u/CanIHaveASong

>Stern and colleagues compared single people and partnered individuals on life satisfaction ratings and the Big Five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).

>The study used a survey of more than 77,000 Europeans over the age of 50 and was the first of its kind to look across cultures and at people who had been single their entire lives. The findings reveal that, in addition to lower life satisfaction scores, lifelong singles are less extroverted, less conscientious, and less open to experience, compared to partnered people.

>For families considering relocating for work or couples planning to welcome their first child, the study highlights critical factors for judging a city's "lifestyle fit" beyond mere proximity to the office:

>The mobility-cost trade-off: Parents routinely prioritize living near essential services like schools and health care, even if it forces them into a longer work commute. This is a trade-off families must weigh consciously.

>City-specific "friendliness": Cities possess distinct structural personalities. New York and Chicago tend to support parents better based on the study's metrics, whereas Houston and Virginia Beach are highly favorable for single individuals.

>The trend for highly-educated women to have fewer children isn't seen among those who are religious, new analysis suggests.

>According to the study, birth rates declines sharply for non-religious women with higher-level qualifications in Britain and France, while practicing religious women who are similarly educated maintain high fertility levels.

If you're interested in the intersection of Christianity, fertility, family formation, and demographics, check out r/ChristianDemographics.

It's a more specialized community, with a particular focus on demographic trends affecting Christian communities. It's a great complement to the broader discussions here at r/Pronatalism.

If you come across interesting research or discussions that are relevant to both communities, crossposts are welcome!

If you'd like us to highlight your community, please send the mod team a note!

>Why does getting by on one income feel so impossible?

>“Nothing is stopping a typical married American couple from accepting 1960s material conditions in exchange for one parent being a full-time homemaker,” Yglesias argues. Even after adjusting for inflation, he calculates that a single male earner today still makes more than men made in the 1970s. “The issue is that living that lifestyle—never taking plane trips for vacation, rarely dining out, having a small house—would mean living like a poor person by today’s standards.”

>In other words, our shared definition of the good life has risen proportionate to our collective wealth. Everyone is richer than people used to be, which has made today’s higher standards the norm. The hitch is that our new, higher standards almost certainly require that most families rely on two full-time workers or be relatively “poor,” and “people don’t want to do that.” In fact, this really turns out to be true. 

I read about this in the Free Press today. I'm hoping it's of value for some of the singles here.

Mods, please remove if it's not appropriate for this sub.

"1 in 10 first dates lead to a marriage" really caught my attention. It's expensive, though.

https://www.vidaselect.com/keeper-ai-reviews

>Keeper.ai is an AI-powered matchmaking service that charges men a "marriage bounty" of approximately $50,000, but only if the match leads to engagement, marriage, moving in together, or having a child. Founded in 2022, the platform combines artificial intelligence with human matchmaker oversight to analyze 800+ compatibility factors across its 300,000+ completed profiles. Women use the service free. Early reviews are positive

For discussions specifically focused on women, feminism, fertility, and pronatalism, check out r/NatalistWomen.

It's a good complement to this subreddit, especially for conversations about women's experiences and perspectives on family formation and fertility.

Relevant discussions can also be crossposted between the communities!

We will be highlighting a few related communities over the next few days. If you'd like us to spotlight yours, please message us!

Number of children	1 FT + 1 not working	1 FT + 1 PT	Both FT
1 child	52.5%	52.4%	60.9%
2 children	38.0%	41.5%	34.7%
3 children	8.3%	5.6%	4.4%
4+ children	1.2%	0.5%	0.0%

I thought the economic makeup of households versus the number of children was interesting data.

>In Finland, beginning in 2011, individuals in a cohabiting partnership that last longer than 5 years or who have a child with their cohabiting partner have the right to demand financial compensation for unpaid household work, similar to the laws allowing married couples in a divorce to do so.

>My analysis for the CSJ estimates that the Finnish reform reduced the number of couples marrying and reduced the number of couples cohabiting, while also reducing fertility. Making cohabitation more like marriage, especially for cohabiting parents, resulted in a broad-spectrum shift away from family life. Some people used the strengthened cohabitation rules as a replacement for marriage, some cohabiters avoided having kids to evade those rules, and some people were scared away from moving in together at all.

It's sobering that sometimes laws created to protect people have major unintended consequences

I have a used copy of "Atlas of World Population History," published by Penguin in 1975, written by an Oxford professor and a historian. It gives historical population figures (estimates mostly of course) for most countries in the world from ancient times to 1975 and then a guess for 2000.

The interesting part is the final section about the world as a whole. It talks about S-curves and declining rates of fertility due to modernity, and then write one paragraph about trends beyond 2000, something it does not do for any countries.

They think humanity will choose "quality over quantity":

"Our guess is that instead of moving further towards a theoretical limit - which is somewhere around 20 billion - the human population, on this Earth at least, will never approach closer to it than the 21st century level of between 8 and 9 billion."

It's rare, I think, to encounter population forecasts made in the midst of concern about overpopulation which under-estimate where we end up, since we're already between 8 and 9 billion and still growing at a fair clip.

The book says nothing that I can find about the possibility of declining global population. The assumption is that we'll level off somewhere and then stay there unless there's some catastrophe.