alt Hacker NewsThis is a real thought process people are contending with. There's also just the simple fact that kids are liabilities more so than assets. That's not been the case through most of human civilization.
I wouldn't limit it to economics either. Socially children are restricting. If you want to be free to travel, move, leave the house on a whim, etc. then kids will interrupt your plans/logistics.
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Appreciate you putting it bluntly.
I've found having children the most rewarding thing to have done with my life. And even so, you are right about the costs. "Million dollar baby" is not just a catch-phrase.
I hate to break it to you but those are almost all economic problems in the grand scheme of things.
You bring up assets. I think per-industrial economies the majority of couples have no ability to gain modern assets. Things like land and infrastructure was locked down. Unless you wanted to try to take stuff by force you were SOL. So only thing you could do is have a lot of children whose value was performing labor. Only encouraged by a high childhood mortality rate.
Switch to an industrial society. Having children to do raw physical labor competes directly with tractors and a backhoes. But you can acquire other assets and put more resources in upscaling children through education. And wage work means you can send wives and daughters out to make money.
I think it usually takes a society one or two generations to figure that out and act accordingly.
Adding a thing I harp on. Malthusian limits traditionally is thought to apply to just food and disease. But you can extended that to an industrial wage based economy and the resource restrictions still apply just not to food and disease. Industrialization probably results in structural population overshoot.
It's worth remembering that schools in American farming regions would shut down during planting and harvest seasons just 100 years ago.
Large families were your source of farm labor.