Couldn't agree more. It seems incredibly selfish to have children and then hand them over to strangers to raise. It's wildly unfair to the child, and as you said, unhealthy for the planet.

I don't have a coherent thesis, but I've been thinking a lot about the connection between the collapse of civil society, the proliferation of loneliness, and the fact that so many children are being raised by transient strangers they have no real ties to. It strikes me as a blueprint for a dystopian society.

This is my point of view as well. I don't understand why you would have a child and then proceed to not nurture and teach them because you're busy with something else.

Some see children as a means to an end, unfortunately.

Because it is a human drive, and for many in the US anyway, working a lot is the only way to get a decently comfortable life - if it gives you this at all. For a decent amount of folks, they just work jobs that keep them from children (nursing and retail work, for example). We could change this a lot of places with worker protection laws. I don't have children, and support more robust support for parents and things like maximum work hours and the like to make sure folks can raise their children, without the poverty that some folks would have when working less.

To complicate it further, birth control isn't made free for everyone and in many areas on earth, sex education is poor if it exists at all - not to mention that abortion services, if they are legal where you are, aren't always available either - for those times when birth control fails or other complications arise.

I'll also say that most of the "we have too many people on the planet" arose from attitudes looking down on others, often from countries of origin, racism, and the like. We know how to help lower birth rates (widely available contraception and sex education) - but we aren't doing this - and we can feed everyone now, but we (as humans on average) don't put it as a priority - as seen by not shipping surplus to folks that would happily eat it.

The point is so people stop asking why you don’t have kids yet

Which is basically code for they'd consider you two levels higher status if you had.

We really need to get rid of this mindset, unless we are ok with the occasional population cull by war (we aren't, right?)

"... occasional population cull by war ..."

Or a pandemic.

That's the most ridiculous reason for having kids I have ever heard. If that's your issue, maybe just invent some fake children and say you sent them to boarding school or they died in a car crash. Or less dramatic, say they live with their other parent.

I don't see why one would actually have a kid just to avoid that question. I don't really see that question come up that much.