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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:30
Why Men Don't Want To Have Kids
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Why do men not want to have children?
Twenty-six percent, more than a quarter, of German men say that the ideal number of children is zero.
It's zero.
Birth rates across Europe are far below replenishment levels, far below sustainable levels.
In Germany there's so few children being had in wealthier neighborhoods that the sewage systems have stopped working because there's just not enough volume.
We're not producing enough shit people to keep our sewage systems going.
That's a sentence I'm not sure I was ever going to say in my life.
But there!
Checked it off my bucket list.
In Japan there are these men termed grass eaters or herbivores who are not interested in women, not interested in sex, and certainly not interested in having children.
In Italy, what is the birth rate?
1.2 or 1.1 per couple?
I mean, that's catastrophic.
That is a plague of voluntary infertility.
It's like a soft death of the European species.
So why?
Why don't men want to have kids?
Now, as to whether women want to have kids, I don't know.
I guess a woman could do a podcast on that.
That ain't my bag, literally.
Why don't men want to have children?
Well, there's two areas you need to look at.
When you want to figure out why men don't want to have children, the first area is the past, and the second, yes, you guessed it, you get a car, and you get a car, is the future.
So, for the past, if we want to figure out why men don't want to have children, we have to look at how their parents looked to them when they were knee-high to a grasshopper, when they were wee-bairns, when they were little boys.
How did Daddy, look!
Because that's a template, right?
If Daddy had a rich and enjoyable family life and really had a great time with his wife and loved spending time with his kids and had a relaxed and enjoyable time being a daddy, well, that looks pretty damn appealing, doesn't it?
But if Daddy weren't there, then that's a big hole in the family portrait that a man finds hard to grow into.
And if the man was stressed and harassed and felt like endless series of tiny-feated monsters were constantly preying upon his wallet, his hopes, his future, his soul, his life, his happiness, and his testes, then, well, it may not be a silhouette that he wants to step into.
Next up!
That daddy guillotine!
No, no, no!
You don't actually put your head there.
Well, not that one, anyway.
Was the dad working hard to support the family and then kicked to the curb by some woman who was looking to trade up?
Well, 60-70% of divorces are initiated by women.
The number one reason given for divorce It's dissatisfaction.
Not... Not... Not too happy.
Going through a bit of a lull.
Not, you know... He didn't beat me.
He's not drunk.
He didn't sleep around.
Just... I'm just... I'm not... I'm not quite satisfied at the moment.
I'm... I'm just feeling a little... Restless.
So let's crack a toe with that family unit, shall we, honey?
Uh-huh.
Well...
Amen.
If you want to know why men don't want to be fathers, how did fatherhood look to those men in the seventies and eighties when those little boys were looking up as the absent or stressed or discarded or blown up or Pillaged Daddy.
Could you, could you, son, son, be great, could you, would you mind, grow up, now just stand in this nuclear shadow where Daddy was, because I believe another flash is about to emerge over the horizon.
Oh, to the left, that's right, yeah, son, yeah, little to the right, stand up a little.
Alright, hold it!
Look!
Another set of male ash flying through the stratosphere on its way to orbit the moon.
I've lonely lived in your car while paying alimony and child support from here to eternity because the lady was dissatisfied.
Now, the majority of people who go through a tough time in their marriage, five years later, are very happy that they stayed married.
But, in our instant gratification planet, you get to live on a friend's couch, or maybe even in your Kia for a couple years.
Oh, and your chance of suicide goes up through the roof.
Oh, and no other woman will want you because you're paying alimony and child support from here to paternity.
So no, I think That I will not want to become a father.
Thank you very much.
I mean, for the Japanese kids, it's not that hard to figure out.
Karoshi, death by overwork.
Not the main occupational hazard of your average internet philosopher, but something that did plague Japanese men.
in the economic boom times of the seventies and eighties up until the general economic slowdown that occurred in Japan and continues to occur in Japan.
For the past 20 years or so funny you'd think that more central bank money printing would have solved that problem like it has never throughout history ever.
Give us more money printing and lower interest rates said no future healthy economy ever.
So what was dad's life like?
To our little Japanese boy.
Well, Dad's almost never home, because he's got to work 60, 70 hours a week or 80 hours a week and then he's got to go out singing karaoke with his boss and fall asleep on the subway and get up every Monday morning exhausted with a strong urge to blow his brains out rather than go back to work.
Well, I think not.
So, at the time when marriage and being a father has become Enormously, enormously less appealing.
And highly risky.
Legally, financially, medically.
The stress of divorce and all that.
Brutal.
Losing custody of your kids.
Custody of the women.
90% of the time, 95% of the time, goes to the women.
Goes to the moms, even though the moms statistically abuse children more than dads.
At the same time as marriage and fatherhood has become, oh my god, absolutely a pretty horrific and ever more horrific prospect, not being a dad, not being married, has become enormously more important.
The old deal was, if you want access to the vajayjay, if you want to sail your super tanker into Snug Harbor, if you want to have access to sex, you've got to get married.
Women had a monopoly.
on that, and therefore to get access to it, you have to get married.
Now, I mean, women in their twenties are ridiculously foolishly squandering their time of greater sexual appeal on a succession of idiots, of fools.
And then when they get into their mid-late thirties and they sort of panic and want to settle down and have kids, nobody's that particularly interested.
And then they had to settle with a guy who was more of a loser.
That's still right, Watts says.
More of a loser than the six or seven guys she dated in her twenties.
Which is hard to imagine, but it's true.
Women are born wealthy and lose money.
Men are born poor and gain money.
Right?
I mean, that's... So, women squander their money and end up broke, and men just get more and more attractive as time goes along.
So what's it like for a man if you don't get married?
Wow, it's pretty cool.
I mean, 60 inch TVs, you've got gyms, you get to travel, you've got easy access if you're reasonably attractive and reasonably confident.
You have easy access to sex on demand.
You've got, I mean, a near infinite multiverse of pornography at your fingertips, so to speak, at two pairs of fingertips.
And it's pretty sweet to not be married.
I mean, think of a small town in the 19th century.
What the hell was there to do?
I couldn't travel, no TV, no video games, no movies, no, you know, 3D stereoscopic mind-bending entertainments.
With nothing to do.
Get married.
Have kids.
Yeah, why not?
Oh, plus God says so.
Right, so, I mean, nobody really believes in the God Commandments anymore.
You go forth and multiply.
But we can't, since the snake, we're adders.
And nobody believes that stuff.
Being a single man I mean, I was a single man for many, many years.
I didn't get married till my mid-thirties.
And, oh my God, I mean, it was fantastic.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm happy being married, but I got one in a million, so do not attempt to reproduce this at home.
But being single, Jettin' off to Belize and Guatemala and China and Paris and, uh, oh man, I was in Morocco!
I traveled all over the place!
Could work as hard as I wanted with no interference.
I could keep my own money.
Date as much as I wanted.
I mean, it's a pretty sweet gig.
And for a man, of course, if you wait to get married, your stock only goes up, right?
If you're reasonably ambitious, hard-working.
Your stock only goes up.
So for men, it's great to delay marriage.
Get wealthier, more successful, you have more resources, which women always want, right?
Because we're disabled by pregnancy and breastfeeding and, you know, the endless conveyor belt of kids.
So women are kind of programmed to look for guys with resources.
In the same way that men are programmed to look for women with even features and wide hips and fertility.
So for a man, delaying marriage is great.
For a woman, delaying marriage is terrible.
It's terrible.
She ends up in her late thirties and the only guys who are interested in her are guys Those kids who are grown, who are 50 or older, who don't want, have round two of kids.
Because a guy's their own age, usually looking for younger women, right?
Because you don't want to date someone in their late 30s, because it's going to be like, ah, got to have kids now, now, now!
No, it's all right.
Let's get to know you first.
Do not bring the pregnancy tester on the first date.
So for men, particularly men in their 20s, I mean, it's a buffet of Greco-Roman delights out there.
As opposed to what?
Getting married, having kids, and knowing that the woman can pretty much at any time decide to walk out and take you for everything you've got.
Forever.
Kill your chances of love, of a second family, of fatherhood.
Forget it!
Thanks, but no thanks.
Almost anywhere you shake those dice, they're gonna come up.
Snake eyes.
There goes another man's heart into the volcano lava of statist marriage.
Mmm.
Well, let's say that for some reason, or maybe because This man, as a boy, saw his own father as being one of those rare fathers who had a great time being a dad.
Didn't have to work like crazy, wasn't him.
Away, wasn't absent, wasn't, you know, threatened by divorce, wasn't, you know, had fun.
Had fun, enjoyed it.
Had a relaxed, happy time being a dad.
So he's like, hey, maybe, you know, my dad had fun.
So maybe, uh, Maybe this could be something for me.
Having kids is great if you can do it right.
Marriage is great if you can do it right.
I'm the right person.
But there are just so few great women around, in my opinion.
I say this having dated a lot.
Wide variety of cultures, races, I mean, dated a lot.
And it's really hard to Be a parent and do it right, which is why you stay home for the first couple of years, at least.
So, let's say there's some guy who's like, yeah, my dad's here, it was a great time.
You know, he was a stay-at-home thumb painter and really enjoyed his kids.
Loved my mom.
So I like to do that.
Let's think about how it is.
Well, of course, taxes have gone up enormously.
Economic opportunity has gone down.
Housing prices have gone up.
Food prices gone up.
Inflation continues to escalate.
25% over the last couple years alone in England.
As one example, Peter Schiff has pointed out repeatedly that inflation is far above the official estimates.
A couple of points.
It's 10-15%.
That ain't how high your paycheck's going quickly.
So, man looks ahead and says, well, what have I got to look forward to?
If I want the kind of life my parents had, then pretty much two people got to work.
Now, let's see.
Let me mull this over.
So, if I get married and have kids, then my wife and I both work.
What does that mean?
Well, it means we got to drop the kids off at daycare pretty early on.
Maybe you get six months.
Maybe you get a year.
One person to stay home.
But then, under the US, it's like six weeks.
Crazy.
Dropped the kids off at daycare, how's that gonna look?
Let's see, well...
Gotta kinda drop the kids off by eight, which means you gotta get up at six, six-thirty.
Get yourself ready, get the kids at breakfast, get dressed, brush their teeth, comb their hair.
Get in the car, remember everything.
Don't freak out, don't panic.
Kids are tired, they don't like to be rushed.
Frustrating, like trying to herd cats.
Drop the kids off at daycare, drive to work.
I'm exhausted, I've already been up for three hours almost by the time I get to work.
Three stressful hours.
I'm half at work.
Day of stress already.
Shop at work.
Work all day!
And I pick up my kids.
Got a sweat through.
End of the day, rush out of traffic, get to the daycare on time, get my kids tired, cranky, hungry, get them home.
My wife's not home yet.
I've got to get something to eat, got to make some food.
No time to play with the kids because they've got to eat and they want to play with me.
They're whiny, they're clingy because they haven't seen me all day or their mom.
They've just been around a bunch of minimum wage, transitional, non-affection objects.
So I'm going to make some How do I make some food?
How do I make some food?
Feed them.
I've got to get them to sit and eat.
They're cranky, tired, annoyed.
Don't want to eat.
Don't like what I cook.
Half the kids don't want.
The other half do want.
I'm going to try and feed them.
My wife comes home.
Homework.
She's tired.
She's irritated.
Stuck in traffic.
Hot.
Bothered.
Legs sore from a long drive.
Back sore.
She's like, I guess they need a bath tonight.
Oh, great.
Go up.
Round them up in the bath.
I haven't played with them.
Barely talked to them.
Ran into a bath.
Read him a story.
Try and get him to bed.
Get him to bed.
Nine o'clock, eight-thirty, whatever time.
Finally get him all to bed.
And what have I done?
Played with them.
Chatted with them.
Haven't had relaxed, enjoyable times together.
Haven't watched a movie.
Haven't learned how to do math.
It's just been hurting them.
Hurting them the whole damn time.
When they don't want to be hurted.
Hey, tomorrow, on the plus side, we get to get up and do it all over again.
And on the weekends, we get to run errands.
Buy your groceries, pay your bills, do your banking, all that sort of shit.
I get to do my taxes, and maybe I have work to bring home on the weekend.
And that's my life!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
Bend over and grab your toes, boys!
There's the telephone pole of modern parenting coming to say hi!
And not with any lubrication and with plenty of slivers.
So, listen, this is not... I mean, it doesn't take brain surgery to figure out.
Modern parenting mostly sucks.
Modern statist marriage is a man-trap of truly biblically destructive proportions for your self-esteem, health, finances, future opportunities.
I mean, try being a guy in your 40s.
Try to meet a woman.
Yeah, I'm divorced.
I pay about three quarters of my take-home pay to my ex-wife and the kids.
I'm broke.
I've got no money to start a new family.
Hey!
Would you like to go on a date?
No?
Come back!
Welcome to your next 15 years.
Ugh.
I mean, you might as well be a pimply teenager again.
Oh, and also, when the kids go to school, you get the great fun of paying for after-school programs and this and that and the other.
And then, of course, by the time the kids are in school, they're sort of four or five or six, you've not really spent much time with them other than herding them here and there.
You become like a cattle prod zookeeper just trying to get them from A to B, from the car to the dinner table, from the dinner table to the bathroom, the bath to the bed.
Just this arsehole with a cattle prod saying, how am I up?
Come on, focus.
Do this, do that, do the other.
Come on, we're late.
Oh, my God.
Will you stop putting that, stop playing that down?
Drop your computer.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, my God.
I'll pay good money to be that arsehole for the next five years.
By the time they go to school, I mean, what relationship do they have with their parents?
Parents are just these tall people who order them around and are stressed all the time.
Oh, I want that!
I'll pay, you know, a quarter million dollars per kid to raise them to the age of 18 to get that kind of wonderful goodness, as opposed to Being able to travel, sleep in on weekends, quit my job if I feel like it, enjoy all the media opportunities, the computer games.
Meals out.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, fatherhood looks like a huge smoking crater of future happiness from that standpoint.
Or from any standpoint, really.
Now, I mean, the government, of course, hugely profited from getting women into the workforce, and ambitious women who didn't want to get married profited from driving women into the workforce, because they generally can't compete with men who have wives, so they want to get those wives into the workforce.
So, oh my God.
Now, let's say that you can get a wife who wants to stay home, or maybe your husband stays home, whatever, right?
You get a wife who wants to stay home.
Well, that might work out.
Except, of course, she's got everyone and their dog telling her that she's not working and she's not fulfilled, she's not ambitious, she's betraying feminism, right?
Poring.
Endless Hamlet-ian discontented polysyllabic nonsense into her ears, and then she may decide to leave you.
And if she's a stay-at-home mom, oh my God, talk about a smoking crater of finances and future, widen it and make it as deep as the Mariana Trench, and have goblins and lava pouring out of it if a stay-at-home wife divorces you.
Because, oh my God, I mean, you're just completely toast.
You're like Paul McCartney, crying because that one-legged wonder took him for like $150 million.
Oh my God, that's even more risky in many ways!
Should she become discontented?
Should she become upset?
Should she meet someone she likes more?
Should she want to crank up the feminine hypogamy bicycle up the hill of men with additional resources?
Well, you're toast!
How much of a presence?
How firm can you be?
How manly can you be?
How assertive can you be, knowing that she's standing on a grenade that blows up your next 20 years?
Should she not be happy?
And so you become deferential, you become obsequious, and of course that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
She ain't gonna be happy if you're doting.
That's weakness, right?
Women, not biologically programmed to respond well to weakness.
Because weakness means no resources, which means you can't raise or have kids, won't be protected during the vulnerable times of pregnancy and breastfeeding, which lasts for decades.
At least historically they did.
But governments made a fortune.
This is all just the shit that governments do, right?
I mean, they pursue these social policies that make massive amounts of money in the short run for the government.
Government drives women into the workforce, they get to tax them.
Can't tax a stay-at-home mom, tax a woman in the workforce.
And then you can tax the people who take care of the kid, right?
Daycare workers and all that.
Nannies.
But it's just the next generation, right?
This is where government policies that are the most destructive show up, like national debts.
I mean, it's a generation or two, but by the time they show up, it's freaking disastrous.
It's freaking disastrous.
Now, I mean, I did it right.
Partly by planning, partly by choice, partly by some good fortune.
And certainly has a lot to do with your support of the show.
But I get to be home.
I can work when my daughter goes to bed.
I'm home with her.
That's wonderful.
That's what it is.
That's what it's all about.
That's what it's supposed to be all about.
You don't get married to move away, and you don't have kids to send them away.
What's the point of that?
Ah, it's too late to reverse this stuff.
I mean, it'll take at least one generation of happy dads for the next generation to even consider it, but I can completely understand why young men these days are like, whoa, thank you!
I think I'll pass!
On that joyful man-trap, which is about waist-height and heavily serrated.
I think, I think I will pass.
And thus, of course, passes Western Civilization.
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