system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
Agreed. To add though, 5/6 of the reasons you mention relate to people, particularly women, being able to make educated decisions. Why is it now the educated decision to limit production? Rising cost of living? A general awareness that our global population outstripped our capacity to manage resources a while ago?
gpt
New US parent here who feels my ability to have a child definitely feels like a luxury we can barely afford, even though our household income is about $140k (before taxes) - the ability to have a single income household is basically nonexistant in many areas, and daycare is almost always at least $100 a day, often closer to $150 (and higher if you're in a city). You need to be making at least $90k for daycare to even be feasible, and even then it's a huge portion of your take home pay. That's not even counting medical costs, food, clothing etc.

If I didn't have a job where I can work from home a few days a week we probably couldn't do this. The reality is that I will be both stay home parent and full time employee at the same time 3 days a week and I'm still not sure how it's going to balance, just that it must. I don't see how it will net out as anything other than doing a mediocre job at both those days, and then spending the 2 days of daycare we can afford catching up on work, and the 2 days of the weekend catching up on parenting.

Tl;dr the more capitalistic the society, the more disincentivized you are from having children.