Kids used to be a backloaded financial asset, essentially low cost labor. Now they're a major financial liability. If you are middle class and have four kids, y

Kids used to be a backloaded financial asset, essentially low cost labor. Now they're a major financial liability. If you are middle class and have four kids, you're probably not really middle class anymore. Also, the stuff related to making kids expensive (school, housing, medical care) is working out of a completely different economy than the cheap TV economy that makes us the richest of all time. Medical care is far more an expensive by proportion of household income than it was in, say, 1955, as is school and housing. Add to that the breakdown in social structures that means you won't get family to take care of your kids and it just doesn't look that hot to have a kid these days, even if you want one.