"So the decision to avoid having children may amount to a kind of performance anxiety in the face of intense expectations and weak governmental and social support".
outside of famine/war conditions, birth rates have historically been (much) higher among people (much) poorer than most americans. I think the difference is more that social support structures are weak, "standard of living" expectations are high, education is both expensive and necessary, and contraception/abortion are widely available and relatively destigmatized
Yeah this is a huge part of it. Boomers were able to give their kids good lives. Millennial can't even give their kids the same standard they have. People want to give their kids a better life than they had, but this is impossible without a house and a yard and extra money for game consoles and extracurricular and playmates and all the shit that was taken for granted in a 90s childhood.
The birthrate is only about 15% lower than in 1975, and 90% of the US population is in a state of financial crisis as severe as the Depression. People should be celebrating that it isn't cratering that hard.
"America is a third world country, and people don't recognise it... and I think that that's pretty god damn sad, that they don't recognise their own country as a third world, third rate, third class slum."