I have friends who were commercial airline captains in 2000. Then 9/11 happened, and they went on furlough for a number of years and had to work places like Best Buy.
You're saying they should've known that their career was about to get upended and shouldn't have kids because of that?
Those are the types of people that need to watch their actions, and count their beans carefully. They're the ones I was speaking of specifically.
Having children should not be tied to having X amount of money - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8177836
I would phrase this as "Society should be structured such that money isn't a concern because there is a safety net for everyone to be caught in aside from the extreme cases like say that "octo-mom"[1] situation.
I'm not so sure that that is the sole reason they get touchy about the topic. I think somehow people view having children as some sort of inherent "right" of being a human. Sure, of course no one should stop them from doing it. All I'm saying is that it's not very moral or virtuous to bring a child into this world that you can't reasonably take care of till adulthood.
The sort of debt that you're talking about goes way further than the narrow perspective that most take on it. It begins before you are even born, and I think we should all ruminate on that.
Let me elaborate a bit, despite consistently getting down mods for expressing this point of view before. The debt begins with the parents that choose to have kids when they are unsure of their financial wellness and security for the years to come of their child's growth to adulthood. i.e. People shouldn't be having kids unless they're damn sure they can take care of them till they're adults and able to take care of themselves.