AIBU The global fertility crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced?

[plantsdieinmyhouse]

We’re in a ‘global fertility crisis’.

I’m astounded that global (even UK/European) fertility decline to below the replacement rate of 2.1 (thought to have happened now) isn’t in the forefront of most people’s radar. There are barely even any politicians acknowledging it let alone devising policies to tackle it.

Thee are even people who still think we’re in the 70s/80s/90s and ‘overpopulation’ is still an issue.

Once everyone who’s alone now is dead the human race will be in terminal decline.

Nothing else matters if there’s none of us left!

Even on a personal level a large proportion of women don’t have the number of DCs they expect to.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/43a9bd63-25c9-4941-bc99-fc9f7e42c12a?shareToken=29bf27cb9dafe9af7a006bc25355e411

This is the response that has made the most sense to me. I'm the same age with a 9 year old and I totally agree. What devastates me is how we've left the planet for the younger generation. I hate to the think of the world my daughter and grandkids may have to survive in.

I'm pleased the human population is declining. We already take up far too much of the earth and leave little room for other species.

If I'm being really honest, the best thing that could happen to this planet is mankind dying out.

The UN predicts 9 billion people by 2037 and 10 billion by 2060. Hardly a crisis.

Fair enough - if proponents of human extinction are willing to put their money where their mouth is, particularly before expecting state support, I wont quibble that.

There’s plenty of babies being born, just not here, the population needs to shrink.

I wouldn't kill myself just because I believe humans are a parasite on Earth, because I don't think we are on an individual level (although, some massive twats are 👋 Trump, Musk, Netanyahu,...). But our species as a whole, as many pp have said above, have destroyed so much that I don't believe we are any good for this planet at all.

You and your husband own a four bedroom house. You have two children and a spare room. One of your children gets married and their spouse moves in to your house. Your other child later marries too and their spouse joins your family. There are now six of you in a four bedroom house. You still have the ability to have guests to stay.

A few years later one of your children has twins. Your grandchildren move into the spare room. There are now eight of you in a four bedroom house. All the bedrooms are occupied.

A guest comes to stay. You manage to squeeze them into the sitting room, sleeping on the sofa. It’s inconvenient, but do-able.

Your other child gives birth to your third grandchild. All four bedrooms can each only accommodate a maximum of two people. Someone has to move into the sitting room full time.

You all grumble but accept that there is no other option. You throw out the sofa and move the tv into the kitchen. You all accept that’s just how it is now. Luckily there is still room at the table so you can all sit down to a meal.

One of your grandchildren gets married and their spouse moves into your home. You have to change the sleeping arrangements and your married grandchild and spouse move into the sitting room and the grandchild who was previously there moves into the bedroom with your other grandchild. There is much grumbling from the grandchild who previously had the whole sitting room to themselves, but you tell them they’ll have to put up with sharing now.

Your husband hurts his back and needs to live on the ground floor. He has mobility equipment that fits into the sitting room so you both move in there, giving up your bedroom for your grandchild and their spouse who move out of the sitting room. You cannot fit two wardrobes in the sitting room with your husband’s mobility equipment, so both you and your husband throw out half of your hanging clothes each and accept that that’s just how it is now.

Unfortunately your husband’s mobility equipment means you cannot all fit round the table for dinner together, so you agree to stand at the side to eat so all the couples and children can sit together.

Your married grandchild announces that you will soon be a great-grandmother.

You are both overjoyed and terrified.

You are currently a family of 10 in a four bedroomed house, soon to be a family of 11.

You love your family and you wish them all to have a good life. But where will the great-grandchild sleep? And who has to eat in the hallway because there is no more room in the kitchen, not even standing room?

Your realise that although it is your house you have given up your bedroom, your wardrobe and half of your storage space already. There is no sitting room and you have nowhere to relax and be quiet, to breathe calmly and to be alone. You wonder if this is really what you dreamed of when younger. You feel guilty thinking this, after all, your grandchildren will have it far worse when they all live here with their siblings, cousins and their own great-grandchildren and this four bedroom house has to accommodate a family of 30. Perhaps they will extend the house into the garden. There will be more rooms but no outside space or greenery, no homegrown food and no visiting wildlife.

You wonder if you can tell your family what you have realised. Should you explain what will happen and destroy their dreams? Or should you keep quiet and hope that by then they have worked out how to underpin the foundations so your four-bedroomed house can grow upwards, into a 12 story block of flats, without falling down?

But even so, you know eventually that there will be too many descendants to all fit at your table. Who will be the ones to miss out? You worry, but you cannot change things.

Your house is a microcosm of our world.

We're well below 2.1 and have been for some time. Ask anyone with kids in primary school outside a major city - classes are having to be collapsed, village primaries are really struggling.

But I don't believe it's a crisis for humanity - it's quite specifically a crisis for our generation, who won't have anyone to pay our pensions or staff our care homes. Within two generations we might well have evened back out to a manageable global population.

Side note: I can't believe so many people are still so heavily invested in stopping economic migration. Within 30 years we will desperately need immigrants to try and stabilise our population.

What about the elderly who didn't have children?

Used fewer resources, took less out of the state, filled less bins...can we have more pension and a bit of state healthcare instead?
Perhaps there could be a sliding scale - two kids no pension and you have to take your own teeth out with pliers. One kid half a pension and one free set of dentures on the state, no kids - £12k a year and an option on a hip replacement every three years.

Or perhaps businesses could pay less to shareholders and more in tax and the 1% who own more wealth than 70% of Britons could pay more tax and share it around more fairly.

Humanity is going to be fighting for the little bits of land that aren't flooded and are still inhabitable, due to climate change, in the not so distant future. So having a smaller population would make that much easier.

Yeah I get that. And personally, I don't expect to get much (if anything) in the way of help by the time I reach retirement age and am preparing financially to be entirely self-sufficient (although I acknowledge that lots and lots of people aren't lucky enough to be in the position I am, either through health or earning capacity, and I absolutely acknowledge that there's a need to support the retired population - so yes, in that sense I get that it's selfish of me to be less concerned about the material facts of a declining population. And obviously there are no guarantees I won't end up unable to work in the coming decades and then have to eat my words and hope all the offspring my peers have are contibuting to a social care system, I know that!)

When I say I don't see a need for humanity to continue I mean more in the sense that I don't think we're some uniquely special species who 'deserves' to survive - and as a species we've globally made decisions which are directly impacting our ability to do so. I obviously do care about the things that are impacting birth rates on a personal and political level - I'd like to see governments improve quality of life in ways that would probably result in more people having children, I'd like a world with proper social care systems, proper healthcare, affordable housing and good education available to everyone, and I'd like a world where there's not tons of political uncertainty and where global warming is taken seriously.

It's not clear to me why you think this is such a problem.

It means we're all going to have to adjust to a lower material standard of living, but that's obvious for other reasons anyway. Not least the contribution of rampant overconsumption to climate change.

All the time I was growing up, the biggest bogeyman facing humanity was supposed to be overpopulation. Now it's finally sorting itself out, and people like the OP are in a blind panic about it. Nowt so queer as folk, as they say.

What drugs are you taking @plantsdieinmyhouse ? Human population globally is out of control. The earth will breathe a sigh of relief when ai kills us all.

Even as a childless person myself, if we're going to tie state benefits to the number of kids you have, its having children that should rewarded (and being childless should be penalized).

Although I'm entirely for increasing the tax burden on the rich, the demographic crisis is just as pronounced in countries with fairer distribution of wealth (like the Scandinavian ones). I'm for it, but it doesn't sole the problem.

So, if population decline continues, we're still left with a choice - do the current and next generation of older people make significant sacrifices, or do we prioritize them and cause far greater suffering to the subsequent generations of elderly people?

Is your personal level of comfort really that much more important than that of your kids or grandkids? Is there nothing to be said for sharing the burden?

I feel the same. I try not to think about it too much or I dive into deep despair, but I am horrified at the state of the world (climate and society) my children are growing up in.

A bit off topic, but planet earth will be in a new ice age in around 100,000 years, regardless of whether humans exist or not, and eventually will be overcome by the expansion of the sun.
I do believe humans should exist for as long as they possibly can, we are the only ones who can figure out what is coming, through science, and help ourselves and other species survive for as long as possible.

Although in the end none of it will really matter, and the solar system as we know it will be gone, and there will be no one to know we ever existed, but let's not wish for our extinction sooner than it need be.

It's not out of control at all. Many countries are already in population decline (this is hidden by immigration figures in the UK) and the increase in global population is slowing, expected to peak and start falling within the next 50-60 years.

The hard decision should already have been made.

They should have included investment in business, training, education, facilities, infrastructure so that work can be more efficient and effective. That would mean more output and greater economic growth with less workers.

Taxing business and the richest more...making businesses pay more in tax and less in dividends.

Another answer would be to open up free movement with our nearest neighbours. EU immigrants were generally younger and net contributors to the UK.

A conspiracy theory of mine is that the reason assisted dying/euthanasia has been legalised in so many countries recently is precisely to deal with the lopsided demographics and lower the pension burden.

They want the right kind of babies. The white ones....

(ETA that I do not share their views, obviously).

I was listening to a recent episode of The New Agents podcast where they were stating the amount the state pours into supporting the pensioners compare to supporting the children, and frankly, it's shocking! I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like the budget for the pensioners is 3 times the budget for children and young people, and the budget for pensioners has also increased dramatically in the last 2 decades, while for children it barely moved up. 💔

People are unwilling to adjust to a lower standard of living, though. They want to punt an even-bigger crisis onto the next generation.

Again, even means testing the winter fuel allowance was so unpopular it needed to be rolled back.

People wont make the personal sacrifies need for a gradual adjustment, they'd rather let the whole system collapse (expecting that they wont be around to see it).

@Bridport You're making a lot of assumptions.

Disabled people can and do contribute to society in many ways including working and being net contributors - in fact if there are more resources available for young people then we may create more opportunities for young disabled people too.

However there may be a limit to the resources we give to any one individual - in the same way NICE analyse the cost of a new drug we need to have limits - do we give millions to one and let 100 suffer?

You also assume that everyone who is retired has worked and contributed - maybe they have because there are many ways to contribute and maybe they have not - they may well have actually been someone who has damaged society and cost them a huge amount of money - criminals and unpleasant people also get old and retire.

I did say it was not a pleasant option!

However, I do stand by the point that at the extreme end of the scale. I loved my grandmother. However, for the last 10 years of her life, her quality of life was so poor that, if it was an option I would have sadly, but kindly called time on it, as would have every member of her family. For her sake primarily, but the state’s finances would have also benefited. The grandmother I knew and loved died in 2009, just over ten years before her funeral.

She had dementia for about 15 years. The first few she still had an active life, and good social interactions, and I think (hope) she got joy from it. But by the end? She had no idea who anyone was. She couldn’t read/watch tv/hold any sort of conversation with anyone because she couldn’t hold anything in her mind for more than a moment or two. She became angry, and abusive, with moments of pure fear. Her previous, true, self would have been horrified. She was in a lot of pain from conditions that weren’t life threatening but nonetheless made her final few years a misery. What was she getting out of it? I would be arrested for keeping my dog in that state. She moved in with family so they could look after her but eventually had to move into care. Within a few years the proceeds of her house sale/life savings were gone. The state was paying for her care for years. I don’t think the spending all that money was in her interest or the tax payers. To me, that’s a very clear cut situation.

I appreciate there are very murky grey areas- weighing up the cost/quality of life benefits and balancing the wants of the individual vs the whole population when trying to share limited resources. Obviously if a person is paying privately from their own money then it’s entirely their decision. But in the case where the person’s quality of life is gone, they are in pain and not getting better but not immediately terminal, it doesn’t matter how much the state spends looking after them, the inevitable is coming. I don’t think it’s in the interests of the individual, the state or the younger generations to pour huge amounts of limited resources into dragging that out.

To be fair, humanity can do with fucking off so that Earth can get a recharge .
And then she can give out the invitations for humankind as or if she wishes.