Children

I do think this applies to a lot of people. All the reasons you gave make perfect sense. I would have to add better birth control options as well. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers didn't have much control over how many children they had. It doesn't actually apply to me though. My parents were from larger families. My dad has 6 siblings and my mom had 8. They only had three children though. I have 6 of my own now.

Actually in my case its the exact opposite. I plan on having more children than my parents had and about the same amount as my grandparents had. I could see your point though, now a days the cost of raising a family has increased by so much its outragous. That doesn't matter to me though, either way I'm having the big family I've always wanted!

This is true in my case! My mother only had one child - me. I have no children and don't want any either. In days gone by it was the done thing to have a large family as the woman would stay at home and raise the kids. As you say today's lifestyle means that both parents feel the need to work and i'm sure it can be quite tricky fitting in childcare with a full time occupation.

I think that there are several reasons: People have their first kid at an older age, often after 30, so there are less years for having more. Also, more and more women work nowadays, and many of them focus themselves in their career as men have traditionally done, which sometimes not having kids. Also, life is way more individualistic today, and more competitive, as opposed to the traditional concept of family.

I agree with you about the career oriented. It has actually been shown that the higher the education, the less children you have. Women who go to college and get higher degrees want to focus on their career. Family tends to come later in life. There are other correlations between education and children, but that's for another discussion. But I also wonder if the fading of religion has something to do with it. I get the feeling that this day and age religion seems to play more of a minor role in many people's lives. In the days of our grandparents, the strict catholic or perhaps orthodox jew, would have multiple children as was expected by the bible. The whole 'be fruitful and multiply' thing. I don't know if this is true, but that's what it seems to me. Also, I think women are waiting longer to have children. It's perfectly acceptable these days to wait until you are 30 to marry and have children. Hence giving you less time. In the older days, if you weren't married with a child by the time you were 25, you were not going to be!

I agree about the career woman thing. I stay home with my kids and I would love to have more, but also, it is tough now a days to run a house hold with only one income. So I think it is about all of those obstacles that it takes to raise a family.

the reason is that is that now in ours days is other mentality, so this must be the consequence why we don't make so many children's.