That's a big one. My formerly inexpensive region now requires 3-4 typical incomes to keep the lights on. We're so many decades past the "One Income, One Family" ideal that even the Fed can't envision a world without everyone working at least one job.
There's a second factor. Between my parents generation and my kids generation - the amount of time required for parenting has gone up ~10 fold. We're about as close to 24/7 parenting as is (even theoretically) possible.
Because the reality is that if you did and you lived in an urban area, you are friends with many couples with kids, and no one is going past two, because they cant afford it without critical haircut to QoL.
And often this is families making 3x mean wages . with at least 1 parent working as an engineer or FAANG job.
I ask again. Are you a parent?
My wife is already primarily a homemaker, and even with the two kids I have to move things around for work to pitch in when there are scheduling conflicts. The problem isn’t money - it’s time and energy. For us to have more children, we’d almost have to hire domestic help.
isnt that dependent on money?
Given current expectations for raising kids, yes, it's a time+money sink. Then again, I think America over-parents on the whole, so altering expectations can also help.
The latter said "almost as if we would need domestic help" its exactly a factor of money.
Lets not kid ourselves. There is no education that is happening in the timesink that is food prep, showering, securing and hustling kids to and fro activities. Rural kids are far more independent, better prepared and more likely to eat better than their urban counterparts. The elders, in fact, help each other and the younger ones,and therefore make the large family a force multiplier in the rural areas.
Add on top of that the lack of cheap living space for a large family, and its a death sentence for the large family in an urban setting.
You cannot multiply a driver. Or a car. Or another room for a 3rd child. And if you could scale it up, it comes down to money anyway.
Time is money. A large family is just more money.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
The number of children goes down as income increases.
There is a biological component
People prefer to view this as a lack of money due to increasing cost of living or stagnant wages because those are more comfortable to talk about, but an increasing standard of living raises the awkward question of whether it's even a good thing to have more (or any) kids.
Fertility rates in most developed countries go down, not up, as couples get richer. Poor couples think they'd have more kids if only they had more money, a bigger house, access to good schools, etc. but the couples who have all that stuff are actually having fewer kids than anyone else.
The root cause isn’t socioeconomic
I also genuinely like living in the city, not for the "fun" but because of the convenience. Everything I need is within a few minutes walk of my apartment.
To your point I think there’s a lot of that which is more manageable than expected, and there are a lot of spectrums to navigate there
My parents live in rural WA, and it's about a 30 min drive into town for, like, anything. Go to the gym? drive. Groceries? drive. Meet friends for coffee or beer? Drive. I was there for Christmas, and even a light snow made getting into town dicey. Meanwhile, it snows heavily where I live and outside of bitter winds necessitating a beard it never stopped me from getting anywhere.
National statistics indicate that 1 in 3 children will have CPS called on them during their childhood.
In the past, people were happy to (or did it because of social expectations or lack of contraceptives) "manage to raise kids".
Nowadays, people expect and even demand a "very comfortable life". The two aren't really compatible for most people except very high earners.
One might think “well city dwellers have more money!” But a huge issue is housing. There’s a supply issue and a cost issue there that simply is a non-issue for rural populations.
Searching for some genetic reason is one thing, but “we cant make a comfortable living space for future children” is just a major point that comes up in surveys and just makes sense.