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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

  Either people have agency  ...

Or things are more nuanced than this view allows. What if people in general have some agency, but not always enough to counteract the larger scale actions that affect them?

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This is a good point. Many aspects of our lives are under the control of others & our socio-economic system. Recessions our previously comfortable families below the breadline, where they are then judged harshly for their life choices. Many families are only a crisis or two away from homelessness, without full agency to rescue themselves.

> What if people in general have some agency, but not always enough to counteract the larger scale actions that affect them?

Would one of those actions be the urge to have sex? If not then not sure what we are talking about here.

I think the majority of people who have children they can't provide for bear the responsibility for that and I don't really see where in that you want to plug your nuance - but if you have something more than "there is nuance" I would love to hear it.

Your are assuming at least two things (there are surely more) about people who are struggling to raise kids

1) They have always been struggling, a didn't have a reasonable plan originally, and/or

2) They didn't take reasonable precautions to avoid pregnancy but still end up pregnant, and believe their best option was to raise the child

Both of these assumptions are clearly false in general although I don't know enough about the issues to hesitate a guess on percentages.

I was mostly thinking about (1). Someone with a partner and a solid household income can easily become a struggling single parent, for example, without having made any obviously bad decisions.

I think we completely rule out cases where people were in a good financial position and could provide for children and cases where people were using birth control child poverty will remain virtually unchanged.

https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-succ...

> The researchers further suggest that the "fraction of children living in single-parent households is the strongest correlation of upward income mobility among all the variables we explored."

It's a complicated issue. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on it, but I do know enough to know that a lot of the research is contentious.

The black/white thinking espoused above, though: I doubt it leads to real insight or improvements.

It is very easy to point at a poor person and make up a random reason why they are poor. (It's not like anyone will spend resources on validating your claim.)

It is very difficult to look at a random average person and predict whether they will become poor within the next 2 decades.

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