What are the real reasons you think?
2) Inflation of expectation on parenting. Parents used to be much more hands off in the previous generations, but the expectation of what you need to provide has gone thorough the roof and not all is useful, to be honest.
3) Delay in child bearing led to fertility drop when people really want to have kids.
4) This, I somewhere and will pawn it as my own, but... kids are no longer useful. Previously, kids were a working hand around the house and insurance for parental care when they got older. Both of these are not something necessarily expected of them nowadays.
5) Since women bear the brunt of the rough jobs of child rearing, even in our more egalitarian societies, their increase in options and freedom means a lot opt to just... not do it. As mentioned at pct1. it's really a tough job. Can't say I blame them.
1) Shifting Culture of Norms == Children are expensive. If you have kids you might have to give up the lucrative career opportunities you have been building towards since your university days, and other personal opportunities
2) Inflation of expectations on parenting == Children are expensive. Parents are expected to spend a lot more of their free time and money putting their kids in programs and sports and such
3) Delay in child bearing led to fertility drop when people really want to have kids == Children are expensive. If you want to have them, you need to have them before you are really financially stable and established in a career.
4) kids are no longer useful == Children are expensive. In the past kids were expected to contribute to the household at a fairly young age. Nowadays not so much. This means families either hire someone to do that work or it falls on the parents.
5) Women in the workforce == Children are expensive! Families have an entire extra income with Moms working and they still can't afford childcare. With an entire extra income!
So you're right that the reasons for falling birth rates don't have to be "children are expensive" but all of the reasons are certainly "children are expensive"-shaped
You could do the same kind of exercise with whatever other measurement of reality that you consider to be the pivot of existence like free time or amounts of sandwiches available or whatever (or is that also boiling down to money?).
But that really really hobbles your model of reality so much to the point it's not useful anymore.
And, then by your own standards, were they ever NOT expensive?
Is this expense some relative state to other people, as in if other people have more it means I have less by virtue of comparison or is it some concrete measure of need one can not afford nowadays and they could before.
Yeah a lot of my points are about money. But it's also free time, responsibility, etc
For example my parents used to drop me off for a friends birthday party and then go away. There would be adults there who they trusted to look out for me, and they could use that time for themselves for a bit to do whatever
Nowadays parents literally stay the entire time. That's a pretty large chunk of time that my parents had to themselves and parents nowadays do not. I don't know what other term than "expensive" to describe that, but it doesn't have anything to do with money
Money can buy people to clean for you, do errands and paperwork for you, and more. Free time is the most precious resource.
...and kids consume an incredible amount of it, and crucially far more of it than they used to.
I tried to provide one.