It pains me to say this but my D and her husband would move to Germany if they could.
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My neighbor’s daughter is in Germany. Met a guy and stayed. Now they have a kid. Never moving back. My neighbors go there for several weeks once a year, and the kids and now granddaughter come here once a year.
As of now, DD does not want any kids. Her long-term boyfriend is fine with that. I’m hoping she changes her mind. She’d be a great mother, and if she marries the current SO, him a great father. Oh and I’d be a very cool grandma. She thinks the world is a terrible place, over-crowded, and dying due to the climate crises so does not want to bring kids into it. I can respect her choice but really hopes she changed her mind.
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@itsgettingreal21, I have heard that from other people’s kids. In general, the fertility rate goes down with education. But, the US is much less supportive of family formation than Canada or the countries in Western Europe that I know. I wonder if the fertility rate among the educated is the same here as in other developed countries. My kids and their cousins in Canada and the US and Israel all expect to have kids (or have them already). But this could be idiosyncratic.
Well, from Wikipedia, here’s a little bit of information (footnotes removed):
In the United States, a large survey found that women with a bachelor’s degree or higher had an average of 1.1 children, while those with no high school diploma or equivalent had an average of 2.5 children. For men with the same levels of education, the number of children was 1.0 and 1.7, respectively.
In Europe, on the other hand, women who are more educated eventually have about as many children as do the less educated, but that education results in having children at an older age. Likewise, a study in Norway found that better-educated males have a decreased probability of remaining childless, although they generally became fathers at an older age.
@NJSue, anyplace in Western Europe or Canada works. Even parts of Eastern Europe. We have a friend whose son moved to Prague (I believe), got married, had three kids and won’t move back. The support from the government for family formation is too compelling.
Based upon my observation as an academic, a consultant in many countries, as a board member, an investment banker, a private equity/hedge fund participant, the husband of an artist, and a son-in-law of Canadians, my sense is that if you wan’t to be the best in the world at what you do, the US is the best place to live for most fields (most academic fields, biotech, tech, art, popular music – I see some exceptions like opera). The downside is the lack of support for family formation and the lesser social support. For most people who want a good job/career but whose aspirations are not as ambitious, Canada and Western Europe are significantly better. Note that this does not mean one can’t be very successful elsewhere, but the colleagues and ecosystem is usually meaningfully better in the US. And, as the wikipedia entry suggests, there is a a potential cost to family formation of pursuing things in the US.
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A good read that might be worth it for your DD to help influence her 
. It is called Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World and Why Things Might Be Better Than You Think, by Hans Rosling. But seriously, I thought this book was good and very thought-provoking.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=factfullness+book&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyMKbBhD1ARIsANs7rEHmgT6Z81e8aghX5IIZ86iKasUNxbWjO4hENxAGiPmpt4t25x04YJsaAlsGEALw_wcB&hvadid=264145904541&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9032015&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11473075750644582612&hvtargid=kwd-436924605266&hydadcr=22536_10353950&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_85sva9c50d_e
With that said, I would be very sad if my kids chose not to have children. They are still young (in their very early twenties), but I am already enviously eyeing other babies and grandmas. Think it’s a consequence of having kids later in life. Of course, I would never express this to them, as I support whatever choices they make, but one can always secretly hope that it will happen at some point in the future.
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S went to visit our next door neighbor—his college buddy and the wife and the 1.5 year old S. It was a nice visit and lasted until it was time for the little guy to go in to lunch and nap. S got along great with the little guy.
I definitely agree that the US is the best place to be top in your field, and the rewards accrue more disproportionately to those people than elsewhere in the world.
However, I think your assumption of less support for families is mostly applicable to dual career couples. The US tax system is very much more favorable to families with one earner than the tax systems in other countries.
It’s certainly true that we want to encourage all of our kids to find a career they enjoy, but very few of the higher income families we know in either the US or Europe have ended up with both spouses pursuing challenging full time jobs. And when one partner brings in most or all of the money, the families in the US are generally much better off financially.
My kids are in their mid to late 20s and thinking about these sorts of life-long decisions. While both want a long term, committed relationship, I would not be surprised if they choose not to be parents. They’ve talked about the difficulty for both partners in a relationship to achieve their professional goals while raising a family, and I think that is part of it. But they’ve also talked about not wanting to bring children into a world which, by the time their children are adults, could be very different from the one we know because of the global, economic impact of climate change. I’d love to be a grandparent and see my kids be parents, but it’s not about me.
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@Twoin18, it is true that in my generation, the high earning couples are mostly one earner, though not strictly true. But, success is not only high-earners. We have a friend who is an author whose books are typically very positively reviewed in places like the NY Times and NY Review of Books. Very talented. Very successful. Not sure how much money she makes. Her husband was instrumental in starting a tech firm that IPOed and independently has a higher-paying job. Similarly, my wife is a pretty successful artist (we met the other couple when the two wives were asked to speak together on creativity). As artists, pretty successful – has one person shows in NY and elsewhere at least every two years, work in museum collections, always cash-flow positive – but not a good way to earn a living. In our case and probably with the other, the wives slowed down their careers to have/care for children. We have other friends where both are successful but one writes operas and is a big deal in theater generally and the other is an artist. Hard to rely on only one income. In Europe, the better child care and, I’d guess, better education through high school mean that one spouse need not slow down. Nonetheless, your generalization is mostly consistent with the world that I see. I think that when one or both parties do well in the US, they do better than in Europe because of the less progressive tax regime here.
I do think the data reported above speaks to the effects of the weaker support for family formation, which is showing up among the college educated. Definitely not my field, so there may well be a more nuanced view.
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Our relatives in the UK have found it slightly easier for both to work, for example schools are required to offer aftercare in the afternoons. Though that doesn’t fill all the gaps with high powered jobs where picking up kids at 5.30pm each evening might not be possible.
But there’s also the feeling that they both need to work, regardless of whether that’s their preference, since their standard of living would deteriorate significantly if only one partner worked. And that also creates more of an expectation of going back to work since others are doing it.
So I think the system shapes behavior, somewhat independent of actual preferences. The US system appears designed to promote a more traditionalist approach to marriage and childcare, but that doesn’t necessarily match with the realities of the job market or the aspirations of Gen Z.
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(OT a tiny bit:
but I’m sitting here in a doc’s office across from THE cutest little baby…;maybe 6 months old!!! And maybe I would be really sad if neither of my S’s choose to become parents!!!)
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Our system has been out of touch for a few generations.
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My niece’s BFF is getting married next year. She’s already made the decision to leave Big Law (after a federal clerkship) and do some kind of government law. She’s been doing litigation for 3-4 years, but realized it won’t work with having family. Her husband to be will remain in Big Law.
I was a nanny to a family where the mother was a partner in a big law firm (real estate) and the father was an anesthesiologist (so always on call). They had 3 kids in 3 years (twins and a singleton). They always had a nanny at home if the kids were awake (so 7 to 7). The mother started working part time but was still putting in 40 hours/wk (some from home long before that was a thing). The father started doing other things like being a pilot when the kids were in grade school. They made it work for their family, but neither had the top of the heap career they could have had. But they didn’t want that. They were happy being semi-top dogs. Their kids did all the sports and ballet and zillions of birthday parties that all the other kids from their schools did. What did they give up? Money. The lawyer cut a deal with her firm to not have associates so she didn’t make any money off them, just took home 50% of what she billed (usually a partner takes 70%+ and a percentage of associate’s billing). And she had a really small office! (like a closet, not a partner’s office) Doctor worked fewer hours, eventually left the hospital and worked at an eye clinic (for him it was the cost of malpractice insurance that drove him out). But it worked for them.
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I know several folks who went the “of counsel” route at their law firms or pivoted to other fields because the work environment, let’s say, was not that family-friendly.
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I’m impressed by this situation where both parents made adjustments for the family. It’s usually one person (almost always the female) who makes the career/money sacrifices, but then is at risk in the event of a divorce, death, disability, etc.
Perhaps more young women would be interested in having children if they didn’t have to make all of the career sacrifices.
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Nowadays many females make more then their partners. My DD in tech two years after graduation makes twice what her boyfriend in IB does. I believe any other career but tech will be starting significantly lower so for those who get married in their 20th the partner in tech would always be making more.
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D1 is the high earner now, while her husband is the one who is around their toddler. They have a full time nanny (8 to 6:30), and Dad is around at home to pop in between meetings. D1 is sad when the baby prefers Dad for the evening sleep routine. D1 doesn’t see the baby few nights in a row between travel and client dinners.
In our family, my spouse and I did exactly this for the reasons you listed, and for others. We felt really strongly about being equal parents and having equal career opportunities and equal ability to support the family as a sole earner, if necessary. We were in short-term unequal arrangements at times, and those were not our best periods. There were a few times we contemplated long-term unequal arrangements and it just never felt right, so we didn’t do it.
We married young (still in college) and nearly every choice we’ve made has involved some sort of compromise and/or turn-taking. We’re just so good at it now (through both luck and practice). We’ve found a way to be wholly supportive of the other person, while also ensuring our individual needs are met.
Our finances took a hit because neither one of us was able to go whole hog on our career. We are both truly capable of doing the parenting and running the household individually, and we love it that way. One nice side effect is that our sons have been raised in a truly egalitarian household, so some of our family values were absorbed more through osmosis than us having to explicitly teach them.
This is not to criticize people who divide tasks more traditionally. Spouse and I are both risk-averse and feel much more secure this way, despite the lower income. We’ve also enjoyed the time just being a family with our children – we’ve both had summers off and great flexibility for most of their childhoods. That’s what our lower salaries bought us and we have no regrets.
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I did not work (kids with health issues) and my social security is half of my spouse’s. We are divorced, so my income is half of his, which I dealt with in mediation. Our social security system certainly does not support the “traditional” model (if that refers to someone staying home, which is hardly traditional for many hard-working families historically).
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If you compare a couple earning say $100K per year total, then if one person earns $100K and the other $0, their total social security benefits will be higher than if each earns $50K per year (despite them making the same amount of contributions).
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