We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well.
But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea unappealing.
In general people who have never had kids don't seem to grasp that the average (non-Radian) car-seat is BIGGER than an adult side-to-side. The Radian series has a niche because they produced a car-seat the same size as an adult (with no loss of safety), but had to sacrifice comfort to do so.
I guess maybe they are less comfortable than traditional car seats, but since car seats are basically build like lazy-boy recliners, that seems unsurprising.
Our kids have never complained about the comfort or lack-thereof. They seem to have pretty equivalent comfort when compared to the back seat itself as far as I can tell.
My kid's infant car seat was a click 'n go bassinet with a soft fabric liner. His convertible car seat stays in the car, but it still reclines better than any adult seat, with more plush padding than the car itself. He actually prefers the car over the bed for naps. Only problem is that he's still rear-facing and his legs are getting a bit too long for the seat, but he solves that by putting his feet up.
Kid stuff is one area where I've been pleasantly surprised by how technology advanced when I wasn't looking. Car seats, strollers, baby gates, and toys are all way more advanced (and cheaper, inflation-adjusted) than they were in the 80s.
My main gripe about the car seat is all the damn waste. We have four of them and you can't sell them or even give them away. I'm not sure about the recycling situation yet, but even in the best case not much can be recycled.
My opinion is that it's way overblown, how many people have a serious crash with kids in the car? How many of them would then go on to resell the car seat? How many of those people would go on to have another serious crash to test the theory?
That said, when it comes to protecting our children, it's hard to justify saving a few bucks.
That...doesn't seem unreasonable? As a society, we like people to start families and continue the human race, but we know overpopulation is a thing and we don't want everyone to have huge families. 10% extra marginal cost is small, and offset by other economies of scale.
[0] I don't have a better estimate for this than Bill Waterson putting it at $100k. In 1987. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/07/24
Do you have any citations for this? Not snarking—genuinely curious, not arguing, but I was under the impression that most population growth in developed countries like the U.S. was due to immigration rather than above-replacement fertility rates.
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
{Edited for typo}
Also, don't we need some level of population growth for Social Security to function correctly? We could replace Social Security, but it would be difficult and expensive.
Unless you make up this difference with immigration, you have a declining population, which creates all sorts of short term issues.
Given that western countries have become increasingly hostile to immigration, especially from developing countries, trying to increase birth rate in western countries is a reasonable thing to explore imo.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
Yeah, there's a tension here it seems. But it's harder to fix a pension system with technology, and the system is much more socially fragile. There are policy approaches available in the US that might not be available elsewhere (e.g., lifting income caps on social security and medicare taxes) that will kick the can a bit further down the road, but it's challenging to make diverse societies peaceful and cohesive.
On the other hand, private enterprise and technology have a bevy of tools that aren't as readily available to policy makers. Government in principle can encourage more environmentally-friendly energy and food production, but they're not in the business of actually innovating.
>"problem isn't that complex."
It's a very conplex problem, people, especially women, had a tectonic shift in their priorities, culture and family size.
All developing and developed countries are on the same trajectory of declining birthrates, and I have not seen any policy that can raise it succesfully.
Financially, no it isn't unreasonable. But it's an added bit of friction to a decision we are already on the fence about.
I think that's the entire point of the article. Adding friction to the decision on whether to have more kids leads to people having fewer kids.
Overpopulation is not a thing anywhere in West.