But the people having kids are the ones with less money. The parents in my neighborhood are middle class (I mean like cops and admin assistants) and there’s three families with three kids just within 8 houses. Meanwhile among my law school friends, 0 kids is far more common than 2, and while I’m sure someone else besides me in my class (200 people, late 30s) has 3, I don’t know them.
One thing I think gets really overlooked is that college and job searches tear apart extended families, which in more traditional societies are a huge part of the child care strategy.
Yes this is what I've noticed too. My friend who installs HVAC systems for a living just had his third kid before 30 and they're doing fine. Other friends who are DINK attorneys are watching the biological clock run out and they feel they "can't afford" a kid.
I think your HVAC friend may actually be earning more than your attorneys. Unless you're in a prestigious law firm, they don't make all that much. And HVAC is so high in demand these days that they can raise prices to the moon and still be booked for months in advance.
I have not yet found a single planned 3rd child among my colleagues and associates in situations where both husband and wife work full time (without live in help, or at least someone who comes to the house full time to watch the kids before and even a little after the parents come home). Not saying it won't happen that I will eventually find one, but I find it to be the single biggest predictor of having more than 2 kids.
She lives in a Catholic faith community in South Bend. There’s lots of kids of all ages and so always people around to babysit, etc. It’s like my dad described his village in Bangladesh. Nobody takes care of their kid all the time like in America. (The women have to go into the rice fields during the day too.) The kids get passed around.
That's fascinating. I'm starting to awaken to the fact that America has a bunch of expensive solutions to problems and create these impressions that there is no other practical way. People figure out stuff all the time but somehow those means never become communicated to become mainstream or even purported as an alternative. It's interesting to put ideas to the "but does it scale" test. I think that idea of individual parents fully monitoring their kids maybe doesn't scale when the kids begin to outnumber the parents. Interesting stuff to ponder.
One thing I think gets really overlooked is that college and job searches tear apart extended families, which in more traditional societies are a huge part of the child care strategy.