Raising children is difficult, not only due to the immense amount of direct contact required to see your children thrive but also while juggling shared responsibilities and managing the economics of a household.<p>There was a separate HN thread about rural America seemingly unable to move to where the best economic opportunities are, but one of the biggest issues a family must deal with are whether both or only one of the parents should work. This is a decision that's often based on a variety of childcare factors outside of a family's control. Sometimes, there's seemingly no choice if local caretakers (e.g. the proverbial village) or daycare centers are too expensive during a child's early years which can impact long-term family financials and take a heavy toll on the stay-at-home-parent who may not be behaviourally suited to raise a child on a full-time basis.<p>Often, parents staying at home, whether by choice or necessity, are mothers. Anecdotally, I find a growing number of SAHD (stay-at-home-dads) often have either part-time jobs or extremely flexible hours. The article didn't touch on this directly but the few choice anecdotes seemed to focus on full-time SAHMs who didn't have the choice to utilize outside assistance.<p>Speaking from personal experience, while we had the luxury to <i>choose</i> to move to a city without grandparents or nearby relatives for caretaker assistance, it was a marital struggle requiring a lot of honesty and heated discussions to resolve the tension between home-building roles, child rearing and career trajectories for the both of us.
Is this really as "surprising" as the article says? I would assume it's obvious that not every woman is fit for motherhood. The reason why the majority of women used to have children as compared to the numbers of today isn't because they wanted it or were fit for it. They had to.<p>Now that's no longer the case (in our society), of course less women will want children. And these women speaking up, I guess they're old enough that they still felt the pressure and gave in to it. I expect that the number of births will continuously decrease as new generations are born. We still have people from the 50s living among us after all.
You've got to be kidding me. If you bring a life into this world you don't have the right to regret it anymore. You must feed and clothe that child, and give them the best upbringing that you can. It's not their fault you didn't understand fully what you were getting into. That's your fault not theirs. Get over your regret, it's only going to make your life miserable.