Agreed completely, but I’ll add another point. About 50% of my friends are university+ educated women of different ethnicities, but all living in first world countries. We’re also all in our late 20s or 30s, so it’s becoming a “now or never” kind of dilemma for some of them.

We used to make “oh it’s expensive!” excuse until we started making decent money. Now that excuse doesn’t work, but there has been a significant precedence showing you can have a fulfilling life without having a child. You can have even a better one unless you have psychological attachment to it. I’ve heard my friends getting baby fever here and there, but then quick reality check of how much work it would be reminds them it’s not worth it.

And I completely agree, what’s the point? If you have some sort of spiritual or religious beliefs about life, maybe you can excuse it. But my circles don’t buy into those. We’ve also discussed global depopulation issues on different occasions, and consensus was “well, we didn’t cause this awful environment, so it’s not our problem”. Some sort of game theory problem where if you participate you’re more likely to be screwed unless majority participates. But if you don’t participate, you’re definitely on the winning side.

And another note, my friends in their late 30s/40s who always wanted to have a child have exactly one child for myriad of reasons. And obviously that’s not enough.

Sorry for the rant, but maybe the older generations were a bit more conscious rather than kicking the can down the road.