I thought about putting this in off topic, but since the discussion will revolve around the current political situation, I decided to put it here.
If we go back 100, 200, 500, 1000 years we had rampant disease, periodic starvation, wars,,, and people still reproduced.
Today, we live in an oppressive society that is overly regulated.
The US is deep in debt, and has no solution in sight.
Seems every nation and their brother and sister has nuclear weapons.
Cost of living has outpaces wages.
With all of this and more, why would anyone want to bring a child into the world?
Even basic stuff, such as home ownership is a fading dream for most people.
College education cost a fortune.
There was once a time when a person could finish high school, then go to work in a shipyard, steel mill, car factory,, and earn a good living. But those days are far behind us.
Why would I want to bring a child into the world, only to watch that child struggle with college, struggle to buy a home, struggle to find a job,,,.
As humanity progresses, shouldn't things get easier? Shouldn't getting an education get cheaper and easier? Shouldn't owning a home get cheaper and easier? Its as if humanity reached a pinnacle in the 1970s, and it was downhill from there.
Wages have stagnated since the 1990s, while cost of living has skyrocketed, especially the cost of home ownership.
Historically, population hasn't grown as quickly as it has during the past century. It took from 1800 until about 1925 for the population to go from 1 billion to 2 billion. We hit 7 billion people in Oct 2011, and are expected to reach 8 billion by 2025. Or, if you'd rather make an argument of growth rate, it took 125 years to double from 1 billion to 2 billion. It only took about another 45 years to double again. And to double from 3 billion to 6 billion took less than 40 years. (Though at that rate, it's about another 40 years to double from 4 billion to 8 billion; it seems the growth rate as a percentage has stabilized.) We keep managing to figure out better ways to produce food; farm technology & transportation in the earlier 1900 absolutely couldn't have supported today's current population. Sooner or later, I think we'll reach a maximum carrying capacity. When? I couldn't even begin to guess. In fact, perhaps we've already exceeded it - remember, a lot of crops depend on fertilizers that we gain from resources that we are depleting. Those resources are finite.
As far as nuclear states, there are only 8 or 9: China France India Israel Pakistan Russia the UK and US. with nukes. we've got about 26 hundred more than anybody else, whatever. Oh, and North Korea is a fledgling nuclear power. That's a pretty tiny proportion of all the countries.
Cost of living, housing - incredibly dependent upon what part of the country you live in. Overall, as a percentage of income, things like food have decreased significantly over the past few decades (though it's rising a little bit right now.) In the early 60's, it was estimated that Americans spent about 1/3 of their income on food. Now, it's a single digit percentage of household income that's spent on food. (I wonder if the increasing amount of available money as a result also helped fuel rising home prices?) On the other hand, in the 1960's, we had telephones & an antenna on our roof to pick up a handful of television stations. Now, in its place, we have a cell phone for every member of the family, data plans on those cell phones, cable or satellite stations for the television, and an Internet data plan. That $25/mo or whatever it was in 1960 has ballooned to $300/mo or more for many families.
And, as far as watching your offspring struggle to find a job, colleges aren't necessarily THAT expensive - a lot of states offer excellent programs for quite affordable prices. Sure, those jobs in the auto industry, steel factory, etc., have dried up to a large degree, but there are a lot of other opportunities for people willing to not blindly enter college expecting a job regardless of their degree. There are many fields in high demand. My younger son - they had more companies looking to hire students than there were students in that major (and it was only a 2 year degree - quite affordable.) The job he landed wasn't just given to him - he worked his ass off at college so that he could get a good job - the cream of the crop of available companies to work for. Within a couple weeks - a month before graduation - he had no less than half a dozen job offers.
In summary - why have kids? Well, if you're going to raise kids to be lazy and ignorant, there really isn't a point. (Well, except that the kids who aren't lazy and ignorant will have someone to flip burgers for them at lunch time in future years.) But, if you're willing to work hard with your kids to instill a strong work ethic, and to work hard in school - there are still nearly endless opportunities for such kids. Yep, this paragraph about sums up this thread.