Thanks for your response. Agree with your first point - all my friends are in tech with decent incomes. Disagree about people claiming there are no downsides

Thanks for your response. Agree with your first point - all my friends are in tech with decent incomes. Disagree about people claiming there are no downsides - people I've seen generally accept the "cost" of kids (monetary, physical, personal etc). But the benefits of kids seem to be outweighing these costs. I agree with you that it is not socially acceptable to regret having kids, so some of them might be lying. Only speaking for myself, I am pretty happy. And lastly, there is another factor to add to your analysis - the culture. Almost all my friends are immigrants to the US, coming from countries with much higher birth rates and very different attitudes about family or having kids.