Too many older parents are paying for college, when they should be preparing for retirement. If the student has the loans, how can the child financially help the parents when she or he has college debt, a mortgage/rent, and wanting to start a family of their own.

Parents are helping children out well into adulthood financially, helping with college or a down payment on a house.

Children never seem to pay in the financial sense, older adult children are there to ensure parents are cared for though. Being able to drive them to doctor’s appointments or obtaining proper elder care when they can no longer live independently in their homes. The mere checking in once a day, if you indeed still have a relationship with your adult child/children.

As someone with four children, as an educated American, I never felt at ease how much government influence the push for a smaller family. We’re are constantly marketed that women have choices, but really there are larger goal to push women to have ‘no more then two’. This comes from economic influences, such as buying a home based on two incomes rather then one. A mortgage based on both incomes forces a woman to work full-time. Then add day-care, after having two children, a woman’s paycheck goes completely to cover day-care and the house. Student debt, doesn’t help in the equation, financially forcing women (and men) to post-pone children.

I don’t think our government really wants housing or education to be truly affordable, the inflated costs of these two things artificially creates an environment in which it makes sense to have one possible two children at most. Also culturally we shame young moms, I know several young mothers through out the years. Otherwise in a healthy relationship with the father eventually marrying and supportive extended family, the finished school/trade and are doing fine. They’re not in extreme poverty.

Sure we don’t live in the suburbs, but the lights are on and there is good on the table. I like to think it pays off, the fewer material items and lower transportation costs reduces our carbon footprint.

While socialised retirement is surely a disincentive, and we know you like to blame governments for every ill in the world as a matter of faith, I suspect the coefficient is quite low. The phenomenon of people having fewer kids as countries become wealthier is universal, and surely some of those countries have very little in terms of socialised old age provisions.

As it is, the West is going into demographic eclipse, where we will find that our entitlement systems don’t work well with stagnant or shrinking populations. Collectivizing old age care removes an incentive to have children, which leads to underfunded, broken entitlement systems.