Good and bad can coexist in a worldview. Teach your kids that they should love their neighbors but your neighbors are all white and straight (-presenting), etc. They were terrible in aggregate in a lot of ways, but there was solid agreement that Nazis could go fuck themselves. If boomers wish their kids would listen to them more, maybe they should remember their own parents’ stances on fascism.
You’re talking about the generation that was literally in charge when American society was desegregated, when women were first allowed to have bank accounts, and when homosexuality was legalized, but go off.
Probably not actually, the Nazi party was relatively popular in America, they really only entered the war to make some money and essentially takeover the global economy and politics.
I was curious, and it was german american groups like the Gemran America Bund which had ~25,000 members. There were also groups that opposed them and pro nazi leaders were arrested when the US entered the war. So not really broad support by any means.
The USA was already making money from both sides of the war in Europe. That was mostly the reason they didn't enter it until Japan bombed them because Japan didn't like having their fuel supplies cut off by the USA because the USA thought the USA should be the only ones to expand an empire into the Pacific. Following that they wanted support for their retaliation to Japan's retaliation to their retaliation to Japan's expansion into the Pacific so they picked a side in Europe (probably the side who owed them the most money) and entered the war against the Nazis.
so they picked a side in Europe (probably the side who owed them the most money)
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but it seems Japan was allied with Germany and Italy at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Given this is the case, I’m not sure what fight against Japan and alongside Germany could have possibly looked like.
They had a loose alliance from 1936 and signed the tripartite in 1940 but that really amounted to keeping out of each other way and sharing information. They only mutually declared war on the US a week after Japan bombed pearl harbour. The US was still profiting from both sides of the European theatre up until then so whos to say what backroom negotiations were happening between Germany and the US in that week. The Nazis werent really renown for treating people from different ethnic groups as equals so who's to say what their first preference of allies were. We can only rely on our written history which is conveniently written by the winners ..
You'll upset a lot of yanks who ignore how 'Murica sat out most of the war, how Henry Ford and others were huge fans of Hitler, and that they didn't rescue the rest of the world
The wealthy don't care who you hate: the elderly, foreigners, immigrants, muslims, jews, black people, white people, the chinese... They'll be fine as long as you're fighting amongst each other.
Oddly, I'm a 13th gen Mayflower. They liked to keep cranking 'em out for a while I guess. Might also explain the offshoot that became Mormon. We don't associate with them.
I estimated the generations for mine and just added two because we came 40 years after. Depending on the fecundity of my line it might be more than that.
Strangely, I'm a 13th generation Mayflower baby as well (via John Howland), but unfortunately my whole family has long been Mormon (not me since I graduated high school at least). I don't associate with them either.
let's calculate: mayflower in 1618 to today, roughly 2018 is about 400 years. first child was mostly had around age 22 for most of that time, so that makes 400 / 22 ≈ 18 generations if you're descended from a long row of first-borns.
You already took everything from me, Mom. I don't have anything left to take care of you with. Now we'll both starve. I'm the frog, you're the scorpion on my back, and these are the consequences of you stinging me.
Women have multiple ways to avoid pregnancy. Men have multiple ways to avoid pregnancy. People who are educated about their options exercise those options like all the time, which is why so many of us don’t have kids at all. Myself very much included. Thats why birth rates are declining so drastically.
I mean, its kinda a boomer take. But what they are saying is that a lot of people reach a certain point in life where they change their minds and decide to have kids even though they didnt want them or thought they werent ready yet. The person who says "ugh, no, there is no way I would ever have kids" and then 3 years later rolls over in bed with their partner and says "yaknow... what if...?"
Which, really this shouldn't be surprising. As a biological organism, essentially all your drives are oriented around survival and reproduction.
Of course, declining birth rates around the world push back against this theory... But with a wider view, we expect evolution to take its course, and for traits that encourage greater reproduction to be selected for.
It's not biological evolution but social evolution that'll happen. Right now you have immigrants coming from a family with 7 siblings. They move to a Western country. The second generation immigrant will be at the same 1.x reproduction number as the rest of that country. It's the environment, the social arrangement.
It means that the countries supporting of children in the long term will survive and pressure cooker ones with very child unfriendly traditions and policies will slowly fade away.
I have to say, this feels like a take that I'd like to see some evidence for. Because often those immigrants are coming from countries with essentially no social safety net and very regressive social customs. They have 7 kids because the mom was raised in a tight knit religious community where it was made very clear that her worth as a person was dependent on birthing and raising many children, and she carried that belief into adulthood. When these nations gain access to birth control, better education and autonomy for women, and more knowledge of the outside world, birth rates drop.
On the other hand, I have yet to hear of any developed nation successfully reversing declining birth rates via social welfare programs. I'm not saying that a properly executed program couldn't work - I'm just saying I haven't seen one yet.
If anything, based on the evidence I can see, we should expect the exact opposite effect. Welfare states will need to import population from more virile regressive states
The only real counterexample at the moment is Israel. It's maybe not the most promising example for the future but they do have the culture and policies in a modern nation that promotes more children.
I did a quick google search and found this article. It seems like it is a conservative news source, so I am skeptical of the bent - but the facts seem to support my view:
Israeli Jewish parents and particularly mothers deserve recognition. Raising children requires sacrifice, patience, and devotion. These mothers achieve this with just 14 weeks of paid maternity leave per child—less than the OECD average of 19 weeks and far less than many European nations. Israeli mothers return to work earlier yet still have more children.
This growth comes overwhelmingly from those closest to Jewish traditional values. Haredi families lead with an average of over six children. Religious families have nearly four, and traditional Jews exceed the replacement rate with almost three children, while secular Israelis fall short with just two children. Those who preserve tradition are building the future.
The narrative I see here is that Israel has moderate support for families, and the reversal of birth rates is being driven by religious conservatives responding to a call to outcompete Palestinian birth rates. I'm open to other interpretations of the phenomenon from other sources, or your own interpretation of the article - but I feel like this matches up with my prior assumptions.
The driving force in low birth rates is emancipation and secularization of women. Providing more maternity leave, more child-rearing stipends, better health care, etc, simply won't sway women who take a rational look at the process of birthing and raising children - destroying your body to be chained to a thankless responsibility for 18 years - and decide that they would rather have more money and free time instead. I will say my personal opinion on this descision is "that makes a lot of sense to me, good for you, snowboarding does sound a lot more fun than trying to control a child's temper tantrum in a starbucks." Of course, there are people on the margins, who would have a child if their economic conditions were better - but my feeling here is that this is a moving target. What counts as "ready" has less to do with actual physical needs, and more to do with being able to essentially keep up with the Joneses. Ie, the prospective secular mother wrings her hands, worrying that if her child can't get into an Ivy League college then they will be miserable and so what is the point of giving them life in the first place? The religious mother, on the other hand, has absolute clarity (as reinforced weekly at her religious services) that motherhood is the greatest honor and responsibility she will have in her life, and that every life she gives birth to is a fantastic gift, regardless of how miserable it might be, and so gives birth while deeply in debt and living in a trailer park.
Men and women in developed countries have had multiple ways to avoid pregnancy for decades, but it's only recently that birth rates have fallen below replacement in most of those countries. So there's something missing from your story, at least.
Yeah, so this post is POV North American per title, the problem of selfish boomers is one that afaik only developed countries even have, so while you are correct, its entirely irrelevant to the conversation at hand, which is why I didn't say anything about it.
I dunno, for Australia at least it seems pretty dire and continuing to worsen
The total fertility rate required for replacement is considered to be around 2.1 babies per woman to replace herself and her partner in the absence of overseas migration.
Australia's total fertility rate:
was 1.481 babies per woman in 2024, lower than 2023 (1.499) and the rate 10 years ago (1.795 in 2014)
42 Comments
EvilBit@lemmy.world · 58 pts · 19h
Row 2 would kick in the teeth of Row 3 if they saw them voting for fascists like they keep doing.
MissJinx@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 14h
oh yeah fuck women, homosexuals and minorities, those were the good old days full of good honest people
EvilBit@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 12h
Good and bad can coexist in a worldview. Teach your kids that they should love their neighbors but your neighbors are all white and straight (-presenting), etc. They were terrible in aggregate in a lot of ways, but there was solid agreement that Nazis could go fuck themselves. If boomers wish their kids would listen to them more, maybe they should remember their own parents’ stances on fascism.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2h
You’re talking about the generation that was literally in charge when American society was desegregated, when women were first allowed to have bank accounts, and when homosexuality was legalized, but go off.
apple_train@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 18h
Probably not actually, the Nazi party was relatively popular in America, they really only entered the war to make some money and essentially takeover the global economy and politics.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 18h
[Citation needed]
somethingsomethingidk@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 17h
I was curious, and it was german american groups like the Gemran America Bund which had ~25,000 members. There were also groups that opposed them and pro nazi leaders were arrested when the US entered the war. So not really broad support by any means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_in_the_Americas
Also US companies kept making money in nazi germany, even using forced labor in some cases...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 12 pts · 18h
The USA was already making money from both sides of the war in Europe. That was mostly the reason they didn't enter it until Japan bombed them because Japan didn't like having their fuel supplies cut off by the USA because the USA thought the USA should be the only ones to expand an empire into the Pacific. Following that they wanted support for their retaliation to Japan's retaliation to their retaliation to Japan's expansion into the Pacific so they picked a side in Europe (probably the side who owed them the most money) and entered the war against the Nazis.
CriticalThought@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 11h
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but it seems Japan was allied with Germany and Italy at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Given this is the case, I’m not sure what fight against Japan and alongside Germany could have possibly looked like.
Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 10h
They had a loose alliance from 1936 and signed the tripartite in 1940 but that really amounted to keeping out of each other way and sharing information. They only mutually declared war on the US a week after Japan bombed pearl harbour. The US was still profiting from both sides of the European theatre up until then so whos to say what backroom negotiations were happening between Germany and the US in that week. The Nazis werent really renown for treating people from different ethnic groups as equals so who's to say what their first preference of allies were. We can only rely on our written history which is conveniently written by the winners ..
dzsimbo@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 16h
You'd make a good history teacher.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 17h
You'll upset a lot of yanks who ignore how 'Murica sat out most of the war, how Henry Ford and others were huge fans of Hitler, and that they didn't rescue the rest of the world
Trex202@lemmy.world · 49 pts · 16h
It's not older generations fucking younger generations. It's the wealthy people fucking the vulnerable
fisch@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 11h
The wealthy don't care who you hate: the elderly, foreigners, immigrants, muslims, jews, black people, white people, the chinese... They'll be fine as long as you're fighting amongst each other.
EffortlessGrace@piefed.social · 11 pts · 9h
The
<insertGroupCategoryHere>-war is a proxy for the only war that ever mattered: The Class War.SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 10 pts · 12h
Guess who's got all the money! Hint: it's not young people.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 7h
It's also not the old people. Sure, the rich are old people, but that doesn't mean old people are rich.
Formfiller@lemmy.world · 44 pts · 12h
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 19h
As a 13th generation North American I don’t get this meme.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 19h
Mayflower material, eh?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 19h
No, those are 15th generation.
We came from Germany to Philadelphia via Dublin a little after them because the French burned our house down.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 19h
Oddly, I'm a 13th gen Mayflower. They liked to keep cranking 'em out for a while I guess. Might also explain the offshoot that became Mormon. We don't associate with them.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 19h
I estimated the generations for mine and just added two because we came 40 years after. Depending on the fecundity of my line it might be more than that.
negativenull@piefed.world · 2 pts · 16h
Strangely, I'm a 13th generation Mayflower baby as well (via John Howland), but unfortunately my whole family has long been Mormon (not me since I graduated high school at least). I don't associate with them either.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 2 pts · 5h
let's calculate: mayflower in 1618 to today, roughly 2018 is about 400 years. first child was mostly had around age 22 for most of that time, so that makes 400 / 22 ≈ 18 generations if you're descended from a long row of first-borns.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18h
Similar here, though I think I'm only the 12th generation
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 6h
You already took everything from me, Mom. I don't have anything left to take care of you with. Now we'll both starve. I'm the frog, you're the scorpion on my back, and these are the consequences of you stinging me.
apftwb@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 5h
"I'm not worrying about it. I will be dead by then"
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 18h
Kids have a way of happening.
A hundred years from now, there will be a small dip on the chart for this time, that's it.
ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 16h
Women have multiple ways to avoid pregnancy. Men have multiple ways to avoid pregnancy. People who are educated about their options exercise those options like all the time, which is why so many of us don’t have kids at all. Myself very much included. Thats why birth rates are declining so drastically.
Unless you are saying women can’t use birth control or get abortions for some reason..? Or abstain entirely as young people seem to be doing in surprisingly large numbers?
“Kids have a way of happening” is basically saying other people don't or shouldn’t have bodily autonomy… kinda fucked up.
blarghly@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 13h
I mean, its kinda a boomer take. But what they are saying is that a lot of people reach a certain point in life where they change their minds and decide to have kids even though they didnt want them or thought they werent ready yet. The person who says "ugh, no, there is no way I would ever have kids" and then 3 years later rolls over in bed with their partner and says "yaknow... what if...?"
Which, really this shouldn't be surprising. As a biological organism, essentially all your drives are oriented around survival and reproduction.
Of course, declining birth rates around the world push back against this theory... But with a wider view, we expect evolution to take its course, and for traits that encourage greater reproduction to be selected for.
Flower@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 11h
It's not biological evolution but social evolution that'll happen. Right now you have immigrants coming from a family with 7 siblings. They move to a Western country. The second generation immigrant will be at the same 1.x reproduction number as the rest of that country. It's the environment, the social arrangement.
It means that the countries supporting of children in the long term will survive and pressure cooker ones with very child unfriendly traditions and policies will slowly fade away.
blarghly@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 9h
I have to say, this feels like a take that I'd like to see some evidence for. Because often those immigrants are coming from countries with essentially no social safety net and very regressive social customs. They have 7 kids because the mom was raised in a tight knit religious community where it was made very clear that her worth as a person was dependent on birthing and raising many children, and she carried that belief into adulthood. When these nations gain access to birth control, better education and autonomy for women, and more knowledge of the outside world, birth rates drop.
On the other hand, I have yet to hear of any developed nation successfully reversing declining birth rates via social welfare programs. I'm not saying that a properly executed program couldn't work - I'm just saying I haven't seen one yet.
If anything, based on the evidence I can see, we should expect the exact opposite effect. Welfare states will need to import population from more virile regressive states
Flower@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 8h
The only real counterexample at the moment is Israel. It's maybe not the most promising example for the future but they do have the culture and policies in a modern nation that promotes more children.
blarghly@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3h
I did a quick google search and found this article. It seems like it is a conservative news source, so I am skeptical of the bent - but the facts seem to support my view:
The narrative I see here is that Israel has moderate support for families, and the reversal of birth rates is being driven by religious conservatives responding to a call to outcompete Palestinian birth rates. I'm open to other interpretations of the phenomenon from other sources, or your own interpretation of the article - but I feel like this matches up with my prior assumptions.
The driving force in low birth rates is emancipation and secularization of women. Providing more maternity leave, more child-rearing stipends, better health care, etc, simply won't sway women who take a rational look at the process of birthing and raising children - destroying your body to be chained to a thankless responsibility for 18 years - and decide that they would rather have more money and free time instead. I will say my personal opinion on this descision is "that makes a lot of sense to me, good for you, snowboarding does sound a lot more fun than trying to control a child's temper tantrum in a starbucks." Of course, there are people on the margins, who would have a child if their economic conditions were better - but my feeling here is that this is a moving target. What counts as "ready" has less to do with actual physical needs, and more to do with being able to essentially keep up with the Joneses. Ie, the prospective secular mother wrings her hands, worrying that if her child can't get into an Ivy League college then they will be miserable and so what is the point of giving them life in the first place? The religious mother, on the other hand, has absolute clarity (as reinforced weekly at her religious services) that motherhood is the greatest honor and responsibility she will have in her life, and that every life she gives birth to is a fantastic gift, regardless of how miserable it might be, and so gives birth while deeply in debt and living in a trailer park.
FishFace@piefed.social · -1 pts · 9h
Men and women in developed countries have had multiple ways to avoid pregnancy for decades, but it's only recently that birth rates have fallen below replacement in most of those countries. So there's something missing from your story, at least.
ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 7h
Yeah, so this post is POV North American per title, the problem of selfish boomers is one that afaik only developed countries even have, so while you are correct, its entirely irrelevant to the conversation at hand, which is why I didn't say anything about it.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 3h
I don't understand this, sorry
Zarobi@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 17h
I dunno, for Australia at least it seems pretty dire and continuing to worsen
Hawke@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11h
FTFY, as that’s what your numbers show.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 17h
That doesn't make any sense
Trex202@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16h
They're saying that "Life has a way" Babies still get born even though you ended your bloodline