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Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

(www.seattletimes.com)
118 points blondie9x | 6 comments | 13 Apr 25 14:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.801s | source | bottom
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TriangleEdge ◴[13 Apr 25 15:41 UTC] No.43673589[source]▶
I live in Seattle now, am married, and have an infant. I find Seattle not friendly towards families at all. The going rate for a daycare here is 3.5k per month for an infant. My wife and I are both ~7%ers? individually and we can barely afford our home (a tall skinny townhouse with no yard) and the cost of 1 baby. Having a family is hard here... Also, I don't find Seattle safe for infants and toddlers, or anybody really..

What big tech wants are people who are willing to give up everything for the dream of making money, and that's what they got.

Edit: Our life is pretty good in any case. I would never let my kid go outside and play unsupervised in Seattle even tho I myself did this as a kid in my home town (the safety I was mentioning).

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1. fifilura ◴[13 Apr 25 16:10 UTC] No.43673830[source]▶
As a comparison, full time daycare in Sweden is $100/month for everyone.

I think this is one important reason that marriage is not as common, since the society is aligned towards that is should be possible to manage on your own if you absolutely need to.

I can't find a proper number but anecdotally I think maybe 50% of first time parents are married in Sweden.

And yes obviously this is paid by higher taxes, but seen an an investment to keep the demography (reasonably) sane.

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2. nradov ◴[13 Apr 25 16:38 UTC] No.43674006[source]▶
The birth rate in Sweden is low and falling. Whatever they're doing to keep demography sane doesn't seem to be working. Like most developed Western countries, their current approach relies more on high levels of immigration. Essentially they have outsourced the hassle and expense of having children.

https://population-europe.eu/research/policy-insights/why-ar...

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3. fifilura ◴[13 Apr 25 16:39 UTC] No.43674019[source]▶
It is true. But that also means that the cost will not be there.

I'd claim it did work for some time (from the 1970s to the 2000s) because it allowed the transition to a society where women did not have to choose between children and a career.

I am not sure what is the reason for lower birth rate now. Maybe that young people have gotten used to that you always have a choice.

4. piva00 ◴[13 Apr 25 17:24 UTC] No.43674334[source]▶
Relatively to the rest of Europe is still on the upper echelons so some of the policies do work.

The issue is: without hope for the future there's not much the State can do to push people into having kids. We live in an age of hopelessness, I don't have my parents optimism from the 80s, I'm starting to approach 40 and every 5 years something happen to chip away on the little hope I still have.

5. lr1970 ◴[13 Apr 25 18:43 UTC] No.43674904[source]▶
> As a comparison, full time daycare in Sweden is $100/month for everyone.

Obviously $100/month covers a tiny fraction of the total cost of running a childcare service in Sweden. I am curious how much does state pays to cover the rest.

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6. fifilura ◴[13 Apr 25 18:58 UTC] No.43675006[source]▶
The structure of the Swedish society is somewhat different in the sense that most families leave their children at daycare starting around 2 years old.

Unless you have more children, where you are allowed to leave the older child in daycare for a few days per week at that cost.

The economy behind this is rather obvious. It is better for the economy as a whole to leave children with professionals taking care of 4-6 children per teacher and let the (supposedly educated) mom work with what she is or will become specialized in.

Mentioning moms here, but the ambition is to have fathers stay as much home with the children as their mom, but this is comparing to e.g. USA.

And not mentioning the other reasons to want to raise your children full time, there are obvious and understandable reasons for that, and you are obviously free to do that and many do. But there are also good reasons for letting them meet other children in a well run daycare too.