> Something that might be worth pondering is: When was that ever not the case? Are we seriously saying that in the 1800s those poor desperate people who had 12

> Something that might be worth pondering is: When was that ever not the case? Are we seriously saying that in the 1800s those poor desperate people who had 12 kids and put most of them (the ones that even survived!) to work in mines and farms, were in a better situation? I mean... the answer to that is, it's complicated. If you're talking the peasantry bound to the land owned by a Lord in ye olden days, I would say they were certainly stressed out and barely getting by, but they were different stressors. If they didn't grow enough food to pay their owed amount to the person who effectively owned them, they would obviously be in a really bad situation. But at the same time, that's something they could work on and reasonably plan ahead for: it's an actionable stressor, if you will. It's certainly a problem but it's a problem you can actually do something about. In contrast, if you work in an industry that chronically underpays people, are saddled with various obligations, and are subject to extremely high costs of living, like, in theory you can try and get a better job maybe? But that's not nearly as actionable in general, and there's no guarantee that the better job is even out there, nor how many people you'd be competing with to get that better paying job. Sure, you have air conditioning, you have modern medical treatments, you have a whole host of things at your fingertips should you need them that those peasants wouldn't even dream of. But you also have a ton of stressors that are far more disconnected from your ability to solve them, that are down to systemic failures in our societies. > The discussion around cost is a red herring. If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton. That presumes that the upper middle class aren't also drowning in debt. I can't speak for everyone, but I assure you, I have the really nice house, relatively new vehicles, people would probably call me quite wealthy by the standards of the area I live in, and make no mistake, we're doing better than a lot of our neighbors, but I'm still like, three bad months from homelessness and that's definitely, along with the general trajectory of the world, one of the reasons why we're childfree. I know tons of people my age who are doing much worse than me, who also have decided against children, even if temporarily because they are so damned expensive and there's basically no support here for parents save for a tax credit.