Re:Third of Japan's 18-year-olds women may never have childr...
by salmonfamine on Thursday August 31, 2023 @11:08AM
(#37338361)
Yes, exactly. This is what I'm trying to get at with "market failure" -- the total economic cost of doing all of that is drastically higher than even the cost of just childcare.
In the past, many of those duties would be distributed throughout a community. And on isolated farms, parents would intentionally have big families so that the eldest could help raise the younger kids.
Doing it all with two people is a huge burden. Doing it with just one is a heroic act. Throwing in the extra burdens and expectations of the upper-middle class professional world -- homework help, extracurriculars, etc -- makes it virtually impossible.
So it makes sense that only the 500k+ income crowd is having big families. That's probably a good approximation of the income required to afford the total cost of replacing all of the childcare benefits of an informal community with paid labor.
In the past, many of those duties would be distributed throughout a community. And on isolated farms, parents would intentionally have big families so that the eldest could help raise the younger kids.
Doing it all with two people is a huge burden. Doing it with just one is a heroic act. Throwing in the extra burdens and expectations of the upper-middle class professional world -- homework help, extracurriculars, etc -- makes it virtually impossible.
So it makes sense that only the 500k+ income crowd is having big families. That's probably a good approximation of the income required to afford the total cost of replacing all of the childcare benefits of an informal community with paid labor.