[dividefuel]

I agree with this as the main factor (over cost) for the falling birth rate. The opportunity cost of having children has never been higher: you give up leisure, hobbies, rest, social life, and income. Whether or not children is worth this cost is a personal thing, but it seems kinda obvious that as the cost increases, fewer will pay it.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> The opportunity cost of having children has never been higher: you give up leisure, hobbies, rest, social life, and income.

Those things are given up because parenting-time is up 20-fold from a few generations ago.

From the 1960s back, kids needed parents a few hours a week.

But we reduced kids' roaming area from many sq mi to just their own property. At the same time, we instituted 24/7 adulting. Most of those hours are filled by parents.

Kids have permanently lost daily hours of peer-driven growth - the ones where complex social interactions occurred naturally. Parents are now left with trying to construct artificial environments (leagues, programs) where maybe some of that can occur.

Those efforts eat time and resources. And they're a poor substitute for the vital environments that kids once had for free.

I spent 20x the time parenting that my mom did. For all of that, my kids had little-to-none of my growth opportunities.

[anigbrowl]

I think it's a mistake to project changes in US society onto that in Japan. Kids there are still largely free range.

[acuozzo]

I let my kids roam free here in the US (Columbia, MD), but the reality is that they don't want to because there are no other kids outside to play with.