Fewer people are pairing off as couples, too. Nobody has time for a social life when they're juggling multiple jobs, there's no Third Places, all the social media and dating apps suck, people are more alienated from one another than ever, and to top it off absolutely everything is getting ridiculously expensive. If people don't have a person to fuck and a place to fuck and the energy to fuck they're not gonna fuck, and that's step one of having kids.
The other factor here is that the main popular entertainment within the imperial core countries is television and videogames which are distinctly antisocial entertainment forms that do not offer opportunities for bonding. These aren't non-existent elsewhere but they're less dominant.
Fewer people are pairing off as couples, too. Nobody has time for a social life when they're juggling multiple jobs, there's no Third Places, all the social media and dating apps suck, people are more alienated from one another than ever, and to top it off absolutely everything is getting ridiculously expensive. If people don't have a person to fuck and a place to fuck and the energy to fuck they're not gonna fuck, and that's step one of having kids.
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The other factor here is that the main popular entertainment within the imperial core countries is television and videogames which are distinctly antisocial entertainment forms that do not offer opportunities for bonding. These aren't non-existent elsewhere but they're less dominant.