Why people don't want to have children any more

Our final third kid introduced a bit of a not-enough-hands problem.

(The Japanese with their mamachari bikes, dad, the salaryman, away at work all day—you can see why one kid is quite enough.)

Any woman with a stable well paying job will try to avoid the very real risks of getting passed over for promotions or illegally fired. A lot of employers still see a mother as someone who can't be dedicated to work or takes too much time off.

Then you have Hispanic Americans with much higher fertility than all other groups, even if you account for income. I think it points to a cultural problem where some women see having a child as too much of a risk, becoming dependent on a man and losing it all if he decides to abandon you.

In a more community minded culture you know you have a support network to fall back on if your husband leaves you behind. And if kids are too much of a burden you can leave them with a relative until you're ready to take them in again, and you can be confident they will get raised good. That makes the risks a lot less scary.

In these places where people have more children but are overall much poorer, is there a different in infant mortality rate? I know in the past, people having large numbers of children was in part a response to the fact that the infant mortality rate was higher.

There can be a whole lot of reasons for that.

poorer people are more likely to be uneducated, have less access to contraception.

Poor people have higher infant mortality.

Children also make people poorer. the higher the fertility rate the more likely that someone will be poor.

Poorer people also tend to be more religious which can limit women's rights, their options, and increase the expectations placed on them when it comes to having children. That's especially true in undeveloped countries where women may have no choice at all.

Some people take great offense to the insinuation that children are a burden.

> but the simpler truth is that I never saw anything on the "pro" side of the ledger.

They'll usually say something about intrinsic rewards or something to that effect. Occasionally, they'll demand we applaud them for their sacrifice for creating the next generation, but that's just silly. We don't need more people. We already talk about how there's not enough housing supply, and nobody wants to create more because keeping the supply constrained is more profitable.

But more importantly, what if I went with their proposition and decided to have a child because "It's so rewarding", and then it turns out, I'm more dead inside than I ever realized and I don't feel it at all? I end up with a child I didn't want that I'm now having to take care of for 20+ years.

It's a taboo topic that people feel VERY strongly about, but regretful parents exist. 7% of parents over 45 years old in the USA said that if they could do life again, they'd skip having children [0]. Granted, this 7% likely includes parents that didn't want kids to begin with.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-%20children-norm....

From an economic standpoint for Americans, absolutely.

Post-WW2, the USA was an economic powerhouse. Other industrial nations had just had all their factories bombed, so the USA being untouched meant there was a massive demand for American products.

And back then, companies were loyal to their workers. Dad could get a job at the factory out of high school and it'd pay enough to buy a house, raise two kids, and provide a pension for retirement. Profits funded bonuses. Now, you've got people earning college degrees being barely able to afford an apartment. Profits are held by the shareholders and wages are kept as low as possible.

The problem is people use simple numbers like "GDP" and "Unemployment %" to define "the economy" and both of them grossly ignore actual purchasing power for the majority of American consumers.

Now even to the most Internet-savvy it's often not clear what's truth and what's the alternative truth. We don't need to look for the things we want to hear - hyperoptimized algorithms deliver it to us directly to maximize engagement, so for majority it really feels like everything is getting worse.

  >rarely does hopelessness result in giving up the kind of indulgences that result in unplanned children

When and where human life is sufficiently cheap, the usual solution is (of course) quiet and unacknowledged infanticide.