80,000 Hours Podcast25 Marras 2025

Rob & Luisa chat kids, the 2016 fertility crash, and how the 50s invented parenting that makes us miserable

Global fertility rates aren’t just falling: the rate of decline is accelerating. From 2006 to 2016, fertility dropped gradually, but since 2016 the rate of decline has increased 4.5-fold. In many wealthy countries, fertility is now below 1.5. While we don’t notice it yet, in time that will mean the population halves every 60 years.

Rob Wiblin is already a parent and Luisa Rodriguez is about to be, which prompted the two hosts of the show to get together to chat about all things parenting — including why it is that far fewer people want to join them raising kids than did in the past.

Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/lrrw

While “kids are too expensive” is the most common explanation, Rob argues that money can’t be the main driver of the change: richer people don’t have many more children now, and we see fertility rates crashing even in countries where people are getting much richer.

Instead, Rob points to a massive rise in the opportunity cost of time, increasing expectations parents have of themselves, and a global collapse in socialising and coupling up. In the EU, the rate of people aged 25–35 in relationships has dropped by 20% since 1990, which he thinks will “mechanically reduce the number of children.” The overall picture is a big shift in priorities: in the US in 1993, 61% of young people said parenting was an important part of a flourishing life for them, vs just 26% today.

That leads Rob and Luisa to discuss what they might do to make the burden of parenting more manageable and attractive to people, including themselves.

In this non-typical episode, we take a break from the usual heavy topics to discuss the personal side of bringing new humans into the world, including:

Rob’s updated list of suggested purchases for new parents
How parents could try to feel comfortable doing less
How beliefs about childhood play have changed so radically
What matters and doesn’t in childhood safety
Why the decline in fertility might be impractical to reverse
Whether we should care about a population crash in a world of AI automation

This episode was recorded on September 12, 2025.

Chapters:

Cold open (00:00:00)
We're hiring (00:01:26)
Why did Luisa decide to have kids? (00:02:10)
Ups and downs of pregnancy (00:04:15)
Rob’s experience for the first couple years of parenthood (00:09:39)
Fertility rates are massively declining (00:21:25)
Why do fewer people want children? (00:29:20)
Is parenting way harder now than it used to be? (00:38:56)
Feeling guilty for not playing enough with our kids (00:48:07)
Options for increasing fertility rates globally (01:00:03)
Rob’s transition back to work after parental leave (01:12:07)
AI and parenting (01:29:22)
Screen time (01:42:49)
Ways to screw up your kids (01:47:40)
Highs and lows of parenting (01:49:55)
Recommendations for babies or young kids (01:51:37)

Video and audio editing: Dominic Armstrong, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Music: CORBIT
Camera operator: Jeremy Chevillotte
Coordination, transcripts, and web: Katy Moore

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