Do you have a solution? From what I see, parents simply have no time to actually spend with kids, they have to spend the equivalent of a full apartment rent on daycare, the cost of raising kids properly is utterly unaffordable, and the cost of living and healthcare makes it impossible for one parent to stay home instead of both having jobs, and the very high probability of divorce makes it foolhardy to enter into such an arrangement in the first place. On top of all that, the time needed to get an education and get established professionally makes it very difficult to have a kid before you're 30, and the older you are the higher the likelihood of birth defects or autism or Down's syndrome. Society isn't going to do anything to help you in raising your kids, so unless you're lucky to have some really great extended family or something, it's just way too much of a risk and an expense.
I fail to see how this is "off the deep end", this is just the reality of modern American society.
the older you are the higher the likelihood of birth defects or autism or Down's syndrome
For what it's worth, we've been getting really good at identifying these very early with tests that also hold little or no risk to the mother and baby (e.g. NIPT with free-cell fetal DNA). Of course, if there's moral objections to terminating such pregnancies even in the very early stages, that doesn't help.
reality of modern American society.
Yeah, that explains a lot. I understand daycare and healthcare aren't really subsidized here, apparently American society has problems with distributing the costs of childbearing over the population in order to encourage it. I guess they'll keep the population demographics at a sustainable level by immigration or something.
I have to disagree about the testing bit with autism; from what I understand, that doesn't even show up until a kid is a couple years old or more. Anecdotally, I have two friends with kids, and both their kids are mildly autistic. I think, in both cases, the mothers were in their early 30s.
>I guess they'll keep the population demographics at a sustainable level by immigration or something.
Yep, that's exactly what they're doing. The people having all the kids are either immigrants (esp. Hispanic ones), or ultra-religious Christians. All the people supporting "liberal" values aren't having any kids because it's too much time and money. So I think we can look forward to something somewhat similar to what happened to the Islamic world: it used to be at the forefront of science and math, and then turned into what it is today when the clerics took over.
Many other cultures (and even many of my relatives) frame the task of rearing children as means to better ensure for your own care towards the end of your life, rather than as a high-risk endeavor comparable to purchasing real estate.
I've heard of this, but what kids actually stick around to take care of their parents when they're old? In fact, isn't that rather cruel? By the time the parents are unable to take care of themselves (if they get to that state; lots of elderly people are fully mobile and capable of taking care of themselves), their kids will now have their own kids, and it will be flatly impossible for them to both have two jobs, take care of their kids, and take care of their parents all at the same time. That's an unreasonable expectation to have of your children.
Apparently this is the case in Singapore, which relies on family support instead of welfare. Retired parents can even sue their children if they fail to adequately support them, according to this Economist article:
I fail to see how this is "off the deep end", this is just the reality of modern American society.