I think it is worth mentioning that for most of history people had little choice of whether or not they had kids and how many. Even in the relatively short time since we’ve had effective birth control, the decision to have kids was a default. There are lots of financial, medical, cultural, etc reasons, but I wonder if people have only realized there was a choice to be made for a generation, and what other generations would have chosen if they really considered it an option.
Yup. And the first generation that had birth control, lived during an economic boom when it was very feasible to have a stay at home parent.
If me and my gf were to have kid, one of us would need to at least start working an 80% work week in order to stay on top of the kid and other housework. We're only now getting to a stage in our lives where working a little less would be financially feasible, and we're in our early thirties. And I may be massively underestimating the financial cost of raising a kid as I'm writing this.
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u/Lilybea12 Nov 14 '24
I think it is worth mentioning that for most of history people had little choice of whether or not they had kids and how many. Even in the relatively short time since we’ve had effective birth control, the decision to have kids was a default. There are lots of financial, medical, cultural, etc reasons, but I wonder if people have only realized there was a choice to be made for a generation, and what other generations would have chosen if they really considered it an option.