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mlinhares

* too expensive;

* not enough daycare even if you do have money;

* not enough space at home;

* cities that are not made for parents and small kids;

* atomized communities with very little help;

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The last one can be brutal. It's tough to maintain friendships with people who don't have kids, it's doubly tough to form friendships with new people who have kids. Although it's mildly easier to build acquaintances.

While unfortunate we were able to make friends with other people with kids so there's some sharing of responsibility (send receive kids at home when they need to be watched over) but this doesn't seem to be the norm here.

Feels like most people are raising their kids by themselves.

Because people with kids won't stop talking about how wonderful their kids are.

This is so true. It's socially isolating. We don't have the support structures we had even back when I was a kid, let alone 20 or 40 years before that, when society was really built around families having kids.

I can only wonder what it will be like in another 20 years, when my children are grown up.

it's always been more expensive. daycare traditionally was only for aristocrats. multigenerational families lived in smaller apartments and cabins than single people do today. Cities used to be filled with sewage, horses and smoke. I'll concede the point on communities and I think that's a bigger contributor than economics.

Couldn't care less about what people did or lived like 100 years ago. I live today and I'm either going to provide my kids a good live and have a good life myself or not have kids.

I don't need to have kids for them to be my labor, that's not how this works anymore.

then it's not about economics it's something else

agree, the argument that the economy needs more warm bodies is not exactly inspirational.

you're right, people aren't having kids because they are not inspired. that is one of the main reasons. but that's not economics, it's philosophical and theological

Exactly. Even 50 years ago, you could not even go to the high school and afford a middle class lifestyle for your kids. Not the case anymore. There’s no point comparing today with history.

You don't have to go back to the 19th century to make your point things are different today. Just go back to the 20th century - what did the Boomers do?

- They had latchkey children - no daycare required!

- "Free range" children was a thing and nobody got arrested for it!

- There were such things as "Block Parents", people in the neighborhood who looked out for all the kids. Obviously this was before "stranger danger."

- Everybody looked after everybody else's kids, even in tenement buildings.

- People lived close to where the grew up and generally had relatives nearby to help out when all of the above failed.

Nowadays, most of this is gone. In short, in just a mere 40 to 50 years, the cost of having children has skyrocketed. Add in the cost-of-living expenses have skyrocketed for younger people and you get the result that fewer people are having children and those who are having children are having them much later.

I wholeheartedly agree. The real reasons are cultural like this, but that's way more complicated to explain than "it's more expensive".

The short answer is cultural fragmentation and soft paternalism.

Yeah it's easy for younger people to forget that those that grew up the 70s/80s/90s were largely unsupervised most of the day once they got to grade school. Almost all kids I knew had no child care by grade 2. I was in a after school program until grade 3 and was teased how I was still a baby.

I would be miles away from home doing whatever and nobody would know. Now parents freak out if their kids leave their sight for more than a few seconds.

One thing that is really interesting is that many of the "free range" children don't follow that same parenting technique even though things are as safe or safer than when I was a child. I think this is mostly from the media putting fear into them that their children are going to be abducted.

I really feel for kids now in the US. How they grow up I would not really consider a childhood. It's just preparation to sit in an office all day until they die of old age.

Nowadays the police will be bringing your children home and you'll be paid a visit by child protective services. It's insane what we're doing to children - and their parents.

Totally agree with this. I grew up in the 70s & 80s; myself, along with every other kid I knew, learned to exist without any supervision starting around 3rd grade. I think that might be difficult to believe for younger people today, but it's true. During the summer, all the kids in the neighborhood would get on our bikes in the morning and ride all day long, not returning home until dinner time. No parents. No cell phones. We had injuries all the time (one kid got shot in the leg by a hunter, another kid broke both his legs jumping into a shallow creek), but we all somehow survived. People weren't so protective of children back then. The attitude was basically, "They're kids. They're tough. They can take it."

My sister has kids, and she's a total helicopter parent. I've asked her why, considering how we were raised. She simply said, "That's just how it is now. That's how everyone parents." So yeah, there is certainly a cultural element to this. But I wonder if that cultural change has been created or amplified by cost. In other words, the dumb-ass kid that jumped off a bridge into a shallow creek (it was on a bet, naturally), would his parents have to file for bankruptcy these days because of the high medical costs?

I had this even in the 1990s. But now it really is different.

Last week, I let my 7 year old go by herself to a Dollar Tree store by herself while I was with her siblings at another store in the same shopping center. A bit later, I went in to the Dollar Tree after her, and got a real talking to from the cashier about how unsafe it was for me to let her go to the store by herself. She said the world isn't safe any more and I'm putting her at risk. The cashier was an elderly woman! I would think she was raised in a time where kids were allowed to leave the house on their own.

I try to teach my kiddos independence. I send them out on their in ways that I think are safe. But the amount of judgment I get is just crazy. And I fear that one day I'll have child protective services knocking on my door.

My Boomer mother is the same way. She sits around the house watching cable news and browsing the Neighborhood website - "This area is going to hell. Did you see someone had their bicycle stolen 2 weeks ago?! And someone's dog pooped on my lawn! I got them on my Ring cam!" The real kicker is the "sex offender" websites - "OMG! The kids can't go outside! There's 2 sex offenders in this area!"

* too expensive * not enough daycare even if you do have money - again too expensive to hire a private nanny * not enough space at home - too expensive to buy a bigger home * cities that are not made for parents and small kids - too expensive to move to cities that are

Again, I think almost everything can be reduced to "it just is too expensive".

Some that aren't quite so idealized:

* Don't care - children are not a priority (often "I am the priority")

* Get wealthy - children oppose money gaining

* Get famous - children correlate poorly with rapid fame rise

* Get sex - children correlate poorly with being a player

* Work less - children take work (if not already wealthy)

* America - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-fe...

* Sinking ship - enshitification everywhere, murder stats on all news, why have kids in a latrine?

* Success correlation - wealth and success correlated with starting wealth. why have kids?

* Negative wage slave experiences - hey kids, here's your collar, just like mine.

* Abortion access - americans would fight to the death other over abortion access. wait, they already do. "a gift to Jesus on his birthday."

* Health care (not specifically kids) - 10x all other locations.

* Food - pointlessly expensive. so much land it's nonsense humans starve. they fight to squander it all.

> Sinking ship - enshitification everywhere, murder stats on all news, why have kids in a latrine?

Don't forget climate change! The latrine is also on fire.

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