No Kids 4 Generation Z

Phil: Neither you, nor I are generation Z. We know that, but there's a new report that comes out that talks about the fact that generation Z does not want to have kids. Here's why: climate crisis, they're naming that as the number one. They're obviously talking about the economy. So, you know, there's a book that Jordan Davidson wrote. It hasn't published yet. It's coming out in December, it's called: So when are you having kids? He interviewed more than 300 people for this book. And it's all about the fears that generation Z have for having kids.

Phil: There's this one quote that Emily Shapiro comes from New York city. She's 23 years old. She's a copywriter for an ad agency. She lives at home, saves money, never wants kids. Here's her quote: They're sticky. I could never imagine picking up a kid that's covered in ice cream. I'm a bit of a germophobe. I don't want to change a diaper if I did have one, meaning a kid, I wouldn't want them until they're in like sixth grade. I also think that the physical earth isn't doing so great. So it would be unfair." Hey, Emily, I don't want you to have a kid. Your kid would not come out normal here. What do you think Sally?

Sally: Well, you know, there are a couple of things I think about this. The US birth rate fell 4% in 2020, and that is the largest single year decrease in nearly 50 years, according to a government report. We've also seen that for a few years now that older women are having babies more and younger women are having babies less. So there's a few things here that I think can be addressed. One, first and foremost we have to, for a variety of reasons aggressively, address climate change in this country. And, we can see it's affecting so many things for people. I also think that addressing women in the workforce and how they can continue to maintain their careers, I've read something in here about women feeling like they lose their identities when they become mothers. And that does happen very often. So I think as a workforce, we have to support women in having careers and being mothers at the same time. And then I also think another thing that's really important is that we need to continue to educate people how to eat healthy on a budget, because if their big concern is, I don't know if I can afford to feed these kids, we have to teach them how to do that.

Phil: Yeah, I think so. And I also think that there's probably nothing more precious than human life and extending life on the planet. And if in fact we have a generation and we're just talking about this one generation here, who's saying, you know, I don't wanna have kids for whatever reason, we're gonna have some severe problems. Whether it's new people who are funding social security for our older Americans or, or just, you know, our whole economy can really fall apart if we don't have, you know, another generation coming up. So I think that, you know, when this book comes out, I think there'll be a lot of controversy just based on, based on these couple quotes that are in this book. I'm hoping that there's some, you know, some of the generations that says, "yeah, I wanna have kids, but here's what I'm gonna do to make sure that, you know, I raise them properly".

Phil: Here's what I'm gonna do to your point, that I'm gonna feed them properly. I'm gonna teach 'em about the environment I'm gonna educate them properly. All of those things. I think it's easy to say, I don't wanna have kids. It's a lot harder to have kids in this kind of current environment and teach them to learn how to become, you know, really good adults and parents themselves.