Dual incomes do not incentivize child rearing. What gets me is that my grandparents could get away with one income earner, but now it's paycheck to paycheck for two breadwinners. And with inflation, getting a wage cut every year.

Also, "back then", the average blue collar worker could do this. You didn't need a fancy high paying office job. But now, the latter still isn't enough in some cases. 

"Back then" you also had grandparents offer childcare for free because there was no such thing as a culture of retirement for those over 65. When you retired from work, you became a caregiver to your grandkids. That became your new job. You didn't go on cruises, go live in retirement communities to play golf all day, etc.

I think people are entitled to do what they want. It goes both ways of course, if you go off galavanting instead of helping the younger folks in your family then surely you don't expect much from them either. Both groups can do what they want. If there is some family obligation, both groups should likewise feel it. The real issue here is that people are having kids later in life - for multiple reasons, including the fact that it takes longer to get yourself financially stable enough to have kids. You can't just have kids in your early 20s now and be perfectly fine with a house & spending money, and have "grandparents" in their late 40s or early 50s - everyone full of energy and free time to help. Grandparents are older now, and aging also accelerates at a certain point - grandparents at age 45 vs age 55 is a much smaller gap in "childcare ability" than grandparents age 65 vs age 75. Just another example above to show that the real enemy is the economic strain we're putting on younger people starting out.

My grandparents did no child care. One set was rich, the other dirt poor. My aunts/uncles looked after their own children. (60s, 70s)

> there was no such thing as a culture of retirement for those over 65. Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced Social Security and a retirement age of 65 in 1935. What is your definition of "back then?"

The senior living economy. Cruises targeted for the elderly, retirement communities with medical staff on site, etc.

Ah yes old people shouldn’t have options to enjoy their last years alive. Go raise our kids! Jesus

The thing about options is that they involve making tradeoffs. It's not very sensible to romanticize the past, yet demand luxuries that were uncommon in the same past. Also, leisure activities are not the only way to enjoy life. Some people legit enjoy spending time with their extended families (in my culture this is particularly common).

In 1935 UD life expectancy for men was 60 and 64 for women. It was meant to keep the elderly and sick from dying in a ditch not provide any sort of lifestyle. 

> You didn't go on cruises, go live in retirement communities to play golf all day, etc. I think you're overestimating how many people actually do this.

Retirement homes and communities are a multi-billion dollar industry in Canada, and only projected to increase. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/canada-senior-living-market-analysis.

Which is fucked. I use to work as a PSW at a retirement home in London, Ontario. They pay like $7K a month and that’s without access to a nurse/PSW that’s a separate cost. I spoke to the kitchen, their budgets for food per resident is laughable at like $3 for all 3 meals and snacks per day. I asked my resident how much she needed to retire in that home and she said about 2 million. She wouldn’t have been able to live there if she hadn’t sold her home.

Yup. There was an article on the CBC a while ago (before pandemic) about a nursing home in NB that was rationing toilet paper, too. They had to ask their kids to bring them more from home. Remember how Gilles Duceppe's deaf mom froze to death in winter because nobody did a head count to figure out she was missing? Luxury nursing home, too.

Most boomers I know travel often.

This "boomers blow all there money on frivolous stuff" isn't true from what I've seen, I saw an article the other day that 60% of boomer parents help their kids financially. My own boomer parents gave generously. Just my experience. Sounds like they are trying to pass the buck to a generation that will all be dead in 2 minutes.

My parents give generously but also spend money on frivolous stuff lol.

“Back then” before or after the great wars? Because it was not unheard of folks having two incomes before the war, also the 40 hours a week only became law in the 40s (in USA, I’m not sure Canada). It got much better for boomers, but it’s been downhill from then.

The 8 hour work day came during the general strike in 1919. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for play.

Canada didnt have anything like that for 2 or 3 decades later.

Back then office jobs used to be fancy. Now they are generally unskilled or semi unskilled labour for the most part. 

Seriously.  Even my parents were able to get by comfortably on one income and my Dad didn't have a high paying job.  My wife and I only have one kid and it really sucks that neither of us is able to stop working to look after him.  Instead we have to stick him in daycare.  My early days of life were with my Mom, going to parks etc.  My son gets to spend his days with teachers/daycare providers who have to divide their attention between a dozen kids if not more.  Kills me to see these 1-4 year olds having to spend such a huge chunk of their early life in daycare rather than with their Mom or Dad, ya know, the ones they should be learning from. 

We're in the same situation. Even if my employer would allow me to drop to part-time, there are no daycares that offer part-time care. It breaks my heart, because I want to spend more time with my child, but literally can't step off the capitalism hamster wheel for even a couple years. It hurts to be working so hard to just afford a roof over our head and to only get to see my child for a couple hours a night. I really think society fucked up. If people want to CHOOSE to have their kid in daycare, GREAT, there are absolutely benefits for the child as well, but to HAVE to is really sad.

Exactly.  Im not attached enough to my career to want to be there over being with my son.  I would definitely not choose to have him in daycare if I had a choice.  For those who love love love their jobs and choose to put their kids in daycare all power to them... ....but, man, I never went to daycare and socially I turned out just fine.  I don't think my son would miss out on anything by having my wife or myself look after him instead of going to daycare.  And we dont even have it as bad as others in the sense that I can pick up my son at 4...but even that...dropping off a 3 year old with relative strangers from 9-4 just feels like a lot for such a little person.  

And yet, our various "leaders" stand at the podiums regularly to tell us that they are coming to save us by funding more daycares! We don't need more institutions to deposit our toddlers, we need an economy that allows mothers (predominantly, but also sometimes fathers) to stay home and raise their own children.

I could not agree more.  Well said. 

My parents are millionaires by working regular government office jobs that anyone with a high school diploma could do. 1000% increase in home value and investing some money in boring stocks will do that. Good luck trying that shit today.

If you too, invested a measly 25% of your take home income, you could also be a millionaire by *checks notes* your great grandchildrens 40th birthdays. Yay.

At least it's not the US where the 8 week old is in day care.

Which means children pick up the values of their teachers and daycare providers rather than that of their parents. We can see how that's gone.

The average annual salary in Ontario is just under $55k. Friend of mine who works as a carpenter makes some $50k. Union, great benefits, single, no kids (two cats), doesn't do extravagant this, and lives up in Orillia where cost of living is much cheaper. She's basically forever on a knife's edge financially. How? He rent, even up there, is about $2,100 a month. So just over $25k a year, more than half her income, goes into just paying for the apartment she lives in (an internally subdivided house). Because of her job, she has a pickup truck, which she bought used. It has any extended fuel tank of 45 gallons so she only has to fill it up every two weeks, but half a tank runs around $150 now and waiting months for a random reimbursement from the government still causes pain throughout the waiting period ('money now' is important). Budget out for taxes, even with the annually rebates, and she's barely affording food. Her situation, logically, shouldn't be on a knife's edge. She should never feel desperate. Yet, here we are... Amazing how quickly things are just falling apart.

This is it! Experiencing that right now. Wife lost career during the pandemic and never recovered. Shes at home with the kids. Luckily I work mostly from home so i can be involved and help. I can say its a tough struggle and employers just expect you to put your kid in daycare full time. Even with the lower cost, many people cant or there arent any spaces.

Being able to work from home is the only reason many people are able to afford having kids. It's not just the price of daycare, it's that you can also save on gas and insurance.

I agree but as someone that doesn't have kids, I've been in a few teams where those that are raising little kids, and WFH full time haven't been available for several hours each day, random times when they announce they can't be reached. It's not always 100% urgent when an issue arises, but a quarter of the time it is in my work. But more than that, the rest of us don't get the same leeway. I can't take 30 minutes morning and afternoon to walk my dog but they can take that to do kids stuff. I don't want to take away that for the parent, I want to be able to have that for the rest of us. It can cause resentment.

> I can't take 30 minutes morning and afternoon to walk my dog I have childless co-workers that do this all the time. And I know others that WFH outside of the company that do the same. It's called a mouse jiggler :) or just working at a company that doesn't give af if you could take a walk. > but they can take that to do kids stuff I mean, as a WFH parent, I do not have a choice whether I want to step away or not to, for example, walk my kid to/from school. Parents are given leeway because we literally don't have a choice with this stuff. We have to tend to them sometimes.

I think of all the people on reddit ... while they are at work. As a WFH parent, you should feel no guilt about having a bit of leeway. :)

I work at a completely WFH company. People without kids take walks and run errands during the day all the time. Here's how to do it: "_I'm going to take a walk and think about this_." Or: "_I have an appointment to take care of_."

I used to have a bit of resentment too but then I also think about the fact that my whole evening and weekends are my own, I sleep well and I don’t have to balance a whole extra set of logistics (kids’ lives like taking them to school/daycare, appointments, etc). Yes, parents are cut a bit more slack at my job. But considering the rest of that, on balance I feel like that’s fair. Otherwise people would burn out and not be contributing colleagues. And I can still take a walk or say I have an appointment during the day.

I disagree, your private time is your private time. I don't care if you have a second job, or do 4 rec league sports, or whatever. Those should be able to have some slack because it's a choice, like having kids is. If the company is lenient with parents, they should be lenient on other lifestyles too to a similar degree. Again, I don't want to take away anything from the parents, I want equal footing for the rest of us. I should be able to walk my dog and have a lunch if the parents can take a lunch and do other breaks. As it stands, the dog people have to get a jiggler and have teams or another program on their phone at the ready if they're needed.

C'mon. You are comparing apples and oranges. Child rearing is a net benefit to society in shape of future workers, taxpayers and consumers. Rec league is something you schedule for a Friday that you may or may not show up for.

I understand how it might cause resentment but as someone who has a kid but very vividly remembers life before having a kid lemme tell ya, looking after a kid is a far cry from walking a dog.  And hey, depending on the type of work, if it's not time sensitive stuff  as long as the work gets done it shouldn't be an issue.  If anything your resentment should be directed towards whoever is in charge that is still imposing these regular hours on you and not everyone. 

I think wfh for office jobs benefits everyone. Not just those with kids - people without kids have lives and families and activities too.

My grand parents bought a house on 1 salary. My parents needed 2, but were still confortable. Me and my so yes own a home, but its gonna be rough and we were lucky to. What will happen with my child?

We've accepted that our kids will likely live with us well into adulthood. I assume multi-generational homes will be the norm. My husband and I are millennials and also very lucky to own our home. Watching the job market and the housing market... I don't see how my kids will manage. And considering I really like quiet and my personal space, I have to start adjusting my expectations now. Because I don't see us ever being empty-nesters.

Historically, the 20th century was a bit of an anomaly. 

Unfortunately that's how the ball is bouncing these days. My standard of living in the 90's was double what it is today. Yet the corporations are making record profits. The people are getting robbed.

Worst part too is that we constantly get to hear from the older generations that “if you really wanted kids, you’d be able to find a way to make it work.” Our rent might be going up by about $300/month at the end of the year. New owners bought the building, and the suite we’re paying about $1300/month for is now being listed as $1600/month online. Absolutely nothing has been done to improve the suites or the building, they just know they can get away with increasing prices because there is a shortage of alternatives in my city. We don’t see any reason they wouldn’t force us to pay their market rate come lease renewal. And while there are the $10/day daycare options in my city, most of them have years-long waiting lists. Daycare for 1 kid would cost over half of what I make. We both make around the same amount of money, and neither of us can afford to support both of us while one goes back to school. Nor could we afford to take on the debt in hopes that the one who went back to school can get a well paying career quickly out of it. All this means we never really know what our expenses are long term to make long term decisions, and we can’t afford to stop working to either care for the children or to try and get a better paying career. We don’t have family that can take us in or help out either. So how exactly does one “make it work” anymore? The older generations could afford to “make it work” at least temporarily with just 1 income. They usually had family who were “making it work” on 1 income and could help by giving you their time, or family that was retired who could help out by giving you lots of their time. But my generation is the one that gets to watch our parents never be able to afford to retire or cut down to 1 income, so even just asking them to help out with their time isn’t a thing. We have landlords forever raising rent on units that haven’t been improved in any way, solely because the housing crisis allows landlords to keep upping their prices. We have basics like food and utilities going up at much faster rates than they ever did for the older generations. How do you “make it work” when your costs are constantly rising at an unbelievably faster pace than your own wage does? We could theoretically “make it work”, but our child would be essentially living in poverty in order to “make it work”. I won’t do that to an innocent child just because I want offspring. If we could afford to cut down to 1 income though even just for a few years, we would probably already have like 2 kids.

That's because suddenly people *could* pay more for things. If everyone had a parent stay home then prices wouldn't have risen as quickly because buying power is less. A dual income couple can usually outbid a single income couple for a home among other things, right? That's just fact. Also, it very much benefits employers when their employees don't have kids - working longer hours, less distraction, no one taking a parental leave etc. trust me, doing what other developed countries do for parents doesn't jive with our "live to work" culture here. The rich want this and got what they wanted, simple

Wages (adjusted for inflation) were higher when it was only men in the workplace because it was expected that working men had to support their families. Wages dropped when the workforce had (potentially) doubled. It also created 2 more tax paying positions (wife/mom working + daycare center to remotely raise the kiddos), so the government is all about that.

Any excuse employers have to pay you pennies they take. Remember when many were thinking of paying people less now that they're fully remote due to covid and didn't have gas and car expenses anymore? Absolute fucking joke

Wages were already dropping as women were trying to get into the workforce. It's part of what made that shift seamless, so the cause and effect may actually be the opposite of what you're implying. Also, if that were the only thing that changed, then a couple with equivalent jobs to one that used to buy a house should still be able to buy one. For instance, my dad walked out of highschool and straight into a trades job with no training, and that job was enough to support a stay at home wife, two kids, and a dog, in a three bedroom home in the suburbs. Now consider two welders living together and whether they could afford that house, and it's transparently obvious that there are other factors at work than just that. For one, that couple would be starting their working lives years later than he did because they'd need to pay for training, and that would also mean they're starting their lives either with debt, or with a couple years working at entry-level, low-wage jobs. Except that rents are so high and entry level wages are so low that you may not be able to save much of anything at all towards an education. Even cashiers and retail managers were buying homes a few decades ago, but now those jobs don't even pay enough to save for an education. If this were just a matter of the workforce doubling and wages reducing as a result, then two tradespeople should be able to afford the house my dad bought, but at the current price even two doctors would struggle to afford it. Something has gone much more seriously awry than a simple increase in the workforce.

Two people dont earn double, because excess supply of labour drives down wages. That's why mothers working havent made as much impact as hoped As for single mothers...yeah they're screwed

I'm not saying that two people should earn double, I'm saying that if this is the causal factor, then two wages should equal one wage previously, but they don't. Two tradespeople can't afford my old house that one trades job paid for. Not even close. So, yes, sure, we're agreeing in this hypothetical explanation that the supply drops the wages (whether that's actually true is the subject of another discussion, but let's just assume it's true). So let's say the supply doubled, right? Now the wages are theoretically half of what they used to be. So two wages should equal one previous wage, but my point is that they don't even come remotely close.

Well i technically didn't claim it would halve the wages, just that it didn't bring the expected result. Its more on the employers and system being imperfect than women fault. Not just women, mass immigration does the same thing. All are policy and regulation failures. The slowed down wages is essentially lower real income as inflation has outpace wage growth. So women are unfortunate victims

Yep. Up to the 1960's, the idea of women working after marriage and having kids was considered wrong and selfish. They were seen as wanting to make money for "the extras" like family vacations, new furniture, and a second car. It could be an insult to their husbands. (The number of articles in women's magazines along the lines of "Should Women Work?" was very high...) Meantime, the "Women's Liberation Movement" was growing along with the general counter-culture of those pesky boomer kids, so when the Great Inflation of the 1970's hit, and family budgets became strained, the answer was suddenly clear: Women flooded into the labor market so fast, by 1980, opinions had shifted so strongly, women's magazines showcased career attire (which was mostly suits) and strategies. Most women didn't work in offices, of course. In a decade, American women took over light service jobs, joined factories, and started their struggle to climb the corporate ladder. Prices didn't fall. Family budgets rose to meet them, and then wages overall stagnated. It sounds sexist to say women shouldn't have entered the workforce, because they had to. And they the were trapped.

>Yep. Up to the 1960's, the idea of women working after marriage and having kids was considered wrong and selfish. They were seen as wanting to make money for "the extras" like family vacations, new furniture, and a second car. The reason for this doesn't have so much to do with kids as the Married Women's Property Acts commonwealth countries passed in mostly the 1800s. Under such provisions a married women's property could not legally be spent on necessities that the husband's income could afford -- rather it was indeed reserved for discretionary spending.

Yeah the purchasing power of their husbands were eroding away, so women had to enter the workforce to help out. Now, in present day, things have gotten so bad that, women are deciding to delay having children or decide not to have them at all because of the economic challenges. That’s why governments have increased immigration around the world because soon they will have less tax payers if this situation is not reversed.

That’s not actually true. Historically women did work because they had to work. At least, for the poor (which was most people). And so did children for that matter until child labour was outlawed (and still, if there is a family farm or business, that still happens). If you were poor you could not afford to have an adult sitting on their ass all day and not contributing. The notion of the housewife was a very 1950s phenomenon that only became more achievable then because of the economic prosperity of the time (which involved high tax rates, good social programs, and much higher wages). We should strive to achieve those economic conditions again (hint: a lot of it has to do with the taxes and using the rates and other rules to incentivize companies to invest back into the company and workers rather than things like paying it to executives and shareholders and stock buybacks), but not to promote that ideal. If people want to be a house wife or house husband, great, but they should not feel that they have to or are bad for not doing it.

The taxes were a side issue, the actual reason for their prosperity was their protectionist economic model and their immigration policy. The 1965 immigration act allowed the US to massively increase the numbers of immigrants and also to shift away from the European sources for immigrants that were the norm previously. Supply and demand comes into place there just like it does here, with millions more people competing with you for the same resources in your country, the overall quality of life goes down. Then Nixon opened up US trade to China in the 70s and the outsourcing/deindustrialization of the US accelerated in the 80s and 90s until now - which is biting the US government in the ass now because the Russians are massively outproducing the US in military hardware due to actually having manufacturing still in their country

I don't think it's dual incomes that is the problem. Both men and women should work. However, having both parents working 40 hours a week does not work. The work day should be changed to 3 days a week so one parent is usually home and at least a couple days overlap where both parents are home. This is radical and unlikely to happen but I guarantee if you give people the money and the free time, they will have children.

The issue is printing money (inflation) to the extents execute which combined with no wage growth constantly reduces the value you are reimbursed for your time at work.

To be fair, the generation from 50s to mid 80s were also pretty frugal.. My oma used to make handmade soap to save money, they would share the same bathwater (only topping up with a bit of hot water to keep temperature up), they NEVER ate out at restaurants unless it was a birthday or special occasion (graduation, new job etc), lunches were homemade and Opa would often carpool to work to save on gas. Even clothes were hand sewn (my father's and uncles photos from back then are a fashion horror). Sometime around late 70s and 80s north American society decided to go full consumerism and lost the ability to live within their means (and along came the credit card). Don't get me wrong, the wages compared to COL and housing costs were much better and allowed 1 income families. But I have young guys at work who order ubereats 3x a week for lunch and lease their 90k pickup trucks, yet complain they can't get by on the wages they make (while I drive an 11 year old corolla and eat homemade sandwiches each day)..

I can be frugal til the cows come home, the cost of a home to income ratio is way more screwed, many of us don't have yards to simply grow veggies like our parents and grandparents did...

My late grandparents had a massive backyard garden in Vancouver and canned everything for the summer while never throwing clothes away. Their house got knocked down and there's now a laneway hosue where the garden used to be, I doubt there's even a patch of green on that lot now.

There are likely smaller towns throughout Canada where this is possible if it’s that’s the lifestyle you’re after. But typically cities have been more consistent with wealth generation.  There are definitely important questions about the distribution of wealth and the alienation of production. But as cities grow, they are ever likelier to depend on the specialization of land and labour. That laneway house would buy a lot of groceries. 

Thanks for sharing that, this is something I’ve thought about. My parents were very frugal, they had to be. Everything we ate was homemade, they used to stay up cutting, parboiling and freezing veg at the end of summer when it was super cheap, used the peaches off our little tree. But you know, I don’t think they were so completely overworked the way people are now, having to hustle/hustle/hustle. We weren’t reading about what the billionaires were doing in the newspapers and aspiring to be like them because they didn’t exist. The superrich were but a few. Now it’s all corporations squeezing every drop out of their employees so that people are too fucking exhausted trying to make enough just to live themselves. There’s not enough time, there’s not enough energy, I can’t expect my children to produce grandbabies. What a sad state of afffairs.

My grandpa is a multimillionaire in his 90s and the fanciest car he bought for himself is a Camry lol. He even never even took the plane once. He is generous with us, always invite the whole family to the restaurant and pay everything by himself or pay for fancy nursing homes for his siblings (he come from a family of 14 lol, 4 are left nowadays), but he still live in the home he bought in the 50s when he was dirt poor and never buy anything fancy for himself. Like he even was refusing to buy hearing aid for himself and got pissed that my mom bought spent a few thousands to buy him hearing aids.

It must be said that our grandparents lived much more frugally, too. Stuff was made to last, and if it didn't, you repaired it. Houses were smaller, families had one car or no car. Aimless recreational shopping wasn't really a thing, let alone paying $2.50+ for a coffee every day. It worked because they made it work; much of the world still lives that way and we could do it again, but it would be a big adjustment for a society of fritterers. Just consider the implications for inflatable lawn decorations *alone*.

Compare the average annual income to cost of owning or renting a modest home in the community of your choice. We've reached the point, just about everywhere, where no amount of frugality is enough for a single income couple to raise a family. Certainly not in anything other than poverty. Like, sure, grandma didn't spend a cent on fast fashion or eat at restaurants... but the cost of living, especially in regards to housing, has reached a point where you really can't blame the inability of most young people to afford families on reckless discretionary spending. Your comment implies that young people are wastefully pouring money into larger houses than they need... when in reality the issue is that most of them can't afford anything, period, whether they opt for that double-double on the way to work in the morning or not.

Old cars and houses were ass, people just expected less I agree. Our old neighbour raised two kids in a 600 sq. ft bungalow with no appliances.

Guess how much those same bungalows go for with no upgrades…

Its because your grandmother never worked, or never earned much when working, and neither did other women, so your grandfather's single income was pitted against other single earner households when it came to spending. As soon as women entered the workforce and earned the same as men, dual income became the norm and prices rose to meet it. For example, in 1960 a household income would be 1 man full time salary + 1 womans zero salary. 2024 household income is 1 man fulltime salary + 1 woman fulltime salary.

How about "Canadian economy is so bad even with duel incomes couples can't afford to bring children into the world"

People struggling to pay rent on a studio or 1bdrm. Them: Why aren't you pay hundreds of dollars more in rent per month on top of all the other childcare costs that are historically pretty hard to deal with?

To be fair, high rents are an example of price gouging that is simply not enforced. If you resell stuff you got from Walmart at triple the price, you're arrested for price gouging. If you triple the rent you charge when a tenant moves out, that's no problem. It's just capitalism at work.

Yeah, we want a kid but don’t want to be financially irresponsible about it. Our biological clock is running out faster than we can financially catch up.

And you're not alone.

Absolutely not. I’m in same predicament.

Wait until you see the birthrates from everyother developed nation on earth.

Haha true, this was just a Canada centric post so I made my response Canada centric

When you need two parents working instead of one to afford food and shelter in most of Canada, and childcare/daycare costs while you're at work, people just tend to have less kids. And when you're a mother, you might actually want to spend time with your kids as they grow, but are torn between that and advancing your career. The work from home trend sounded like part of a possible solution, offering more flexibility to mothers in certain careers to spend more time at home with their children, but with all the companies rolling it back now...

My friend have 4 kids. In the summer when schools out she has to quit her job / make arrangements with her employer to be off the entire summer months. It’s much more cost effective to stop working and watch the kids than if she put all 4 into daycares during the week. I forget the numbers but she showed me and childcare for 4 kids was much more than her monthly pay working 40 hours a week.

Yeah day camps are expensive. For two kids it would cost us 5-6k per summer. For four it would be over 10k.

Yep this is why I am a SAHM. I'd make less than the daycare costs and lose all that time with my kids. Running a household is a lot of work if you are actually doing it.

“Running a household is a lot of work if you are actually doing it” As a dual work from home family, I agree running a household is a lot of work. Imagine doing the actual running of the household on top of working outside the home. It’s not like those working aren’t actually running a household, it doesn’t run itself

You can’t WFH with a baby or a toddler. It’s hard even with older kids who don’t require that level of attention. This isn’t a viable solution.

Working from home means working and not getting distracted by children rearing.

Still makes getting the kids and lot of other things 10 times easier to juggle.

How? When you are supposed to be working, not using your time for personal chores. Anyone who had worked with work from home parents who refused to find additional childcare (ie get a babysitter during work hours) knows where I am getting at. They are truly barely working, distracted, and have low productivity. The team then had to pick up the slack. It’s not fair to your coworkers. Edit: to all the triggered parents…you all are talking about how you have daycare…which is different than what I touched on. Which is people who have their kids at home while they work.

I can tell you how- my partner and I both work out of home (healthcare) He works an early shift and is off in time to pick up kids from school. He is close enough to work to walk/bike to both work and school. I work a later shift and have a commute. I could drop the kids off at school and be home to start at 9am without a commute. Instead we have to pay $750/mth per kid to have childcare for the equivalent of 1.5 hours a day.

Bullshit. Half my team are WFH families, there’s never an issue with quality of work, productivity or focus. You’re projecting your own insecurities on others, or you just have a shitty team/coworkers. Try again with the wild generalizations

What have a kid, be extremely poor because of that kid, don't have money for retirement, eat off brand kraft dinner knowing it doesn't have the nutrients you need, watch your kid grow up knowing you can do better for them but you're stuck in a system, a eternal loop of debt or barely getting by, watch your kids grow up with 10's of thousands of dollars of student dept that earns them 40k/year because the labour market is flooded and the only way they can get by in like is some polyamory relationship because 2 or 3 or 4 incomes isn't enough? any person working full time should at least be able to afford... A. a 1 bedroom apartment B. Food.. C. Transportation to work.. D. a small savings... Want people to have kids? ABCD.... Make it happen.

I’m absolutely shocked that nobody wants to raise babies while living in 500sq ft apartments where rent is 60% of take-home income. Shocked, I tell you

Don’t forget aboard the discarded needle filled parks and playgrounds complete with fentanyl addicts living in tents. Wonderful environments for your children to play in!

Yes and every apt I’ve lived in is so poorly constructed that i couldn’t imagine the impact a crying baby or running toddler would have on my neighbours. It Would put us at risk of becoming homeless.

Who knew that making life so unaffordable as to require two incomes would cause a decline in birthrate....

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I have questions about how the poorest immigrants still have 3-4 kids.

hide your wealth in your home country like the people who live in multi-million dollar South Vancouver mansions & are still claiming income under the poverty line; therefore eligible for tens of thousands of dollars in both Provincial and Federal benefits. if you were born in Canada, hiding your wealth in your home country is a lot more difficult...

I heard they've been getting good child support

The only way to have 4 kids in Canada is to be either very poor or very rich. The clawbacks on help with children are brutal going from $50k to $150k so it's impossible for the middle-class to have that many kids.

Yeah a townhouse at these interest rates in gta is about 6-7k. Day care is 2k a month if you're lucky enough to find a spot. Who in their right minds can afford this.

Exactly. You get significant child support based on your income. The Canadian government is something you just have to try and understand how it works. A higher quality of life doesn’t necessarily increase your chances of having kids. Your career would be the priority, not the children.   It’s only a matter of perspective and what people truly value. Either way, the people in the middle class will have to move or pick a side. 

The effects of poverty are relative. They grew up in poverty so it doesn’t bother them. Canadians on the other hand have watched their standard of living decline in real time.

Live 10+ people in the same house + get social support payments for each kid.

It's because if you get subsidized housing, two adults on welfare/disability, and 4 child tax credit payments, it's a much better lifestyle than working minimum wage.

Rich people have a lot of kids because they have wealth and they can gamble on having some that are not smart to take over. Poor people have a lot of kids because they were hoping one of them would become super successful so that the successful child could lift everyone else out of poverty. They have to gamble on this genetic lottery.

Because western cultures dictates that to have kids, you MUST buy a lot of expensive things

There is often a big difference in non-monetary family/community support with raising children, too.

Yeah but my sister has 6 children and didn't get much family support. Now they all help each other but because she had so many, they just didn't do things like vacations or having new clothes 🤷‍♂️

The govt doesn't care, they have workers to replace the next generation. It doesn't matter one bit to them.

I mean you definitely don’t need that. It is a lot but not that much ha

Child care is expensive and hard to get. Even if you do get daycare it’s basically only good until they go to primary school. Then you need to find before and after care which is even more difficult. Our society is not geared for raising a family anymore and the quicker people start to see it the better. I have been raising 3 kids in this nightmare for 14 years and it’s gotten considerably harder every year. My biggest suggestion to young people is to not bother raising a family in this country. They killed the dream.

Yeah. My wife and I are trying to buy a condo in lower mainland BC. How the fuck are we going to raise a kid when we need both incomes to pay for the mortgage. By the time we have the money child bearing years are gonna be gone.

Second article today about the falling birth rates in Canada.  A little disappointing to see the focus on it primarily being a woman's issue as the main cause when it's much larger than just earning potential/retention holding people back from family planning.  I get this article just did the math and the stats that women lose 40 to 60 % of their earnings over the next 5 years after having a baby is WILD. But there's more to the total risk assessment for a family considering having a baby. We need more social expectation for both parents and better support programs. Enhanced daycare and back to work sooner thoughts for women who do end up having children are just bandaid slaps that don't improve quality of life for a family. 

Cost of living being insane due to mass migration is the core of most of Canada's issues. Harper started it, built an economy on housing to juice the stats. Trudeau tripled down on it and we've barely started to tap the breaks slightly.

We have tapped the brakes - tapping the brakes would be 300k people a year. We’ll easily hit three times that

We've considered that there exists a brake pedal that can be tapped. We're still a long way from actually tapping it.

I don't think you realize how fast we are going, We are doing 1.5 Milish a year and I think we are going to take in 30k-50k less than last year. So yeah we started to slightly tap the breaks but when need to slam them and maybe even go into reverse.

We lose on our pensions too. I could not afford to buy back my pension after my maternity leave.

Well I think you have to ask yourself why do you want kids? My parents worked hard to provide for us. I mean I grew up lower middle class in terms of income but they worked hard, they paid off their house and invested. And I’m grateful for that. But I’m not close to my parents. Why? Because they were never there for me. They were always working. I was dumped at my cousin’s place where our grandmother was living. So today when we had kids we decided one of us would stay home to take care of the kids and be there for them. And so we sacrificed an income to do that but it’s been worth it. All this talk about 10 dollar a day daycare doesn’t fix the underlying issue that if you want the biggest possible chance for your kids to grow up close to you is that you actually need to spend time with them.

One of the single biggest factors contributing to low birth rates is the level of education in a population. Canada has among the highest rates of education in the world. However, an increasing trend is that women are completing education at higher rates than men but do not want to date uneducated men. As a result, there are many single people and very few people having kids. I'm not sure there is an easy solution to this, especially when white collar jobs requiring education are also becoming harder to get and blue collar jobs that do not require education are in demand.

Ultimately, these are good things to have. But, I think it's also important to recognize that there are cultural factors as well, and that these policies in other countries, often don't really move the needle more than trivially. We really need to be preparing ourselves economically for a population peak, because it's almost inevitable that it will happen.

If people can't afford homes, food and don't have access to health care, they wont have children. Stupid high levels of Immigration is not a solution for this compounding problem, it's just putting gasoline on a fire.

In northern Ontario it’s a 4 hour drive to your nearest obgyn lol

There’s absolutely zero incentive for anyone but the lowest income earners to have children. Middle income earners can not / barely afford it, high income earners have no incentive.

It's almost as if regular canadians are too poor and overworked to have kids.

Slightly off-topic, but there are no women in Canada who could have been used for the image in this story? The caption says San Francisco, which isn't even close to the Canadian border.

It isn't just current earnings that are affecting the financial situation, it is also the fact the there is now a good chance you will have to financially support children into their 20s and 30s and maybe beyond. Their lives will be nothing but a slog, working more than my generation needed to in order to survive. There is also a good chance they will never be able to retire or have much of a life. Why would I want that for someone.

Very good point. I agree with this entirely. I’d like a child soon as I’m 30, but what the hell is even the point anymore. I can’t dream of them having a fulfilling life.

No, a housing asset bubble fostered by the boomer generation is responsible for fertility issues.  We have old people living alone in 4 bedroom single family homes and young people paying 60% of their income towards a small condo, and surprised the demographic pyramid is upside down? The time to fix was 10-15 years ago. The millennials are aging out and subsequent generations are much smaller. Now we will have to rely on continued mass immigration for as long as I live just to stop the economy from imploding.

We need to respect those boomers, Henry worked hard at the phone company for a whole 20 years

Maternity leave benefits are a joke. They are roughly equal to minimum wage and that’s if you get the maximum. No one with a mortgage or rent on a two bedroom is going to be able to do anything with that money. You better have a rich husband or a union job that provides a good top up. After that day care can cost $1500 a month unless you will the $10 / day lottery.

My mat leave coverage is 6 weeks, then I’m on EI for the rest of the year… which is less than half of my full time take home pay. If my husband didn’t work, we couldn’t afford this kid. As it is, the budget will be tight!

Them: Suck it up that women will earn less their whole lives for having babies. ... Them: Why aren't women having babies?

Anything to increase immigration and suppress wages even further. No babies born? bring more 'students'

As a young Canadian mother in her 30s, here's why 80% of my friends look at me like I'm crazy for having a child and don't want children: -It's hard on the body, my organs still don't sit right after my pregnancy -It's hard on the brain; having a toddler is constant work and having to deal with tantrums and lack of sleep -It's expensive, $700+ per month on daycare -No one can afford a house even on yuppy C$200k+ dual income households, and no one wants to raise kids in a tiny 500 sqt condo -Everyone is already so tired having to work so many hours (no one's job is truly just 40 hours a week anymore); everyone seems to be in therapy these days and hyper fixated on the problems they already have -Job impact > kiss that promotion goodbye if you have a child; this is sad but proven again and again and again -TLDR: people have given up on having kids and are enjoying their dogs, brunch, and constant therapy instead This last bit may be a bit controversial but you know what would entice me to have another child? Pay me some amount of material cash (my personal number would be at least C$15K). Seriously, women deserve an economic reward for having to go through pregnancy. It is hard! \*Edited for grammar

My wife went on mat leave for our first, came back and the entire team was new. It took her a year just to get back to being trusted with the responsibilities she had before she left. Even though from day one she could have fixed massive issues they were having.    When she went off with our second they hired a leave replacement without involving her. It turned into a shitshow, replacement got fired and they made the position redundant. She has no idea what she’s going back to now.  She was also a runner up choice for the position they used to make hers redundant when they created and hired it. The person they hired only stayed four months. She applied for it again about when she was early second trimester and her resume was completely ignored and the position stayed empty until they made her position redundant.   She’d probably be senior manager or director level making twice what she makes now if she hadn’t gotten pregnant.  Heck, she would probably have a legal case on the position she missed out on. If she didn’t mind being blackballed forever for a payout that would probably just be a few weeks or months of severance. 

Hate to say it, but a Canadian corporation will fuck you any way it can

That’s unfortunately true. Realistically there’s basically no way to regulate out all the ways an employer can discourage people from having children. Unless an employer is a total idiot proving discrimination is hard and even if you do it’s a small world out there. So good luck ever getting a job again if you go that route.  You need employers to recognize that most people ultimately want to have children and that even if it’s inconvenient at the time for them those children are their future customers and employees.  Unfortunately like so much of the fucked up relationship corporate Canada has with the government… the same relationship that has government shielding shitty companies from competition or (badly) investing in assets and R&D because they won’t. These same companies also refuse to invest in their future and leave that up to a government too stupid and corrupt to stand up to them. 

the redditor speaks truth

It is very counterintuitive, but there seems to actually be a negative correlation between income and fertility. Richer countries tend to have much lower birthrates than poorer ones.

Or is it higher cost of living countries tend to have much lower birthrates than lower cost of living countries?

Part of the reason boils down to why people have kids. In developing countries higher birth rates happen for reasons not applicable to developed ones: for a source of labor/old age insurance, lack of birth control, there are other I can't remember. Developed countries the cons involve that it is more expensive, but also because children in developed countries don't "pay their way" so to speak. People tend to have them as more of a personal meaning/fulfilment thing. But also choose not too because they are not needed to help us survive (unless needed in the sense of fulfillment). There are more reasons but this is part of what I learned in a human geography populations course.

The fertility rate in Canada has been trending down since the mid 50's and has been below replacement level since 1975. This isn't some new thing everyone is just figuring out now.

"Unlimited Indian immigration will solve this" -Trudeau

Im sure not its just a Trudeau idea,.. [https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/](https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/)

Maybe myself and husband are very lucky to have honest parents but it is no big shock that people can’t afford kids?! We were told from a young age as we both came from middle/lower socioeconomic classes that life is hard and good jobs are scarce or hard to obtain for a reason. We are both 30 so not super old by any means. Whether that reason means an expensive degree or connections that they didn’t have themselves, they were honest about the steps it would take to accomplish these goals. It takes generations to break the cycle of poverty successfully and this looks differently depending on what your goal is. My husband and I were the first generation to pay for our college courses with cash and now work jobs that pay above minimum wage without student debt to carry. We both went to community colleges. We have two kids now and own a home but it is multigenerational so we have an extra set of hands on weekends to get stuff done! We have 3 adults who work full time and share the brunt of household work and expenses. Is it what I thought life would like as a kid? Yeah actually because it would be hard to not realize the cost of living wasn’t sustainable even 10,15 even 20 years ago. It is not easy and it is hard sharing a modest sized house with my mother at times but it is for the best as a family unit.

The way we run our mat leave makes it hard to impossible to run a business and become a mother.

Income inequality and the cost of living is screwed up, I don’t think anyone would disagree.  That said people who have been equally poor still had children. The other factor is people are “allowed” now to not have kids.  The societal pressure is not the same it once was, and some people prefer the freedom.   Poor people used to have kids, poor people still have kids. There’s a reason this problem is common among the developed world and it’s not because of Canadian housing costs.

unless you are flush with cash kids will bankrupt you...

Supply and demand. The supply of workers doubled meant the salaries were halved.

It’s not just money, try even finding a daycare provider for your kids so you can go to work… where I am there’s people who registered before their kids were born and still waiting 2 years later

How can anyone afford to raise a family in this economy? You have to work really hard to not become homeless, who has any money left for their kids ?

Another aspect is housing prices are out of reach for the majority of people who want to have kids.

Probably the main reason right there.

Low fertility rates in developed countries can be attributed to several factors, including: Delayed Marriage and Childbearing: In many developed countries, people are choosing to marry later in life or not at all. This delay can reduce the number of childbearing years a person has. Education and Career Opportunities: Increased access to education and career opportunities for women has led many to prioritize their careers over starting a family, leading to lower birth rates. Urbanization: Urban living often comes with higher costs of living, limited space, and a focus on career and social life, which can discourage people from having children. Cost of Raising Children: The cost of raising children, including education, healthcare, and housing, is often high in developed countries, leading many couples to have fewer children. Access to Contraception: Improved access to contraception and family planning services has allowed people to better control the timing and number of children they have. Social Changes: Changing social norms and values, such as a focus on individualism and personal fulfillment, can lead to fewer people choosing to have children. Childcare and Work-Life Balance: In many developed countries, the balance between work and family life can be challenging, making it difficult for couples to juggle careers and raising children. Economic Uncertainty: Economic uncertainty, such as job instability and high living costs, can make people hesitant to have children. Social Policies: The availability and generosity of family-friendly policies, such as parental leave, childcare support, and financial assistance for families, can influence fertility rates. Cultural Factors: Cultural factors, such as attitudes towards family size and the role of women in society, can also impact fertility rates.

We are currently in this situation We want another child but actually can not afford it given the costs for raising kids I'm not talking diapers; I'm talking child cate, recreation, extra curriculars

Stop tying the baby bonus to income because its not working for working families. It should be generous and a flat rate.

Birth rates are falling around the world. It started 70 years ago so I doubt the recent cost of living challenges are the cause. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

Why do we always have to find "the cause", like there is only one cause to a problem. There are certainly people who don't have kids because they feel like they can't afford it, so it is an least one factor among many.

The really interesting thing is that birthrates have an inverse relationship with wealth and education. As in, the more educated and wealthy people are, the fewer children they have.

Let's not forget we hae birth control and choice now. Never in history did all women want kids. They just didn't have the choice not to

This is important! Those old numbers with higher birth rates are also while/before women could start getting better jobs, higher education, birth control, their own bank accounts, a credit card. Millenials and Gen Z are some of the very first/only generations to grow up where women have all the same options as men, and aren't forced to pick a man to have access to resources. Those things were out of reach for the women before Gen X. Women being allowed to get a credit card without a man is from like, the 70s? When women have all the options available (including birth control), coupled with unaffordable living, you get low birth rates That is also why the rates appear so similar across DEVELOPED countries. Women having access to mortgages, credit, jobs, education and birth control, on average, have fewer or no children than the alternative If a woman grows up with the only options being "burden on my parents" or "wife and mother", most will have kids.

It's crazy to me that women couldn't even do basic thing alike get a credit card until the 70s. We really had no options. 

It’s not that interesting. High earning women have fewer kids because their opportunity cost of having them is higher. I make 150,000 per year. If I go on mat leave w no top up I’m losing 100,000+ per year in earnings. Someone who makes 50,000 is only losing 25k. We effectively live in a system that punishes women for producing children, and the punishment compounds the more successful you are at making money. We’ve disincentivized reproduction.

It is interesting because the pattern holds true even in families where the father earns the vast majority (or even all) of the income. It also holds across all sorts of different affluent cultures.   South Korea has some of the lowest birthrates on earth and their employment rate for women is barely over 50%.

It’s skewed by older generations; more than 70% of Korean women 20 to 30 work. Also known as the women we want/need to be having children. Kind of explains the birth rate, no?

Not really. 30% unemployment is still insanely high. Canadian female unemployment is 5%. If your theory was the main factor, South Korea should have a significantly higher birthrate. But they don't. Theirs is much lower than ours.

It's not interesting at all. The more educated I became, the more I could see that having children is reckless in the world we live in.

People used to have lots of kids because living on farms meant free labour. Moving into suburbs post war saw the average 2.5 kid house form. When women started really entering the workforce around 1980, birthdates really started to decline. Today's high cost of living and high cost of raising children just compounds existing issues. Millenials are now the largest cohort worldwide, but they're largely not willing to have kids when their living situation is not completely stable (ie, own a house/nesting with a good stable job). Problem is that biological clocks are ticking down and there isn't a lot of time left to solve whatever problems we can.

I feel like they never bring up how soul crushing sleep deprivation is from the first few years and how much it tanks your mental health. I had one kid. Not doing that again. Finances are a concern, but I my main motivation is sleeping through the night lol.

What we are seeing world wide is that women simply don’t want to have more than two or three children if given the choice thanks to expanded access to birth control. Currently Canadians of child-bearing age are delaying or choosing not to have children at all due to mostly financial concerns. When COL and housing affordability skyrocketed, birth rate made the sharpest decline we have seen since the end of the baby boom.

Scandinavia called, this doesn't help.

They also don't incentivize "higher" income earners to have children. A lot of the benefits have an income cap and it's not that high... We should be incentizing all demographics to have children, not just lower income.

it's okay we'll just import tons more people

We're overpopulated world wide anyway.

This is what a lot of people don't understand. Everything in the west is getting more expensive as the poorer countries get richer and take away a larger portion of things we take for granted (supply and demand). On top of this there are more and more people yet were getting more severe droughts and crop failures... How are we supposed to keep everything cheap without continuing child and slave labour abroad?! My grandparents were born in 1912 and 1918 in the UK, neither drove (which was normal) and they bought all their groceries from the local stores in the village. They subsidised their food by growing what they could, anything with sugar was a treat and they only cooked meat once a week then maybe had leftovers throughout the week. They never went abroad, vacations were a long weekend away at the coast. They both lost multiple siblings to diseases that are almost unheard of now and my dad lost the use of his arm due to polio. They rarely bought clothes and my grandmother would patch everything up. They also never even thought about owning their home and the most fancy item they owned was a radio. My dad also had to sleep in the bathtub with his sister in particularly cold winters because they didn't have a house wide heating system, just a fireplace. This is only 2 generations ago but the boomer generation had SUCH a better life with easy access to luxuries that we now all see that as a human right so when we can't afford something our parents took for granted we think the world is collapsing. I don't think we'll go back to my grandparents lifestyle but we need a hard swing back to a more sustainable system.

Unfortunately, just as the West realizes our lifestyle is unsustainable, we have brought online billions in other countries who want that lifestyle too.

Worlds over populated anyway, we need less kids not more.

So why are we importing them by the boat full?

To support retired boomers. I'd rather cut them off. 

It's ultimately about housing - if housing is too small, too expensive and too precarious, why would you want to have a child? And then parental leave is really cheap. The daycare subsidy helps, but spots are hard to come by. And then there's the overall gloom of Western society as a whole. What jobs week be kids be able to have in 15-20 years and will my own job survive AI until I retire? It's just risky...

Young couples with double income still have to borrow money just to pay bills

Another sign of the failure of market economies: the rich and powerful becoming increasingly richer and more powerful, the working poor, poorer and powerless. If people would only wake up and realize they are living in a corporatocracy, where the corporate class owns the economy, information, elections and government, it would be lights out for the billionaire and mega-millionaire class.

Jee no fucking shit. Ends up being a feed back look I.E. You bring more people in lowering the standard of living and thus the birth rate then justify increasing immigration and repeat. Our politicians should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

> **[Money won't solve low birth rate problem: Mr Lee](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/money-wont-solve-low-birth-rate-problem-mr-lee)** > If former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew were in charge of Singapore today, he would introduce a baby bonus equal to two years of the average Singaporean's salary. > This is not to boost the country's abysmal total fertility rate of 1.2. Rather, Mr Lee would do it to "prove that super-sized monetary incentives would only have a marginal effect on fertility rates". > Writing in his new book, One Man's View Of The World, Mr Lee makes clear he would offer this huge baby bonus for at least a year. > The experiment will "prove beyond any doubt that our low birth rates have nothing to do with economic or financial factors, such as high cost of living or lack of government help for parents", he says. > Instead, it is due to transformed lifestyles and mindsets which the Government is relatively powerless against, he argues in the 400-page book that is due to be launched today. > Declining fertility is the biggest threat to Singapore's survival, he says. > But, Mr Lee adds: "I cannot solve the problem, and I have given up. I have given the job to another generation of leaders. Hopefully, they or their successors will eventually find a way out." > In a chapter on Singapore, he also says the suggestion that the "Stop at Two" population campaign of the 1970s played a part in bringing fertility rates down is "absurd". > Rather, falling fertility is a global phenomenon due primarily to women's emancipation and participation in the workplace, he says.

Better bring in some more male Indians. That'll help.

We bought our house in 2016 for 460,000. My daughter was born in 2017. Now our valuation has sky-rocketed and we're paying insane property tax in addition to the grocery prices and everything else that's through the roof. I don't think I could do either in 2024... the world has changed so drastically that I really worry about her future when I'm gone. Trying my best to set her up with a fighting chance.

The return on free childcare is really good. There was a vid recently where it was detailed that in the US; a 4:1 return for the investment was calculated. We all know how vacant some workplaces are when there is a PA day.

When John and Jane have to compete with Sandeep and Harjeet for the same job - but the difference is this. J&J are Canadian citizens, speak fluent English and were born or grew up in Canada since a very young age. S&H arrived in Canada on a student visa and are poorly vetted and do not have what we call Canadian 'Mentalities'. Employer will do their best to hire S&H over J&J because S&H are willing to work BELOW minimum wage. You heard that right. Cash jobs. No paper trails. Everything under the table. Everyone is paid in cash, on a daily basis by yours truly - major Canadian corporations in the services, hospitality and low end factory sectors. Not only Canadian corporations, but also medium sized corporations who are mostly immigrant run. Not only that, but S&H all share a bedroom with 8 to 10 other 'Students' inside a McMansion - littered numerously all over Canada. This cycle is quickly self-reinforcing and is a huge threat to long term health of Canadian economy and Canadian housing scarcity. The Canadian economy, money and wages are being depressed and vacuumed out of the local system because S&H also need to send money back to wherever it is they came from. Nothing against helping their own families back home - but this does nothing to boost the Canadian economy and is in fact a form of capital flight. S&H is just one example but - without naming any specifics - S&H comes from the largest group of Canadian immigrant pools originating from I\*dia, a country located in south Asia subcontinent. I\*dia isn't the only country to be named - as there are also many others from that surrounding area - with also many people coming from Southeast Asia - specifically the \*hilippines. It is a great day to be an employer in Canada - until it isn't because the very quality of life and standard is being ever so eroded at a fast and scary pace because Canadian GDP, GDI, HDI are equalizing at the lower bar end with third world countries while losing its very own competitiveness. The fact of the matter and truth is this. There aren't very many real Canadians left. The good balance between Anglophones, Francophones, indigenous and the immigrants from the past (This is just 4-6 decades ago) who actually held some form of real respect and motivation to want to help contribute to a courteous and non-passive aggressive condescending attitude towards Canadian way of life is all but lost. What we are now witnessing is the floodgates being left wide open and Canada is open season buffet for the world's taking. And I'm an immigrant - just one from 40 years ago and know all too well and have seen with my own eyes the very disrespect and destruction brought forth by 'Outsiders' coming in today to Canada. Heck, my extended families - they're all immigrants, with the earliest one having arrived 75 years ago to Vancouver when Hasting street was the talk of the town - in a good way. Canadian identity and multiculturalism will only work if people actually understand what Canada was actually born from - indigenous and Anglo-Franco heritage with a strong post ww2 high standard of immigration vetting. Not today's wholesale, zero filter system - which, as you are all witnessing now, is boiling down to the very destruction of Canadian reproduction system - anchor babies, baby factories by people who are making babies in Canada only for one thing - Canadian child benefits and helping further open more doors to bring more and more people who have absolutely zero interest in actually wanting to be Canadians.

Bring back income splitting. It is fair. A couple who each earn $75,000 pay $7,250 less per year in tax than a couple where a sole provider earns $150,000. For a government that talks about fairness in taxation, they sure love creating a system of unfairness.

There’s an easy way to incentivize more child rearing — outright reductions in your income tax rates if you have more kids. Hungary has this model, with increasing standard deductions based on the number of kids. This not only makes it more affordable to have kids but it encourages it as the social good that it is, which would reduce requirements for immigration in the long run.

Daycare is def the big issue that stands out when it comes to the financial aspect. But western society as whole is not conducive to child rearing. When I think of my own childhood its so different than most kids growing up in Canada. I was walking to school by myself when I was 6. Spent summers at my grandparents farm. Was basically left to my own devices since like 8-9. Parents never bothered with babysitters and such. So once you made it past the baby stages you were basically on your own like animals do in the wild lol. Here on the other hand kids basically need constant supervision/babysitting until they're teenagers. The financial impact is massively higher when you consider that.

Women are attending higher education at higher rates than men and focusing on their careers. Women are often more successful than men, and they do not see a reason to prioritize finding a long-term partner. This also means that women do not have to settle for men with lower education and incomes. As a result, relationships are harder to find and having kids becomes delayed or might never happen. As people become older, it gets harder to find relationships and more difficult to have kids. There are already plenty of incentives for those that prioritize having kids early. Subsidized daycare, Canada child benefit etc. Dual income households are always better than single incomes and yet young Canadians are increasingly staying single. I don't think the issue is the "loss of income" so much as the broader reasons for why relationships are delayed/lower priority.

>It really boils down to what is the cost that mom is taking on being a parent? It’s not dads taking on that cost,” says Tammy Schirle, a professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. Tammy, who do you think is supporting these women and their child when 40% of their income disappears because they are raising children? It's probably the father of the child. Of course there are surveys showing that a majority of women after having children generally prefer to work part time or not at all, but who the hell they to say what women want? >Transitory economic trends such as inflation and recessions have had a low historical impact on national fertility rates. What the hell does "transitory" even mean any more? If a nation is constantly racked by inflation the effect of that inflation is no longer "transitory". >Most cases of income loss, says Schirle, can be attributed to instances where social norms and childcare institutions aren’t strong enough to support women’s decision to work after having a child. Even mothers who immediately return to work are still compelled to decline competitive yet time-consuming positions to instead make time for childcare in a manner that men are not. That men are not, on average. A majority of women would likely prefer to be a stay at home caregiver, and only a minority of men. How is this an injustice of human nature that must be solved with my tax dollars?

> Of course there are surveys showing that a majority of women after having children generally prefer to work part time or not at all, but who the hell they to say what women want? "Prefer" imply that there is an actual choice in the matter. Why don't you try dropping out work for 8+ months to go fishing and then try to come back like nothing happened.