Or, I know, celibacy for everyone and hope you don't get raped? Free abortions when birth control fails, if you can afford birth control and aren't unlucky enough to have issues with it?
Do you happen to know the income level when kids are affordable? Is this well above the average wage in the area (or in general)? Is this higher or lower than low-level military salary? Knowing this sort of number would really help folks out.
suddenly becoming unable to provide for your kids through no fault of your own is quite different from deciding to have children when you know (or should know) you already have no ability to support them. in both cases, we need to at least do something to help the children, but we have to structure it carefully to avoid encouraging the latter.
> Do you happen to know the income level when kids are affordable?
no, but I can look at what I spend to sustain myself every month. if I can't comfortably double that, I'm probably not ready to have my first child.
...and in doing so you make certain assumptions which might not be true for others. Like that your circumstances can only get better, never worse. The GP specifically asked about the latter, in the form of job loss. What if you decided that you were ready to have that child, quite reasonably acccording to those assumptions, and then those assumptions turned out to be incorrect. Would you blame yourself the way you seem to be blaming others?
also, my heuristic is meant to be more like a bloom filter. you can't know for sure when you are ready to support a small human for the next eighteen years, but it's not hard to tell when you are definitely not ready. making barely enough to support your single self is a pretty strong signal.