I recall there’s been programs in some countries in which they’ve thrown a lot of money into enticing people to have children, but the experiments haven’t yielded very impressive results.
To get the age pyramid corrected, not only would people have to plop out more babies, they’d also have to do it a lot younger. In ages past it was more common to have your first child in early twenties, while now the average age of first-time mothers is around 28.
As a woman who has never dreamed of having children, and knowing there’s a lot of people like me for whom no amount of money would make a difference, I’d like the focus to shift from increasing childbirths to how we’ll care for all the elderly and keep a high standard of living despite the decrease in population, which I see already inevitable. A lot of young adults prefer gaming & me-time to nursing and I’m not one to fault them.
I got my first one when I was just 20, but I did notice at that time that alot of the other mothers I met were often more older than me so that is very much accurate.
Ultimately this, it is and should always be everyone’s personal choice that matters. And don’t get me wrong, that both me and my partner chose to have a family early was a decision for us. But there is absolutely alot of social pressure at women to build their lives around children. And I do think that needs to be diminished.
Because some people just don’t want kids. Or don’t want them in the moment. Or are uncertain. Regardless of their choice or stance its their life and its equally valid as anything else.
I don’t know how applicable it is to the Western world, but I do recall watching a documentary on Japan’s love industry (the Cuddle Cafés, dating sims, all that stuff) and over there, they still have quite conservative ideas of what the gender roles should be. The men are disinterested in being the sole breadwinner of the house and working themselves to the bone to keep a happy family, and the women are tired of their ambitions being denied and the expectation that they should basically just be housewives and carers for their kids.
I don’t imagine that for many countries it’s as strict and rigid as Japan is, but I have to assume that it’s still a factor regardless - and honestly I can’t blame anyone who does want to distance themselves from the traditional ideas there.
On a slightly more on-topic subject, I am quite disappointed by how Blizzard didn’t turn Dalaran into a military base. Instead of some Justice League of Azeroth members, together with a vendor and a couple of portals I was expecting to see Dalaran guards and mages utilizing the same portals to fight back and investigate the echoes and make the city itself more of a hotbed of activity with stacks of supplies, trainees and magi deploying or patrolling the place.
Instead we get nothing, leading to such brilliant community initiatives as a fashion show right up until TWW launches and the city gets blown up.
I agree, which is why injecting money into various benefits and restructuring the whole long-term policy of parenting from a governmental position won’t solve the issue of low birth-rate, no matter how “enticing” pro-natal policies can be. It is a complicated issue and there is just no one-size-fits-all solution.
The prepatch event sucks D.
Its Azeroth throwing memberberries at us instead of something tied to TWW, i remember most of the pre-xpacs being tied to the xpac’s theme.
For a city like Dalaran who first suffered the brunt of a demon invasion, then became a crucial point for the assault on the LK, and then after that became a crucial point against the Legion(and suffered alot of infiltration)
It is weird how lax their security is. You’d think they would have learned something after decades of fighting people, being infiltrated by the Legion more than once, and also having Naga straight up steal powerful titan artifacts from the center of the city.
Back in Legion I accepted the idea that they didn’t need to start amassing an army, given that the city became the center hub for every Order Hall as well as having dedicated districts for the Horde (Forsaken) and Alliance (Worgen). You can see that as a lot of investment, particularly with the increased presence of murderhobos, who I’d argue are the best line of defense in the setting. We even got several new adventurer NPCs added to reflect this increase in importance.
Now we have none of that, except the locals giving away their own weapons and armor to those who get beamed into an Echo warzone to fight Azeroth’s brain farts.
I’m gonna put it in a spoiler tag to just be safe, but I also think that the whole thing going on with Dalaran for the TWW is very silly and shows some serious incompetence on the Kirin Tor’s behalf.
TWW Intro spoilers about Dalaran
So you have a mage who was last seen nearly two decades ago show up out of the blue with zero communication. They know that there is bad stuff on the move in the world already and they’ve had so many issues with infiltration as already mentioned.
How does NO ONE suspect that it is likely a trap(It ends up being Xal’atath) and just freely let said mage wander around without supervision or even a basic check?
I know it is common in WoW, but it is also a serious flaw still and always has been.
I do think that is the sign of someone not being a very good writer. If the plot hinges again and again on really obvious stupidity that is also very out of character, then that is just shoddy writing.
Tbf Warcraft has never had stellar quality writing, its always been pulpy fantasy. The only difference in the past was the writers didn’t try to insult the intelligence of the readers indulging in their content or gaslight them into thinking it was something more than it was.
It’s more of a sign of Blizzard employing a team of writers who can’t for the life of them cook up a scenario where a catastrophe doesn’t occur because some people were stupid.
Dalaran can just falter because the Council of Six underestimate the Kaheti. That’s all. They fought Nerubians before, they were floating right above a spot in Northrend where the Argents were having a scuffle with said Nerubians, but no-one told them to prepare for the Kaheti on Khaz Algar.
Xal’atath being the Sylvanas 2.0 girlboss waifu is becoming an increasingly stupid trope as well.
Remember when Blizzard tried to hype people with guessing who would be burning down Teldrassil and everyone concluded that Sylvanas was the most boring milquetoast choice? Remember when we could have had an interesting narrative of the Alliance being the aggressors (and besieging Lordaeron City before Teldrassil got nuked) instead of the Horde getting clobbered with the villain bat for the umpteenth time?
Remember when the Zug Zug demolishers became Intercontinental Boulder Launchers that were able to hit the tree from Darkshore?
What sort of bizarro warped mindset do you need to have to take that message from any of the comments? Nobody is asking for gay people to be quiet, only to stop projecting themselves as weird fetishists in public spaces. I honestly don’t get why we shouldn’t hold everyone to the same standard. Ask yourself if every gay person wants to be attached to that crowd too.
And surely there’s a lot more to pride and expressing yourself as a gay person than that. Why the heck can’t they express themselves in, as you put it, “most modest and bland outfits” again?
next time just admit that you don’t know how to counter what’s being said, obahar
This was said many times but another big factor is that they were, for the most part, pretty simple stories, just told relatively well and rooted in the lore of the setting. There’s a reason why so many people like Arthas’s arc and it’s not because it’s the most inventive piece of fantasy writing since Tolkien.
The last time this game had a genuinely good story was in MoP and that was relatively simple too, albeit rather original I’ll admit (the sha are very cool) and also rooted in the lore (using the faction war as means to fuel the bigger threat)
It’s the age of the marvel-esque selfish writers who are incapable of respecting past work while also striving to rise high above it, ignoring the limits of their incompetence (hi danuser).