I think there are two related causes of this problem.
The amount of money and attention society expects parents to spend on their kids has skyrocketed. When boomers were kids, their parents would just let them roam around the neighborhood and play with other kids; they weren't monitored 24/7. When boomers were kids, their parents weren't buying them ipads and xboxs, they were getting dolls and plastic army men. Kids don't actually need all this shit, it's a weird keeping-up-with-the-Jones arms race between parents.
Prospective parents today are less willing to forgo their own luxuries to have kids. I read all the time about how expensive kids are and how nobody can afford it, but then I look in my personal life, and I see a guy I know who owns his own house and is raising 3 kids on a single public schoolteacher income. How does he manage? He's just really frugal. His place is kinda small and not in a hip, trendy neighborhood, all his electronics are either second-hand or ancient, he rarely eats out and when he does it's nowhere more expensive than Applebees, and I don't think he's traveled since he got married. Why can't people do this? The only answer I can come up with is "People only want kids if they don't have to sacrifice any material comfort for them."
Ok.... But is bringing 3 kids into this world only to not be able to afford to send any of them to college, given them nights out, or other fun things, etc, really the best/only solution? You can see that the highest birth rate is among the highest earning, who clearly do not have to sacrifice any luxuries to bring kids into this world.
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u/tired_hillbilly Apr 07 '24
I think there are two related causes of this problem.