The simple solution is to not have any children. Leave that to extremely rich people and very poor people. Society obviously does not support child-rearing, given the cost of housing and the lack of support from employers, so why fight it?
It disturbs me deeply and I wonder why.
Maybe it was your matter of fact, emotionless delivery of it that caught my attention.
I can't really dispute what you have said other than it is not an inevitability. Societies can choose to change this, Sweden being a current example, Finland too. But people need to organise and want it enough, maybe they don't. Time will tell.
I'm very glad about this; it means I must have gotten something right. :-)
>I can't really dispute what you have said other than it is not an inevitability. Societies can choose to change this,
Exactly, but that's the problem: societies can choose to change this, but will they? As a pessimist, I say no, other than a few very small countries like those you cite (and even there those are just attempts at change so far; the birthrates in those nations are extremely low). Humans are remarkably bad at seeing impending large problems and collectively working together to change things to avoid them.
Case in point, my cousin in NYC just had her third kid. She'd been considering moving to the suburbs for a while, because there was barely any room in their tiny apartment in Battery Park City for her, her husband, and the twins. Now that they've got another kid and the twins aren't babies anymore, they've gone from simply considering moving to the suburbs to actively house-hunting (and they're putting such a priority on it that she had her parents go house-hunting for them while she was in labor). I'd be surprised if they were still living in the city by the beginning of the second half of this year.
Another example: my parents. Both of them lived in Manhattan when they were in their 20s, and immediately after they got married, they moved to Texas and bought a nice cheap house in a suburb that had just been developed.
Basically, if you want to be a decently-paid professional and have a rewarding career, location is going to be very important to you, and you're not going to have time or money for kids. If you really want kids, you should make that your priority, and forget about education and career, and just work on having a stable job in a low-cost place, perhaps working in fast food and trying to work your way into managing a McDonald's where you might be able to get $40k. With kids and working at McD's as a cook in your younger years, you should qualify for tax benefits and probably some social programs like SNAP to help make ends meet.
This is what the corporate world is like all across the country.
To answer specific points:
> Right, but now you're forced to get a new job in a new place, or at the very least have a very lengthy commute.
People change jobs all the time, and they typically get raises and promotions out of it
Oh, and having a long commute and spending lots of time at work is considered a bonus to many people who have kids. Work is the best way to get a breather from the screaming babies at home. You know the guy who's always super-excited and happy to be in the office at 8:00 Monday morning? He's obviously a father.
> Or worse, having to live in Texas?
I actually love living in Texas. I've lived here my entire life, and the only reason I'm even considering moving later this year is because of SB6, and even then I'm going out of my way to move to a suburban environment that reminds me of home (I've pretty much decided on Torrance, CA, though Orange County is still a backup).
> This of course assumes that there's even jobs for you in TX or other low-cost locations.
And it's not like Dallas doesn't have any tech industry. We're even called the Silicon Prairie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington is the fourth largest metro area in the country, and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land is the fifth-largest [0]. It's patently absurd to say there are no jobs here. Both metro areas individually (Dallas: 7.1M; Houston: 6.7M) are more populous than San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward (#11) and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (#35) combined (6.6M).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...
So it all falls on the wife to do the vast majority of the child-rearing and domestic duties (in addition to their employee job), as supported by many current studies. No wonder so many women are opting out.
Anyway, I think the population figures speak for themselves and support my arguments. The US is at either ZPG or probably even NPG except for immigration, and statistics show a huge portion of children are born into poverty.
It's very possible with perfect decisions, lots of sacrifices, and freakishly good luck.
The question is how well they will sustain, and whether a future market shake up (quite possibly Trump-related) would reset things to more sane levels, and for how long.