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I could not agree more. Whereas historically having kids used to be a "social" decision in various respects, it has now become a socio-economic decision for th
by logshipper 6y ago
I could not agree more.
Whereas historically having kids used to be a "social" decision in various respects, it has now become a socio-economic decision for the reasons you point out.
If anything, I would argue that the economic shock of the pandemic (aside from the horror stories you hear from WFH parents who have kids) and the inequality it has exposed in our financial systems has cemented the idea for a lot of middle class millenials to have no kids/fewer kids.
- treis 6y agoIt was always a socio-economic decision. Kids were your retirement plan before we came up with things like 401ks.
- tenacious_tuna 6y agoThis is a very interesting perspective to me, because I know it’s relatively common in non-Western (or maybe just non-American?) cultures that parents move back in with their kids when they get old, or more generally that extended familial units are far more cohesive than they are in the States. ....Which then means your extended family (and own children) are indeed a ‘retirement plan’, because the expectation is that they’ll be around to support you when you’re unable to support yourself. But the intensely individualistic American lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to that thinking very well, so there’s less incentive for folks to have kids for their own interest. (Indeed, as a mid-20s couple, we’re more often told the ways in which children _limit_ the lives of the parents, rather than augment them.)