I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
“Nothing new under the sun” I suppose!
No. Only joy for the new parents and child. (Though I do put in work to shore up their finances, try to get them my next bonus.)
Several reasons: being a kid today is better than being a kid 20-50 years ago. Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.
Health risks are largely down, especially compared to 35 years ago. (Anecdotally about 10% of families around my cohort lost kids. Far fewer in the younger cohorts.)
While economic mobility is down, more people means a stronger voting block. Boomers run the world because their protests changed policy. I see indications that kids are a more competent politic than earlier generations (eg, climate and LGBTQ rights), we just need them to matter sooner.
For what it’s worth, the economy is not just bad, it’s breaking. If workers remain this exploited, there will soon be nobody to sell to. We are seeing large (usually stupid) interventions to try and address it, I put nontrivial odds on something sane eventually being tried.
War deaths are low and really don’t seem likely to increase dramatically (see here).
Edit: I forgot to add LGBTQ rights/acceptance! While there are definitely still places that are not safe, many of them were not safe before (and that was just the status quo), I believe the risks have decreased and will continue to do so, while the medical access has improved (and that hopefully will continue, though I’m personally expecting that to get worse before it gets better. I think kids today probably get good care in 10 years, some kids 6-12 are in for a bad time.)