re: Fertility rates dip, people are having babies later

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I made a comment along these lines in the valedictorian thread from a few weeks back. The top five students in my graduating class were five of the most brilliant people I've ever known, all in their mid-30s now and all well into their very cushy careers. Four of the five are married. One of those five has two kids. One of the five has one kid. The other three are childless, and have given no indication that they plan to have kids. Three kids among those five brilliant and hard-working people (plus four spouses). Three of those bloodlines on track to just die out. It's depressing.

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Now do the dropouts

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Younger people always try to blame how expensive it is to raise kids, but like someone mentioned. It was always expensive, but people just have no taste for reducing their luxuries. It isn't too expensive to raise kids, it is too expensive to raise kids and not make a sacrifice. Which is fine, just realize that society goald changed.

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This is flat out wrong and such a typical older generation thing to say - much like conversations in housing.

Every study I can find shows this.
In 1960 2% of a families income was spent on childcare and a child's education. As of 2013 that had risen to 18% and the trend has only been going up in the last decade.

Cost of having a child (relative to income) in 2018 vs 1990 is up 214%.

I've just had my first child (aged 30) and the UK gives alot more allowances than the US, my wife and I both earn comfortably over the average salary and childcare costs alone even with subsidies is kicking our arse, 25% of our income on it alone before you consider other expenses.

Our house is not outlandish(still in our 1st home), we owe nothing on cars and it is still a big stumbling block. We are in an unhappy medium of not living off the state but not being rich. Why would we have a second? At best it will have to wait until the first is in school so childcare costs are consistent.

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By doing so you also sacrifice the quality of life you can give your children. We want our children to be able to go on vacations with us, to be able to live comfortably and pay for their ventures into finding out what they like (sports, dance, music, etc, etc). Having more kids may mean you can no longer afford to go on vacations or buy extra music lessons or pay for equipment and fees for their sports hobbies.

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Right, this is a change in thinking over the generations.

3500/month daycare true story

Sure it does - and I'm not so proud to not be realistic with my household income.

For reference median gross salary in the UK is £33,000 heavily influenced by London at £42k, rest of the country(where I live) is more £31-£32k

Combined Gross Pay - £89,000
Combined Net Pay - £61,800

Child care daily cost - £67
5 days a week, 51 weeks a year - £17,085
Minus Govt childcare subsidies - £2000
Total Childcare cost = £15,085

Childcare vs Net income = 24.4%

I don't mean to pry, but at what point does one of you feel like yall are working for free?

I'm not sure if the salaries are split 50/50, but someone is working a full time job to bring home less than 15k. Maybe less than that if you consider other areas that have to be compensated because both are full time workers

Assuming childcare wouldn't be needed with one parent being a full time parent.

For the 50th time in the thread, I never said costs of raising a child haven't increased.

I maintain that society has pushed us away from having large families, as all advancing societies eventually do. That is a phase.

We don't need the numbers to farm or work, and we focus on lesiure and luxuries. If you are in the UK they are even further progressed than we are here.

I can admit, I don't want to go back to the 40s or 60s where we have one car, over the air tv, no a/c, stay at home childcare, vacation once a year for a week to a lake that is driveable, kids all share a 2BR 1BA, no swimming pool existance.

Us leaving that style of life has driven up costs, but there are those that will complain about the price and not realize how that price became so elevated.

There are still families who have that kind of life today. And make it work.

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Right, this is a change in thinking over the generations.

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And I think it's probably for the better. For some reason I thought you said it was selfish to do such a thing but looking back over I see you never said that so I apologize. I think the conflict of understanding is from saying the parents don't want to sacrifice their lifestyle as if the parents are only thinking about themselves, but I see what you're trying to say now.

But yeah generally I think it's a good change in mindset to be considerate and realistic about the life that you can give your children before you start pumping them out. We don't all live on farms nowadays where we need all the helping hands we can get and having 9 kids or so was common. My wife even now in her 30s still harbors some bitterness over how her childhood went where she would get involved in activities she loved and then have the rug pulled from under her, so all she did her whole childhood was go to school and go home to a cramped house until moved out for college. Also didn't help that my MIL isn't exactly the most responsible person. Her dad got custody of all the kids when they got divorced for a reason, but that's starting to get off topic and more personal.

So in her mind she (and me included coming from a single parent childhood, but my grandparents stepped up to where I still had a happy upbringing) is trying to break the cycle of what we consider to be irresponsible parenting. Sacrificing quality of childhood for quantity of children isn't something to be proud of imo, I know my wife doesn't want our kids to have the experiences she did and wants our kids to enjoy a better childhood, and we just think if we started popping them out willy nilly without proper planning that we'd end up repeating said cycle.

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some reason I thought you said it was selfish to do such a thing

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He has, multiple times

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Kind of hard not to given the economics of having a kid these days.

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I’ll tell you what my grandfather told my dad when he was worried about affording his fourth son, “hell, if people waited till they could afford children, they wouldn’t have em.”