Nobody should be forced to get married or have children if they don’t want to. But if we can alleviate some of the risks/down sides to having children, I think we will see more people choosing to start families and also having more children per family.

This is a bad idea. Russian government have already tried that, and the result was that less wealthy people (mostly alcoholic and drug addicts) started to literally make children to receive subsidies and spend them on themselves.

It's fun to me how Google search results differ for "to make a child for subsidies" and for this same phrase translated to Russian, where it has already became a phenomenon.

Or people grew up watching their parents regret starting one too soon and want to avoid that mistake.

People who talk about women being more selective makes me wonder if there's an ulterior motive to choosing that hypothesis. Sour grapes?

There's much more economic uncertainty for the average family as a result of two things.

1. Corporations innovating the labor market and successfully squeezing increasing amounts of wealth out of the workforce: successful union busting, ever more cleverly exploitative labor contracts, the gig economy, unpredictable scheduling, metrics and surveillance, etc.

2. Fewer funds proportionally available to labor thanks to increasing wealth capture by a tiny minority.

It's not only expensive, but it's statistically difficult to overcome the uncertainty and establish a homestead you can believe will prove stable over a kid-raising time frame.

It's easy to understand why people are hesitant to start families in such family-unfriendly economic conditions.

Sexually speaking, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.