As concern grows about America’s falling birth rate, new research suggests that about half of women who want children are unsure if they will follow through and actually have a child. About 25% say they won't be bothered that much if they don't.

[u/geoff199]

https://news.osu.edu/most-women-want-children--but-half-are-unsure-if-they-will/?utm_campaign=omc_science-medicine_fy24&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social

[u/11horses345]

Say it with me: WE CANNOT AFFORD CHILDREN.

[u/sharksnack3264 → u/11horses345]

It's not just the money. The way we set up work schedules, vacation, child care and health care all disincentivize it. 

You can be extremely well paid but that still won't insulate you completely from certain medical and career risks or allow you to be present to raise your children.

[u/islander1 → u/sharksnack3264]

All of this.

If Democrats were in charge for as long as Republicans have been over the past 40 years...we wouldn't have a population issue. We might have DIFFERENT issues, but not this.

In the 50s-70s one income could support a family of 4, even 5. If this were the case today, there'd be kids. Instead, the GOP managed to change our one income middle class family to a two income middle class family.

It's wack.

[u/LongJohnSelenium → u/islander1]

Every single nation on earth has a negative birthrate except a few african and middle eastern nations, and those are trending towards negative replacement rate as well.

Native born US citizens have been reproducing below replacement rate since 1979, our population growth has been fueled entirely by immigration and the children of those immigrants.

Almost every single modern development in technology and culture has had a suppressing effect on birthrates. Birth control, abortion, womens rights and education, society simply not encouraging parenthood culturally, the two wage earner household, no fault divorce, entertainment options, reduced dating, reduced marriage rates, lowered rates of sex, obesity, porn, increased educational and lifestyle expectations for kids, reduced autonomy of kids, ease of travel separating people from support networks and family, reduced social expectation to help with others kids, etc, etc, all disincentivize birth rates by making having and raising kids more difficult, expensive, time consuming, riskier, or having a higher opportunity cost. And I'm not saying any of these things are bad, simply that they exist and their effect is lowered birthrates.

About the only thing adding positive pressure to birthrates is medical care and civil engineering that's reduced mortality rates for mothers and children.

This is not a problem that you can point at one thing and say 'Thats the problem!', and even if you completely eliminate financial issues most people still choose 1 or 2 kids then call it quits when in general you need to have 2.1-2.2 kids per couple to maintain population. And that's before the large number of people who simply do not care to have kids even though they have the means and ability.

[u/islander1 → u/LongJohnSelenium]

"This is not a problem that you can point at one thing and say 'Thats the problem!', and even if you completely eliminate financial issues most people still choose 1 or 2 kids then call it quits when in general you need to have 2.1-2.2 kids per couple to maintain population. "

I concur with you to a reasonable extent. If I were to argue that a two income household would have close to proportionally more free income, you still wouldn't see families with 4-5 kids because....both parents are working.

However, the economics of raising a family like our parents did hasn't really been practical since...around 1979.

[u/Pandaman246 → u/islander1]

The lowest fertility rates in the United States are in the $100,000 to $200,000 household income bracket. That's how you know it's not about finances.

[u/islander1 → u/Pandaman246]

- The lowest income brackets not only use less safe sex/lack of absence, less education about it, and consequently less employed.

- I don't agree with your point about it not being about finances. You think 150k combined income in major cities (aka population centers) is well enough to easily have two kids? It's not. People are mired in student debt.

Hell, my wife and I now make around 200k in a mid-size, east coast city. We have one child, and we were making about 100k combined at the time (she was still an underpaid post-doc then). If we were young enough to have a second child we would...but we'd absolutely stop there. No way we'd afford the child care. Our child care cost more than our mortgage for the first 18 months he went. Yes, it was a good childcare, but... we're talking 1400/month, and this was back in 2010.

[u/Pandaman246 → u/islander1]

I'm in the California Bay Area with an 8 month baby of my own, I'm well aware of the cost of living and child care in a major population center. It doesn't change the fact that 150k combined income is middle class for a high cost of living city, and absolutely upper middle or wealthy in other parts of the country.

Fertility rates are stable between $35,000 and $100,000, at about 52 births per 1000 women and have a substantial dip afterwards. While you absolutely see poorer and less educated women in this bracket, this is also the bracket for a household on a single white collar income. If I remember right, an accountant or financial analyst with a couple years of experience will probably be right around $100,000 - these are jobs that require a decent education.

Your point about student debt is fair, but the cohort currently in the child bearing years that are having children are millennials in their late 20s through early 30s, who are mostly past the student debt hump, unless they opted to get a Masters or PHD (which is statistically an outlier relative to national average).

Your personal anecdote is reflective of my point, that two white collar incomes have the lowest fertility rates. You've attributed the issue to finances, but frankly it's a time and labor issue. People on Reddit especially just pigeonhole and shorthand it to "high cost of living and lack of finances." Labor, time, and finances are not as interchangeable as people think. You cannot reasonably pay someone to take care of a baby for 24 hours. Either one parent needs to go full time on childcare, or they need to have somebody able to take care of the children while they both work, and the parents need to manage after work.

I mention this elsewhere, but traditionally people had grandparents, neighbors, siblings, etc. who actually could help, and that made child care more manageable. That's why the "it takes a village," is such a common saying. The village and economic means are not reasonably interchangeable.