How can you afford it?

@puddingtader Just because people in history usually HAD to have kids if they had sex regularly, doesn’t mean it IS the best option to have a lot of kids now.
People died in childbirth, babies and kids died of diseases, unsupervised children died in preventable accidents. Nutrition deficits caused health issues. Abuse. All kinds of issues happened because people couldn’t help reproducing.

On top of that, there are plenty of people with lots of (& few) kids that did/do a horrible job parenting.

There is still no where near equality in genders, their roles, the way people view them in the workplace, or their pay in the workforce. That’s largely bias based on having children.

And I’m barely going to mention the cost of childcare - or that having a parent stay home full time has its own set of issues.

It comes down to priorities. Being able to give kids a level of life we are comfortable with, and still having enough for ourselves can be important.

I’m not morally superior because I decided to have kids instead of traveling the world regularly. I’m not morally superior because I chose to live in an expensive city and not have kids.

There are hurdles that could be decreased if people want birth rates to go up.
Earth’s population going down also wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing.
 
@rksharma If I could upvote this 100 times I would. I have kids. I would love to have more kids. All of the reasons people have for not having kids—financial, logistical, emotional, physical, etc. — are valid and I’m not in anyway a better person than they are just because I have kids.
 
@peacefulrestlessness Raising the next generation is perpetuating your own DNA - which in and of itself is incredibly selfish.

I’m not saying that people should not - I have and love my own kids. But it is selfish to create people and leave your DNA behind, not altruistic.

Unless you are parenting solely foster kids, which I am not.
 
@peacefulrestlessness Upvoted because I think there needs to be some pushback here, but I have a bigger problem with the "instead of traveling the world regularly" part.

There are plenty of good reasons someone might not have/want children.

But "so I can travel the world"?

Sorry, no. The world simply doesn't need you to jet around it. That is an almost entirely needless use of time and money and significant source of air pollution. There's no getting around that.

I'm not saying "ban travel" or anything like that. If you really need to travel for work or some other reason go ahead. If you want to travel every now and then as a treat go ahead. But responsible travel would not prevent you from having children.

Even people that take a gap year to travel when they are young usually come home and settle down afterwards.

If someone's wanderlust is so severe that the time/expense involved is permanently preventing them from having a family, I doubt many people would have trouble admitting that is a bit of a problem in-and-of-itself.
 
@dale91 Someone who is reproducing should not be complaining about the pollution of travel. Every additional human increases pollution far more than any trip. The diapers alone…

No to mention there are plenty of ways to travel that don’t cause detriment to the environment.

I stand by that statement. If you would rather travel than have kids, you should do that. Plenty of people do both. You shouldn’t have kids to have kids out of some mistaken duty - it’s really hard to have kids, even when you want them and plan for them.
 
@rksharma You're way off. Air travel generates 92 kG of CO2 per passenger per HOUR. By contrast, disposable diapers for the average baby is estimated to generate 550 kG of CO2 total over the entire 2 1/2 years they are in diapers.

So, yes, if a couple takes ONE three hour round plane trip they have already polluted more than they would have raising a baby.

But it wouldn't really make sense to say you are not having a baby to travel the world if you are only planning one trip. That statement would imply you intend to spend the entire 2 1/2 years traveling and/or you intend to spend all of the money you would have spent on having children on trips.

Either way, the frequent travelers are going to wind up polluting way more than the parents who stayed home and put their money into daycare, diapers, and starting college funds.

This isn't some silly exercise, by the way. If you look at carbon footprints by country it is clear that essentially all of the world's pollution is coming from low birthrate countries. The first world heard the "overpopulation" part but we don't seem to understand that it doesn't do any good to just not have kids so we can consume more ourselves, right now.

As I noted above there ARE good reasons not to have children. Not everyone needs to reproduce and reproduce as much as possible. But that doesn't mean any reason to not have kids is a good reason.
 
@puddingtader Our biggest expense is food. We buy in bulk (if it happens to be the cheaper option (it isn't always) and we buy our beef from a family member who owns a beef and Buffalo farm... they started raising pigs last year so we'll be able to start buying pork from them too. We buy at a friend's and family discount so it's quite affordable.

We bought an old house in a rural area for under $90k (it's a fixer upper and we have put quite a bit of money into it as we have the money to do so.)

We also own several commercial condos we rent out to businesses.

I am a SAHM so we don't have to worry about the cost of childcare. (Also, even if I got my cosmetology liscence current.. I wouldn't make enough money to cover childcare so it ends up cheaper for me to stay home with the kids.)

My husband (a disabled veteran) owns and runs a small business. He works 80+ hours a week.. often pulling overnighters or double overnighters to get big jobs done. (He doesn't believe in the 40 hour work week... he believes in the "however many hours it takes" work week.)

As for "bringing children into this world".. we're shaping the next generation. We are teaching them current events and history. We are instilling strong moral compasses in them. It's true that things seem to be going to hell in a hand basket but this is not even close to the worst time in history.

Most of our kids are boys so hand-me-downs help with the expense of clothing.. we just have to replace whatever gets worn out (every 3 kids or so) and buy new clothes for our eldest. We ended up getting girl hand-me-downs from my sisters-in-law and my cousin who are done having kids.
 
@puddingtader The declining birth rate is a serious issue with social and public policy implications that we are going to have to deal with. The level of blaming and anger the OP's post received concerns me. I've noticed this in my real-life conversations too. Don't bring up this topic unless you are okay hearing lots of excuses and blaming. Even though many of the points about the economy are completely valid, there is still an element of personal choice and choosing between trade-offs as several of the comments here note. The number of successful professionals I know who have no kids and sometimes even no partner amazes me. They could afford it but chose different life priorities. That is their prerogative but en mass it leads to a declining birth rate trend that has serious implications.

I see a lot of posts on parent subreddits about how they could provide a good life for another kid but aren't sure whether to do so. I want to respond with an article like this about demographics but don't because of all the hate I know I'll get.
 
@puddingtader Our biggest expenses with 6 kids is housing and food. After that maybe clothing? We made a choice to build a large home for our own comfort level- if we couldn’t have afforded it then we likely would have stopped at 4. Even then- our mortgage is cheaper for us then the average because we had the ability to build it ourselves, so we saved 300k by not paying a builder or paying the market rate.
We can afford it because we choose to make it a priority. Included in those types of articles is the cost of a college education which we have no intention of paying for when our kids reach that level. We plan on helping them make the best decision for themselves and get scholarships, go to community college etc but we will not be footing the bill (we wouldn’t even with one kid, we don’t believe in it).
 
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