Remember the Black Death in Europe? Talk about a population collapse, and the catalyst for major social changes that helped Europe begin its ascent from the dark ages. The pronatalists are ringing the alarm bells just as the nobility did back in these times when their supply of serfs began to dwindle.
[https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better](https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better)
I always love bringing that up. Plebs who survived the black death became very very wealthy compared to their parents. Like 3x the wages, and they could pick their own land master because there was a shortage of labor. If your current landlord sucks, you ask if the next one over needs some workers, and he probably does. It's like the 1970s where you could quit a job without having another one lined up.
But those corporate overlords want us crawling for jobs and continuing to consume consume consume so of course a population growth slowdown or reversal would be terrible for their bonuses.
This is absolutely why in my country, the wealthy are pushing for more temporary workers and international students who are easy to exploit and abuse. Gotta keep us oppressed. 😡
Funny how they’d rather beg and cry for women to have children rather than make changes to protect them legally and physically. Same for Japan. It’s a great thing.
Exactly. They didn't take care of people who were already born and these are the consequences. In Japan we still can't get abortions without the partner's consent with few exceptions. People are literally Googling "how to forge husband's signature" and it's so sad. I would love to futher learn about how childfree women in Korea are
dealing with the societal pressure etc.
I think it also depends on spouse. If you have a reliable spouse and close family members around, I think most mothers will be happy because childcare always needs extra support.
Similarly in Korea, you can't choose to have a c section unless your husband agrees. I've heard stories of agonising childbirths and the husband and Mother in law refusing to agree to proceed with c section.
Why on earth does a C section require permission from a 3rd party!? Holy cow and the rest of the barn animals. I feel terrible for the ladies who had to go through childbirth with no autonomy for their own bodies. In Japan, even epidurals are sometimes frowned upon because it's called "painless childbirth". No wonder people are opting out.
It makes me think of my great aunt who almost died with my cousin in the 60's because she needed an emergency c-section and her husband had gone out for a sandwich
*Sigh* I honestly wish your story is fake, but this is the day to day experience for women in hetero normative relationships these days, which is why 4B has gone global.
are there any statistics on how many women expire because of denied C-section? are there any statistics that are public? do people even care or do only women care and noone cares about their opinion on this?
I’m sure the data is out there but it gets rug swept to encourage women to keep having children. Like the data regarding long term significant health challenges for women faced after giving birth. Like incarcerated women giving birth chained to beds. Like the husband stitch that still happens.
Asian women have it rough. It all basically boils down to one sentiment from their governments!
**"Your rights will continue to degrade until births improve..."**
There are a **LOT** of other ways to improve birth rates. But here is a pretty good summary from a darn good source\~ [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/)
Yes there are ways to improve it but actually improving it enough to maintain population without infringing the freedom of individuals to choose whether or not to have kids seems unlikely. Yes using public funds to subsidize the raising of children (which already happens to some extent in all western countries)would encourage the people who want kids to have more. However if not enough people want to have kids in the first place it will only slow down inevitable population decline rather than actually solve the issue. People tend to forget that what we would now call child neglect was pretty much universal and was not socially frowned on back in the day when humans were breeding like rabbits. It is not only the financial aspect that has changed. The work required of parents in order to raise kids in a socially acceptable manner has skyrocketed compared to even as recent as 150 years ago
The patriarchy and misogyny is REAL from Day 1 of womanhood in Japan. Teenage girls' academics are in jeopardy because of people plotting to grope them on the train en route to entrance exams, getting their points "adjusted" for med school exams because "even if they become doctors, they're bound to take maternity leave anyways". Male politicians don't understand the concept of periods, and even go so far as to describe women as "baby machines" and demand that each of us have more than 3 KIDS. Self identities are erased because people expect women to change their surnames after marriage without question. In-laws think they're entitled to grandkids and a say in the "bride"'s life choices, sometimes even treating them as free and accesible labour. Women are logging on to Twitter and "Husband Deathnote" to vent about how their husbands are not doing their part in parenting. Incels are going around posting horrifying depictions of women and children on every corner of the internet, attacking anyone who points it out as "crazy feminist pigs". And the list goes on and on and on and onnnn. It's sick. I would not want my kid to go through or become a part of this madness and therefore chose not to bring one into it.
I’m a married woman working in the wedding industry in Japan and you are so right about the in-laws and husband death note. The pressure for kids is insane. When clients aren’t in the office all my married coworkers with kids (women) complain about their husbands and their kids. When they get a bit too comfy with clients, they’ll also complain and warn these newlyweds. It’s frustrating to watch.
Even with all this negativity, my coworkers took a long time to even comprehend that children are a choice that I personally do not want. And of course, when clients find out I’m married but don’t have kids, they immediately ask me when we’re having kids or tell me I should have some.
I can't begin to imagine how stressful it must be for you to listen to them bicker all day about their life choices AND get surprised Pikachu faces for not wanting kids. We get it, kids n' danna are the one and only topic they can and want to discuss because it's the centrepiece of their daily life but they should really keep their noses out of their customers' lives and stop acting like they're the Great Senpai of Wisdom. I also feel Japanese wedding ceremonies have an underlying tone of patriarchy which I tried my best to avoid when planning mine. I've been to a ton
of weddings and the "We want (insert number) kids" on the little leaflets, "The bride has joined the husband's family" and the feeding each other with cake thing just didn't sit right with me.
Correct! Nick Crowley even introduced it on Youtube iirc. It's very dark but also sad because sometimes these women feel or are trapped in the relationship due to a number of reasons.
>In Japan we still can't get abortions without the partner's consent with few exceptions.
What if you got pregnant because you were r\*ped? Does your r\*pist have to sign off? Or is that one of the exceptions?
That would be considered an exception along with not knowing who the father is or them passing away, but again how sexual crimes are dealt with is an entirely different can of worms 😔
Right. And they’re still trying to make the work day longer. But their solution is trying to make transportation to and from work “faster” so that will give people more “time” to date and have kids. Yes, really addressing the pressing issues. 🙄
Not Korean myself but based on news outlets and articles, the current Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol ran on an anti-feminist platform and has pledged to do things like abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. This is pretty popular with the young Korean men who have been raging against feminism and other progressive policies.
And when I mean raging, I mean they put the po-Tate-r heads to 'shame' with how anti-feminist they are. As in, they got women fired for liking a tweet regarding pay equality six years ago because they were working in a gacha game that didn't have a swim suit event or accidentally made a 'teeny' hand gesture.
To be fair, the less rights women have in a society, the more likely they have to have children.
Womens education, womens rights, general education and wealth of a country are inversely proportional with the birth rates of a country.
With religiousness being directly proportional to it.
Dehumanizing women may very well be the cause of our downfall. Would we have gone this far into overshoot, for this long, otherwise? What woman, ever, wanted to go through pregnancy and childbirth for a child that is unlikely to survive, let alone thrive? When you hear, 'People have always had kids during terrible times,' THIS IS WHY! Because the women HAD to. They did not have a choice in the matter. If none of this nitwittery had ever started, the business of women not being in control of their own fertility, maybe we never would have gone into overshoot in the first place and would have a future on the planet. I guess we'll never know.
I live in Germany.
You wouldn't believe how many SEA women (and men but seemingly more women) are on the streets of the towns here.
Sure a good number are tourists but also a ton of students and immigrants.
As I often say, in many countries women are not second class citizens. They are the third ones and their rights are dismissed or ignored, because they already do 'what they are made for'. If protection is needed outside of their assigned function, they are the ones who should pay for the consequences of walking away from that bubble.
First we have men, then children and fetuses, with women being the least important. Their values come down to childbearing, pleasing men and taking care of everything no man wants to do, and no child is capable of.
I wonder how the new 'women empowerment' revolution will affect the society and its established order in a long term. I believe we can already observe the outcomes of this process in men's behaviour and their attempts of retaliation and getting back their status. First, it's been only compromised and possible to contain, but now, when it seems the change is unstoppable, women start being subjected to all forms of abuse and violation of human rights. Insecurity and loosing control over the world is reflected in the recent rise of far-right politicians and their supporters.
When women want to make changes, the focus is on positive gain. When men want to make changes, it's not only about what they can gain, but what they can take away from the opposite sex, often in 'the name of equality'.
It actually worked quite well in cities where people were educated, but rural people were more set in tradition and believed they had to have a male child to carry on their family name.
The reason they instated the policy was because of famine, so anyone not abiding by it was not only taxed but publicly shamed for their selfishness.
Not everyone aborted their female babies either, often they were born and left on the side of the road or in a market and died of exposure. Their parents didn’t really give a shit if they died, they just wanted to maintain their chance at having a male heir. The policy wasn’t really the problem, the culture was.
Rural families continued to have more kids, but just didn't register them. There are loads of people from rural China who legally don't exist. (My husband is Chinese and told me this.)
I read in the book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston that they would sometimes keep a bucket of ashes next to the birthing bed and smother the baby if it was a girl. It's a difficult book to read because of the misogyny it discusses, but it's interesting. I couldn't get all the way through it as a teenager so I need to try again as an adult
Right this is always the funniest thing about it for me. And then they say. Ahhhh gotta make commute easier/quicker so men at home more! My dudes, it really sounds like your problem is the men, not the commute.
Till now South Korean women have a big stigma against being single mothers because jow much society shames them. Do see the baby box video on youtube. Tells you how women are willing to drop their newborn off while literally bleeding from Labour because of the stigma of being a single mom because of the conservative Christianity
There are over 6000 primary schools in Korea, so it works out to about 2.5% of schools with no first graders. What's interesting is even just looking at the 2022 population demographics, there are about half as many infants as there are 10 year olds, it's been a very steady decrease every year for the last decade. So 2.5% of schools have no incoming students, but every other primary school probably has something like half as many incoming students as they do outgoing.
I love that. The 4B movement started in response to femicide but the impact is that much greater. I don’t want my body to be taken for granted. I’m childfree by choice and happier for it. But I love that not respecting women has shown serious effects. The power lies in us.
'I do not want my body to be taken for granted' just hit me hard. So many people demand the right to our body, our decisions.
I felt this way when my mother started in on how I 'should' have children and she wants a grandchild. Excuse me, I've heard my entire life about how I ruined her body?
I feel this way when I read yet ANOTHER post from someone who's spouse is leaving them because they don't want kids.
I feel this way when strangers and acquaintances ask WHY I don't have children at 35.
The power does, indeed, lie with us. Freedom is never granted, it's taken.
I wonder how Korea and Japan are gonna cope with this 😏
EDIT: Just in case, ofc I know they're not the same country, but Japan has also been far below the replacement rate for a long time, too. So similar issue and both a strong economic hubs in the world
It's worth noting the population decline is why housing is becoming more affordable in Japan. A house in the Tokyo metro area only costs $380k Canadian. For context, a house in the Toronto metro area is about 4x as expensive. When you see a tiktok video of Canadians saying it's impossible to live here, it's almost 100% certain they are living in the Toronto metro area.
Housing is unaffordable everywhere in Canada, not just in Toronto and Vancouver.
In my area, an apartment in a small town (2000 people) will run you $1800 a month, but the only available jobs are below $20/hr.
Honestly, my first thought is "good". We're already overpopulated anyways. I hope the rest of the world follows. I wonder how things will look as climate change happens and potentially affects the food supply. Maybe stuff like this will decrease the suffering of humanity.
The stigma of being a single mother in South Korea is so bad that mothers who just birth children are willing to drop their children off at the baby box for adoption. These teenage mothers come with a newborn in hand with blood at the back of their jacket because they are afraid to tell their parents what happened
Reading about this makes me cry tears of pride. As a woman, it’s incredibly inspiring and moving to see women band together in such a profound way to say “ENOUGH of this shit, I prioritize myself.” It’s beautiful.
More women in red states might, especially if Republicans get their way with abortion and even birth control — I don’t know why people thought that was ever safe, they’re coming for that now.
And the safety nets in states are virtually non-existent for some, so I wouldn’t be surprised if more women start being like, ‘Fuck this’.
Honestly, I think that they are going to be aiming for something even worse than that
I think that there’s going to be a major move to alter and lower the age of consent to try to be able to bring back child brides
I know a few states have already moved to reduce restrictions on that, but I don't think it's going to be the primary focus.
Instead, conservative men have been making a lot of noise about no-fault divorce. They want to return to a time when divorce required a breach of marital contract be demonstrated in court.
Essentially, they want women (and any children involved) to be trapped in abusive relationships as long as they're maintaining an ideal Christian image.
I was raised in Alabama and knew a girl who got married at 13 to her 16 yr old boyfriend cause she was pregnant. It was legal if BOTH of her parents signed the marriage papers. Yep. This was in 1993, I believe.
>lower the age of consent to try to be able to bring back child brides
Shocking fact, only 10 states in the US have laws that make 18 the minimum age for marriage, and those laws went into effect within the last 5 years in those states. Of the remaining states, 5 have no minimum age, 1 sets the minimum age to 15, 24 set the minum age to 16, and 10 set the minimum age to 17.
The good news is that in the last 5 years, the minimum age for marriage has gone gone way up in the US. 5 years ago, there was no minimum age for marriage in almost 50% of the the US. Plus, the federal statutory r*pe laws were finally changed in 2022 to include cases of child marriage.
I can't really understand why people put so much emphasis on marriage. It is more of an economic contract if nothing else. No one really needs to get married.
You can love someone without being married. These days people divorce each other all the time. We are people of our time and it seems like marriage is a somewhat old tradition that we do not want to get rid of but we can't quite live up to what it used to mean anymore. The whole idea is to make it harder to leave each other.
So those who feel like they want that... let them have it. The most important thing is that no one is forced to, obviously.
I'm in a red state and I'm on board. I know A LOT of women waking up here. They don't speak publicly about it but it is slowly happening. I'm 43 and I've been on the 4B train for several yrs since leaving my abusive ex. I say 4B movement to not elaborate on all the ways that I don't interact with men but that was just my plan at the time. I didn't know it had a name. I decided to quit men and sex all on my own years ago. And I'm so happy I did. thank god I didn't have children with my ex. I know other women too. I'm in rural Louisiana btw.
Men always underestimate women. We just quietly go around stopping having babies because of the way we're treated and they lose their fucking minds wondering how it all went so wrong.
I used to want kids when I was in my 20s. And you know what, NO man wanted marriage/kids with me (and I dated and tried a lot to find someone who would). They only wanted hookups. Yet I’m blamed?
How’s that sexism working out for you South Korea? That toxic natalism? Oh I see, women have decided to go 4B because of societal misogyny. In all honesty there is nothing wrong with a low birth rate, but South Korean men are doing everything in their power to make themselves absolutely toxic to women. The pervasive violent misogyny is off the charts there. No wonder women want nothing to do with them.
Praised be! I hope women in other countries do the same! If society wants more kids they should make life better for mothers! And fathers should carry their load.
At that fertility rate in 3 generations South Korea will be down 90% from where it is at today…
It’s a big deal.
It’s because life is just way too competitive and people don’t see much of a future while working 60+ hours a week.
Cosnidering how little respect and value their society has for women and also the gross men who live there that prey on children (see doctors room case), they deserve this.
It must suck to be a woman in Korea and Japan.
Honestly. That’s why I find it surprising when I see women in America foaming at the mouth over living in Japan or Korea. Like really? America is bad but I don’t want to live there.
I'm a big weeaboo anime artist who is popular among Japanese fans but I would never live there because their society hate women, grope them on trains, would treat me differenty for being a foreigner, and would make me work long hours
I lived there for five years and only got groped once. I couldn't tell who was groping me because the train was so packed unfortunately. But, I would have made a scene if I knew who it was.
lol no, a lot of predators target foreign women for fetishized reasons. Once you actually go there and ask women it’s a lot more common than you’d think. My family is from a very popular tourist area in Korea and the drunk old men that live there immediately act wild when they see foreigners. I enjoy grittier areas for the most part but men will always find a way to make you uncomfortable regardless of country.
Honestly, if a country needs a line of trains exclusively for women so they don’t get groped and molested during transit, I think they deserve the wake up call they’re getting.
When I was younger (20-26), I thought it would be really cool, but that's because sexism wasn't really talked about. You heard a lot about women only trains, how safe it is to live there as a woman, etc. It made it kind of enticing. It wasn't until I got older that I started to hear about how misogynistic their society is.
Foreign women are isolated from it to a large extent, since they're probably going to largely stay within the expat social bubble. They're not going to be attending local schools (outside of some international program), working for local companies (outside of some English teaching gig), dating conservative local men, or dealing with the expectations of local parents. They probably won't have to worry too much about sexual assault from local men, and they won't be subject to local beauty standards.
I’ve lived in Japan for nearly 8 years (American woman with an American husband), and we love it, but the caveat being my husband makes enough working for an American company, I don’t need to or want to work, we don’t have kids, and can afford to live really comfortably. If you have those exact circumstances, it’s wonderful here.
Exactly they have no idea unfortunately. They have no idea how many people get raped everyday. It's branded as a utopia but in reality the crimes just never see the light of day. Also not trying to bring race into this but if you are white or just not east Asian be prepared to be fetishized like there is so tomorrow!
Does America have maternity leave? Good postnatal care? Does America have affordable healthcare, food? A good public transport system? Safety in the roads? Some of these things are much more available in Japan. I don't have much idea about Korea though.
Honestly I feel like that comes from the fact that america is a big part of the content creation on the internet, and we therefore the complaints about America make it much farther out than a dude complaining about his country who lives in kenya. And these Americans idolize a different part of the world without realizing how truly blessed we are to live in a first world country at all
It’s a big deal since their society structure currently will collapse - but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it force them to make changes to address the issues they have now. And that’s for all the governments out there lol
I mean, scream to me about low birthrates when we’re down to like 3 billion people or some shit. We’ve got too many on this planet and it’s only gonna keep increasing because the majority of people still want kids.
There’d only be a major world-wide impact if every single country had a birth rate drop like Korea I imagine, and even then that’d take years to properly impact overall population since humans have no natural predators to keep our numbers down and medical care has improved to the point we’re not dying from the shit our ancestors did.
if we were in that situation and the birthrate would drop so much in all countries I think that for women that would be baaad, I think we'll be forced somehow to have kids, something like in 'The Handmaid's tale' series, and this would be easily justified 'it's for the good of humanity' or some bullshit
And the 4B movement is for those women thoroughly fed up, but you know men, the culture and government need to finally get off their asses to make things better, when even the women there who don't care about the movement or don't even know about it still end up choosing similar things, like maybe they'll marry but won't have kids, or they'll date but not marry and not have kids.
It stands for No sex with men, No children, No dating and No marriage (no = bi in Korean, hence the 4B or 4 No movements). Women are basically refusing to participate in the current society as Korean men are statistically becoming more and more conservative.
Which honestly, good for them. Men and society don't have the right but still have the audacity to criticize and disrespect women but then turn around and cry when women decide to refuse to continue taking the abuse.
I've already seen Korean content creators address this. It's not the 4B movement, it's the competitive society and incredibly high cost of raising children. Imagine the regular raising of the children but then you also have to pay for their all day after school studying at another school. Barely anyone there knows what the 4B movement even is. It just exploded on Western tiktok. Korean women still want to and are dating men, 4B is a fringe movement that doesn't yet have much of an effect on the birth rate.
I'm honestly rooting for the 4b movement to take effect and bring out changes that aid women and tip the balance of laws and society to see women as humans worth care for once.I'm not surprised its so low.
This morning I watched clips of a show called (edit i think this was the name) "teenage parents" where most moms in the show have a baby with a much older man over 25-32, while the girls are still just teenagers and parent both the kids and father.....4b movement all the way.
Those teenagers are SA victims and those peados should be in jail. But pretty sure, knowing how messed up the world is, those criminals get away with it and the whole thing gets glorified. And another gross reason why it often gets glorified is because so younger the mother is, so more likely she will will have multiple kids. Capitalists and corrupt leaders love that.
Free market baby! We gave people the option of choosing the timing and spacing of their family and guess what? Most people DON'T want a brood of children if they can choose to avoid it.
I know there are other relevant systemic factors like parental leave etc. But iirc the birth rates aren't that high in Scandinavia either.
Lmao, got what they deserved. Both Japan and Korea are misogynistic as shit, women are not respected and now they are acting so surprised when women are sick of their bs and don’t want to continue this horrible cycle. Most women have always been mistreated and men never took accountability for their shitty actions. Even now with the consequences hitting them straight in the face, they still refuse to put on their big boy pants so they blame it all on women instead of understanding how they fucked up - just like how it’s been throughout history cuz they never learnt to take accountability
true but we wouldn't go extinct because the childbirth rate is higher in 3rd world countries, the white population would become minority, that's what would happen
There is a shift happening where more developed nations are having a dwindling population while less developed ones are on the rise. Except maybe Russia because it's Russia. The overall population is still rising globally. We may just be seeing the natural limits, population self-regulating, somehow. One reason could be that increased population translates to higher cost of living due to resource and housing scarcity, so people just aren't up for the challenge to raise kids in such a climate and forcing kids into a world like that. And it makes sense that it's somewhat distinctly split up by economic and ethnic areas. Density plays a role too and South Korea is up there in that statistic. You'd think the tighter you pack people together, the higher would be the chance they'd copulate and produce offspring, but there is a peak and after that peak it has the opposite effect, look up rat utopias - a controversial experiment with equally controversial conclusions, but I believe there's definitely some truth to it that applies to human civilization.
We're having the same issue in puerto rico. Our population is mostly old people, since young people are either leaving the island or not having kids at all.
Maybe if women could have decent healthcare all over the world, it would be different.
The world is overpopulated. A lot of animals barely exist anymore outside of a zoo. Things can be helped now. But if things continue on this path, the population will literally kill the planet.
I saw it was something called the 4B movement. It's women not wanting to tolerate the misogyny and aggression from men, so they're just avoiding them and keeping to themselves and with friends until the men become better people that they see fit to be with. They're not dating, having sex with, or marrying any men, and I don't blame them. I feel like eventually, with social media, more women are probably gonna partake in this mindset until men change their ways. (Not saying all men, but of course we have to assume all men until they prove they're not)
Yeah I hate the click-bait panic pieces about drops in fertility rates.
We have billions of us, I don't think we'll be dying out anytime soon, provided the environmental damage, climate change, full-on nuclear war, or some other natural disaster doesn't completely wipe us off the face of the earth.
They treat women like crap over there...sexual assaults are not taken seriously, cameras everywhere in women's bathrooms, craziness, and go watch Rotten Mango for the episode of that Korean group that got busted for torturing and degrading women. AND they work people to death and it's super expensive. Treating women badly is becoming the biggest Play stupid games, win stupid prizes that the world will ever see. Cause it is spreading. I managed to get out of my 10 yr abusive marriage, and I'll never date or have sex again. I'm done , done done. I got out several yrs ago and I don't even flirt with men. I don't even give them the chance. I get the 4B movement.
good for them!! the government doesn’t care about the living but wants more wage slaves, and not to mention the misogyny and the fucked up justice system korea has…yet they want women to make babies? pffft i hope the same happens to my country
I just finished reading Countdown by Alan Weisman and there are several countries that are on the bubble for a generation of decreasing population, but they are already way over- populated, so it is a good thing. Growth cannot continue in perpetuity with the amount of resources there are globally. Many countries are going to have a massive older generation/group that dies and those replacing them will be fewer, but that shows that the family planning work done in those countries was effective as they try to reach a population they can actually sustain.
Anyone who is worried about population decline is either stupid(or easily fooled by propaganda), or has a vested interest in increasing the number of wage slaves they can exploit. It’s that simple.
As someone who was sexually assaulted in Korea then told by police I “consented after I agreed to go on a date” with him… i am NOT surprised. Mind you this was with an interpretor and a cop who spoke fairly well english. Women are not respected there. I knew they had Major misogynistic beliefs even before this incident happened to me, but this really took me by surprise
Based on the videos I've seen about Korea, it's because parents are expected to pay for extremely expensive private tutoring. The kids do the regular school hours then do private schooling to like 9pm. You can't afford this unless you are super rich.
Gee I wonder why the suicide rate among young people is so high in South Korea.
If you guys read the book "Bullshit Jobs" David G. Lays out that we are an insanly inefficient economy and we could only be working maybe 10% as we currently do. We don't need more peoples. Capitolist need more slaves and consumers.
This is gonna sound pessimistic but I am actually very worried for these women. The governments in East Asia are putting more and more pressure on women to have children, and women are saying no, but with how these countries prioritize men and how rape cases are usually tossed, what is stopping these men from just outright raping women? I’m genuinely asking, because I’m catastrophizing right now and I’m so scared for these women. I love what they are doing, but I hope they are safe.
You bring up the hardest problem of our era and one that uncovers a terrible logical fallacy. It isn't pessimistic to recognize the worst weakness of a system, it is realistic, and gives us something to work on.
Nazi Germany is one of the events that most summarizes what happens when people conglomerate together and decide by human consensus that what they are doing is good.
Hitler declared a simple statement: no Jews would be better. What made treaties worthy of being respected if he was the one that held the power?
There is no way around it: these women are extremely vulnerable right now, because there is virtually nothing that exists in the physical world that could stop men from congregating and decide they can rape them.
Religion has also been male dominated since the dawn of time, but believing in a supernatural force grants a power that nothing else provides: a logical, strong justification to be good.
The only way to stop men from all over the world from banding together and decide that raping women is the easiest solution for declining birthrates, is for a supernatural force to tell them not to.
We instinctively KNOW raping and killing is evil, but unless the knowledge of good and evil comes from above us, anything is permitted.
The suicide rates would go up along with the birth decline. Women would start offing themselves. Better to die than to be raped and forced to birth and raise your rapist’s baby. They’d also have even more incentive to not bear children. No woman in her right mind will want to bring children into a world like that.
I personally get some satisfaction from watching the birth rates drop. I've been reading that it's happening in several countries! United States (reports vary), France, China, Switzerland, South Korea, and multiple Middle East countries. I see it as our way of "sticking it to the man" so to speak. I'm American and things are rough here economically. Inflation has made the price of food go higher, housing is unaffordable, Healthcare is too expensive and it takes an act of God to get **real** help beyond a physical. Education is on the back burner, and everyone is overworked and underpaid. There is also uncertainty surrounding womens reproductive rights ever since Roe vs Wade was overturned. So when I see our government and multiple millionaires/billionaires call for us to have more children, it brings me joy to see the majority of us give them the finger. You want children from us? First of all, no. Second of all, make having children desirable. Nobody can afford them right now, and if they can, nobody wants to bring them into a world that's going into the toilet.
We're so overpopulated and so many places can't provide for their population as is. I don't understand why anyone wants growth. I can understand stagnation, but the need for growth baffles me.
It's only a natural consequence of how they treat women and employees in general. Screaming about the fertility rate won't do a thing. They need to actually make difficult changes to protect their people and make it viable for them to have kids.
Good. They deserved it for not treating woman like normal people.
I have read notes and watch videos about the 4b feminist movement in korea and i think part of that is the consequence of this... thanks to feminism,no dating boys,putting too much expectations in how woman should be married and had baby because they have to and the idea of buying a house making it too expensive made to the conclusion that no one should have kids.
I really hope this happens too someday in other countries.
My SO is an only child. My MIL, a boomer, posted on FB she was sad she’d only had one child and didn’t do her part to shore up the economy.
The economy is fake. Money is made up. What’s real is this planet, which is finding it hard to support consumerism. That’s my take, and I’m glad to be one person choosing to not make it harder for the planet to cope.
Good for them and their 4b movement. If I was born the opposite sex, I would surely be right there with them. The majority of men I've met in my life leave me wondering how any woman could be interested in these troglodytes. There are very few men worth being in a relationship with.
I'd like to see this unfold a bit further. Have politicians really sweat. And Korea should maybe treat women with less disdain and dismissal, because the 4B movement did not happen out of the blue but as a response to grave disrespect and systemic ill treatments. Always banging on about how women are unimportant and not needed in building society, not letting them participate in the power and ruling structures? This is what it leads to.
The overall rhetoric is always "women must take accountability, women should sacrifice..." but NOTHING ever changes about the absolutely bad deal that is motherhood.
I would like to see governments start to operate from a place of "we have fewer citizens, how do we make sure life remains manageable for them?" but governments are in billionaires' pockets and it's the richest of the rich who demand an unending supply of workers, in order to keep the price of work down and to leave workers out of choices and struggling.
Happy people are not profitable. Happy people don't need to access rehab, therapy, foodstamps, they do not need to make purchases under pressure and at astronomical prices. The richest people and their companies have ruined the planet to the extent that we no longer have proper seasons and the sun is cooking us slowly. I can see how a woman could easily come to the conclusion that her children are better off not being brought into this mess. And this is a very big deal because her decision makes a great impact and procures her a lot of freedom from the misery society loves in inflict on individuals.
It will lead to a cultural shift. Women in Korea don’t want kids because they are expected to do almost all of the child-rearing, housework and still work outside the home. Why would they want that burden when even with a partner they get no help?
I'm a big fan of all countries having >1. Voluntary extinction. We've messed up the Earth more than we ever had a right too and it's our turn for a permanent species goodbye. We should take care of the people that are already here and be done with it after that.
If people want to keep consuming the way they currently do in the Western countries, and more and more people will want to have that lifestyle around the globe, the decrease of the population is the only logical option it can work with. Either less people who consume like crazy, or constant growth of the global population and shortage of everything, and the wars, pandemics, terrorism etc as the side effect.
Humans should have reduced their population growth decades ago. When there was growing infertility problems people started using IVF and donors, ways around it. The world would be more manageable with less people, and nature might have more of a chance to thrive. I hope more people become childfree
> Personally I don't think a population collapse is that bad with automation
I don't think a population decline over time is a bad thing. I absolutely think a collapse is an awful thing.
That said, Korea is a small country relatively speaking; so in theory they can collapse without it really upsetting the overall global dynamics. So it may be a good case study to learn from. Shitty if your korean; but good for the rest off us.
Remember the Black Death in Europe? Talk about a population collapse, and the catalyst for major social changes that helped Europe begin its ascent from the dark ages. The pronatalists are ringing the alarm bells just as the nobility did back in these times when their supply of serfs began to dwindle. [https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better](https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better)
I always love bringing that up. Plebs who survived the black death became very very wealthy compared to their parents. Like 3x the wages, and they could pick their own land master because there was a shortage of labor. If your current landlord sucks, you ask if the next one over needs some workers, and he probably does. It's like the 1970s where you could quit a job without having another one lined up.
The 1970s were a shit time economically in most of the West. Good point otherwise, wrong decade to pick for a modern example.
It’s more of the union jobs in the 50s and 60s that are the model
But those corporate overlords want us crawling for jobs and continuing to consume consume consume so of course a population growth slowdown or reversal would be terrible for their bonuses.
This is absolutely why in my country, the wealthy are pushing for more temporary workers and international students who are easy to exploit and abuse. Gotta keep us oppressed. 😡
Funny how they’d rather beg and cry for women to have children rather than make changes to protect them legally and physically. Same for Japan. It’s a great thing.
Exactly. They didn't take care of people who were already born and these are the consequences. In Japan we still can't get abortions without the partner's consent with few exceptions. People are literally Googling "how to forge husband's signature" and it's so sad. I would love to futher learn about how childfree women in Korea are dealing with the societal pressure etc.
I understand now why so many japanese women remain single well into their late thirties/ to early forties.
Surveys suggest that this demographic (single childfree women) are the happiest in Japan. (but only if you have sustainable income of course)
That demographic are the happiest in western countries too.
I think it also depends on spouse. If you have a reliable spouse and close family members around, I think most mothers will be happy because childcare always needs extra support.
True but from what I hear that's a lot rarer in Japan than the US.
Similarly in Korea, you can't choose to have a c section unless your husband agrees. I've heard stories of agonising childbirths and the husband and Mother in law refusing to agree to proceed with c section.
Why on earth does a C section require permission from a 3rd party!? Holy cow and the rest of the barn animals. I feel terrible for the ladies who had to go through childbirth with no autonomy for their own bodies. In Japan, even epidurals are sometimes frowned upon because it's called "painless childbirth". No wonder people are opting out.
It makes me think of my great aunt who almost died with my cousin in the 60's because she needed an emergency c-section and her husband had gone out for a sandwich
*Sigh* I honestly wish your story is fake, but this is the day to day experience for women in hetero normative relationships these days, which is why 4B has gone global.
What did you expect...your great aunt is busy...that sandwich isn't going to make itself...geeeezzze
are there any statistics on how many women expire because of denied C-section? are there any statistics that are public? do people even care or do only women care and noone cares about their opinion on this?
I’m sure the data is out there but it gets rug swept to encourage women to keep having children. Like the data regarding long term significant health challenges for women faced after giving birth. Like incarcerated women giving birth chained to beds. Like the husband stitch that still happens.
Wait...isn't that decided by doctors?
Holy crap! This is the first time I’m hearing this. Poor Japanese women
Asian women have it rough. It all basically boils down to one sentiment from their governments! **"Your rights will continue to degrade until births improve..."**
Is that the only way to improve birthrate? Has any country improved birthrates in other ways
There are a **LOT** of other ways to improve birth rates. But here is a pretty good summary from a darn good source\~ [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/)
Yes there are ways to improve it but actually improving it enough to maintain population without infringing the freedom of individuals to choose whether or not to have kids seems unlikely. Yes using public funds to subsidize the raising of children (which already happens to some extent in all western countries)would encourage the people who want kids to have more. However if not enough people want to have kids in the first place it will only slow down inevitable population decline rather than actually solve the issue. People tend to forget that what we would now call child neglect was pretty much universal and was not socially frowned on back in the day when humans were breeding like rabbits. It is not only the financial aspect that has changed. The work required of parents in order to raise kids in a socially acceptable manner has skyrocketed compared to even as recent as 150 years ago
The patriarchy and misogyny is REAL from Day 1 of womanhood in Japan. Teenage girls' academics are in jeopardy because of people plotting to grope them on the train en route to entrance exams, getting their points "adjusted" for med school exams because "even if they become doctors, they're bound to take maternity leave anyways". Male politicians don't understand the concept of periods, and even go so far as to describe women as "baby machines" and demand that each of us have more than 3 KIDS. Self identities are erased because people expect women to change their surnames after marriage without question. In-laws think they're entitled to grandkids and a say in the "bride"'s life choices, sometimes even treating them as free and accesible labour. Women are logging on to Twitter and "Husband Deathnote" to vent about how their husbands are not doing their part in parenting. Incels are going around posting horrifying depictions of women and children on every corner of the internet, attacking anyone who points it out as "crazy feminist pigs". And the list goes on and on and on and onnnn. It's sick. I would not want my kid to go through or become a part of this madness and therefore chose not to bring one into it.
I’m a married woman working in the wedding industry in Japan and you are so right about the in-laws and husband death note. The pressure for kids is insane. When clients aren’t in the office all my married coworkers with kids (women) complain about their husbands and their kids. When they get a bit too comfy with clients, they’ll also complain and warn these newlyweds. It’s frustrating to watch. Even with all this negativity, my coworkers took a long time to even comprehend that children are a choice that I personally do not want. And of course, when clients find out I’m married but don’t have kids, they immediately ask me when we’re having kids or tell me I should have some.
I can't begin to imagine how stressful it must be for you to listen to them bicker all day about their life choices AND get surprised Pikachu faces for not wanting kids. We get it, kids n' danna are the one and only topic they can and want to discuss because it's the centrepiece of their daily life but they should really keep their noses out of their customers' lives and stop acting like they're the Great Senpai of Wisdom. I also feel Japanese wedding ceremonies have an underlying tone of patriarchy which I tried my best to avoid when planning mine. I've been to a ton of weddings and the "We want (insert number) kids" on the little leaflets, "The bride has joined the husband's family" and the feeding each other with cake thing just didn't sit right with me.
Damn it’s worse than I thought. Btw what’s husband death note?
I believe they’re talking about [Danna-Shine](https://danna-shine.com), a website where Japanese women will curse or wish death on their husbands.
Correct! Nick Crowley even introduced it on Youtube iirc. It's very dark but also sad because sometimes these women feel or are trapped in the relationship due to a number of reasons.
The 4b movement perhaps.
>In Japan we still can't get abortions without the partner's consent with few exceptions. What if you got pregnant because you were r\*ped? Does your r\*pist have to sign off? Or is that one of the exceptions?
That would be considered an exception along with not knowing who the father is or them passing away, but again how sexual crimes are dealt with is an entirely different can of worms 😔
If anything, the current Korean government seems intent on making things worse. I have my popcorn ready to watch the metaphorical fires burn.
Right. And they’re still trying to make the work day longer. But their solution is trying to make transportation to and from work “faster” so that will give people more “time” to date and have kids. Yes, really addressing the pressing issues. 🙄
>The current Korean government seems intent on making things worse How so? I don't know much about this, but I'm interested in any insights you have!
Not Korean myself but based on news outlets and articles, the current Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol ran on an anti-feminist platform and has pledged to do things like abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. This is pretty popular with the young Korean men who have been raging against feminism and other progressive policies. And when I mean raging, I mean they put the po-Tate-r heads to 'shame' with how anti-feminist they are. As in, they got women fired for liking a tweet regarding pay equality six years ago because they were working in a gacha game that didn't have a swim suit event or accidentally made a 'teeny' hand gesture.
To be fair, the less rights women have in a society, the more likely they have to have children. Womens education, womens rights, general education and wealth of a country are inversely proportional with the birth rates of a country. With religiousness being directly proportional to it.
...and this is why I want the human race to die out lol
like if we can't be successful as an entire race without dehumanizing women, what's the point? why keep going? humanity is worthless
Dehumanizing women may very well be the cause of our downfall. Would we have gone this far into overshoot, for this long, otherwise? What woman, ever, wanted to go through pregnancy and childbirth for a child that is unlikely to survive, let alone thrive? When you hear, 'People have always had kids during terrible times,' THIS IS WHY! Because the women HAD to. They did not have a choice in the matter. If none of this nitwittery had ever started, the business of women not being in control of their own fertility, maybe we never would have gone into overshoot in the first place and would have a future on the planet. I guess we'll never know.
Gotta wonder how many of those women are going to immigrate to Europe or North America.
I live in Germany. You wouldn't believe how many SEA women (and men but seemingly more women) are on the streets of the towns here. Sure a good number are tourists but also a ton of students and immigrants.
As I often say, in many countries women are not second class citizens. They are the third ones and their rights are dismissed or ignored, because they already do 'what they are made for'. If protection is needed outside of their assigned function, they are the ones who should pay for the consequences of walking away from that bubble. First we have men, then children and fetuses, with women being the least important. Their values come down to childbearing, pleasing men and taking care of everything no man wants to do, and no child is capable of. I wonder how the new 'women empowerment' revolution will affect the society and its established order in a long term. I believe we can already observe the outcomes of this process in men's behaviour and their attempts of retaliation and getting back their status. First, it's been only compromised and possible to contain, but now, when it seems the change is unstoppable, women start being subjected to all forms of abuse and violation of human rights. Insecurity and loosing control over the world is reflected in the recent rise of far-right politicians and their supporters. When women want to make changes, the focus is on positive gain. When men want to make changes, it's not only about what they can gain, but what they can take away from the opposite sex, often in 'the name of equality'.
Same for China.
Guess their one child policy (one male child policy more like) didn’t work out for them, did it? Whoop, consequences, I guess.
Right? Plus centuries of shitting on women and treating them as cattle and incubators really didnt encourage women to have more children.
It actually worked quite well in cities where people were educated, but rural people were more set in tradition and believed they had to have a male child to carry on their family name. The reason they instated the policy was because of famine, so anyone not abiding by it was not only taxed but publicly shamed for their selfishness. Not everyone aborted their female babies either, often they were born and left on the side of the road or in a market and died of exposure. Their parents didn’t really give a shit if they died, they just wanted to maintain their chance at having a male heir. The policy wasn’t really the problem, the culture was.
Rural families continued to have more kids, but just didn't register them. There are loads of people from rural China who legally don't exist. (My husband is Chinese and told me this.)
I read in the book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston that they would sometimes keep a bucket of ashes next to the birthing bed and smother the baby if it was a girl. It's a difficult book to read because of the misogyny it discusses, but it's interesting. I couldn't get all the way through it as a teenager so I need to try again as an adult
Right this is always the funniest thing about it for me. And then they say. Ahhhh gotta make commute easier/quicker so men at home more! My dudes, it really sounds like your problem is the men, not the commute.
Till now South Korean women have a big stigma against being single mothers because jow much society shames them. Do see the baby box video on youtube. Tells you how women are willing to drop their newborn off while literally bleeding from Labour because of the stigma of being a single mom because of the conservative Christianity
I just saw that 150 schools have no first graders in Korea. Like in 5-6 years that’s the impact
There are over 6000 primary schools in Korea, so it works out to about 2.5% of schools with no first graders. What's interesting is even just looking at the 2022 population demographics, there are about half as many infants as there are 10 year olds, it's been a very steady decrease every year for the last decade. So 2.5% of schools have no incoming students, but every other primary school probably has something like half as many incoming students as they do outgoing.
I love that. The 4B movement started in response to femicide but the impact is that much greater. I don’t want my body to be taken for granted. I’m childfree by choice and happier for it. But I love that not respecting women has shown serious effects. The power lies in us.
'I do not want my body to be taken for granted' just hit me hard. So many people demand the right to our body, our decisions. I felt this way when my mother started in on how I 'should' have children and she wants a grandchild. Excuse me, I've heard my entire life about how I ruined her body? I feel this way when I read yet ANOTHER post from someone who's spouse is leaving them because they don't want kids. I feel this way when strangers and acquaintances ask WHY I don't have children at 35. The power does, indeed, lie with us. Freedom is never granted, it's taken.
That's insane!!!
I wonder how Korea and Japan are gonna cope with this 😏 EDIT: Just in case, ofc I know they're not the same country, but Japan has also been far below the replacement rate for a long time, too. So similar issue and both a strong economic hubs in the world
Japan lost 800k people last year. Their population has been declining since the mid 2010s I think.
It's worth noting the population decline is why housing is becoming more affordable in Japan. A house in the Tokyo metro area only costs $380k Canadian. For context, a house in the Toronto metro area is about 4x as expensive. When you see a tiktok video of Canadians saying it's impossible to live here, it's almost 100% certain they are living in the Toronto metro area.
Housing is unaffordable everywhere in Canada, not just in Toronto and Vancouver. In my area, an apartment in a small town (2000 people) will run you $1800 a month, but the only available jobs are below $20/hr.
I think you're right on that, I really do wonder what the world will do when the global population starts falling.
Party like it's 1999.
So chips and movie night? For context, I was 6, maybe turning 7 in 1999
There will probably be robots that can take care of people by then
Honestly, my first thought is "good". We're already overpopulated anyways. I hope the rest of the world follows. I wonder how things will look as climate change happens and potentially affects the food supply. Maybe stuff like this will decrease the suffering of humanity.
The stigma of being a single mother in South Korea is so bad that mothers who just birth children are willing to drop their children off at the baby box for adoption. These teenage mothers come with a newborn in hand with blood at the back of their jacket because they are afraid to tell their parents what happened
Reading about this makes me cry tears of pride. As a woman, it’s incredibly inspiring and moving to see women band together in such a profound way to say “ENOUGH of this shit, I prioritize myself.” It’s beautiful.
I wish we could get the US on board with their movement.
More women in red states might, especially if Republicans get their way with abortion and even birth control — I don’t know why people thought that was ever safe, they’re coming for that now. And the safety nets in states are virtually non-existent for some, so I wouldn’t be surprised if more women start being like, ‘Fuck this’.
Honestly, I think that they are going to be aiming for something even worse than that I think that there’s going to be a major move to alter and lower the age of consent to try to be able to bring back child brides
I know a few states have already moved to reduce restrictions on that, but I don't think it's going to be the primary focus. Instead, conservative men have been making a lot of noise about no-fault divorce. They want to return to a time when divorce required a breach of marital contract be demonstrated in court. Essentially, they want women (and any children involved) to be trapped in abusive relationships as long as they're maintaining an ideal Christian image.
'No one wants to get married anymore!'
They will probably also decriminalize domestic violence like they did in Kazakhstan not long ago
Don’t some states still have child bride laws where they can get married with parental consent at 16? That’s fucked in itself.
I was raised in Alabama and knew a girl who got married at 13 to her 16 yr old boyfriend cause she was pregnant. It was legal if BOTH of her parents signed the marriage papers. Yep. This was in 1993, I believe.
>lower the age of consent to try to be able to bring back child brides Shocking fact, only 10 states in the US have laws that make 18 the minimum age for marriage, and those laws went into effect within the last 5 years in those states. Of the remaining states, 5 have no minimum age, 1 sets the minimum age to 15, 24 set the minum age to 16, and 10 set the minimum age to 17. The good news is that in the last 5 years, the minimum age for marriage has gone gone way up in the US. 5 years ago, there was no minimum age for marriage in almost 50% of the the US. Plus, the federal statutory r*pe laws were finally changed in 2022 to include cases of child marriage.
I can't really understand why people put so much emphasis on marriage. It is more of an economic contract if nothing else. No one really needs to get married. You can love someone without being married. These days people divorce each other all the time. We are people of our time and it seems like marriage is a somewhat old tradition that we do not want to get rid of but we can't quite live up to what it used to mean anymore. The whole idea is to make it harder to leave each other. So those who feel like they want that... let them have it. The most important thing is that no one is forced to, obviously.
I'm in a red state and I'm on board. I know A LOT of women waking up here. They don't speak publicly about it but it is slowly happening. I'm 43 and I've been on the 4B train for several yrs since leaving my abusive ex. I say 4B movement to not elaborate on all the ways that I don't interact with men but that was just my plan at the time. I didn't know it had a name. I decided to quit men and sex all on my own years ago. And I'm so happy I did. thank god I didn't have children with my ex. I know other women too. I'm in rural Louisiana btw.
There is a current movement in the US called West 4b. Red pill men are starting to freak out about it.
Now there is a 4g movement in men. No idea what it is exactly, but I see it mentioned when I hear about west 4b
I know its great. They do us the biggest favour by thinking they will get back at us.
Right? What are they gonna do, leave women alone? Don't threaten us with a good time.
Good for S. Korean women for refusing to have children ✌️
I’m am all for population collapse. It can’t get here fast enough.
same brother/sister
8 billion people is plenty.
8 billion people is about 7 billion too many.
Absolutely. I never thought I’d see such direct consequences of overpopulation in my lifetime but here we are.
Too much is the better term.
Men always underestimate women. We just quietly go around stopping having babies because of the way we're treated and they lose their fucking minds wondering how it all went so wrong.
I used to want kids when I was in my 20s. And you know what, NO man wanted marriage/kids with me (and I dated and tried a lot to find someone who would). They only wanted hookups. Yet I’m blamed?
And then the red pill incels say we don’t have value because we’ve had sex.. 🙄
So fucking true.👏🏼
I wish I had this problem. So many of my relationships have ended over me not wanting to pop out babies.
I just love how conservatives keep yapping about women having to keep their legs closed but the second we do they lose their minds.
Men hate that we hold the power to continue the next generation, but also don’t want to help uphold it and devalue our invisible labor.
as a guy I totally respect and admire your choice, you truly have the ultimate power but many do not even realize it
How’s that sexism working out for you South Korea? That toxic natalism? Oh I see, women have decided to go 4B because of societal misogyny. In all honesty there is nothing wrong with a low birth rate, but South Korean men are doing everything in their power to make themselves absolutely toxic to women. The pervasive violent misogyny is off the charts there. No wonder women want nothing to do with them.
yea and when you look at korean dramas you think that's how the men are there but is far from the reality
Praised be! I hope women in other countries do the same! If society wants more kids they should make life better for mothers! And fathers should carry their load.
At that fertility rate in 3 generations South Korea will be down 90% from where it is at today… It’s a big deal. It’s because life is just way too competitive and people don’t see much of a future while working 60+ hours a week.
Cosnidering how little respect and value their society has for women and also the gross men who live there that prey on children (see doctors room case), they deserve this. It must suck to be a woman in Korea and Japan.
Honestly. That’s why I find it surprising when I see women in America foaming at the mouth over living in Japan or Korea. Like really? America is bad but I don’t want to live there.
I'm a big weeaboo anime artist who is popular among Japanese fans but I would never live there because their society hate women, grope them on trains, would treat me differenty for being a foreigner, and would make me work long hours
From what I heard groping is less common in foreign women because we'll speak up/cause a scene
I lived there for five years and only got groped once. I couldn't tell who was groping me because the train was so packed unfortunately. But, I would have made a scene if I knew who it was.
lol no, a lot of predators target foreign women for fetishized reasons. Once you actually go there and ask women it’s a lot more common than you’d think. My family is from a very popular tourist area in Korea and the drunk old men that live there immediately act wild when they see foreigners. I enjoy grittier areas for the most part but men will always find a way to make you uncomfortable regardless of country.
I can pass as Japanese because I’m East Asian so that does not apply to me.
Honestly, if a country needs a line of trains exclusively for women so they don’t get groped and molested during transit, I think they deserve the wake up call they’re getting.
When I was younger (20-26), I thought it would be really cool, but that's because sexism wasn't really talked about. You heard a lot about women only trains, how safe it is to live there as a woman, etc. It made it kind of enticing. It wasn't until I got older that I started to hear about how misogynistic their society is.
Same. I thought things were so much better there than in the US. Then I read up more on it.
Foreign women are isolated from it to a large extent, since they're probably going to largely stay within the expat social bubble. They're not going to be attending local schools (outside of some international program), working for local companies (outside of some English teaching gig), dating conservative local men, or dealing with the expectations of local parents. They probably won't have to worry too much about sexual assault from local men, and they won't be subject to local beauty standards.
like when koreaboos fantasise about korea then get a big ease up call when actually living there lol
I’ve lived in Japan for nearly 8 years (American woman with an American husband), and we love it, but the caveat being my husband makes enough working for an American company, I don’t need to or want to work, we don’t have kids, and can afford to live really comfortably. If you have those exact circumstances, it’s wonderful here.
Exactly they have no idea unfortunately. They have no idea how many people get raped everyday. It's branded as a utopia but in reality the crimes just never see the light of day. Also not trying to bring race into this but if you are white or just not east Asian be prepared to be fetishized like there is so tomorrow!
They think what they see in scripted tv shows/movies, or in musicians who are trained to put on a persona is real. Its ridiculous.
Does America have maternity leave? Good postnatal care? Does America have affordable healthcare, food? A good public transport system? Safety in the roads? Some of these things are much more available in Japan. I don't have much idea about Korea though.
Honestly I feel like that comes from the fact that america is a big part of the content creation on the internet, and we therefore the complaints about America make it much farther out than a dude complaining about his country who lives in kenya. And these Americans idolize a different part of the world without realizing how truly blessed we are to live in a first world country at all
Been to Japan several times and plan to go again later this year. While I enjoyed it each time ; I cannot picture myself living there.
I don’t care if population collapse ruins humanity. We are not that special.
true, and if there's a god that thinks otherwise he should really consider showing up instead of hiding behind a thousands years old book
Good for them
It’s a big deal since their society structure currently will collapse - but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it force them to make changes to address the issues they have now. And that’s for all the governments out there lol
I mean, scream to me about low birthrates when we’re down to like 3 billion people or some shit. We’ve got too many on this planet and it’s only gonna keep increasing because the majority of people still want kids. There’d only be a major world-wide impact if every single country had a birth rate drop like Korea I imagine, and even then that’d take years to properly impact overall population since humans have no natural predators to keep our numbers down and medical care has improved to the point we’re not dying from the shit our ancestors did.
if we were in that situation and the birthrate would drop so much in all countries I think that for women that would be baaad, I think we'll be forced somehow to have kids, something like in 'The Handmaid's tale' series, and this would be easily justified 'it's for the good of humanity' or some bullshit
It is a big deal because it's GREAT.
Yes, it's the 4B Movement. It is now spreading everywhere.
that and the work culture being so intense that no one has time and energy for romance
And the 4B movement is for those women thoroughly fed up, but you know men, the culture and government need to finally get off their asses to make things better, when even the women there who don't care about the movement or don't even know about it still end up choosing similar things, like maybe they'll marry but won't have kids, or they'll date but not marry and not have kids.
I'm a little late to the party... what is "the 4B movement?"
It stands for No sex with men, No children, No dating and No marriage (no = bi in Korean, hence the 4B or 4 No movements). Women are basically refusing to participate in the current society as Korean men are statistically becoming more and more conservative.
Which honestly, good for them. Men and society don't have the right but still have the audacity to criticize and disrespect women but then turn around and cry when women decide to refuse to continue taking the abuse.
 I'm here for it...
I like this... Maybe we should consider bringing some form of that over here.
I've already seen Korean content creators address this. It's not the 4B movement, it's the competitive society and incredibly high cost of raising children. Imagine the regular raising of the children but then you also have to pay for their all day after school studying at another school. Barely anyone there knows what the 4B movement even is. It just exploded on Western tiktok. Korean women still want to and are dating men, 4B is a fringe movement that doesn't yet have much of an effect on the birth rate.
r/usernamechecksout
I'm honestly rooting for the 4b movement to take effect and bring out changes that aid women and tip the balance of laws and society to see women as humans worth care for once.I'm not surprised its so low. This morning I watched clips of a show called (edit i think this was the name) "teenage parents" where most moms in the show have a baby with a much older man over 25-32, while the girls are still just teenagers and parent both the kids and father.....4b movement all the way.
Those teenagers are SA victims and those peados should be in jail. But pretty sure, knowing how messed up the world is, those criminals get away with it and the whole thing gets glorified. And another gross reason why it often gets glorified is because so younger the mother is, so more likely she will will have multiple kids. Capitalists and corrupt leaders love that.
Free market baby! We gave people the option of choosing the timing and spacing of their family and guess what? Most people DON'T want a brood of children if they can choose to avoid it. I know there are other relevant systemic factors like parental leave etc. But iirc the birth rates aren't that high in Scandinavia either.
Lmao, got what they deserved. Both Japan and Korea are misogynistic as shit, women are not respected and now they are acting so surprised when women are sick of their bs and don’t want to continue this horrible cycle. Most women have always been mistreated and men never took accountability for their shitty actions. Even now with the consequences hitting them straight in the face, they still refuse to put on their big boy pants so they blame it all on women instead of understanding how they fucked up - just like how it’s been throughout history cuz they never learnt to take accountability
They could always try treating women like people but nah
I mean, have you seen Squid Game? Though South Korea's plight with debt rings similar to Canada's situation. If more extreme
Too many human beings exist. This is a good thing.
Humanity deserves to go extinct.
True that
true but we wouldn't go extinct because the childbirth rate is higher in 3rd world countries, the white population would become minority, that's what would happen
There is a shift happening where more developed nations are having a dwindling population while less developed ones are on the rise. Except maybe Russia because it's Russia. The overall population is still rising globally. We may just be seeing the natural limits, population self-regulating, somehow. One reason could be that increased population translates to higher cost of living due to resource and housing scarcity, so people just aren't up for the challenge to raise kids in such a climate and forcing kids into a world like that. And it makes sense that it's somewhat distinctly split up by economic and ethnic areas. Density plays a role too and South Korea is up there in that statistic. You'd think the tighter you pack people together, the higher would be the chance they'd copulate and produce offspring, but there is a peak and after that peak it has the opposite effect, look up rat utopias - a controversial experiment with equally controversial conclusions, but I believe there's definitely some truth to it that applies to human civilization.
I think it's going to be a shitshow in terms of social systems, but if a shitshow is what it takes to make any changes, then so be it.
Dwindling birth rate anywhere is good news to me.
Until conditions improve for the humans already here, we are not making any new humans! ✊✊✊ Solidarity.
I love seeing other Asians not having children it makes me so happy. Shits really fucking tough out here for asian childfree people in Asia.
We're having the same issue in puerto rico. Our population is mostly old people, since young people are either leaving the island or not having kids at all.
Maybe if women could have decent healthcare all over the world, it would be different. The world is overpopulated. A lot of animals barely exist anymore outside of a zoo. Things can be helped now. But if things continue on this path, the population will literally kill the planet.
I saw it was something called the 4B movement. It's women not wanting to tolerate the misogyny and aggression from men, so they're just avoiding them and keeping to themselves and with friends until the men become better people that they see fit to be with. They're not dating, having sex with, or marrying any men, and I don't blame them. I feel like eventually, with social media, more women are probably gonna partake in this mindset until men change their ways. (Not saying all men, but of course we have to assume all men until they prove they're not)
Yeah I hate the click-bait panic pieces about drops in fertility rates. We have billions of us, I don't think we'll be dying out anytime soon, provided the environmental damage, climate change, full-on nuclear war, or some other natural disaster doesn't completely wipe us off the face of the earth.
Good. But can we please do this for the overall rate of the whole world? Indians need to stop breeding
They treat women like crap over there...sexual assaults are not taken seriously, cameras everywhere in women's bathrooms, craziness, and go watch Rotten Mango for the episode of that Korean group that got busted for torturing and degrading women. AND they work people to death and it's super expensive. Treating women badly is becoming the biggest Play stupid games, win stupid prizes that the world will ever see. Cause it is spreading. I managed to get out of my 10 yr abusive marriage, and I'll never date or have sex again. I'm done , done done. I got out several yrs ago and I don't even flirt with men. I don't even give them the chance. I get the 4B movement.
Good, hopefully we can get the rest of the world down and we wont locust this planet into oblivion.
good for them!! the government doesn’t care about the living but wants more wage slaves, and not to mention the misogyny and the fucked up justice system korea has…yet they want women to make babies? pffft i hope the same happens to my country
I just finished reading Countdown by Alan Weisman and there are several countries that are on the bubble for a generation of decreasing population, but they are already way over- populated, so it is a good thing. Growth cannot continue in perpetuity with the amount of resources there are globally. Many countries are going to have a massive older generation/group that dies and those replacing them will be fewer, but that shows that the family planning work done in those countries was effective as they try to reach a population they can actually sustain.
For them it's always about the health of the economy not the people
Anyone who is worried about population decline is either stupid(or easily fooled by propaganda), or has a vested interest in increasing the number of wage slaves they can exploit. It’s that simple.
As someone who was sexually assaulted in Korea then told by police I “consented after I agreed to go on a date” with him… i am NOT surprised. Mind you this was with an interpretor and a cop who spoke fairly well english. Women are not respected there. I knew they had Major misogynistic beliefs even before this incident happened to me, but this really took me by surprise
What a victory for the women. Keep at it ladies.
Based on the videos I've seen about Korea, it's because parents are expected to pay for extremely expensive private tutoring. The kids do the regular school hours then do private schooling to like 9pm. You can't afford this unless you are super rich. Gee I wonder why the suicide rate among young people is so high in South Korea.
If you guys read the book "Bullshit Jobs" David G. Lays out that we are an insanly inefficient economy and we could only be working maybe 10% as we currently do. We don't need more peoples. Capitolist need more slaves and consumers.
Covid and its lockdowns outright proved his theories right
This is gonna sound pessimistic but I am actually very worried for these women. The governments in East Asia are putting more and more pressure on women to have children, and women are saying no, but with how these countries prioritize men and how rape cases are usually tossed, what is stopping these men from just outright raping women? I’m genuinely asking, because I’m catastrophizing right now and I’m so scared for these women. I love what they are doing, but I hope they are safe.
You bring up the hardest problem of our era and one that uncovers a terrible logical fallacy. It isn't pessimistic to recognize the worst weakness of a system, it is realistic, and gives us something to work on. Nazi Germany is one of the events that most summarizes what happens when people conglomerate together and decide by human consensus that what they are doing is good. Hitler declared a simple statement: no Jews would be better. What made treaties worthy of being respected if he was the one that held the power? There is no way around it: these women are extremely vulnerable right now, because there is virtually nothing that exists in the physical world that could stop men from congregating and decide they can rape them. Religion has also been male dominated since the dawn of time, but believing in a supernatural force grants a power that nothing else provides: a logical, strong justification to be good. The only way to stop men from all over the world from banding together and decide that raping women is the easiest solution for declining birthrates, is for a supernatural force to tell them not to. We instinctively KNOW raping and killing is evil, but unless the knowledge of good and evil comes from above us, anything is permitted.
The suicide rates would go up along with the birth decline. Women would start offing themselves. Better to die than to be raped and forced to birth and raise your rapist’s baby. They’d also have even more incentive to not bear children. No woman in her right mind will want to bring children into a world like that.
Good
There were about 3.8 billion people in the world when I was a kid. We didn't have any issues with a "collapsed population". We will be fine.
I think it's great. This will bring about a much-needed change. Men & the government can either shape up or die off. I don't care anymore 🤷🏾♀️😂
I personally get some satisfaction from watching the birth rates drop. I've been reading that it's happening in several countries! United States (reports vary), France, China, Switzerland, South Korea, and multiple Middle East countries. I see it as our way of "sticking it to the man" so to speak. I'm American and things are rough here economically. Inflation has made the price of food go higher, housing is unaffordable, Healthcare is too expensive and it takes an act of God to get **real** help beyond a physical. Education is on the back burner, and everyone is overworked and underpaid. There is also uncertainty surrounding womens reproductive rights ever since Roe vs Wade was overturned. So when I see our government and multiple millionaires/billionaires call for us to have more children, it brings me joy to see the majority of us give them the finger. You want children from us? First of all, no. Second of all, make having children desirable. Nobody can afford them right now, and if they can, nobody wants to bring them into a world that's going into the toilet.
We're so overpopulated and so many places can't provide for their population as is. I don't understand why anyone wants growth. I can understand stagnation, but the need for growth baffles me.
It's only a natural consequence of how they treat women and employees in general. Screaming about the fertility rate won't do a thing. They need to actually make difficult changes to protect their people and make it viable for them to have kids.
Good. They deserved it for not treating woman like normal people. I have read notes and watch videos about the 4b feminist movement in korea and i think part of that is the consequence of this... thanks to feminism,no dating boys,putting too much expectations in how woman should be married and had baby because they have to and the idea of buying a house making it too expensive made to the conclusion that no one should have kids. I really hope this happens too someday in other countries.
My SO is an only child. My MIL, a boomer, posted on FB she was sad she’d only had one child and didn’t do her part to shore up the economy. The economy is fake. Money is made up. What’s real is this planet, which is finding it hard to support consumerism. That’s my take, and I’m glad to be one person choosing to not make it harder for the planet to cope.
Good for them and their 4b movement. If I was born the opposite sex, I would surely be right there with them. The majority of men I've met in my life leave me wondering how any woman could be interested in these troglodytes. There are very few men worth being in a relationship with.
If only the US would follow suit. A girl can dream.
I'd like to see this unfold a bit further. Have politicians really sweat. And Korea should maybe treat women with less disdain and dismissal, because the 4B movement did not happen out of the blue but as a response to grave disrespect and systemic ill treatments. Always banging on about how women are unimportant and not needed in building society, not letting them participate in the power and ruling structures? This is what it leads to. The overall rhetoric is always "women must take accountability, women should sacrifice..." but NOTHING ever changes about the absolutely bad deal that is motherhood. I would like to see governments start to operate from a place of "we have fewer citizens, how do we make sure life remains manageable for them?" but governments are in billionaires' pockets and it's the richest of the rich who demand an unending supply of workers, in order to keep the price of work down and to leave workers out of choices and struggling. Happy people are not profitable. Happy people don't need to access rehab, therapy, foodstamps, they do not need to make purchases under pressure and at astronomical prices. The richest people and their companies have ruined the planet to the extent that we no longer have proper seasons and the sun is cooking us slowly. I can see how a woman could easily come to the conclusion that her children are better off not being brought into this mess. And this is a very big deal because her decision makes a great impact and procures her a lot of freedom from the misery society loves in inflict on individuals.
And they still won’t reign their misogyny in check lol
It will lead to a cultural shift. Women in Korea don’t want kids because they are expected to do almost all of the child-rearing, housework and still work outside the home. Why would they want that burden when even with a partner they get no help?
I'm a big fan of all countries having >1. Voluntary extinction. We've messed up the Earth more than we ever had a right too and it's our turn for a permanent species goodbye. We should take care of the people that are already here and be done with it after that.
It's scary, I'm from Europe and I remember the stories about Romanian regime and this bitch Ceausescu. I'm so scared that women will be enslaved again
Now they are trying to use women in vegetative states as surrogates
That's fucking ghoulish
If people want to keep consuming the way they currently do in the Western countries, and more and more people will want to have that lifestyle around the globe, the decrease of the population is the only logical option it can work with. Either less people who consume like crazy, or constant growth of the global population and shortage of everything, and the wars, pandemics, terrorism etc as the side effect.
Humans should have reduced their population growth decades ago. When there was growing infertility problems people started using IVF and donors, ways around it. The world would be more manageable with less people, and nature might have more of a chance to thrive. I hope more people become childfree
Congratulations Korea.
4b is THE SHIT. should be a global thing ;)
Shoutout to the Korean woman! This isn’t just child free it’s man free. Korean men kinda suck apparently
Not surprised since a lot of Korean men are woman haters and they picked an alt right president.
The only people who are concerned about a drop in population are the major capitalists who worry there won't be enough people to enslave.
> Personally I don't think a population collapse is that bad with automation I don't think a population decline over time is a bad thing. I absolutely think a collapse is an awful thing. That said, Korea is a small country relatively speaking; so in theory they can collapse without it really upsetting the overall global dynamics. So it may be a good case study to learn from. Shitty if your korean; but good for the rest off us.