Nation With Lowest Birthrate Is Rocked by Soaring Sales of Dog Strollers - WSJ

SEOUL—After pushing a stroller to a park near her home in a Seoul suburb, Kang Seung-min plopped down on a bench. Then an elderly woman approached, looking for a friendly chat with Kang about motherhood.

“I’m not even married yet,” Kang, 24, responded. 

The startled woman stared into the stroller and took in the little passenger: a brown poodle named Coco. She left, imploring Kang to start a family. “I don’t want to get married,” Kang says. “I’d rather spend money on my dog.”

A global discourse has emerged, including in the U.S., about childlessness and the reluctance to bear offspring. But the hand-wringing might be at its fiercest in South Korea, home to the wealthy world’s lowest birthrate, as well as another distinction that has fur flying: the skyrocketing sales of dog strollers, which last year outpaced those of baby strollers for the first time, according to Gmarket, one of South Korea’s largest online retailers. The trend held true for the first six months of this year, too.

via www.wsj.com

I had a number of Korean women students in my AI seminar in the last few years. Their anxiety about finding someone to marry and have kids with was palpable. (And in one case, the joy of the woman who had had her first child was even more palpable.) Why Korean or other men aren't stepping up, I have no idea. One of them in a different discussion about what to invest in remarked presciently, "pets." If you could have a law that said you could buy a second dog only if you had a child, that might work.