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There's so much to unpack here -- the need to normalize having fewer or no kids, the challenges of having kids in a country that doesn't support parents, and the fact that we're "alarmed" by a declining birth rate while people face barriers to seeking asylum or citizenship...
By the time our family logistics supported having kids, it was too late for my biology to cooperate. The only options left are surrogacy ($60k - $120k+), adoption (as much as $50k, with multi-year waiting lists), or no kids.
Like many in my generation, my husband and I combined have a more student loan debt than a surrogacy costs. We have no savings, because we're paying off debt and (finally) buying a house at 38 and 42. If we have a kid, it will be cheaper for him to stay home than pay for daycare.
And we're LUCKY. We can afford car payments, a mortgage, and our student loan payments. But we live in constant fear of not having a safety net. And we definitely don't have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around for surrogacy or adoption, or the time it would take to save.
At this point, barring some weird windfall in the next year, adding to our family is going to require going into a lot more debt (loans), possibly supplemented with crowd-funding, (which is what a lot of folks in our shoes do, though this never covers everything).
So yes, economists, you should be alarmed. But I'd worry less about falling birth rates, and more about the fact that people who are ostensibly in the middle class can't afford to have a family because of student loan debt, healthcare costs, and childcare costs and availability.
