People generally are waiting until they're older to have children than before. Anyone I know who's had kids has had the first one in their 30s, whereas their parents had them in their mid-late 20s.
Perhaps that's wanting to 'do' more stuff before having your first child, but I can't shake thinking that economics/working arrangements are the bigger kicker.
It’s worldwide. Some of the countries like Poland have seen huge increases in living standards. Working arrangements now may be worse than ten or even fifty years ago but are light years ahead of before that.
I don’t even think it’s wanting to do more as much as expecting a certain standard of living two incomes provides and seeing any drop even temporary as poverty, plus for women especially it’s a huge career hit and women tend to be more likely to have a career they care about considering they’ve been kicking out ass at school and uni for a generation.
I know a lot who left it late then couldn’t, that I’ve seen more than people saying they couldn’t afford it. The better educated all seem to leave it later definitely. But again when you’re talking about trends across society showing lower incomes have more kids and across the world showing poorer countries have more kids it’s hard to argue for localised effects.
South Korea is proper fucked and has been throwing cash at people to no avail. I think their working culture is probably to blame for them being an outlier, a lot of women seem to just be more picky too and less likely to settle down with a guy who doesn’t pull his weight. So you need to make it a better deal for working parents especially women 100%
I honestly believe if the majority of people had a kid they’d wonder why they ever worried about managing, but equally you’ve got to make it clear to them so they can see themselves as parents and you’ve got to enable stuff like WFH and job share that allows people to parent and work. But ultimately no one has really managed this.
