I'm having a hard time parsing that statement.
Are you suggesting that only the wealthy can realistically afford to have children today, or that parents increasingly treat their children like status symbols or pets?
Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian.
A little of both. Kids are a luxury good in the current macro.
The cost to raise a child from 0-18 in the US in 2023 dollars is ~$330k (Brookings, USDA). This does not include daycare (~$1k/month if you can find a slot) nor college. No sick leave nor paternal leave mandate, no job security, and so on. 2.5M children experience homelessness each year in the US. 14M are food insecure.
Look at wage data, correlate against housing and other non discretionary expenses, back out to affordability.
> Both interpretations strike me as pretty dystopian.
Welcome to the shit show. “To know is to suffer.” —- Nietzsche
no no no. welcome to america. in no other country in the world is raising kids so expensive and receives so little support.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/babies-birth-rate-d...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I don’t think anywhere else puts an effort into making being a parent not suck
i don't believe that is true. not even in developing countries. the reason we can't see that is that developing countries suffer from other problems. but those problems don't motivate people there to not have children. on the contrary.
And even places putting material resources into family and parent support, it doesn’t move the needle
because material considerations are not a big factor. you were arguing that having children is expensive, and that children are only to be afforded by the wealthy, and treated as a status symbol.
but if that is a factor then it is only a factor in the united states and nowhere else in the world. especially not in developing countries.
