Yea, pretty much this. I'm half of a two person couple well into the upper middle class - we live in a one bedroom condo that costs more than half a million dollars... kids are not a realistic financial decision.
You and I are probably in similar situations (I rent a 1-bedroom apartment in an upscale-ish area) and you probably earn more than me but I live very comfortably.
I've personally never had any interest in having kids. Whatever it is that makes kids appealing, I've never had it.
But I think I agree with you and I don't understand why I think I agree with you.
Kids do seem like a crazy financial decision today. But if we wanted to, we could for sure have a kid and get by. Plenty of people have plenty of kids on a lot less money.
Is it that we want to maintain our standard of living more than people did in the past? Plenty of poor people have plenty of kids in 1 bedroom apartments. Do we just demand more comfort today? Are we just more picky? Are kids just not worth what they used to be?
I don't think any of these answers are bad. I just think it's interesting.
> Is it that we want to maintain our standard of living more than people did in the past? Plenty of poor people have plenty of kids in 1 bedroom apartments. Do we just demand more comfort today? Are we just more picky? Are kids just not worth what they used to be?
I find it interesting that this is almost the only post in the entire thread that arrives at the need to do a little introspection.
Apparently, the ability to do that is much rarer these days than I thought.
It's not ability it's just willingness. Go to the recent Scrum threads or any discussion of remote work. It's all just these incredibly strongly held opinions that people feel the need to share over and over.
I think this is a big part of it. As much social pressure as there is to have kids today, it seems reduced from how it was even a single generation ago.
Raising kids is expensive[1], time consuming, and in general a pain-in-the-ass. With reduced social (and even legal) pressure to stay married, and increased expectations of a career for women (without any accompanying reduced expectations for men), it's entirely unsurprising to myself that many opt-out of it.
Indeed, most of my daughter's friends in early elementary school lived with their parent in a 1BR, studio, or a rented bedroom. One of them had 3 siblings, making 5 people in a 1BR apartment.
I guess maybe parents had fewer expenses when I was a kid (I was born in 1983)? No cable bill, no cell phones, fewer video games, no streaming services?
IIRC, housing, child-care (especially if you include after-school activities), and health-care (If you are un- or under-insured with your job) dominate the increased expenses. Housing is a strange one because a lot of parents will try to move to a better school district, so parents may end up paying more for otherwise similar housing than non-parents.
FWIW, the things you give as examples are rounding-errors in our budget (though only two of our kids have cell phones so far); we don't have cable, pay $22/mo for streaming services, buy used video games, and pay an average of $60/mo for our phone bill. We spend over $300/mo on groceries for comparison.
