Why people don't want to have children any more

Commenters debated why people are having fewer children, with several attributing it to time and career pressures. One commenter said new parents felt they needed to be financially and professionally established before starting a larger family, making mid‑20s childbearing impractical; daycare, school and extracurricular schedules were described as incompatible with two working parents. Others emphasized financial cost and opportunity cost as decisive, pointing to steep decline after 2007 and arguing the Great Recession and falling real wages made extra children unaffordable. A contrasting point noted that widespread birth control, not past absence of contraception, explains smaller families.

Opinion divides over whether pessimism about the future raises or lowers birth rates and whether poverty reduces fertility. Some commenters argued that people who lack hope don’t have children, while others said impoverished and hopeless populations often have higher fertility or unplanned births. Several pushed back on single‑factor explanations: one highlighted cohort effects in “lifetime” birth statistics and cultural shifts since the early 2000s, another invoked the post‑WWII U.S. economic context that once made raising multiple children feasible, and another pointed to regional histories - such as Eastern Europe’s - to argue economic narratives aren’t universal.