.WARNING EPIC LONG POST AHEAD. Split in 2 parts here though as responding to 2 different points:
–
I think a part of it though somethingguy is that pregnancy is no small thing. It lasts 9 months. It’s not even really a case of getting fatter for a few months and woops a little bit of morning sickness temporarily. For some women it can be an absolute nightmare. People may make jokes of hormones but pre (and post)-natal depression is really not that rare at all and well… hormones control how you feel and I’ve seen and heard things which are not pretty in that area. In a sense hormones affect your very behavour and feelings and in pregnancy your own personal control at the time is dubious. For a time your body also contains a fetus attached to the woman which can all sorts of strange and not all that pleasent effects. Sure there’s points of joy and happiness for many women in pregnancy too (it’s not like every single pregnant womean is a basically walking angst 24 hours a day for all those months even late on in the pregnancy) but it’s not a walk in the park physically and mentally for many and it’s not for every woman at all to begin with either. Even if technically they are physically healthy to carry a child to term.
Granted the whole not truely being asked/fully informed (and thus this makes it utterly dubious in terms of true actual and informed consent) would fit a great dark fanfic in a way (though it would be a very high T if not an M in terms of fanfiction.net) in terms of potential fodder and would be interesting to read. But it would still be potential nightmare fuel or fridge horror in any case. Pregnancy is not easy from what I’ve seen. If culturally robots almost raised humans to consider this normal to not ask it wwould almost be a form of mass cultural ‘grooming’ -shudders-. They don’t know it’s wrong themselves for robots to just do that without asking and simply inject human females with it if they want it to happen because ‘culturally’ it’s seen as normal. Same with the men getting sexually violated in their own way if they are not asked before hand in terms of being sperm donars.
Though if in the mens case if they don’t even really feel it it’s almost like taking advantage of a paralysed child or someone who mentally is like a child about these sorts of things.
That’s pretty chilling.
It’s fine if they ask and tell they tell them of the full ramifications of what is happening and they agree really. But are these people even mentally capable of that? Of giving full consent in this particular area where their viewpoints have become pretty screwed up in?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cloning is possible TDIT! I never though of that. I still wonder if their bodies would be fit myself for the whole carrying a baby to full term etc though. (Since cloning still requires a vessel to develop it, and today that still involves using a surrogate mother).
The thing with the aging population today isn’t really down to laziness though really but various reasons today though laziness is certainly a major factor in the Axiom. But generally it doesn’t seem to be a thing people on the Axiom are thinking about and doesn’t seem to be in their “culture” to be parents, though some natural parental instincts may exist if John and Mary are any indication… and the captain seems eager to teach the kids about pizza plants. Some of the instinct is still there but it had yet to wake up really. (Probably because with the robots looking after them any such instincts were not ‘activated’ as it were- but seeing the kids in danger called Mary to action with John helping her 
). Honestly though on the Axiom the adults are almost babies themselves, continually baby sat by robots to their every need and getting mushy food to eat. Plus when they start standing they look like babies trying to walk.
I don’t seem them as at that stage being all that capable of raising children.
But now adays it really isn’t laziness to me that there are less children really. It’s a variety of reasons. To me though having or not having a kid are both equally a personal choice. People both choose or not choose to have children because they generally want to in developed countries (most of the time anyway, being utterly forced to not give birth or to give birth to children is disturbing and thankfully generally against the law in most developed countries). It’s generally acceptable for women to be able to choose to not have kids in developed countries at all or have them later because there are more options for women (which is a good thing). A woman can still choose to be a housewife and have a lot of kids but that’s not their only option, so naturally with social advances, choices for women and more equality there will be less children. With careers most women have less or mayhe none at all and are childfree. Also in some cases people take on the wonderful option of adoption and fostering- because that’s less taboo today- as recently as the 70s for instance people were ashamed of the whole concept because it showed that birth families were not necessarily always loving or acceptable. Many kids became ‘dirty little secrets’ unfortnatly.). While adoption is still difficult it’s still better than how it used to be. (And one of my cousins in law is adopted herself- her mother was single and still fosters children today, the wedding was fun with all those kids running around).
Also of course there’s the fact protection is more or less a legal right in most developed countries (not all though) so there’s more ways to prevent more births than you want than strict abstinance which most people don’t seem to be keen on.
In general also families decide they want the best for the kids they have- so tend to have fewer now because they wish to invest more and put more into fewer kids then ‘spreading’ the resources out across more children - more kids go to university eventually than before which is expensive (this can be seen across the generations it seems especially in my family . Also with more medical knowledge it’s very unhealthy to women to have as many kids as they did back then. It greatly lowers your life expectancy as a woman to have the numbers my great-grandparents had -my paternal grandmother had 12 siblings for instance, I have 1 sibling- my paternal Uncle has 4 kids which is above average). So in fact a lower birth rate can in some cases raise the life expectancy of women too by a fair amount!
Plus there’s the fact that medical care has made leaps and bounds so people are living longer in general. It used to be living past 60 wasn’t easy in many areas of the world where it’s now considered a young age to die (but in less fortunate areas in the world this is still unfortunatly a hard age for some to reach to). In fact a major reason as to why people had so many kids in the past in developed and in many developing countries now is because of high infant mortality rate (IMR) (there used to be a thing in my grandparents childhood time for some where you didn’t get ‘too attached’ to kids under the age of 2… because they might not make it and well that was something which would be of course hard to take) not to mention the fact with less or no social security instead kids would look after their parents if they happened to live to old age and all. Hence another incentive to have more children. Often as developing countries become medically and socially more advanced- birth rate doesn’t drop immediately so for a while they have a huge population increase as they have a high birth rate still and yet a much lower/decreasing IMR and Death rate.
As things become more socially comfortable and advanced death rates are the first to decrease and then birth rates follow afterwards. Generally this is because of more choices for women in their adult life (housewife/having lots of kids is still a choice but it’s not the ONLY choice- perhaps though when people are more acceptable of the idea of house husbands and everything, a choice men should also be allowed feel comfortable to take for true equality- birth numbers might rise a little more though they’ll never be as high again for various reasons already stated). It’s just basically how it works as a society advances in various social and medical areas.
-shrugs-
But on the Axiom it’s laziness it seems though as really being the reasons for having less kids. It isn’t to do with laziness today but more gender advancement and more acceptance in various areas (though developed countries are obviously not perfect and are still having to advance in various areas). The having less kids thing was just an inevitable resultant factor of this. Not to say there haven’t been some bumps though (like sometimes women having kids a bit too late in life- so late in fact that being alive while the kid is a teenager is actually something they might seriously have to consider as having a reasonable chance of something that just won’t happen).
But as long as the kids are well cared for (and their futures planned for in some way if something bad does happen in the case of aging parents) and loved and happy I think I’m happy enough in those cases myself.