The welfare state is predicated on a pyramid-shaped population.
Also: people deride infinite growth, but growth is what is responsible for lifting large portions of the population out of poverty. If global markets were repriced tomorrow to expect no future growth, economies would collapse.
There may be a way to accept low or no growth without economic collapse, but if there is no one has figured it out yet. That's nothing to be cavalier about.
We tried to counteract this with our own children by giving them a lot of freedom.
But these things are very network dependent. Yes we let our kids play in the street and bike around the neighborhood, but it is boring because there are not any other kids to play with, so they don't do it much.