Now with smaller family units and less community interaction they represent a risk to security, mainly financially.
Having children for yourself provides more security for all the other families but barely anymore for your own. Meanwhile you bear most the costs and everyone else bears very little. So the incentives are totally reversed, and even worse the coupling between investment in children and payoff is cut which means the people in the best position to help their kids be successful are the least incentivized to do so.
Given the post you’re replying to, it seems you’re implying a specific reason, but what if it’s a different one? How about “I love children but having kids is super expensive”?
> There is generally an inverse correlation between monetary income and the total fertility rate within and between nations.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
> In 2021, the birth rate in the United States was highest in families that had under 10,000 U.S. dollars in income per year
And a few thousands more links.
always surprises me when ppl say this when they clearly observe the opposite in action. whats going on here.
My oldest will need a laptop for school next year. It isn't optional or provided.
Maybe you need a bigger car because car seats take up a lot of room.
What if your kid decides they want to join a sports team? A friend of a friend told me they did the math on a year of competitive swimming. It was $10,000 by the time they were done with equipment and travel.
A trip to the dentist for my family of four is about $1000 for just cleanings. Braces for my oldest were $3000 if I could pay cash or $4000 to finance. You could skip dental care, but some might consider that neglect.
What if the school tells you to get your child tested? That costs about $3000 in my part of the world. Half of the kids on my block are neurodivergent somehow. What do you do?
In a less well off part of the world, most of these "concerns" probably disappear. I think we have pretty high expectations of parents that aren't poor.
I don't know why you're trying to explain an outcome that is opposite of the observed outcome.
Are you saying that while more money is correlated with less fertility (the fact), that somehow even more money will reverse the trend and start going the other way?
Based on observed data, one could almost make the case that if only billionaires start stealing from the poor even more, then birth rates should go up.
I've always believed that it isn't money itself, but access to healthcare and education that lower fertility rates. Money correlates really strongly with access to healthcare and education.
Having good education and healthcare leads to birth control and maybe an abortion if the BC fails.
When a family of three is making $15K a year, do you believe baby four, five and six were planned out in agonizing detail? Or do you think maybe they weren't planned at all?
And I do believe more money going around would help. If the perspective is "I can't afford it", those who are doing OK will not have children if they can help it.
So it's expensive no matter what income bracket you're in.
Also: having many children used to be an insurance policy, but as countries become more developed it's less necessary.