true, but you didn't know until you had them, and society keeps telling us otherwise. we need to change the message and educate youth about becoming parents. but also create a culture where having children is welcome.

in the west we complain about kids running around, making noise, being not under control. and most importantly we blame the parents. in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children, or for bringing them along when they have noone else to care for them. for example children hanging out at their parents workplace after school is normal. in the west that's ground for getting fired.

huh, I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing about your culture :)

So it doesn't seem that that cultural difference boosts the fertility rate all that much.

And of course China's fertility rate now is even lower than it was at any point when the one child policy was in effect.

In my peer group, it's been about 50/50 between people who seem to really enjoy parenthood and others who are struggling. There are many reasons for struggling, like how they or their spouse handle the stress and how much help they have or pay for. But the biggest one is that kids largely take up a lot of time and energy.

It's hard for someone to expect that they'll enjoy parenthood when they look around and see many parents who are unhappy.

Maybe we should have like with "open university day", "open raise a child day". Some might like it more than imagine, some might hate it more than imagine.