I’m wondering how the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical events are going to shape the outlook and actions of our kids’ lives after college.
The most important thing that happened during my time in college was the fall of the Berlin Wall followed a couple of years later by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War. It was generally a time to feel optimistic about the triumph of liberal democracy and globalization, after growing up as a child in the shadow of the Cold War. Remember “the end of history”?
Feeling positive about the future (along with an improving economy and significant technological advances) made a lot of things easier. I didn’t worry about whether it was a good idea to take risks in my career, get married, buy a house, have children, etc.
But our college kids are seeing a much different world. Not only have they had a very impacted college experience due to Covid, but now the geopolitical environment is looking more problematic too, with talk of a new Cold War. And that’s not to mention worries about environmental disaster.
On the other hand, our own parents lived through wars which impacted many of them personally, and still got married, bought houses and had kids. So maybe it just requires an adjustment to acknowledge that life goes on regardless.
However, one of my kids has said they are not sure they want to have children, at least partly because of all this. And they can’t imagine that they will ever be able to buy a home. Maybe that’s just the usual worries about leaving college, finding a job, meeting new people, etc. But I’m interested to know if your kids view the future more negatively than you think we did 30 years ago?
I was college age in the late 60’s with Vietnam, Watergate, assassinations, protests and Kent State. However my kids’ view of the future seems darker. Climate change is a major factor as are COVID, and housing prices. My kids are considering adoption, and for two of them, owning a house or condo seems out of reach. We’ll see how the actions of Russia and possibly China affect this outlook and the Middle East as well.
My adult D (33) says “no children” - she is very concerned for the earth, human and animal life, and even for the generation just younger than she is. I think it’s too much for her age group to worry about.
My kids love kids but have never mentioned having any of their own. S has been in a committed relationship for over 6 years. They are both in their 30s. Many of their friends are not having kids either.
I think it’s fair to say that the national and geopolitical environment has always impacted young adults. It’s unlikely that kids grew up in the Great Depression, World War 2, 60’s, Vietnam, Watergate, Berlin Wall, Iraq War, etc., etc. without any impact.
I always worry that if those who worry about doing the right thing don’t have kids…only those who don’t give a **** will have kids, and are much less likely to raise kids who will solve the problems we are worrying about.
My D22 has been extra quiet and a bit sullen of late, and I thought it was just the pressure of mock A level exams and the real ones fast approaching. So I asked her what’s up and she said that the future looks so bleak, with worsening impact of climate change, declining biodiversity, geopolitical turmoil, etc. and that she’s not able to do much about it.
I don’t think she’s alone among her peers in carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. (As an aside, she also accused me/my generation of not caring enough because we won’t live long enough to suffer the full consequences!)
D20 also says “no kids” and seems very worried about not being able to have a good job and support herself. I read an article a week or so ago (maybe linked on here, maybe somewhere else but I can’t remember) that talked about fewer 20-somethings having sex or dating/in a relationship. The “Old Fart” in me wonders if it has more to do with how cell phones and technology have impacted interpersonal relationships.
I think it is different these days: they believe the world is ending. The only experience I can come up with that rivals that feeling was the 1960’s fear of nuclear winter, but at least that was avoidable. Young people feel, and probably rightly, that climate changes are not reversible and will only get worse.
I also worry, like @Tigerle, that the demographic that is choosing not to have kids is the demographic that may be most equipped to help solve problems. Adoption may be an answer for that.
My 18 year old is a maybe not on kids and my 21 year old is more like a heck no.
Of our eight 30-something nieces and nephews and one 28 year old two have one kid or are pregnant. Six are married or in long term relationships, but only have dogs or cats.
I was in college in the early '80s and I truly considered not going because I was sure the world was going to end shortly during the time of mutually assured destruction.
My high schooler has been a “no” on kids for years because of environmental reasons - too young for this to be a for-sure permanent decision but she isn’t the only one in her friend group. There will be people accusing Millennials and those younger than Millennials of making the “selfish” choice to put their own material happiness above child-rearing when actually the choice was made to not subject a new group of humans to the disaster that is our planet right now. In fact, in recent news a particular very famous person made that exact accusation, and it made me sad that his particular organization isn’t taking environmental issues as seriously as I’d hoped they would.
We’ve all witnessed how a more interconnected world could, paradoxically, also be more politically and geopolitically divided. The generation that grows up on social media may have real time access to information, while having a harder time discovering the real truth. They may be virtually in touch with larger circles of “friends”, but have fewer real-life friends. With metaverse/virtual reality on the horizon, are the kids going to be further detached from reality?
Echoing some of the other comments, I think many kids have had a negative outlook about the future way before the events in the Ukraine, largely because of the world’s collective inaction to address the long term impacts of climate change (regardless of what you believe the causes to be). In addition to my own 3 kids (17-23), I work with many recent college grads. Among them there is a widespread sentiment against having kids because they don’t want to bring them into a world they believe will experience devastating change within their lifetimes. The other reason is the cost of housing and student debt. They feel that the old “American dream” of owning a house and raising kids is financially unattainable for most of their generation.
I must be a similar age to the OP because I was also in college during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first Gulf War, but I experienced it differently. My friends and I saw the Gulf War as confirmation that the US had learned nothing from the Vietnam era in terms of projecting our military force into other parts of the world non-defensively (we were going to war to restore a monarchy over our entitlement to foreign oil). I remember being worried about being drafted into a war I was against (in the end they didn’t draft but that wasn’t off the table initially). Even then it made us worried about the long term consequences of the US reputation in the world, something that has played out predictably since.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the temporary sputtering off democracy in Russia and many of its former puppet regimes was briefly heartening. But democracy in Russia lasted less than a decade. That’s how little time it took for a former hard line autocratic Soviet KGB agent to take over the country and start dismantling anything except the pretext of democracy for show. And in that decade poor Russia was awash in organized crime, violence and corruption, so it’s not like they had more than a moment to enjoy the idea of freedom. And during the same time our collective angst against geopolitical violence just shifted elsewhere. In my kids entire lifetimes, Democracy has been in decline in the world and in the US. Fear of terrorism quickly replaced fear of Cold War nuclear attack. The first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was in 1993, only 2 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
@Tigerle , you sound like a boss I had when I was in my 20s and unsure about having kids.
She was part of a marginalized community and told me: “No, the world needs the people like you to have kids!”
But I admit to questioning whether my own kids should have kids. The future looks bleak, indeed, and I would understand if they chose the no-kids route.
This was an argument I used with the person who became my husband (and father of our kids) when he recognized (even “back then”) that having kids was potentially an immoral choice. And I’ve also heard it used by friends who have many kids and are teased about belonging to certain religions…(they argued that if those folks have large families and “we” (the nonreligious) do not, we’ll be woefully outnumbered as voters in the next generation). I had never thought about it that way until hearing that retort!
Pew surveyed people younger than 50 in 2018 and 2021 about their plans for having kids.
44% of non-parents didn’t plan to have children in the 2021 survey, up from 37% in 2018.
Of this 44%, 56% simply don’t want to have kids, 4% cited the state of the world, and 2% climate change. I can’t find comparable numbers from the 2018 survey.
