It's the South Korea model and road, people are working hard to chase constantly and quickly moving goal of securing extremely expensive home, basic setup for having the family. But process itself is exhausting and depleting.
It's not prosperity, but consumerism. Consumerism causes demographic decline, because it unhinges people's priorities. Their conception of the purpose of life becomes more materialistic, and children compete with that kind of materialistic, self-indulgent consumption.
In that sense, the Poles have been seduced by consumerism.
First time I hear this explanation of why demographics is in decline in Europe and it kind of makes sense, every so often having this discussion about having children people bring up that they wont be able to enjoy things anymore, like travel, which in itself is a form of consumerism - buying the "experience"
Indeed. People also like status. If consumerism ties status to consumption, then children constrain that consumption and thus constrain status.
It also used to be that having a large family was a source of honor. Today, it makes people uncomfortable. They may even take a condescending view of those with many children. People have formed a strange association between having many children and poverty.
What you find is that the highest fertility in the developed consumerist world tends toward the poor and the rich. It's the middle class that has the fewest children. This makes sense through the lens of consumerism: the consumption of the rich is not constrained by having more children, while the poor can't consume all that much anyway, so having more children doesn't really change their buying power meaningfully where conspicuous consumption is concerned. It is the middle class (especially the upper middle class) that is anxiously keeping up with the Joneses and engaged in aggressive and petty consumerist competition. They have just enough to consume conspicuously, but not enough that they don't need to prioritize their spending. Consumerism simply prioritizes conspicuous consumption to the detriment of fecundity.
This is very simplistic and I would say there is more reason than only consumerism. People still might have kids they just have it less - they are happy to have only one kid because they fill fulfilled and also they cannot afford 2 or 3.
Standard and expectation also increased and even thought I grew up with 2 siblings in 2 bedroom apartment in Poland today nobody would want that - or good luck finding a partner that want that. You would expect to have house or at least 3-4 bedroom apartment to raise 3 kids.
Today also probably you need 2 cars instead of 1 family car because your partner also have to work. You probably also need extra money for babysitter or kinder garden because again your partner is working and probably less likely your parents nearby to help since most young people had to move to big cities to get a job.
The things you list as ostensibly different from consumerism are for the most part consequences and manifestations of consumerism. They are downstream from the consumerist ethos. So these are superficial distinctions.
Inquire into the causes. For example, why do people say they can't afford more children? Materially, we're the wealthiest we've ever been in human history. We are in the best possible position in human history to afford more children. The problem is that we have different priorities. Consumerism shifts our valuations.
Consider also the parabolic distribution of fertility. Who is having the most children and the least in developed consumerist countries? The poor and the rich are having the most. The rich, because within the consumerist calculus, the cost of raising children are minuscule as a fraction of their total wealth, even given their high material standards. The poor, because they can't compete in the consumerist game anyway (social programs that enable the poor to have more children, and perhaps a greater average religiosity, are also contributing factors; the latter shifts valuation).
The people having the fewest number of children are the middle class, because the middle class has just enough money to gain access to the fruits consumerism offers, but not enough to accommodate both the consumerist indulgence of them and large families.
This is where "keeping up with the Joneses" is most prevalent. This is where you find the most careerism; the poor don't have careers, and the rich don't need them. The middle class - perhaps especially the upper middle class - is in the fierce competition for marginal and petty gains of status over their middle class peers, and in a consumerist society, that is tied to spending on things other than what enables a family to have more children (costs whose growth, by the way, is logarithmic, not linear). The upper middle class is also perhaps best equipped to craft elaborate rationalizations for their lack of fecundity.
So you have to look at things systematically and in a systemic way.
I think you are collapsing too many different causes into a single explanation.
Yes, consumerism probably influences expectations and lifestyles. But many of the things I mentioned are not just superficial manifestations of consumerism - they are structural economic and social changes.
When people say they "cannot afford" more children, they usually do not mean literal starvation or inability to keep a child alive. They mean they cannot afford the living standard that modern society effectively requires or expects for a family with multiple children.
I mentioned, in Poland when I was growing up, it was normal for 3 kids to share a small apartment and for grandparents to help raise children. Today, many young adults had to move to larger cities for education and work, far away from their families. That removes a major support system.
Now both parents usually need to work, which creates additional costs: larger housing near jobs, childcare, kindergarten, transportation, often even a second car. These are not just luxury consumerist indulgences but practical requirements of modern urban life.
> Materially, we're the wealthiest we've ever been in human history.
But wealth being higher on average does not mean family formation became easier for the middle class. Housing costs in major cities relative to income are a huge factor, especially for people who are not poor enough to qualify for assistance and not rich enough to comfortably absorb the costs.
It's crazy to think that a 21st century genocide could be as simple as extending massive amounts of credit to your victims for a long enough time to obliterate their social order.
And many stupid decisions have no direct impact on the driver, but instead on those around the car. Like red beltline lights that don’t function as brake lights, instead using red lamps near the road that are easy to be obscured/ignored because the giant red lights above them look like brake lights.
Or dashes that are fully lit at night even if the headlights aren’t on, so the driver doesn’t have an obvious visual indicator that their tail lights aren’t lit.
So many rules I’d enforce were I king of the automakers.
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