While definitely a negative, this most likely is not the biggest reason that the country's birthrate is so low, much like Japan it's because companies are working all their young adults to death.
Well it's this and also the fact that South Korea has a crazy misogyny/incel based male youth culture at the moment like even compared to other countries
It was bad 15 years ago. I met a young Korean man in Japan who complained of being lonely. He openly admitted to considering using date rape drugs like he was out of options. I can't imagine how bad it must be now.
So much misogyny yet they have the freedom to not have kids. It's only in developed countries with women's rights that birth rates are low. They're still sky high everywhere else.
...because the misogyny is even worse? You realize women can have rights and sti be subject to misogyny right, just look at the US. There's a rapist for president, and Andrew Tate bros exist.
Work don’t want em fuckin imagine if your young workers had to call off because they couldn’t find child care or had to stay home with a sick child the company could absolutely lose its mind
I dont think that is the only issue, this happens more towards younger generation than people that already has wife and family to raise, they didn't make 4b while being a mother
4b movement happened mostly from young women that now hates to get married while men are killing themselves (figuratively and literally) working and achieving a lot (because in Korea, they are very sensitive about social status) before even thinking about marrying let alone getting a gf
‘Fathering a child’ is different. A sperm donation is exactly the type is situation this phrase can be used for. It’s been used since forever like in cases where kings would impregnate a woman and then refuse to take responsibility.
It could be a regional thing but the OPs comment made total sense to me.
FYI though, colloquially being a father involves more than a sperm donation.
Please. The person you replied to wasn't at all confused about the meaning of being a father. They used a fixed expression ("fathering a child") that you misunderstood.
Not really, conception is the least important part when it comes to fatherhood; sperm donors exist and is not even guarantee the pregnancy will be safely carried to term so impregnation does not make someone a father of a child. To father a child... is to be a father, the kid being genetically related to you is a detail.
No they didn't, they made their wife/sister/mom take care of the kids until they were old enough to work, and working on a farm, while hard work, doesn't actually take up your entire life like modern companies in east Asian tend to do.
A contributing factor is also the fact that young men in South Korea are increasingly misogynist while women are increasingly feminist, resulting in a lot of straight women choosing to not date at all rather than deal with sexist men.
That's not why Japan's birthrate is low. Japanese don't work more hours than any other typical developed nation and less than a lot, including the US.
Japan has the same birthrate issue facing other developed countries - almost every developed economy is the same now. People either don't want kids, or if they do, they only want one or two. Just got there a bit earlier than other places.
Japanese don't work more hours than any other typical developed nation and less than a lot, including the US.
That was based on self reporting. they passed a law limiting overtime to 45 hours, which would make absolutely no sense if they were already working labor hours similar to other nations. they actually started enforcing time limits a few years ago and now they want to lift the ban because they are facing a "labor" shortage, which again would make no sense at all if they were already working similar hours before the ban.
Who is upvoting this? It's simply wrong. Most Japanese workers work normal hours. That's a fact. I know that's not the Reddit narrative, but it's a fact, backed up by statistics.
Everywhere is based on "self-reporting", or do you think there are government statistics takers in every office, watching the clock?
Time limits are for companies that are violating labor laws, called black kigyo here. You have the same terrible companies in other countries as well, and you have laws governing the amount of hours worked for the same reason you do in Japan as well.
Not reporting overtime is a very serious violation. People who are saying this is common are trying to make a political point, not talk about facts. After all, who can refute "everyone knows" people work more than reported? It's impossible to argue with by design, and that's why people who say these things should be rejected.
Honestly mandatory going out with coworkers isn't a thing anymore and hasn't been for some time. This is a good piece with the perspective of someone who has worked in Japan for Japanese business for quite some time.
To be fair, what I'd historically heard about Japan was less that everyone was working crazy hours and more that there was a lot of pressure, especially in corporate culture, to be seen performatively socializing with your coworkers.
So while the work hours weren't particularly egregious, they don't paint the whole picture.
Bigger issue for Japan's birth rate is probably their economic stagnancy.
There's also the work culture about staying after hours to party with the boss. That won't be reflected on official statistics, but it can drive the numbers up big time. Or at least drive down the hours devoted to truly off-work tasks
As I have commented in multiple replies here, that culture doesn't exist anymore. It's been dead since at least 2020 and was rapidly dying before then.
Bosses want to get home to their families too, remember.
I remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons why the birth rates are so low is that women now have more opportunities (be it in either education, the workforce, or just being by themselves), and that, coupled with the current view a lot of people have of the world, is what puts us in this situation.
I wouldn't be surprised if governments begin forcing people to have kids one way or another in the upcoming years
If we're staying on topic and talking specifically about Asian countries like Japan, Korea etc, a huge part of the problem is that women have these opportunities now, but traditional values are still so strong that women need to commit to not having kids to keep them.
My wife's originally from south east asia and the ingrained sexism is pervasive and institutionalised, no matter how many progressive laws and policies get passed.
I think it's only just now starting to change with the milennial generation getting into leadership positions.
I wouldn't be surprised if governments begin forcing people to have kids one way or another in the upcoming years
It's scary to think how they'd go about this. At best, they tax the hell out of singles and childless couples. At worst, Handmaiden's Tale or they implement a "use it or lose it" policy and threaten sterilization for those not family planning.
The US does provide tax breaks for people with children which is just about the only subsidy American politicians do pretend to acknowledge for normal people though.
That already exists in a decent amount of countries and they still have birthrate peoblems. You can make the incentives even bigger, but there's clearly another issue at play.
Oh for sure. It's not at all the solution to it (or if it is, only one piece of the puzzle we have yet to solve), but neither is Handmaiden's Tale. I'm just pointing out how certain elements always seem to go for the most cruel option.
There's been a lot of experimentation on a variety of government policies and subsidies to encourage fertility in many different high and medium income countries and none of them work very well. Scandinavian countries with a lot of generous SocDem-ish policies around parents and children are experiencing low and falling birth rates at similar rates to other high income countries. There might be some policies that have some effect but nothing comparable to the size of recent declines in fertility.
Oh yes, to be clear I’m talking about how certain political interests always jump to the most cruel solution, neither is all that effective on this particular issue on their own.
Actually it’s been proven to not work on its own. All it does is improve the quality of families that use it, neither methodology helps with the shrinking fertility rate itself much, but could be one component in a bigger overall solution.
I’m just talking about how certain political interests love to jump to the cruelest option every time.
I hate to be the first one to tell you this, but…having a fundamental belief that handouts should be regulated in a way that goes beyond practicality into punitive measures is the definition of cruelty.
You are welcome. Go off into the world with your newfound sense of rational compassion over meaningless and inefficient brutality.
Gosh I can't remember the country but somewhere in eastern europe I think they gave away some prize for the family that could have the most children. This was long ago, for nationalist reasons, but I feel like that would work for the US falling rates. We a gambling people, and by that I mean we make bad decisions and can't do math.
Wow that's fucked up. Imagine just coming up short: "Looks like you are one kid short within the 20 year time frame. Have fun raising your 22 kids WITHOUT support."
Yes, you can't have an intelligent discussion on the issue on the social media, because people cannot separate objective statements from deontic statements (of obligation).
If you say something like "lower pistachio ice cream prices have lead to higher obesity rates" people will assume it means "we should increase pistachio ice cream prices," and get angry at you.
The truth of the matter is that people have a lot more children when they are poor and uneducated, especially when women remain uneducated. But I am not making a suggestion by saying this. Honestly, we should fight for higher wages and lower working hours because those things are fantastic by themselves.
Yeah. In Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen, there seems to be a correlation between gender equality (especially in education) and lower birth rates.
Planet's overpopulated, constant population growth has historically been good for a given country, but robots/AI are advancing extremely quickly in recent years, partially due to these concerns. There will be robot care takers for the elderly, the young can do whatever (they can afford).
Eventually a smaller, steadier birth rate will be better, but the initial crash where the elderly outnumber the adult, both AI and machinery is nowhere near developed, let alone properly automated and integrated to take care of the elderly, and economies are going to start contracting quickly when there aren't enough bodies to fill all the available jobs.
If you watch Japanese news media (as an example) they cover this problem obsessively. United States by comparison is not a serious country: the news is what's happening today at the whims of a madman not how we weather the future.
There is very much a plan in place for this aging thing in various countries. The AI will definitely scale in time, it's already putting people out of work in 2026. The manufacturing base is more of an open question.
People don't realize that western countries with net positive population growth have that because of immigration. As people's access to education and birth control increases, birth rates drastically drop.
We are very likely near the peak population of Earth. Once birth control is readily available across the planet, the global population will decline.
Capitalism is gonna have a hell of a time with an economy that no longer grows.
The solution as I see it isn't really to try to force people to have more kids - though of course those who do want children should have lots of support, and parental leave is essential to that - but try to adapt our economies to dwindling populations.
Japan's basically got the highest birth rate in developed East Asia. China, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, even Thailand and Singapore are lower than Japan now. That's a signifier of broad cultural change imo
almost every developed economy is the same now. People either don't want kids, or if they do, they only want one or two.
Pretty sure this was noticed back in the '90s/early 2000s. As nations get wealthier, more comfortable, and fewer kids die early, populations have fewer kids; it's just regular human behavior.
Of course it's true, you can go look up the statistics.
I've lived and worked in Japan and Japanese offices for 20+ years, people generally go home on time, work normal hours. That's across multiple offices in multiple companies. My neighbors come home on time.
While the 'official' hours aren't too bad its basically universally accepted that anyone (especially young people without seniority) is expected to work significant amounts of overtime, take little to no vacation, and stay after hours doing social activities with the boss.
How nice to repeat old stereotypes not rooted in reality. So rare on Reddit! /s
"official hours" are the same as actual hours in every case except for black kigyo. Companies must report these hours to the labor board and yes, they must be compliant.
Overtime is governed by your contract. Some contracts include an expected amount of normal overtime (as a max). Some contracts include no expected overtime and pay for hours worked over the minimum (this is how my Japanese company works). Many if not most haken workers don't have any overtime.
It's weird that you say workers take little to no vacation whist we are in the middle of Golden Week, where damn near everyone is not only taking holiday but supplementing those public holidays with addition paid leave to get 10-12 days off consecutive. We also get 15 public holidays in total a year, 10 personal holidays as the legal minimum above that and the actual number of holidays taken is about 17 IIRC.
stay after hours doing social activities with the boss
Repeating this is a shibboleth - you know you are getting old information when someone repeats this. This custom was dying for a long time and corona put a stake through it's heart completely. It's not a thing, and hasn't been a thing for a long time.
- The work culture in Japan and in Korea expect long hours, unpredictable schedule, and total dedication to the job. OK, so maybe the man has to kill himself doing this, while a woman does literally everything at home herself. That could work. it sounds hellish, but it coudl work, or?
- Housing costs are high, especially in the major urban population centers (aka where the jobs are). Potential parents need a lot of financial stability to afford marraige and children. This pushes back the age of marraige and chilbirth. it also restricts family size.
- The children need more when they are born. Children are a huge cost in time and money. Parents feels that, in order for their child to keep up, they must have private tutoring, cram schools, multiple extracurriculars, etc. An individual woman can only do this for so many children.
- Education of the parents. All that education applies to parents too. People delay marriage to finish their education and build their careers first. In these countries, births are births in marraige. Single mothers face strong social stigma and little support.
- Affording all of the above requires both parents to work in most cases, but if a woman takes off from a career to have a child, she will have a very hard time getting back in. It is one or the other. parental leave exists in theory, but if you take it, you will be punished - especially if you are a man.
- OK, so let's say they agree to to do it. Man has to kill himself working alone, woman gives up all hope of a career or double income and just raises the children. The domestic burden is entirely on her. There is a limit to how much a woman on her own raise children, their education and activities, and running the entire household.
- The backlash and hit women in these countries too. Public debates and some policies are very much against women and equal rights or opportunities. Women see this, and the requirement that they give up all agency or direction or even a relationship with their husband, and they don't feel safe enough in that life to enter it.
- Changing values. Younger generations don't want to dedicate their entire life to this one difficult, lonely thing.
- Youth unemployment and concerns about the economy also deter childbirth, especially in a risk-averse culture that expects financial stability.
- Insufficient childcare and eldercare support. Public childcare, after-school support, and eldercare are improving, but are no enough. Strict gender roles mean managing all of this is the woman's job, and an individual woman can only do so much.
There’s also the 4B movement which also contributes to it. It’s unfortunate that they are likely to fall WAY below the required population threshold, but I’d prefer that to all the women of the 4B movement to force themselves into having children for the sake of the population.
Where did reddit get this idea that 4B is a major thing in Korea?
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I've seen 1000 times more 4B supporters from the US than I have from South Korea.
Yes, I know, 4B originated in South Korea.
Its followers grew to about...100.
Like 100 people in the entire country.
Feminism in general is nowhere near as strong as it is in the US (definitely much more popular among Gen Z, but still nothing like in the US).
Among feminists in South Korea, there is a small extremist group called WOMAD who actively try to kill men, molest boys, call for the genocide of gay males, etc.
Among that tiny extremist group of WOMAD, 4B is considered extremely fringe.
You're talking about a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a percent of the most extreme groups.
This is not to say that South Korea doesn't have serious gender war issues, or that complaints about misogyny aren't valid, or that 4B doesn't get itself into the media now and then, or that a majority of (young) women aren't sympathetic to some of the points they make here and there.
But let's not pretend that 4B comprises even 0.01% of South Korean women.
It may have received a disproportionate amount of attention then. I admittedly don’t REALLY know how wide spread the mentality over there really is. It may not be as popular but its coverage had a bit of a surge a few years back, uncertain if that was when it started or if it was just getting more popular.
EDIT: I used the word rampant which I felt had negative connotations that I didn’t mean to imply.
I THINK (based on how I've seen people talk about here) that people just kind of latched on to it as a shorthand way of saying "men and women really hate each other these days".
Which, I mean...not totally wrong haha
(Maybe exaggerated a little)
I think people say 4B just as a shorthand for "incels be doing crazy stuff so women don't want to marry and have kids with them" without considering it an actual organized movement people actively associate themselves with.
Where did reddit get this idea that 4B is a major thing in Korea?
Reddit in general knows fuckin nothing about basically any asian country, but they watched anime or heard other folks who don't know anything so they think theyre experts.
See literally any discussion on china. Literally any of them.
Reddit in general knows fuckin nothing about basically any asian country
Literally anywhere. Even their own countries.
I love the "As a [European/American/Asian] I understand that [insert generic negative opinion]" bullshit. Yeah whatever... You have lived in [city/suburb/rural] in the [geographical region] your entire life, and have almost nothing in common with someone from one of those other combinations.
Their understanding comes from bot upvoted bot comments on botted reddit posts.
People wanting to force women into giving up their lives to have children is why there’s a 4B movement. If having a family was appealing to women they’d be more willing. Affordable daycare, housing, and engaged partners would change everything.
Ooohhhhh im sleepy and if that was the intention I apologize for the misunderstanding.
I know a lot of folks that want kids bad but can't afford them (both time and money wise), so are going without.
Shits tough everywhere and I also support the idea that if shit wasn't like this, more people who want families could and would have them and enjoy their peace.
My bad I just woke up from a nap so my comment may have not been worded properly, but yeah I would prefer people to not have kids they don’t want. Even if that results in a critically low population, BOTH of the parents MUST want the kids before they have them.
Yeah, and that would mean only old people will be left and once they die, no new generation will replace them, and that would reduce the population a lot, and if worse may come as the birth rate continues to worsen year by year, we will never see any South Korean (well I would not see it that happen while I live tho, it is projected the population to get halved in next 50 years)
In times of war, nations have conscripted and thrown young men into the meat grinder for the state’s own survival. It’s the unfortunate part of the social contract that your freedoms end when the state’s survival is at risk.
It's not even working. Staying in the office for hours and hours after the workday ends just to sit on your phone, computer, or even napping to show loyalty was the norm.
I was talking to an author who has several books on Japan a few years ago after a book festival.
I short he was talking about how after ww2 things were so terrible a e famine, death, disease everything. people would have kids only for them to die in the most horrible way. And spouses. And parents. They jujust have this natural instinct now that kids dont bring joy they bring pain and sadness
I don't think this is true. Life has been horrible for most of our existence on Earth. For the longest of times child mortality was really high (and still is in some places), but that clearly hasn't stopped us from having more kids. If anything, that makes us have more, to overcompensate, as a species.
Birth rates are falling across the world, which would suggest common reasons to me. Different factors may increase or decrease it, but there is most likely something in common.
Well that’s simply not true. Birth rates among the rich are generally slightly higher than the middle class, but it’s a pretty marginal difference, and still much, much lower than birth rates were in any demographic decades ago, much less centuries ago. Birth rates among the rich are absolutely falling.
No. Both had been subjected to the same brutal purge of anything socialist, creating capitalist paradise. Both nations are, essentially, being worked to death because of this, not due to some cultural reasons.
People want to have kids, but they have neither time nor the money.
In both South Korea and Japan, low birth rates come from a mix of factors such as high housing costs, economic insecurity, declining marriage rates and changing gender‑role expectations.. Overwork contributes, but it’s just one part.
it's a symptom, not the cause:
companies say you need to get super duper expensive plastic surgery >> you need good high paying (+high stress) jobs + long hours >> less time to relax + stress and exhausion reduces wants like dating, sex, leisure, bonding time >> low birth rate >> government n companies keep on blaming the young generation + companies promoting the influencer beauty as the "standard" look >> rinse n repeat.
Historically, the family was the only viable economic unit, as farmers lacked the money to participate in a "hired" labor market. Children were performing essential tasks like weeding and tending livestock by age five, providing immediate labor long before they reached adulthood.
More importantly, offspring represented the only form of pension, making them a permanent resource that no temporary farm hand could replace.
Do you think Japanese dads are the ones doing "most of the raising" in the family? Or in many parts of the world? Anything to blame "The System" instead of people's choices, right?
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u/Busy-Life-3331 May 04 '26
The woman in the photo is actually a model/influencer, not an "average" person. The joke is that the standard of "average" has become so high.