Comments by "Ralphie Raccoon" (@Croz89) on "What ACTUALLY Caused the Baby Boom?... It Wasn't (really) WWII" video.

Fundamentally I think we have much higher standards for raising children than we did in the past. Some of what boomer and gen-x children would have experienced would be decried as child abuse or neglect today. It was once normal to leave children to their own devices from morning until evening, have older siblings take much more caring responsibilities for younger ones, and so on. This made it easier for dual income parents to have children and manage their time without burning out. Now the options are pay enormous sums for professional childcare or supervise your kids constantly when not at school. There's also a lot of social pressure to ferry them around to clubs and other activities rather than just let them entertain themselves. Perhaps that's how it should be, certainly there were problems with the old way of doing things, but it's no wonder people aren't having so many children, apart from how expensive it all is, it just sucks away all the free time parents have. You basically have to have no life away from your children unless you're very rich, and a lot of adults, rather understandably, don't want to do that.
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