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Chris Jesu Lee's avatar

Yes, it's clearly mostly a cultural issue. The costs of having children are obvious, direct, and tangible (money, time, stress, responsibilities, fear of shame and judgment if children don't turn out well, physical transformation and danger for women) while the benefits are often vague and platitudinal ("children are our future," "it's the next step," "it's time to grow up," etc.). Without things like religion to create social and cultural rewards to influence people's behavior, of course people are going to look at those pros and cons above and either have few or no kids. A society can't just make having kids merely more affordable or less strenuous; it has to actively give high status to those who have kids. And you can't just legislate that.

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Martin Greenwald, M.D.'s avatar

One simple part of this whole thing is that having and raising kids is time consuming and often difficult. Some people naturally enjoy having children more than others, and when the economic imperative to have children is reduced, along with various social/cultural/religious encouragement, fewer people overall will do it, just like fewer people would do any difficult time consuming things if there are fewer incentives / less pressure.

The idea of kids as a capstone rather than foundational is counterproductive for the obvious reason that having kids is way more exhausting when you're older. And I agree that our culture instills utterly insane amounts of fear re: being a parent, motherhood in particular.

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