Let me brag a little bit.<p>Myself and my fiancee don&#x27;t have children yet.  However, you may kinda want us in society&#x27;s gene pool.  After all, I&#x27;ve got a damned resilient immune system, she&#x27;s wonderfully empathetic, and we&#x27;re both <i>ferociously</i> clever and hardworking individuals who valued our educations and actually <i>want</i> to contribute to society.  Hell, we&#x27;re even proud of paying our taxes, we both volunteer for things in our spare time, and we consider time spent on civic or community affairs to be well-spent.<p>I&#x27;d be fine paying the &quot;opportunity cost&quot; myself, but you see, I&#x27;m not the one with the uterus.  Really, if we could get by and support a kid on one income per couple, we could easily just make some sacrifices of Nice Things, <i>but we can&#x27;t</i>.  Yes, we actually are stuck between living as fiscally responsible adults in the Dual Income No Kids class, and the precarity of the so-called &quot;middle class&quot; nowadays, in which one layoff or unexpected medical emergency can throw the whole family into poverty.<p>It&#x27;s become: housing, children (with the entailed college funds, housing cost of good public schools, etc.), responsible preparation for a rainy day -- pick any two.<p>Elizabeth Warren was lecturing people about this a decade ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8GHg3GAeQ1Y" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8GHg3GAeQ1Y</a>