Pratica di Shadowing: Why Gen Z GAVE UP Having Kids - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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According to the CDC, U.S birth rates have now fallen to the lowest point in American history, with Gen Z having over 50% fewer kids than the 1950s.
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But when child care costs more than rent in all 50 states, while 60% of Americans can't afford a minimal quality of life, it raises the question, how is Gen Z expected to have kids
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when they're struggling to afford even the most basic costs of living?
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Well, headlines frame the nation's declining birth rate as a shocking phenomenon driven by individual selfishness,
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As if genuine care and investment has been given to any emerging generation over the last 40 years, the reality is that this trend has actually been building for over two centuries,
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as economic conditions have continuously redefined the true cost of having children.
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Throughout early industrialization, children were not viewed as a personal choice, but as an economic necessity tied directly to national power and household survival.
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In a 1791 report, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton argued that children, who would otherwise be idle, could serve as a source of cheap labor,
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helping build a domestic manufacturing base capable of competing with Great Britain.
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Even in agricultural settings, children predominantly functioned as economic assets as they provided the necessary physical labor
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while also serving as informal childcare for younger siblings.
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We can see this ideology was also replicated in Europe with historians studying proto-industrial France, discovering that multiple sources of household income,
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combined with the fact that children became profitable at an early age,
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encouraged marriage and large families across both towns and rural areas as industries not only sustain larger populations,
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but actively incentivize families to have more children as a means of surviving on minimal wages.
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Even throughout the Gilded Age, with overall birth rates being cut practically in half through rapid urbanization, the underlying incentive for working-class families remained unchanged.
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An analysis of Philadelphia households found that children contributed between 28 and 33 percent of total income in native-born two-parent families.
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For Irish and German households, those figures rose as high as 46 and 35 percent,
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forcing both parents and children to be largely opposed to child labor reforms not
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because they supported exploitation but because they were financially dependent.
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However, unlike the working-class households who were consistently fighting just to keep their heads above water,
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middle and upper-class families had the luxury to prioritize the long-term outcomes of their children.
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According to the study, Fertility Declined the United States,
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by 1930, women married to men and in professional and managerial occupations had 18% fewer children than those married to farmers,
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as larger families were increasingly viewed as an economic liability, as having fewer children allowed families to afford a better quality of life, often in the form of an improved education,
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and sometimes even a college education, all in hopes to position them for upward mobility in an increasingly stratified society.
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Suggesting real birth rate decline did not start with selfishness.
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It began when children stopped being seen as economic assets.
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And as we are once again seeing wealth inequality widen dramatically, we're unfortunately beginning to see elements of this dynamic re-emerge.
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Between 2019 and 2023, the Department of Labor reported an 88% increase in overall child labor violations,
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alongside a 31% rise in children employed in hazardous conditions, predominantly among lower-income and migrant households.
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But for the majority of young people today, they're doing exactly what they were raised on.
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If you can't afford to have kids, don't have them.
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One of the most important aspects of being able to not only financially provide for oneself, but for a family, is having a job.
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According to Revelio Labs, the average new hire was 42 years old in 2025.
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Revelio chief economist Lisa Simon said years of economic and political uncertainty, along with the push to use artificial intelligence,
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have led employers to place a higher value on experience
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and become more risk-adverse in who they are hiring and willing to bet on in this labor market.
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That so-called risk has resulted in the share of the workforce,
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age 25 and younger, falling from 15% in 2022 to less than 9% today,
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with hiring inflows for Gen Z dropping by nearly 50% in just the last three years.
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And while some of you are already commenting that these lazy kids just need to get their hands dirty, well, many already are.
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The question is whether you prioritize completely changing careers or starting a family without any form of job stability.
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Now, traditionally, another way to overcome a failing job market was to go to college.
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But unlike a minimum wage worker in 1989 who could pay an entire year of tuition, fees, and room at board with roughly 24 and a half hours of work a week,
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A Gen Z student today would need to earn $21.27 an hour to do the same,
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with nearly 40% of the entire American workforce earning less than $22 an hour.
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And while Gen Z is on track to become the most educated generation in history, the outcome has been higher unemployment than those without degrees,
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alongside increasing displacement, whether from the 37% of employers who say they would rather hire AI than a college graduate, or from large-scale H-1B replacement. And
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when we compare paying an average of $526 a month in student
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loans to the average child care cost sitting at around $1,100 a month,
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or a monthly increase of $600 when adjusted for inflation compared to a parent in 1985.
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We once again run into the same question.
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Does Gen Z prioritize paying off student loans or starting a family, all without any form of job stability?
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And while there are certainly those who have managed to find or create stable income, they are still running into rising healthcare costs, historic housing prices, and growing economic uncertainty,
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all compounded by a dollar that is now worth roughly 86% less than what baby boomers entered adulthood with.
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So when the median Gen Z income is sitting around $50,000, while it costs roughly $23,000 a year to raise a child,
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it highlights that while Gen Z selfishness may make for a convenient headline, the reality of a declining birth rate has far more to
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do with Gen Z living with the consequences of decades of self-serving decisions made by those in power.
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However, even with economic conditions playing a massive role in child creation, another critical factor
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is that people are willing to endure hardship when there is a shared belief that tomorrow would be better than today.
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This is most clearly represented with the generation that is directly responsible for the baby boom.
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Throughout the worst economic crisis in American history, birth rates dropped 26% between 1926 and 1936,
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with the nation's fertility rate now falling to one of the lowest in the Western world, where families weren't just having fewer children,
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they were rapidly abandoning the idea of family expansion altogether, with marriage rates decreasing 22% between 1929 and 1939.
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Alongside this cultural shift in the nation's perspective on having children also emerged a growing disdain of capitalism.
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Journalist John Chamberlain, who would later become a central figure in shaping 20th century American libertarianism, warned that the crisis was reshaping an entire generation's political and economic identity.
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Chamberlain feared that the prolonged stagnation was creating a resentful generation, writing, young people have no memory of a good economy with plentiful opportunities.
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They are a trapped generation that will explode.
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He illustrated this volatility through the story of Joe Carnes, a young office boy who once identified as communist,
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convinced this economic system is never going to spread out enough to take us all in, yet abandoned politics entirely after a modest promotion.
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To Chamberlain, it proved that ideology was rarely the problem.
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Opportunity was.
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and without vocational training, night schools, domestic investment, and real job pipelines,
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he argued, education is a weak bulwark for democracy if democracy can't deliver the goods in the form of jobs, a future, or just plain hope,
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almost perfectly mirroring the reality that young Americans face today.
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However, by the late 1930s, New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration provided jobs for millions of young men,
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with federal investment in public infrastructure resulting in the construction of over 40,000 new schools, libraries, and hospitals between 1933 and 1939.
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And even though the actual cost of raising children had not substantially decreased, nor had the depression massively improved, this renewed sense of optimism and societal investment,
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alongside the rise of American mass media, introducing characters like Superman, offered the nation's youth a sense of hope that a better tomorrow was always possible,
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resulting in both fertility and merit rates beginning to rise by the end of the decade,
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with some historians and demographers even stating that the baby boom originally began prior to the war, proving that despite economic hardship,
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even a fragile sense of optimism is enough for families to begin planning for the future.
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And when you combine genuine domestic investment and amends post-war optimism alongside economic stability, such as low-interest home loans,
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increased wages, pensions, employer-covered child care services, and health insurance, well, America's youth turned to family formation,
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where between 1946 and 1964, over 76 million babies were born, creating what we now call the baby boom,
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signaling that while governments across the world are doing everything they can to encourage Gen Z to have kids, the reality is that the internet has brought young people together all over the world.
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And if Gen Z collectively views the future as an AI dystopian reality filled with immense wealth inequality, working till death, a lack of any ownership,
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climate concerns, wars continuously on the horizon, domestic unrest, endless amounts of covered up filth from our leaders,
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and a lack of any actual signs of real investment into the youth, then it once again poses a question.
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Does Gen Z wait and do everything they can to try
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and build up their own stability or go ahead and have children?
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This question is especially relevant when the generation predominantly using the selfish label went through this very same reality.
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As Cold War anxiety mounted, the 1980s saw a surge in research papers from psychologists and psychiatrists calling for intervention,
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warning that entire generations were growing up with a sense of helplessness, with the Department of Psychology at Harvard University stating,
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this fear of nuclear annihilation fostered a sense of having no future, an anxiety that persisted into adulthood,
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influencing personal decisions like delaying marriage and creating a future generation.
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In England, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences described a similar trend, writing, the threat of nuclear war involves an overwhelming threat to the individual's future,
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that he or she will have no future, that there is no point in planning for marriage, children, or a career.
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And as the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960, for a generation coming of age amidst rising divorce rates,
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growing disillusionment, a cultural rejection of traditional societal norms, and the dismantling of the nuclear family, having children became deliberate and intentional,
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particularly as more young Americans began to question whether the future would be more prosperous than the past.
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And for the Gen X viewers out there, this is a reason why your generation is so small. So
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when you have researchers at the University of Sydney pointing to
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a growing Gen Z mental health crisis driven by economic insecurity and social instability.
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Gen Z in South Korea, referring to the country as Helljosen, a hellish, hopeless society.
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Gen Z in China, calling themselves rat people, a way to describe burnout, high unemployment, and disillusionment with the rat race.
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Gen Z across Europe, effectively facing the same struggles of a failing job market being blamed on laziness and entitlement.
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While in Canada, despite Gen Z saving more than any previous generation, they have effectively given up on home ownership.
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If the powers that be genuinely cared about a potential population collapse, then they must stop having these pointless discussions of selfishness and redirect attention to real change.
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And to just prove the impact of shared struggles all across the world, I'm 26 years old and I live in Austin, Texas.
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Because of this channel, I receive emails from people my age all over the world, from Brazil to Russia, telling me that while my content is American focused,
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they are still experiencing similar issues.
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So I just do not understand why our so-called leaders frame this birth rate collapse as some sort of unbelievably complex issue.
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If you cannot financially provide for yourself and you do not see hope on the horizon, you are not going to have kids.
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And until that is changed, this trend will continue.
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And something else that we need to put further emphasis on beyond the fact
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that teenage pregnancy is at like the lowest point ever in human history.
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I think that there are more 40-year-olds that are having kids than those that are teenagers.
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I would argue that that's something that we probably want to be seen as a society, but that does affect the birth rate.
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Beyond that, what I am finding is a lot of these individuals, whether it's on the internet or social media or in the news,
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so-called experts, are spending all of their time focusing on the birth rate collapse
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as if it's solely responsible for modern dating culture
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or the selfishness or the laziness or people just wanna go out and travel on vacation
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or a lot of these other things.
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Obviously, there's some validity to it, right?
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I think the dating pool sucks.
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What I think that we're missing here is the meat and potatoes of this argument.
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The economy is not working at least for the average person.
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I think it's probably working for whoever it's intended to work for, but not the average person, not the majority of individuals.
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And I got to say, when is anybody going to say that the way
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that society is functioning and that the direction that we're heading is not a great one?
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I just feel like so many of these so-called leaders or voices or different things like that
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are making careers out of talking about the seasoning on top of the meat and potatoes.
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It's like they don't actually know anything.
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I would say that you could fix a dating pool and a lot of these other issues if people made more money.
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If a house didn't cost, if my 600 square foot apartment didn't cost what it was that a mortgage payment was just a decade ago.
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I'm spending as, I'm almost spending $2,000 a month just on my rent and my health insurance.
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And the craziest thing is, is that for a lot of you watching that or watching this, that's fantastic.
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So then I'm going to add what another $1,100 a month for childcare.
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So I'm spending over $3,000 a month and I haven't even bought groceries yet or car insurance or, you know, all of these other things.
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It's, it's, it's unreal how, I think what I'm really just wanting to stress is that this birth rate collapse.
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Well, I would say for like humans to survive, I am a proponent for human survival.
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I think the way that it's been, I just don't think that the people that are discussing it actually, actually cared to see it better.
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Because if you did, you would talk about the obvious things.
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And, you know, I'm going to bring, I'm going to bring in one other thing here.
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So, you know, some of you guys are going to hate me a bit,
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but I look at my closest friends absolute just top performers, great individuals.
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The parents was infidelity, physical abuse,
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mental abuse, other types of abuse, unfortunately.
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The amount of divorce is like near 100%.
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With that being said, again, all great individuals, but their perception of the future, including myself, I have great parents,
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but I have to say the majority of my childhood was consumed by divorce.
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Our collective thoughts about the future is we are
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so concerned about what direction it is that we're heading
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because we have seen it through our parents
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that we feel like we have to provide as much stability as we possibly can.
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What I'm ultimately saying is that when I used to work at a bank from 18 to 22 or whatever it was,
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24, I guess, I would see individuals that were the parents of my friends and other individuals I went to school with, they would come in.
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I would see that they were cheating on their husband or their wife.
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I would see that they were lying about credit card debt, that they had extra lines of credit on their home equity lines of credit, that they were drowning in debt,
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that they had liquidated their 401ks because of gambling issues.
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I think it's just, I'm ultimately trying to say
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that I'm shocked how a lot of these individuals saying you're selfish for not having kids weren't great role models.
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And I'm sorry to say that.
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That isn't a great thing.
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And a lot of you are fantastic parents.
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But man, the amount of comments I've got that have said my parents beat me and all of these other things,
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it hasn't necessarily been the best environment to foster the desire to want to have kids when things are so difficult.
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And I don't think anybody else is saying that.
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Again, I had fantastic parents.
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And I think what you want for every generation is to
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want to give the next generation a better life than what you had.
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So what I see is, man, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure
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that I have some financial stability to be there when my kid is young, to be able to help them out a little bit,
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to make sure that I don't have to do some of these other things, to just be more present, to offer a little bit of stability for them, and to make sure that I am rock steady with my partner.
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I just think that we're shying away from the important conversations
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and I'm going to say it because some of you might be
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questioning everything that I'm saying is
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that I want to have kids I've said it many times in my videos the only thing that I really want,
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my main goal is to be a father it has been the driving force of everything that I've done
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I've worked at least two jobs, the majority three jobs since I was 18 and it was solely because I wanted to create a stability some sort of,
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I wanted to create a foundation to be able to be a father at some point.
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I'm now working 60, 65 hours a week on this channel, trying to do everything I can to make whatever change I can,
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because at some point I know I'm going to try to be a dad.
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And when that happens, I won't be able to balance both.
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I won't be able to be somebody that is really trying to make a difference and to be a real present father.
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And to me, being a present father is important, but I have to do this other thing first.
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And if you want to call that selfishness, which I've actually been called selfish.
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I don't know.
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I think that you might need to get your priorities set.
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So again, I'm doing everything that I can and I'm really doing my best to provide stability, but it's a very difficult time to do so.
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And we start, we have to start having these conversations.
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And, you know, I know a lot of you out there aren't maybe, you know, thinking, oh yeah, you're selfish for not having kids.
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But man, that is a prevailing thought process out there.
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And I almost just want to offer like a rebuttal back of, then why did you make it seem like it was so damaging to your life being a parent?
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Again, this isn't directed towards my parents, but man, that is something I've seen a lot of.
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And it's really frustrating.
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I wish that I could have talked about other things in this video.
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I feel like I'm having to do so much damage control of societal narratives because we're just not having the right conversation.
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I don't know.
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It feels like that's what this is all designed for.
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It's not to actually address anything, not to pursue any way forward.
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It's just to keep wasting our time.
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So I don't know.
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I think it's really frustrating.
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But again, I hope this was able to provide some value.
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I just really want to see us go in a better direction.
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I want to, I want, I'm actively trying to plant the seeds so my kids
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and my grandkids and my great grandkids can benefit the shade from the tree.
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And previous generations, why didn't you do that?
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Why are you so focused on my selfishness that you didn't plant more trees?
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I think we got to start asking that question.
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But anyway, I hope this was able to provide some value to you.
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Thank you all so much for your support.
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Make sure you hit the like and the subscribe.
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It greatly helps me be able to get the message out there to the people that want to see this.
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I'm actively trying to make a change and I'm doing my best.
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I'm doing the best that I can to be able to make sure that that happens.
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Anyway, until next time.
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Bye-bye.
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “Why Gen Z GAVE UP Having Kids”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: Gen, generation, economic, rate. Questo video contiene 221 frasi e 3609 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 21:10. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 170 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Solo il 81% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese, quindi il lessico è impegnativo.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| selfishness sostantivo | /ˈsɛl.fɪʃ.nəs/ | egoismo |
| selfish aggettivo | /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/ | egoista, egoistico |
| collapse verbo | /kəˈlæps/ | collassare, crollare |
| societal aggettivo | [səˈsaɪ.ɪ.tɫ̩] | societario |
| optimism sostantivo | /ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/ | ottimismo |
| predominantly avverbio | /pɹɪˈdɒmɪnəntli/ | prevalentemente |
| financially avverbio | finanziariamente | |
| laziness sostantivo | /ˈleɪ.zi.nəs/ | pigrizia |
| hardship sostantivo | /ˈhɑɹdˌʃɪp/ | avversità, difficoltà |
| emerge verbo | /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/ | emergere, venire fuori |
| historian sostantivo | /hɪˈstɔɹi.ən/ | storico, storica |
| inequality sostantivo | /ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/ | disuguaglianza |
| workforce sostantivo | /ˈwɝk.foɹs/ | forza lavoro, manodopera |
| continuously avverbio | /kənˈtɪnjuəsli/ | continuamente, costantemente |
| ideology sostantivo | /aɪ.diˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | ideologia |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| build up verbo | accumulare | |
| cover up verbo | insabbiare, occultare | |
| go ahead verbo | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | procedere, andare avanti |
| go out verbo | uscire, andare fuori | |
| go through verbo | attraversare | |
| pay off verbo | corrompere |
Frasi da ripetere
Frasi brevi e complete del video che puoi riutilizzare nella conversazione di tutti i giorni:
- It's just to keep wasting our time.
- I think it's really frustrating.
- And previous generations, why didn't you do that?
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | have now fallen · has been given · have led |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | has been given · were not viewed · was also replicated |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 65 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come I'm, don't, I've. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: selfishness /ˈsɛl.fɪʃ.nəs/, selfish /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/, disillusionment /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənmənt/, hardship /ˈhɑɹdˌʃɪp/, traditionally /tɹəˈdɪʃ.ə.nə.li/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: prioritize /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/, optimism /ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/, fertility /fɝˈtɪləti/, predominantly /pɹɪˈdɒmɪnəntli/, disillusionment /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənmənt/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: hardship /ˈhɑɹdˌʃɪp/, historian /hɪˈstɔɹi.ən/, horizon /həˈɹaɪ.zən/, headline /ˈhɛd.laɪn/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: selfishness /ˈsɛl.fɪʃ.nəs/, selfish /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/, collapse /kəˈlæps/, prioritize /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/, disillusionment /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənmənt/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: collapse /kəˈlæps/, grandkid /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌkɪd/, capitalism /ˈkæp.ə.təlˌɪzm̩/, abandon /əˈbæn.dən/, gambling /ˈɡæm.bl̩.ɪŋ/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come selfishness, selfish, collapse.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.