Young Couple's Edition: More Than We Can Stand

I've been reading about how the birth rate in America has been going down for years, reading about it in articles with titles like, “Why Aren't Young Couples Having Children?” (N.B. Not a real article.) What, you're surprised?

Women get married for companionship, and men get married for sex, and in simpler times, young couples had children because, why not? It was all cheap enough. I enjoyed being a parent, and I don't recall it ever being too much of a financial burden. All of the medical expenses were covered for anyone with a job. Everything was cheap, gas, rent, food, the emergency room, clothes. The kids went to free schools that were mostly safe and they received a decent education. University? Free up into the 1980s anyway, so anyone getting married before that would imagine that the kids could go to university without much trouble. And back then, no one really believed that there was going to be a nuclear war, so no one had to worry that the entire world was on the brink of changes that would end human culture as we knew it. Now we live with a population that is increasing exponentially (more people; faster increase; more people; rinse and repeat), changes of all types coming right on top of one another, and everything is going to hell in a bucket. Global climate change; mass extinctions; Monsanto monocultures. Trump is the president, and he's doing his damnedest to ruin everything. England has committed national suicide, and they're not the only ones. We know that our food sources are increasingly threatened on land and in the seas by the climate thing. We also know for God-damned sure that having babies today is just too bloody expensive! The doctor; the hospital; well baby care; orthodontia! God forbid anything is wrong with the baby. There is no math that can fix that problem.

Let's say a nice young couple gets married this year. They have a baby in 2022. Is there anyone on the earth who can predict with any certainty what it will be like for someone graduating from high school in 2040? Would the young couple like to retire at some point in their lives? Can anyone offer any guidance about what that will look like in 2065 or so? Will it be possible to live on less than one or two million dollars per year? Young people are looking at a huge list of unanswerable questions; they have no reliable way to plan for the future. Is it in any way surprising that so many of them are deciding to face this unknown future without the responsibility of caring for children along the way? They'll be lucky if they can rent an apartment big enough for the two of them. I'd say that it's a miracle that people still get married at all.

I already worry plenty about my ability to pay for the rest of my life. I'd feel even more worried about my future if I were their age. So many decades, so little information to plan with! Has there ever been an older generation on the earth, before now, most of whom would agree that we wouldn't want to young again for anything? Oh, maybe you're a geezer who thinks that he would just learn to code and get a job for Facebook. Good plan, bro! Make a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year, wow, I'm impressed. Then you could spend that money on taxes, a place to live, Uber cars, and sushi while you work hunched over a computer for fifty hours a week. And that's the lucky ones! Not for me, thanks. My train will be coming soon, and I'll be getting on with a smile.

We've got a lot on our minds. Old-timers wondering how long they can hold on before it's time to pull their own plugs; youngsters working two part-time jobs, Air B&B renting their bedroom and sleeping on the couch, driving Uber every spare minute in the week, and wondering how long they can hold on. 

It might be more than we can stand.