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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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You say all of this is easy...and yet if I got pregnant tomorrow, I would not be able to make enough money in nine months to pay for my child's daycare, clothing, food, and my own needs. I would have to surrender my child to the state, because I would also have medical debt on top of that for the not-free doctors I would have to see while pregnant, unless I wanted to avoid doctors and attempt to induce a miscarriage by negligence, which could be life threatening to me or hurt my fertility. You say interstate travel is incredibly cheap, but the amount of money required to move myself from a one-bedroom apartment to anywhere else is far from cheap for my wages.

So, I am not too sure where "you don't prioritize having children" comes in.

A person who very strongly valued children would dramatically cut back other expenses, whether they be 'travel', 'restaurants', 'not living in a low COL area', 'daycare' (when mom and dad were working the fields, they couldn't exactly hire childcare. maybe live near grandparents or something?). They would not choose to not have children over potential medical difficulties.

but the amount of money required to move myself from a one-bedroom apartment to anywhere else is far from cheap for my wages.

I'm not sure what your wages are, but I'm confident it's doable. If you and your bf/husband thought it was essentially necessary to have and raise children, these issues would be less!

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Okay, that's 'extreme' to a modern ear, but - how do bottom 5% income americans have children? Or, for that matter, extremely poor urban africans or south asians? Surely every problem you have is worse for the poorest americans and 10x worse for poor africans/south asians, yet their fertility rates are higher than ours.