Well, I have to admit I am pleasantly surprised so far at the results of the poll and the responses here.
I am in the camp that initially said I didn't want kids and then changed my mind. But that 7 years after getting married and before I got pregnant were really tough. So much pressure was put on me (us) - almost the first question people would ask us is, "When are you having kids?" Like it was a given. I got even more pressure from my extended family to "carry on the family genes" and stuff like that.
And while I do hear Grappler's point about people having tolerance for noisy kids in public - we also have plenty of stories around parents making horrible choices about bringing young children to places where they have expressly been asked not to come (weddings for example) or where they are generally not well tolerated (movies, the theater, high end fine dining restaurants) so that awareness and tolerance needs to go both ways. Time/place is important. Also even in a family friendly atmosphere don't completely ignore your kid while they run like hellions around and get into other people's spaces. We've all seen that too. I think that is what drives the scoffing attitude more than anything.
So this research study looks at the growing numbers of people choosing not to have kids and the reasons why. I thought it was interesting.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/
Main reasons non-parents younger than age 50 don't want children seem to be in order of importance: 1) they just don't want them 2) medical reasons 3) financial reasons 4) do not have a partner 5) their age/partner's age 6) state of the world 7) climate change/environmental reasons 8) partner doesn't want to
These reasons shift a bit for people who are already parents which makes sense because at that point you really understand the physical, mental, and financial toll parenting takes on you. In the US the way our healthcare system is set up and the growing financial burdens placed on families it appears these numbers of people remaining child free by choice will only continue to grow.
I've seen some reactions to this information as extremely alarmist - "the end of civilization as we know it" stuff and personally I can't help but see it as a good thing. The world's resources continue to dwindle and are not finite. I guess it depends on whether or not you want the world to implode faster or slower.
I find those reasonings quite sad.
It's sad how the state of our human livelihood, our lifestyle is not beneficial at all. This gives reason to why some think humans are killing ourselves.
Its a lot to do with culture, and how humans choose to live. A humans lifestyle is why there are people who lived long lives, especially in places where there was no modern medical care. I find it hilarious how some people are baffled to how these people lived long lives. Hell, some cultures didn't even celebrate birthdays, there's no record of their people's age, so when you had others coming in trying to document their age, they just assumed their age and guessed based on their physical features. If this was done to me now, I would be 21 again, because I physically look that old. Guaranteed there were people who were way older than what was recorded.
In other words, it's the lifestyle of modernity which is causing humans to shift perceptions of how they sustain themselves and how they perceive the future to be. Based on those reasons, humans think the future will be bleak, and that's something to consider when discussing the future of humanity. The future of humanity depends on us having children and thriving. If not, things will die out, and even at that, civilizations and cultures will dwindle.
Japan is currently having a population crisis. It's now to the point where people not having children is beginning to effect the cultural society, by there being not enough young people to work to help those elderly who need medical care and other various aspects that society relies upon.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/asia/japan-births-2022-record-low-intl-hnk/index.htmlNo matter what you think, the realty is, in the longer-term, having children does affect how we humans live. It's effect on how we humans run our societies can become detrimental to it's entire function and structure.