What would happen if we decided not to have any more children?

[TheGreatIndoors]

Hello

What if society just said one day...humanity is fucked. As of xxx date, no-one is allowed to have any more children. We are going to wind down society and just let everyone die off naturally and not be replaced.

Would people still go to work?

Imagine being the last human to turn off the lights.

It sounds like a dystopian novel - has someone already written it?

@Jk987 they tried it, but it was a colossal failure. They're now going down the road of financially incentives for having children!

It’s a really interesting question, OP. I’m of the view that it’s ethically questionable to inflict life on someone who didn’t ask for it, so I’ve wondered about this before. People raising some really interesting questions and thoughts.

Oh dear God. This is taking snowflake to a whole new level.

It’s a rarity in my circle of relatives to have kids. There are more childless, and those that have are near 37/37. Seems already happening and a few primary schools have closed in London.

Have you read the antinatalist board on Reddit? That's their position, it's quite an interesting idea but not one I agree with.

I am quite sympathetic to the antinatalist viewpoint. And I am someone who is perfectly healthy and educated etc (as opposed to someone born into a life of abject pain and misery). But that was the luck of the draw wasn't it! My mother wanted a baby and that was that! She says it was just human instinct rather than a rational decision.

There have been several seriously intelligent scholarly philosophers who have been antinatalists. There's one book in particular I read some years ago but I can't recall the title.

It's an impossible question to answer isn't it, is life (with all its suffering, even for a "lucky" person) better than not existing at all? Or DO humans exist in some dimension before/after being born on earth?

In our family DHs DPs were both only children, DHs 3 sibs never had DC.
Our only DD has 1 cousin on my side. So we're fading out here!

@Blackberriesandcobwebs same here. I'm 41 and my brother is 39. Neither have been married (albeit had LTRs) and neither ever had any intention of having children (my brother has a super-exciting career involving a lot of dangerous travel for months on end).

So if our (very unusual) surname is to live on, we are depending on our cousins. Who have so far produced...nothing but they are a bit younger.

Funny to think I am the first woman in a line dating back millions of years not to become a mother. It ends with me sort of thing.

Can't say I've ever felt any pressure from family/friends/society to have a baby.

Fading out here too!

My dad is one of 6, all with at least one child, but only one of my cousins has had a child and nobody else plans to, including me and my brother. Mum is an only. Off we go!

In most cultures of the world having children is seen as something beautiful to aim for. I suspect if white western countries tried to implement something like this they would be the only ones to die out

Some couples still had more than one child.

If the woman wasn't forced to have an abortion and she managed to give birth the child was either dumped or hidden from the authorities. The latter meant that the child had no entitlement to schooling and other resources from the state.

Oh and it led to not enough women in the population.

That is multifactorial and part of the issue is housing costs plus the type of housing available.

Also outer London boroughs are finding that they have too many children for nursery and primary school places.

So do you believe nobody should have children and humanity should never exist? Or have existed?

It seems like an incredibly extreme view.

It's kind of already happening in slow motion.

The birth rate in the UK has been below 2 since the 1980's (replacement fertility rate is 2.1) and is currently 1.5. Our population is only growing due to increased life expectancy and immigration.

In South Korea the birth rate is 0.72. Women are collectively saying no to child rearing.

A lot of this sounds very familiar! 😮

What a dopey thing to say!

When you have a child you have very little control over how their life turns out.

But you put your desire to have a mini-me ABOVE the possibility that that son or daughter might live many many many years of unhappiness.

It doesn't reflect well on you that you cannot see that.

It’s hardly a new thing, though! Sophocles thought not to be born was best, ditto Schopenhauer, Flaubert, Beckett, lots of early Christian thinkers, the Shaker movement, writers on Buddhism and Taoism, and countless others, including contemporary philosophers. From different points of view, obv — some people think that as you can’t ask a future human fir consent, you are inflicting necessary suffering.

@OpenSecret I never said it was new, just that it was extreme.

Our family haven't kept up with replacement levels. We're fading out.

Yes, I’ve recently realised there a name for it and I probably am a bit antinatalist! It was part of the reason I chose to adopt rather than have kids biologically.

There is a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement founded in 1991!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoluntaryHumannExtinctionMovement

At first people would move into other jobs. Benefits would be supporting less people so potentially afford to support for more people to work part time. Housing would become more available and people would need fewer large homes
By the time the youngest ones are 60 you're into problems though. Lots of fit healthy adults in their 60s but increasingly fewer could do hard core manual labour. You'd need to keep working though as retirement would basically cease to exist.

I think there would be a spike in euthanasia and people dying in their homes and not being buried.
You realise you've got early onset dementia but all the carers are older than you, or cancer but all the docs are older than you and you're 70. I think humanity would end with a clutch of special pills

This is why I like MN! Can learn the most random things.

@Rainallnight same. I've always adopted my pets from rescues instead of getting from a breeder.

If I was good with children and wanted to raise them, I'd imagine myself more likely to foster/adopt than bring brand new ones into the world.

For some of us it's a good thing my family haven't kept up with replacement levels. 😂