PS: The point here is NOT that poor people shouldn’t have kids, it’s that no one should be having kids without having the basics of childcare covered, which necessitates widespread systemic, societal, and economic change so that no parent needs to worry about those basics, and kids can grow up in secure, healthy environments. I completely forgot to mention this when I originally posted it, and that’s my bad.
If my parents didn’t say “we’ll figure it out” I probably wouldn’t have existed for very long and neither would have my mum. They did however try and succeed in figuring it out and we’re all doing fairly great these days.
Being financially well off should never be a qualification for having a child. That’s incredibly elitist.
What’s much more important are parents that love their children and want them to have it better than they did. And there are probably just as many of those among people barely making rent than there are among millionaires, if not more.
What we don’t need are people having children than don’t want or don’t care about them. Because that’s a surefire way to fuck up kids, no matter their financial and social background.
This is the crux. I’m reasonably well adjusted, I like to think I would love my theoretical kid. But it’s hard to overcome the fact that the whole society is getting way harsher and so many people are poorer than their parents were. My life has been a lot more difficult than my parents’ life was, and it seems like if I had kids, their lives would be even more difficult than mine has been.