My hypothesis, which I rarely hear anyone else mention, is that we no longer look to our children for entertainment. Life used to be really boring. while there

My hypothesis, which I rarely hear anyone else mention, is that we no longer look to our children for entertainment. Life used to be really boring. while there is some truth to that with stories of a sudden baby boom 9 months after a significant power outage, i'd rather rephrase that as "we no longer look to our children as the only thing we care about" there are now so many other things (hobbies, causes) that we can put our energy into that they take away the focus from having kids. after all, once you have kids you will have to put aside some of your other activities for some years. sociopolitical explanations of falling birth rates have been refuted by the present trends i think birthrates don't so much correlate with wealth but with education. my guess is that education improves faster than wealth, so this could explain the development better.