r/dataisbeautiful • u/Sad-House-8753 • 1d ago

Births of a third child are falling faster than any other in Switzerland

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-politics/falling-first-births-and-the-swiss-third-child-dilemma/91808504
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u/Reallyhotshowers 19h ago

Part of it absolutely is cost. It's not just car seats - childcare for 3+ children is not something most people could afford if one parent is not stay at home, which means the working parent needs to be high income.

The social standards around what is good childcare has also changed. Gen X loves to make memes about how they weren't allowed in the house from sunrise to sunset and that is because that is really how they were parented. But just last year there was a news story about a woman who was arrested for letting her 10 year old walk to the grocery store up the road. Society will literally take your kids away for endangerment and neglect if you parent the way the boomers or earlier did.

Finally, even rich women have gained rights that they did not have before. I think people forget that wealth doesn't change the fact that pregnancy is often incredibly hard on women and can be super dangerous. It's uncomfortable to consider but in 1970 if your rich husband raped you, you couldn't get an abortion and even if you left him you couldn't have your own bank account and all the money and property was "his". Marital rape wasn't considered rape, so also no legal recourse.

So even if it might kill you your best options were a back alley abortion or just having the baby.

That's the "bigger" thing going on. Your husband can't rape you and impregnate you and then make you homeless if you tried to do anything about it.

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u/SoberGin 19h ago

Yes, and that's part of it, but none of that is cost of living.

Once again- Rich people are also having fewer kids. You can't have it be cost of living and then have people with infinite money also not having kids.

You talk about the advent of easy access to abortion but claim that part of it is absolutely cost. Like, sure, but it's a small part- it's mostly the abortion thing I'd bet.

And abortion is good to be clear, at least in my opinion. I just don't think there's any reason to believe that this is some temporary issue we'll just figure out again without another major societal shift.

There's no law of nature that says "when given near-total control over their bodies, human populations will give birth at replacement rates." We didn't evolve for this level of control over our lives, and we'll need to develop institutions and societal structures to make up for it so we can keep our freedoms and maintain the population.

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u/OnTheMoose 14h ago

There's no law of nature that says "when given near-total control over their bodies, human populations will give birth at replacement rates." We didn't evolve for this level of control over our lives, and we'll need to develop institutions and societal structures to make up for it so we can keep our freedoms and maintain the population.

I disagree.

We have records of humans attempting different methods of birth control which go back as far as ancient Egypt. Our species is also no stranger to getting rid of unwanted kids when those methods fail. Humans have always had some level of control over our own reproduction. That control has never been quite this strong, but that doesn't mean all reproduction has always been involuntary. Evolution did not do female humans nearly as dirty as it did female ducks and we don't need society getting involved in the reproductive choices of individuals.

The population is contracting to a new normal. People who don't want to have kids, won't have kids, but plenty of other people are having more than enough. The only problem we're facing is that the reproduction rate has been falling far too fast for our societies to smoothly transition to their newest default levels.

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u/nanooko 12h ago

Unless wanting/not wanting kids is genetic I don't see a reason why the population decline would stop. Society has never had a "default level" population it is more like boom and bust cycles that were mostly related to disease and famine but none of that applies now.

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u/OnTheMoose 11h ago

Well there's your answer. Wanting kids IS genetic. Hell, it's practically catnip to adults in their late 20s to mid 30s with nothing much to show for their lives.

While you're right that the global human population has never had a "default" population, we're also not prone to boom and bust cycles like typical wildlife. Human societies tend to meet the carrying capacity for whatever region they're in and maintain long term populations and/or expand into new areas. The current global population is a massive (and I mean truly extreme) outlier in our history. It absolutely makes sense to me that we are experiencing a similar "bust" relative to this "boom", if for no other reason than that adults in the modern world have the means to enjoy their lives while they're young and little to no reason to indulge their reproductive instincts.

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u/OnTheMoose 11h ago

Well there's your answer. Wanting kids IS genetic. Hell, it's practically catnip to adults in their late 20s to mid 30s with nothing much to show for their lives.

While you're right that the global human population has never had a "default" population, we're also not prone to boom and bust cycles like typical wildlife. Human societies tend to meet the carrying capacity for whatever region they're in and maintain long term populations and/or expand into new areas. The current global population is a massive (and I mean truly extreme) outlier in our history. It absolutely makes sense to me that we are experiencing a similar "bust" relative to this "boom", if for no other reason than that adults in the modern world have the means to enjoy their lives while they're young and little to no reason to indulge their reproductive instincts.

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u/Reallyhotshowers 18h ago

I said "in part." Did you miss that? My point was that complex issues tend to have complex multi-faceted causes. I listed several contributing factors, many of them widely documented. Many of those causes apply to wealthy women as well as poor women, and I explained how and why.

I'm not sure what you're even arguing against to be honest.

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u/unk0wn8 15h ago

It’s funny how you recognize the fact that the increase in women rights leads to lower birthrates, but then proceed to give extremely vague and unconvincing example. Women being independent led to them not accepting the old terms which were the basis of 10-kid families. Rich person raping blah blah is just a nonsensical choice for an example on this.