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Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

It's not just a matter of giving your kid a new laptop every year vs. every couple of years, or not being able to pay for college out-of-pocket.

There are plenty of people out there who can't afford to live in anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, who can't afford to clothe their children, or who can't even afford to feed them. Telling them to have kids because they are "resilient" and parenthood is "meaningful" isn't very helpful - it's far better to wait a few years until they're financially stable. A parent's love can't fully compensate for childhood poverty trauma.

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To accept this view is to accept the idea that most of our ancestors had "childhood poverty trauma". I just don't see how it's a useful frame.

And really, it's not the actual poor who are delaying having kids into their mid-30s: it's the college educated who make way, way more money than them!

> To accept this view is to accept the idea that most of our ancestors had "childhood poverty trauma".

I 100% accept this idea. Most of my ancestors lived the miserable, short lives of impoverished alcoholics. They and their children absolutely experienced trauma from their miserable hunger and disease-ridden lives.

If I can’t see myself giving my child a good life I’m more than happy to wait until I’m able to. Bringing a child into the world isn’t an intrinsic moral good.

The college educated also live in very expensive cities. What they make in gains of income gets subtracted by landlords.

You're missing the fact that class mobility has changed wildly over time. Delaying having kids is class mobility play, trying to give your a leg up socioeconomically based on your own heightened socioeconomic status. This was a VERY effective move during the 20th century, because the economy was in the biggest growth spurt in history.

In contrast, you go back 150 years, and class mobility was for the cut-throated, extremely ambitious entrepreneurs. The idea of "get a better paying job working for someone else and fundamentally change my social standing" was laughable. Go back any much further than that, and socioeconomic class was basically immutable.

Where I live ( East Asia ) most early-child bearing parents are have wealthy grand-parent who could afford to fund the whole child raising cost. The less wealthy stay working until later in life.

The even more wealthy one marry and have kids right out of college. Delegate child-caring to grand-parent, and only then start working for their career.

>To accept this view is to accept the idea that most of our ancestors had "childhood poverty trauma". I just don't see how it's a useful frame.

For most of the human population, this has genuinely been the case. Most of South/East Asian and African adults are barely 1-2 generations of separation from living in poverty. Most of them are very familiar with the struggle of giving kids a good life in much worse poverty than that experienced in much of the West, and would very much rather their grandkids not go through the same thing.

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