Marriage and procreation

had an interesting conversation with Ying and Jasmine about marriage and procreation. it started out because Ying told us how she got reminded about how much older she is now because one of her friends is going to get married and is buying a flat.

i asked the girls whether they feel compelled to get married and then have kids. Jasmine said that it is like the sale mentality, when you feel that "it's now or never, and it's the fear of the never that pushes you more than the attractiveness of the now that draws you."

i think it is particularly difficult for people to have kids now because we have grown up having so many other things that we could otherwise be doing, which we find to be equally meaningful as having kids. and it's not only that we are afraid of how much it might cost to bring up a child, but also because we think that we might be bringing up a child in an environment where the child ends up being completely unhappy. so we keep considering, analysing whether we can help the child cope, whether we can give the child all the opportunities we had. we become paralysed by our own need to think, to calculate and analyse. and the result of this analysis is that we are afraid to bring a child into this world, this society with its systems because we are more sure that it would unhappy regardless of what we are able to do than we are sure it would be happy because of what we can and will do.

so monetary incentives will not be enough. society would have to change so that mindsets change. else birthrates will not rise significantly.