How can families afford children?
This article claims a lot of things and assumes many more.<p>I think &quot;affording&quot; children has never been the primary goal of folks having children. Most folks aren&#x27;t all that good at predicting what it will cost to raise a child or three. Some costs aren&#x27;t as much with multiple children (used clothing, for example, or sharing rooms makes housing more affordable). Others are higher, such as child care and food costs. Some things are improved if one parent stays home. I think the main thing that drives folks to have smaller or larger families is desire to do so rather than costs themselves. Oddly enough, education can help as well, if you are in a country that thinks it needs more or less children in total.<p>I find it appalling that it is socially unacceptable in many places for the man to stay home while the woman works. If my immigration status didn&#x27;t depend on my husband working and we were at all keen on having children at all, I&#x27;d work while he stayed home with children.<p>I&#x27;m not sure jobs are any more satisfying, as it is a difficult thing to compare. Many parts of the world simply didn&#x27;t allow women the same sort of opportunities as men 100 or 150 years ago. Some didn&#x27;t 40-50 years ago. I got turned down for a job 20 years ago because &quot;females just couldn&#x27;t do the work required&quot;.<p>We also don&#x27;t actually need large families any longer, not like we did in the past. Between better infant mortality rates, better survival of giving birth, and birth control, and the financial reasons given earlier, it really isn&#x27;t as necessary. It&#x27;s OK to do, but it should be a choice. I think society should have laws allowing maternity and paternity leave and time to tend to the children. This should include a parent staying home... at least until the child is in school and&#x2F;or mature enough to spend some time alone. In so many places, this is missing.<p>There are opportunity costs if someone has multiple children, though. What chances does a woman have to be CEO if she also wants 5 children in a 10-year time frame? If she takes the proper time off for both her pregnancy and infant care, it becomes difficult. This can be worked around with strong paternal leave policies: After all, once a woman is healed enough to do her job, she doesn&#x27;t need to be the one staying at home. It also puts the opportunity costs on both sexes.