I think the consensus is that it’s mostly as a result of women having greater reproductive choices, greater access to family planning services, and more women choosing to delay having children or choosing to not have children at all, often so they can instead focus on a career.
Edit: I want to point out that what I’m describing is the consensus, as I understand it, of mainstream experts in the US. However, I believe there is evidence that this consensus opinion is not entirely accurate. If I’m not mistaken, surveys indicate that there are a fair number of people who would like to have children but are not because the right circumstances are not present for them to feel secure enough to have children. Many of the people who are not having children would have them if they felt more financially, romantically, and/or emotionally secure. Therefore, it’s possible that it’s not so much that people are choosing not to have children as it is that the necessary conditions for making people feel secure enough to have children are not present for a large number of people.
That’s more than a bit insulting to the women of the world choosing to work instead of have kids. Sure, some of them are forced to because they wouldn’t have enough money to live without a job. And many of the jobs these women have chosen aren’t necessarily long term careers.
But it’s condescending and insulting to say those women have no other contributions to the world outside of working a menial day job and would rather stay at home having kids if only they could afford it. Calling a career a clown term is so edgy and cool of you! As if there aren’t people out there who absolutely love what they do for a living and aren’t happily working for crap pay just to do what they love. All of the adult women I know who have chosen not to have kids have really good careers, and all but one have a great salary.
And to your point that the vast majority of people don’t have “careers,” sometimes an entry level position that is just a day job and not really a career can lead to a bigger career. My mom started as a secretary at a small company and showed she knew how to do the job of her boss, so she got his job when he left. Then she ended up starting her own business in that field, which absolutely flourished and became the thing she did for the next 30 years.
I personally felt like it was a reference to the complete lack of corporate loyalty to it’s employees.
It’s hard to have a “career” in the classical sense the way my 90 year old grandparents did.
You can still choose a field of work and if you’re lucky you’ll get to stay in it for most of your adult life, but between outsourcing in IT, fields being made redundant as technology advances/changes (from cashiers and retail to journalism and marketing, accounting, and phone work) and whole fields of manufacturing work getting shipped overseas, the number of lifelong fields of work available is rapidly shrinking, facing fierce competition for jobs, and becoming a moving playing field faster than most people can retrain for.
“HR” jobs could get halved or more with chatbots providing benefits and payroll adjustment information. “Big data” is doing most of the “market research” that advertisers handled manually 30 years ago.
Big money is still trying to sell us the “career” dream because it leads to the school loan debt they feed off of and temporarily gluts fields with workers to reduce salaries, but only a few handfuls of fields of work really have “career” style options anymore.
I took it not as an insult to the people trying to have one, but as disdain and disgust at how the word gets bandied about like so much bait on a hook when the reality is fastly becoming far different for the 20- and 30- somethings of today.
That might be just me being both charitable and jaded, though.
I think the consensus is that it’s mostly as a result of women having greater reproductive choices, greater access to family planning services, and more women choosing to delay having children or choosing to not have children at all, often so they can instead focus on a career.
Edit: I want to point out that what I’m describing is the consensus, as I understand it, of mainstream experts in the US. However, I believe there is evidence that this consensus opinion is not entirely accurate. If I’m not mistaken, surveys indicate that there are a fair number of people who would like to have children but are not because the right circumstances are not present for them to feel secure enough to have children. Many of the people who are not having children would have them if they felt more financially, romantically, and/or emotionally secure. Therefore, it’s possible that it’s not so much that people are choosing not to have children as it is that the necessary conditions for making people feel secure enough to have children are not present for a large number of people.
Corpo speak people are broke… I expect better here
Vast majority of people don’t have “careers”
Whatever that clown term even means.
We work for money lol
That’s more than a bit insulting to the women of the world choosing to work instead of have kids. Sure, some of them are forced to because they wouldn’t have enough money to live without a job. And many of the jobs these women have chosen aren’t necessarily long term careers.
But it’s condescending and insulting to say those women have no other contributions to the world outside of working a menial day job and would rather stay at home having kids if only they could afford it. Calling a career a clown term is so edgy and cool of you! As if there aren’t people out there who absolutely love what they do for a living and aren’t happily working for crap pay just to do what they love. All of the adult women I know who have chosen not to have kids have really good careers, and all but one have a great salary.
And to your point that the vast majority of people don’t have “careers,” sometimes an entry level position that is just a day job and not really a career can lead to a bigger career. My mom started as a secretary at a small company and showed she knew how to do the job of her boss, so she got his job when he left. Then she ended up starting her own business in that field, which absolutely flourished and became the thing she did for the next 30 years.
“Corpo speak…” you are such a tool.
I personally felt like it was a reference to the complete lack of corporate loyalty to it’s employees.
It’s hard to have a “career” in the classical sense the way my 90 year old grandparents did.
You can still choose a field of work and if you’re lucky you’ll get to stay in it for most of your adult life, but between outsourcing in IT, fields being made redundant as technology advances/changes (from cashiers and retail to journalism and marketing, accounting, and phone work) and whole fields of manufacturing work getting shipped overseas, the number of lifelong fields of work available is rapidly shrinking, facing fierce competition for jobs, and becoming a moving playing field faster than most people can retrain for.
“HR” jobs could get halved or more with chatbots providing benefits and payroll adjustment information. “Big data” is doing most of the “market research” that advertisers handled manually 30 years ago.
Big money is still trying to sell us the “career” dream because it leads to the school loan debt they feed off of and temporarily gluts fields with workers to reduce salaries, but only a few handfuls of fields of work really have “career” style options anymore.
I took it not as an insult to the people trying to have one, but as disdain and disgust at how the word gets bandied about like so much bait on a hook when the reality is fastly becoming far different for the 20- and 30- somethings of today.
That might be just me being both charitable and jaded, though.