Many still have the desire, but today have the choice to walk away from that desire in order to pursue a career, or to just live life in a different way. Some also have the desire but have trouble conceiving, or don't have the means to support a child. The gap is definitely there.

> Many still have the desire, but today have the choice to walk away from that desire in order to pursue a career, or to just live life in a different way.

I'd say in that case they don't have the desire. They may want children all else being equal, but they don't want to put in what it would cost them to have children. Otherwise they would.

Okay…I usually have the desire to eat cake, I don’t have it for every meal though.

I'm not claiming that desire is zero, just that it's below replacement rate. Just like if the desire for cake isn't enough to sustain a bakery in my neighbourhood.

the deciding metric here is how old are they when they start wanting children. naturally, that factor is ignored, because it's politically incorrect to discuss it for a number of reasons.

a woman in her thirties has very slim chances to find a partner because men in their thirties have unlimited access to an unlimited number of women in their twenties. it's a harsh truth, but burying one's head in the sand doesn't really help.

> men in their thirties have unlimited access to an unlimited number of women in their twenties

On the contrary. Maybe the most desirable 20% do, but many men in their thirties have very little access to women of any age.

yes, there certain discrepancies between what men and women consider desirable in a partner, but we aren't really allowed to discuss this on the internet without certain folx coming out of the woods to claim that 2+2=5.

still, your claim does not invalidate my point, does it?

"There are no men available" and "women do not want the men who are available" are quite different situations with different solution spaces.

no, no, my point was neither of those things. my point was that "women past a certain age have slim chances of finding a man who would be willing to have children with them," and I don't think it's a particularly outrageous or controversial statement.

Then perhaps we have a real disagreement. I think for the vast majority of women over 30 there is a ready supply of men who would be willing to have children with them - just not men that those women would condescend to have children with.

which doesn't invalidate my point, does it? :)

I don't know where is that you live that men are so desperate and eager to commit to low-value women, but in the world I live in, men in their thirties are unmarried and/or childless by choice.

Cultures differ wildly across the world. Where I live, the median age for a male to get married is 37, and the median age for women is 33 or so, so I would suggest that you not be so dogmatic (as an aside, US people seem to marry absurdly early for my tastes).

> which doesn't invalidate my point, does it?

Yes, it very much does?

> a woman in her thirties has very slim chances to find a partner because men in their thirties have unlimited access to an unlimited number of women in their twenties.

This is utter nonsense. I met my now wife at 31, and can assure you that I had little to no interest in 20 somethings at that point (having made those mistakes in the past).

Clearly you live in a very different world from me, or you're just trolling (more likely given the green account name).

Oh, good, now we're slut shaming women.

Why do you say evidently not? I have multiple friends who would love to have children, but can't fathom managing to fulfill the monetary costs to do so. They don't make enough money to send them all to childcare all the time, but quitting their job to take care of the kids will cut their income in half and make saving any reasonable amount of money for retirement near impossible.

> Why do you say evidently not? I have multiple friends who would love to have children, but can't fathom managing to fulfill the monetary costs to do so.

Then I put it to you that their desire isn't above the replacement rate. People with no money manage to have plenty of children.

Perhaps they simply have unrealistic material expectations not in line with individual productivity. In fact, if your expectations are a function of your childless consumption levels, then it will always exceed what you can achieve with the same income spread over more people.

Maybe in your job losing your partner's income may merely represent lowering your consumption levels, but the vast majority of people aren't earning enough money to simply lower consumption levels when their income is halved. I don't consider people living in a 2 bedroom 1 bath house, driving 15 year old cars, and buying a few video games to be some sort of excessive living or high level of consumption.

The people living a simple life as you describe have more children than the higher paid inner city folk. Explanations like yours are shown again and again to not explain reality.

But if your fixed costs are much lower (housing etc) then it makes more financial sense to have kids as there's less of a hit from the loss of lots of income (plus expenses, kids are not cheap).

Like, we have two kids and a top 10% (bottom of the top though) salary, and we have no discretionary income or ability to save (very much) after paying for the costs associated with kids and housing. I can completely understand why people don't want to do that, particularly given that 90% of households in my country earn less than us.

Sometimes there is an income problem. Sometimes there is a spending problem. And sometimes there is a cost problem. But cost is unlike the others, because income and spending are individual, but cost is universal.

Inflation from 2020-2024 was absurdly high. This was a universal hit to cost, and everyone felt it.

But outside of that recency bias, Americans have poor financial literacy. Americans have spending problems: credit card debt, car loans, and student loans come to mind. Each of these debt categories aren't inherently bad. Student loans are great if the degree has earning potential, but most Americans don't seek those degrees. Car loans aren't bad if it's a practical and affordable vehicles, but Americans like luxury SUVs. Credit cards aren't bad if you buy a washing machine to save on laundromat visits, but Americans like expensive vacations.

Americans also have problems with income, but that's even more complicated.

> Americans have poor financial literacy. Americans have spending problems: credit card debt, car loans, and student loans come to mind.

Sure, but I'm not American and we have none of those debts. It's mostly housing/bills and childcare that screw us.

That may be, but this is the internet. Everyone is an American, didn't you know?

You mean those people with running water, indoor plumbing, central heating, electric lights, and a passenger vehicle capable of reaching speeds faster than the fastest land animal who entertain themselves with a magical rock that performs trillions of calculations a second to render 8-bit animals on an island to display on a sheet of quantum dots? Not to mention vaccines, antibiotics, cell phones, free education, supermarkets, and all the other modern wonders?

My point IS that you don't consider this to be a high level of consumption. To you it's normal. You've acclimated, and would again if the quality of life were 10x higher.

If people decide to build careers before having children, and DINKs acclimate to their income levels, then any child would feel like an unacceptable quality of life. You'll always feel like you're a rung below where you need to be, and this property would be independent of any particular scale.

Call it pedant's hypothesis. I've proposed it as an explanation. I can neither prove nor disprove it.

If people having children is a public good, maybe it shouldn't be disincentivized?

It's called hedonistic adaptation. Most people scale material consumption with income, and the new consumption level quickly feels normal. If this happens to you, then it's plausible that children will always look expensive, no matter your earned income.

The quality of life that modern, affluent people consider unacceptably low for a family would be considered decadent by most people who ever lived anywhere.

Sure, I'm saying maybe we should distribute public funds to reduce or minimize the affect of having children on your quality of life, if we agree that having children is a public good.

The same way that we give people tax breaks for making donations, because we think making donations is good, people having children are donating their time, physical health, money, and earning potential to the greater good of society, so maybe they should be compensated for it.

Regulating with positive feedback is usually unstable and rife with unintended consequences.

Can we start by striking down regulations that make having children more expensive? Zoning laws, environmental laws, development approval processes, and even building codes have significantly increase the cost of housing. Regulations made daycare prohibitively expensive, while also subsidizing that model over traditional childcare models. High costs are first order effects of these regulations, but there are plenty of second and third order cost increases as well.

They also can’t buy a house that would house 2-3 more people and their stuff

Why do you think this is “evident”? I don't know worldwide but in France at least, French women would like to have more kids than they have.