Modern American middle class norms are that babies cost a fortune.
The best nutrition, daycare, early childhood learning, classes, tuition, etc. Extreme expenses.
All throughout history, children have been cheap, and if you look back far enough - disposable. And even parents viewed kids as a free source of labor.
Kids used to be left to roam the woods, streets, and neighborhoods. Now a lone child will get a call from CPS, fines, and jail time.
The parents that favor strong government intervention and high expense parenting basically set the rules for all other parents.
In developing countries, children do not cost this much. Those countries are growing and do not face generational collapse with the younger generations being too small and inadequate to pay for their elders.
We did okay for hundreds of thousands of years. Did Big Advertising get the best of us and make us needlessly devote expenses and energy?
> We did okay for hundreds of thousands of years. Did Big Advertising get the best of us and make us needlessly devote expenses and energy?
ever since my wife was pregnant i've actually started paying attention to the advertising targeted at women. Holy shit, I feel so bad for them. It's easy for me to laugh at and ignore the "if you buy (this product) then this sexy woman will be attracted to you" ads (spoiler: she won't). But their advertising is very much "you should feel bad about yourself for not buying this, because it means you don't love your (self |child |pet |whatever." It really tugs at emotions and capitalizes on insecurities.
And they do it to themselves a lot of the times, it's not just the big companies doing it, it's female influencers trying to maximize their referrals/sales.
The vast majority of advertising is laser focused to push women's buttons it's alarming.
Interestingly, I was at the cinema and saw back to back adverts for monitoring where a woman is all the time is coercive control and abuse.
Then an app for a mum to monitor where their adult daughter is at all times as a positive.[1]
Both are abuse AFAIC and that helicopter parenting is encroaching on adulthood is alarming. In sure we'll soon have diaper sizes newborn through 25 years old eventually.
Speaking of monitoring, your YouTube link has a tracking identifier in it… although it's ?is=, for some reason. Did you type that out manually, or has YouTube changed?
> Modern American middle class norms are that babies cost a fortune.
> The best nutrition, daycare, early childhood learning, classes, tuition, etc. Extreme expenses.
Daytime childcare isn’t really optional in the first few years. Our system assumes both parents will work. In many metro areas childcare alone can take close to half of a median household income, and daycares are even pretty notoriously low-margin businesses. Moving somewhere cheaper is possible, but that often means fewer job opportunities and lower earning potential.
The result is a tough set of choices for Americans looking to have children:
1) Earn well above the median so childcare costs are manageable (obviously not an option for everyone)
2) Accept a massive drop in your standard of living after having kids, possibly to the point of impoverishment
3) Decide not to have children
Maybe that’s the part of the system worth questioning first.
EDIT: And yes, I know some countries or municipalities try to address this. No, it’s not the only reason birth rates are low in America. Communal support for childcare is one, but not the only, necessary component of a growing society.
> best nutrition, daycare, early childhood learning, classes, tuition
In the past you didn't have to do any of this to be able to have a decent "middle class" living, now if one doesn't do all of that then they are already behind in the "rat race". I forgot where i read it, but basically in society we've removed any "slippage". One mistake (say an arrest record) can result in making it hard to find jobs whereas in the past you would just move. The 20 points on the sat that you might have attained if you had better nutrition in your youth make the difference between breaking into the remaining sliver of the middle class.
Your comments are just totally out of touch with the realities of being a parent today. The average person can't afford to raise a kid because of the time demands of constant work to make rent and afford food.
Furthermore, people in past times were historically more budget-conscious and stressed than we are - yet they had lots of children. And developing nations are typically much pooerer than our lower class, yet they're also having lots of children.
Do you have kids? The phone comment seems pretty out of touch.
I have two young kids in NYC and it’s objectively very expensive. Ignoring all consumables, daycare and needing a 2 bedroom apt triples our monthly expenses as compared to before having kids.
Of course for both of these it’s technically possible to solve. If we lived in the suburbs space would be cheaper and having kids wouldn’t double our rent. If one of us didn’t work or had grandparents willing to help daycare wouldnt be needed. In less developed / modern places these issues might not be as acute, but for many modern day families they are very real issues.
Regardless, kids are a lot of work and expensive, and I don’t see how being on your phone a bit changes that.
There's never just one reason, obviously. Maybe phones are a big reason we're not socializing as much and it cascades from there. But as a young parent, I'm gonna tell you flat out - the core necessities, not the best of the best, are insanely expensive today than ever before as a share of our monthly take home.
I'm a huge fan of public schools, letting kids play and be out on their own till 10-11pm a night with other kids, etc, etc. But just the first 3 years until publicly funded pre-school kicks in is going to cost us over 100k. It doesn't become free after that of course, but definitely not 30k+ per annum.
We'll see how quickly we can potty train, I'd like to avoid using diapers after a while, but that's not the major expense for us since we're your run of the mill dual income couple. Just standard day care is 2500 a month in Chicago. Unlike the bay or NY, there isn't a wait-list or competition to get in but it's definitely priced at the high end. We're delaying using that until both our parental leaves finish up, which not everyone gets to have in the US. We also have my parents moving close to us to help with the kiddo. Most of the things that made a village what it was without professional services (except day care which is a big one) we're gonna do, and it still is going to be stupid expensive. My parents are in shock compared to what their expectations were based on how I grew up vs today's reality.
The average person can absolutely afford children!
I’ve got a buddy, his wife works at a daycare and he does network installs. They’re right around the median household income of 80k or so in a middle-low cost of living area. They have 6 kids.
Perhaps ironically, I have a household income of roughly 200k. I have three kids and wonder how does he do it, I can’t imagine having three more kids and the expense of it all. Yet somehow they do it.
I think the reality of it is folks don’t want to make sacrifices to have kids, or have many kids. My observation lately is that couples will go have one kid and look at the expenses and struggles and say they’re done. A while back my wife and the kids and I were walking down by the boardwalk and an old man fishing stopped and said “Look at that, a real family with three kids! You don’t see that anymore!” Kind of strange, but I look at my big Irish-Catholic side of the family with 13(!) aunts and uncles in the same astonished way I guess
A big part of it may be that once you fall below a certain percentage of the federal poverty level, you start getting assistance. WIC kicks in pretty early, as do ACA assistance and Medicaid/CHIP.
And percentage can be anything below 400% of the poverty level, and the poverty level goes up with each kid - 400% of the poverty level for a family of 8 is $216k. https://snapeligibilitycalculator.com/fpl-calculator/
Child mortality saw steep improvements in the 1900s - 1940s all over the world. I didn't think I had to clear myself of this argument.
"Helicopter parents", the desire to call CPS for unattended children - these are new and novel phenomena that are symptoms of society's desire to raise the cost of parenting through marketing, social norms, and peer pressure.
"Helicopter parents" are because of the rise of national media amplifying relatively rare cases of things like child abductions, not a conspiracy by big diaper
Babies are incredibly difficult even in the best case. Sleep deprivation is intense. Breastfeeding is difficult. Adding in small additional difficulties adds up. "This is a bit more difficult" becomes a huge mess when you are on three hours of sleep and there are 10 different "this is a bit more difficult" things that people are suggesting to you.
Add this on top of any sort of complex baby (illness, allergies, colic, slow weight gain, etc) and suddenly the slightly less complex disposable diaper becomes a godsend just to save a few minutes or a bit of mental load.
Babies are incredibly difficult even in the best case. Sleep deprivation is intense. Breastfeeding is difficult. Adding in small additional difficulties adds up. "This is a bit more difficult" becomes a huge mess when you are on three hours of sleep and there are 10 different "this is a bit more difficult" things that people are suggesting to you.
Add this on top of any sort of complex baby (illness, allergies, colic, slow weight gain, etc) and suddenly the slightly less complex door dashing a warm bottle of formula becomes a godsend just to save a few minutes or a bit of mental load.
I don't judge people who order out all the time or pay for a night nanny or do any of a million things that make life easier with an infant. Infants are fucking hard.
No, but if you have a kid with no support system you’re going to find it really hard to add just a few more hours per week to clean diapers out every other day on top of everything else. If it was easy for you congratulations you had an easy one.
The best nutrition, daycare, early childhood learning, classes, tuition, etc. Extreme expenses.
All throughout history, children have been cheap, and if you look back far enough - disposable. And even parents viewed kids as a free source of labor.
Kids used to be left to roam the woods, streets, and neighborhoods. Now a lone child will get a call from CPS, fines, and jail time.
The parents that favor strong government intervention and high expense parenting basically set the rules for all other parents.
In developing countries, children do not cost this much. Those countries are growing and do not face generational collapse with the younger generations being too small and inadequate to pay for their elders.
We did okay for hundreds of thousands of years. Did Big Advertising get the best of us and make us needlessly devote expenses and energy?