Jim Penman argues that having kids comes down to personality and preference, not economics. In the 1950s, surveys showed women with children pitied those without. Now social pressure flips the other way, making childlessness seem preferable or normal.
I think it's mainly a personality issue. It's a matter of behavior. People have children because they want to have children, because they like children, because they enjoy children, and they don't have children because they'd rather do other things with their lives, which is understandable. You know, you can spend more, you can travel, you can buy better cars, better houses. The trouble you get is when you get so many people thinking that having children is a bad idea, or you don't want too many or too late or whatever. It does create a sort of a social pressure. I know one of my daughters probably wouldn't mind getting married and having children. She's quite young, early twenties. But the social pressure, oh, you can't do that. It's just other people would look at you and think you were strange. So it does have an effect. But then back in the 1950s and early 60s, for example, it was normal to have children. People just thought it was the right thing to do. And actually, if you read accounts of people at the time, they did surveys of women, they said women who had children and were largely at home in those days felt sorry for. For women who didn't. They just thought they were missing out on something.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
