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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27720 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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In the context of Sweden, which has very generous parental leave benefits, an extra child per woman would amount to ~0.75 lost work years per person over their lifetime.

Personally, going from 1->2->3 kids werent big changes and I feel like I share the parenting equally with my wife. The big change was going from 0->1.

I agree that the opportunity costs are much lower if women work while also raising kids but I've been operating on the assumption people want women to become full time homemakers, which I think is much more disruptive. I do not have any kids of my own but your experience makes sense to me. I'm under the impression there are a lot of up-front cost for kid 1 that can probably be re-used for subsequent kids (toys, clothes, etc).

Things like toys and clothes aren't that expensive in rich countries. Time and personal attention are. The main upfront cost is not having the freedom to go do adult things without a babysitter, and having to plan everything around the children. It's a sunk cost, and the second child might play with the first, slightly lowering the attention burden at some point in the future. On the other hand, if the parents are paying for daycare, that adds up very quickly, and to have a fourth child, parents have to change vehicle class, which is not just expensive, but can also be quite inconvenient.

Why would you assume that? Or are you talking about people here specifically?

I think people concerned about TFR often advocate it as a mode of social organization and I had received some other replies downthread suggesting it was the way we ought to be going to boost TFR. So, mostly people here I think.

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