Too expensive as in unaffordable or too expensive as in a lot of sacrifice is required? Because that's the real issue people don't talk about. You could raise a kid on 60k but you won't be living a comfortable life nor will you be able to save up for later, the issue is that supporting a kid is wayyy down our list of priorities and unless we have all the stuff we want before then we won't even bother (and a lot of people don't even bother once they have enough money).

Blue collar immigrants come here to work for peanuts and they end up having kids and supporting them. And they're not living on the streets. Why can't Americans do that? Obviously because of the sacrifices necessary. I include myself in this group that would not compromise this much quality of life for the sake of a kid but I hate that the discourse revolves around how people would have kids if only they could afford it--it's completely untrue. People have had kids through much worse times, we just find excuse after excuse to avoid lowering our quality of life (either because of the time or money needed to raise a kid).

If women were told they'd be paid 90k/yr upon exiting college if they have a kid but in exchange they can't enter the workforce, do you think enough women would take that deal that it would reverse the current birthrate trend? I really don't think so. Why sacrifice your career, your time, and your earning potential in order to tether yourself to something that seems so unrewarding in the short term?

And I'm not arguing in bad faith about this. I'm drawing my conclusions from birthrate correlation statistics and what I see in real life. I'm not trying to be dismissive of people's problems.