Is it worth having kids?
子どもを産むかどうかを検討する人が増えているため、裕福な世界では出生率が低下している。 育てるのはストレスがかかり、お金もかかるかもしれませんが、大きな喜びをもたらしてくれるかもしれません。 さて、すべてのことを考慮して、国際女性デーに子供を持つ価値はあるのでしょうか?(English) Fertility rates are falling across the rich world as more and more people are weighing up whether to have children. Raising them can be stressful and costly, but they might bring you much joy. So, all things considered, is it worth having kids on International Women's Day?
Is it worth having kids?
//Summary -Level-C2//
Having children is a significant decision influenced by emotional and practical factors. At the same time, children can bring joy and have substantial financial and emotional costs. Parenting can be stressful, and the financial implications are significant, especially in countries with expensive childcare and limited parental leave policies. In addition, the "motherhood penalty" sees women's earnings drop significantly after childbirth, often not recovering. This can lead to career sacrifices and increased part-time work. Despite these challenges, many parents find the experience rewarding. More generous parental leave, affordable childcare, and flexible work could make children more accessible.
1)
Do you want to have kids? If so, when and how many? It's a big decision. There may be small bundles of Joy, but they can cost a fortune as people weigh the pros and cons of procreating.
Fewer children are being born; mainly in the rich world, and in the long term, this can mean fewer young workers to support older people, so is it worth having kids?
2)
Jessica and her husband, Andre, live in Houston, Texas, with their two-year-old son Michael. I was overcome with emotion, happiness, and Joy the day he was born. Children make people happy in the short term, but in a long time, not necessarily, according to academics.
Jessica was likely experiencing what's known as a happy month. Mother's happiness levels rise in the Years leading up to giving birth, but that's where they Peak and return within a few years.
3)
We've been studying men and women in couples with and without children, and we see that their happiness, life satisfaction, and mental health levels are pretty similar, that's entirely consistent across many different countries.
Some factors affect people's enjoyment, such as their income and whether they are single parents in countries with more muscular welfare systems also report higher happiness levels. Still, all in all, there isn't much difference between life.
4)
While there might be moments during the day filled with happiness, the more typical experience is that being together with your children can be pretty distressful. It also takes up much of your time and energy.
5)
About 80 per cent of parents in America say parenting is enjoyable, but almost 30 per cent also are met it's stressful all or most of the time. So it won't make you happy, why have them?
For most of history, people have had many children, which made Financial sense because kids could work in the fields and look after their parents in old age, but as societies have grown Richer, there has been a reduction in procreation.
6)
We've seen a change in why people have children and the economic incentives to having children. As more countries offer pensions, older adults rely on their adult children to provide for them in their senior years.
And at the same time, we see more women getting higher levels of Education employed. We also see a change in attitudes and a move towards secularization, so less importance on religion, a rise in feminism,m a surge in women's rights, and childhood extend because we need to educate our children.
7)
Longer, so the costs of raising children go up. Oh, and kids can be costly. The prices start even before birth. Fertility treatment for those who need it is expensive, and in some countries giving birth in a hospital can cost thousands of dollars.
8)
Factor in college tuition, rising to over four hundred thousand dollars for Jessica and Andre in Houston. Those costs are about to increase even more; They're expecting their second child.
The financial implications are big children are expensive. I mean, there is less stuff to buy, you know, just because we already have you do a car seat and all that stuff from Michael, we are saving for Education and all that stuff for our two kids instead of one.
9)
The Strain on Jessica and Andre's budget is not helped by the fact that America is the only wealthy country that doesn't have nationwide statutory paid parental leave; instead, federal policy is just 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
But there are so many restrictions only 56 of the workers are eligible, and many feel they can't afford to sacrifice their salary for this long when Michael was born; I was the primary breadwinner for our family, but I did not get paid maternity.
10)
I extended maternity leave to take; after two months, I returned to work full-time. It was hard leaving Michael after two months just because that's around when kids start to become a little more interactive babies begin to smile, so I almost felt like I was missing out on something by returning to work so soon.
Statutory parental leave in rich countries varies greatly. For example, in Japan, parents are given about a year of paid parental leave, Each of which half is born at about two-thirds of their average salary.
11)
In Finland, parents are given about 14 months of paid leave to share. They're also entitled to take Child Care leave until their child is three.
In Britain, a mother's job is guaranteed for a year, but only six weeks are paid at almost full salary. A further 33 weeks are spent, but at a much lower level, which means Britain has one of Europe's least generous leave policies, making it harder for some Brits to balance their budgets.
12)
Faye lives in the south of England with her husband Matt, and their three-year-old daughter Eloise was the last one trying to do it with me.
I took 12 months of maternity leave, so the previous three months were unpaid, unfortunately, but it was something.
We sat down and worked out what we could achieve financially, with my husband doing extra overtime. But unfortunately, there isn't much pay for maternity leave even before those final three months. So we just had to be financially conscious of what we were spending.
13)
Those challenges don't end when the parent returns to work. When we were looking at our finances, we didn't factor in Nursery costs. When we then looked at child care costs, it was huge, and some months, she was going two days a week and some months, it was more than our mortgage.
The prices are sometimes crippling in six OECD countries couples earning an average wage spend over 20 per cent of their salaries on child care because Honey Britain has the joint's second most expensive child care in the world.
14)
We have thought about having another child; unfortunately, the cost side of things does have a significant impact. I could give up work but I don't want to rely on benefits or income support.
We want to be self-sufficient if that means not having another child because of the financial implications. It isn't enjoyable because we would love to have another one. It's not just in Britain. A survey of young American adults found that of those who said they have or expect to have fewer children than they'd like, 64 cited childcare costs as a reason.
15)
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Having kids can also affect how much mothers earn. For example, most parents experience a loss in take-home pay when they take parental leave for men in heterosexual relationships to share a tiny short-term dip.
16)
But the drop is much more significant for women, and their earnings rarely recover. This is known as the motherhood penalty.
Jolie Brilli is the founder of the British charity Pregnant then screwed. The motherhood penalty is the pay differential between mothers and other employees. It's essentially a procreation pay Gap when you have a baby the way that a parental leave system functions. It encourages women to take long periods out of the workforce.
17)
It doesn't encourage men to do the same in most sexual couples; the father will earn the most money, so when women look to return to work, they look at the cost of child care and compare it to their salary.
And in most cases, it doesn't add up. So they then start to make career sacrifices. They look to return part-time, if at all, or they change jobs to something more suitable so that they can continue to do Lion's Share of the caring and the unpaid labour, and so all of this starts to hack away at their income.
18)
And their career progression in Britain, mothers are three times more likely to work part-time than fathers following the pandemic. The shift to remote working has made it easier for some parents to work more flexibly.
But not all jobs allow this work to be very flexible, but it's a Juggle, and at times just trying to work out my working pattern to be able to make it worthwhile for me actually, work and financially contribute to the house.
19)
Motherhood penalties vary across the world.
One study looks at motherhood penalties in six rich countries.
It finds that Germany, where many women work part-time, had the worst penalty, with a 61% drop in long-run earnings. In contrast, Denmark and Sweden had the most minor but still sizable corrections partly because Scandinavian countries have longer and better-paid paternity leave.
20)
As a result, many more dads take time out of the workplace to care for their children in Sweden.
We've seen that the gender pay gap is much smaller than the share of unpaid labour is far more equal over the last 50 or 60 years we've seen significant changes in gender Dynamics and in countries where we've seen that men have become more equal partners with women in raising kids we see that fertility rates are higher than in similar countries where men aren't contributing as much to child-rearing.
21)
And housework takes Japan, where women spend far more time on household chores and child care than Monday, making it much harder for women to have a career and raise children despite having some of the most generous maternity and paternity leave on the planet, which might explain why Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world in nearly all rich industrialized countries fertility rates have fallen below 2.1 children per woman the speed needed to maintain a stable population.
22)
And on a macroeconomic level, that can cause problems if fertility Falls low enough. There are potentially not enough workers in the Next Generation in the long term, which means a change in the labour force, how many workers are available, and how much money those workers are paying into pension programs into taxes. Most industrialized countries are pretty far from that level. However, there are a few that have seen dramatic reductions in fertility. More open immigration policies could help.
23)
But few countries seem willing to consider them, so falling birth rates can cause economic disruption should governments intervene.
We want to be careful that governments aren't doing coercive things or unduly restricting people's freedom to have the kind of families and the number of children they want.
But there is a role for the government to support families with children, and in many countries, there is undoubtedly a lot more room for investment from the public sector, but it's not just about the economics.
24)
It's also about cultural ideals, the influence of religion, the compatibility of motherhood and careers, and gender Dynamics.
Having children is a big decision governed by Deep Emotions and practicalities.
More generous parental leave, cheaper child care, and flexibility at work might make the decision easier. However, despite Parenthood's challenges, those who choose to have babies rarely regret it.
25)
Being a mom has come with its struggles and redefining your image of yourself, but at the end of the day, life is just Fuller with a new person in your family.
It's the hardest thing that you ever do become apparent, but it's the most rewarding. I've never experienced such extreme levels of joy, happiness, Elation, and pride as I have since I've had children.
Is it worth having kids?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPXGeQ5ADfk
Cabinet Office of Japan - Why is the declining birthrate progressing?
First, I would like to refer to the causes of the declining birthrate, namely, the "increase in un-marriage," "increase in late marriage," and "decline in fertility among married couples." Next, the factors behind these developments are "delay in creating an environment that allows work and child-rearing to be compatible, and an increase in educational attainment," "changes in values regarding marriage and childbirth," "increased sense of burden on child-rearing," and "economy." "Increased social instability, etc."
Have you figured out the "real reason" for the declining birth rate in developed countries? - 2018/Feb.
https://www.natureasia.com/ja-jp/ndigest/now-and-then/contents/1
Since 2005, UK universities have been "voluntarily" introducing programs to rate gender equality. Three years after its introduction, one university increased the percentage of women promoted to professor posts from 28% to 50%. Although the relationship between women's social advancement and the birth rate is not clear, the birth rate in the country has been recovering since around 2003, from 1.63 (2002) to 1.8 (2015)
Source: The World Bank:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN/
Shining Women Scientists
In 2013, Nature asked four female researchers in their 30s, "How has being a woman affected your research?" Although they all felt uneasy about balancing childbirth/childcare and research life, they maintained their willingness to fight back with a solid will to "not give up on research" and an understanding of their workplace. Even women who have achieved outstanding results are anxious, so many women should be even more nervous. It tells us that even today, no sound system is in place to prevent women from giving up childbirth.
What I noticed by interviewing 12 women who decided, "I will not get married."
https://am-our.com/idea/115928/2/