The real reason why nobody is having kids can be summarized by the sentence:
"It takes a village to raise a kid".
Look up how much time a mother actually used to spend holding their own child vs other people holding that same child. It was something like 40%.
When you lived surrounded by your tribe, you had an extremely strong support network that no longer exists in industrialized society.
Add to that all the other factors like:
- both parents working often without the grandparents nearby or even willing to help
- unnafordable housing, even when renting
- effectively delayed adulthood (university) into the 30s
- falling fertility from whatever chemicals we're poisoning ourselves with
- anti-natalist messaging
- etc.
"It takes a village to raise a kid".
Look up how much time a mother actually used to spend holding their own child vs other people holding that same child. It was something like 40%.
When you lived surrounded by your tribe, you had an extremely strong support network that no longer exists in industrialized society.
Add to that all the other factors like:
- both parents working often without the grandparents nearby or even willing to help
- unnafordable housing, even when renting
- effectively delayed adulthood (university) into the 30s
- falling fertility from whatever chemicals we're poisoning ourselves with
- anti-natalist messaging
- etc.