This conventional wisdom is the exact opposite of what a society needs for healthy population growth: a large number of people marrying young and raising 3 or more children. Every advanced society in the world is belatedly realizing nothing else works.
That's not a religious or moral judgment, by the way, although marriage and family issues understandably intersect with religion and morality. It's hard, cold math and biology.
Unfortunately, every prosperous society seems to inevitably produce a generation that believes defying the natural order is the essence of individual autonomy and intellectual sophistication; or that raising large families from a young age requires unreasonable sacrifices.
It's like a psychological "kill switch" that flips and initiates demographic collapse. Some of the response is rational given the terms set by modern society: having 3 kids IS incredibly expensive and seriously alters your lifestyle.
Some of the kill switch generation's mindset is shaped by logical inferences from faulty or politicized data, i.e. Western young people tend to believe the world is overcrowded and having large families is damaging to the environment.
Some aspects of the demographic decline attitude are inevitable consequences of decoupling sex from morality and social responsibility. The social forces that encouraged young people to marry early and raise large families have been almost completely disabled.
Which was a ghastly mistake because, as the developed world is realizing, marrying young and remaining committed for life while raising 3 or more kids is a HUGE ask. It's something large numbers of people are reluctant to do without enormous social support and encouragement.
That's how you arrive at a point where the bulk of a generation embraces a "conventional wisdom" that is a formula for demographic collapse... and social suicide because today's big plans are based on a large and prosperous next generation paying the bills we leave them. /end
