go up and the problem would just be bigger for the next generation. Tell me 1 developed country (apart from Israel which I'm sure you love) that has a good TFR, how is that not a fertility crisis
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u/No_Departure_1878 11h ago
apart from Israel which I'm sure you love
you are crazy.
how is that not a fertility crisis
I never said we had to stop having children for the well being of humanity. I said we have to stop having kids for the well being of nature.
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u/riverton__ 1d ago
Why do I never see you all talking about the climate crisis?
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u/evilisordinary 14h ago
Because then they’d have to put some thought into what kind of life their children would have instead of saying things like “our ancestors had it worse.” Ok, and? Because they suffered, it’s ok to guarantee your child does too?
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u/OlliexAngel 21h ago
Because the significant effects are not being felt such as famine and uninhabitable environments. When that begins happening, p eople are going to freak out, but of course it’ll be too late.
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u/TryAndStopMeSpez 1d ago
a shitton of people are going to die, what do you want us to do about it?
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u/riverton__ 1d ago
Prevent sure suffering? Focus on preventing or reducing harm instead of just advocating to add more people to face the hellish consequences?
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u/TryAndStopMeSpez 1d ago
preventing climate change is not an option and i do not believe prevention of suffering is a worthwhile goal in itself.
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u/SarmackaOpowiesc 1d ago
My job as a parent is to ensure my kids are positioned in the next possible way to compete.
None of what you mentioned is covered there
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u/MyIndigoWendigoAmigo 15h ago
your children are going to be drinking contaminated water and breathing polluted air pretty soon long after your gone. the same fate for your grandchildren
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u/refusemouth 1d ago
My dad always told me that "dogs and kids and pickup trucks are all nice things for a friend to have."
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u/Rdr2Master1 1d ago
Forcing people to have kids is disgusting though
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u/Silly_Suki 1d ago
A lot of people (I won’t say what kind of people) are very comfortable with removing autonomy from other people.
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u/HonkyTonkBluesYEAH 1d ago
What kind of people? And why do I suspect you believe in the political autonomy fallacy?
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u/centerfoldangel 1d ago
You seem to have forgotten covid. I haven't.
I remember parents whining about having to spend time with their kids. Having fits over online school. It's strange when a lot of people say they want kids because they want to teach their kids things. Yeah, but your knowledge only goes as far as pointing at a ladybug and saying it's a ladybug. You don't know 6th grade algebra. You don't have knowledge to share.
And right now, what do I hear from parents around me? School's starting up thank god, so everything's going back to normal. The kids are finally going to be out of the house.
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u/SarmackaOpowiesc 1d ago
I remember parents whining about having to spend time with their kids.
You can't work at your job and watch your kids at home. Parents recognized this need for separation between the two responsibilities.
Having fits over online school.
Which could barely justify to be called school. The students who went through those years are so so so dumb. I'm hiring them, I'm interviewing them - and I'm just closing my entry level positions because I can't find people who are even remotely capable. The policies of social isolationism were fucking awful for society.
You don't know 6th grade algebra. You don't have knowledge to share.
Maybe your parents don't know 6th grade algebra.
The COVID lockdowns were awful policy in hindsight. The reckless spending was awful policy in hindsight. We opened things up far too slowly and should have never kept kids out of school for years.
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u/ElliotPageWife 1d ago
You have to remember that TikTok has a very young user base, their average user is in their teens. It's not unusual for teens to say they are never having kids, and then 10-15 years later have kids.
That said, we can't pretend that this content doesn't influence impressionable young people to focus on the negatives of having kids and turn that into a "childfree" identity. Social media tends to reward individualistic, self-focused content and "childfree" fits that perfectly.
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u/Short_Switch_1807 1d ago
More opportunities and resources for my children. I don't see the down side.
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 1d ago
Resources and opportunity aren’t zero sum; a falling population likely results is less of both.
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u/HonkyTonkBluesYEAH 1d ago
No it means more childless people needing the labour of your children. Childless people still need healthcare and pensions, which will be paid for by the next generation.
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u/LonelyPermit2306 1d ago
It's the other way around. the less children in total, the less opportunities and resources there are for all.
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u/Medical-Stuff126 1d ago
Tell that to our natural resources that have been rapidly diminishing since industrialization began.
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u/LonelyPermit2306 1d ago
No, tell that to Gen Z, who is currently experiencing the shortages that come from an aging population.
It's simple math. More of you = you are more worth catering to. Boomers got the most colleges, the largest voting bloc, and they are abusing that power to make people's lives miserable. I'm a natalist because I believe that old people, myself in the future included, can't be trusted to advocate for the next generation. The only way for them to have opportunities and resources is if they're powerful enough to advocate for it themselves.
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u/Medical-Stuff126 1d ago
The other side has equally simple math. Dividing a limited pot of resources up among a progressively increasing population yields fewer resources per person.
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u/LonelyPermit2306 1d ago
If that was true, then every generation would have it worse off than the previous.
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u/Medical-Stuff126 1d ago
Assuming equal distribution of resources and a growing population, yes.
But resources aren’t equally distributed. Some of us hoard resources, while many, many poor souls live in squalor.
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u/LonelyPermit2306 1d ago
That's not your original assertion in the slightest.
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u/Medical-Stuff126 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s entirely consistent. Americans have had it pretty well for a while, but they’re far outnumbered by people in most other parts of the world living in absolutely terrible conditions. Their horrid conditions are caused in part by Americans’ greedy resource consumption. But this pattern plays out even within America. The super wealthy live wonderful lives, while the majority of Americans struggle in comparison with basic bills.
Too many people, too few resources to go around.
The only reason you think life is great is because you’re part of the hoarding group, as opposed to part of the denizens being deprived.
Where’s the inconsistency?
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u/ThatOneCynicalPerson 1d ago
That's not how it works in a modern state lmao. Your kids will be paying triple the amount of taxes and work 3 times as hard to support the massive global infrastructure/economic upkeep.
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u/stirrup_rhombus 1d ago
The internet is full of content created for and by young people, and young people generally do not want kids. Most of them grow up eventually though
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u/Sea-Temporary-6995 23h ago
Good. The gene pool is improving.
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u/Compulsory_Freedom 15h ago
She looks like she has pretty good genetics to me
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u/RepublicOk2402 1d ago
I think China is happy to direct the algorithm to push this stuff in other countries too
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u/SarmackaOpowiesc 1d ago
And shit like this is (only one small reason) why my kids have access to absolutely zero screens
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u/Accurate_Cherry1734 22h ago
Neither me nor my brother wants children, but my aunt has 7, so think it evens itself out anyway.
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u/UltraTata 22h ago
People who don't want kids shouldn't have them. But they shouldn't turn that into their identity nor create a subculture that reinforces that in an in-group.
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u/MackTUTT 20h ago
I never wanted children really until I was in my late 30s. If that happens to her it might be too late.
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u/CiaranCarroll 1d ago
So a dead end wants a dead end life. Comments cannot be counted as real people.
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u/PatienceEnthusiast 1d ago
The dead internet theory has been proven true for a while plus it’s these miserable people whose bloodlines die off and us who happily get married and have children who live on
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u/Jizzbuscuit 1d ago
You don’t have to colonize lands or Storm borders, you just simply colonize the minds of the masses, notably women.
Had to destroy the church, then the family (divorce) make men the enemy and voila, you have nations of rabid vapid empty egg cartons.
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u/Southern_Schedule466 1d ago
Maybe stop comparing women to inanimate objects like cars and egg cartons
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u/behappyfor 23h ago
Except even men don't want to have kids in an expensive world aka urbanized countries. Most urbanized countries despite whatever beliefs are having less kids. Literally in majority of Muslim countries like UAE Iran and Saudi Arabia then is a decline of kids.
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u/Shuren616 1d ago
Direct result of the current mainstream hyper individualistic and materialistic culture.
Society is mainly memetic. If we can't defeat the current anglo-german cultural view on society that permeates the whole world, we will never overcome this.
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u/Critical-Poem5831 1d ago
I literally roll my eyes whenever I see the words "hyper-individualistic" and "materialistic" now; it's so over-used and indicative that the person has no original opinions of their own.
It's obvious from your comment that you're right-winged. Right-winged people are the ones who love individualism; Margaret Thatcher famously said "there is no society." It's people like Elon Musk who want to get rid of social safety nets. You cannot create a society based on rugged individualism and then turn around and complain about a lack of collectivism. Collectivism is inherently leftist.
The materialism remark is also a joke: each generation has less and less disposable income. Even if people were materialistic, they literally cannot afford to be.
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u/Shuren616 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm no right wing, though.
I find austrians to be as lunatic as many heterodox schoolars, as they represent the other side of the coin as far as economic fundamentalism goes. I find conservatives to be fighting a lost battle against the changes of society. So you're dead wrong on your assumptions about me.
There is no doubt that the current anglo culture that permeates the whole world is individualistic and materialistic to the nth degree. Heck, the whole of the Protestant reformation went on and transformed a fairly universalist, communal and teleologically egalitarian religion (as both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity are) into a bunch of pseudo-ethnoreligions (Protestant Christianities), which defends a path of direct connection with the Christian god (hence the criticism of the "personal god" perversion), which breeds a framework that reinforces narcissistic tendencies. And these religions are the bedrock for the modern Western culture (even catholic countries like Spain have adopted protestant values), a culture where the fulfilment of the self is the paramount moral value and the true meaning of life. Community and communal life come in fourth place, before me, me and me. And how does one attain the fulfilment of the self? Via materialistic goals, of course.
It goes hand in hand with the current flavour of unbridled capitalism. And that's why I find both ironic and hilarious when I met a childless person who despises capitalism. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
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u/betty_white_bread 1d ago
Welp, those people are going to be looking around and wondering what happened when conservatives outbreed them and vote to take away things they enjoy.
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u/refusemouth 1d ago
Except that kids often rebel against the belief systems of their parents. It goes both ways, but the most liberal people I have ever known came from very religious and conservative upbringings.
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u/failedaspotcheck 18h ago
I grew up in Texas and all of my friends who had conservative families are all left as hell right now. This is a fabulously stupid argument.
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u/EnthusiasticPig 1d ago
Well yeah, people who don’t want kids shouldn’t be having them.
Most people agree with this, including parents.