America’s Child Crisis

 From Splice Today:

The child problem is simple. Fewer people are having children because the conditions required to raise them have collapsed. The supports that made family life possible for previous generations no longer exist. Stability, affordability, healthcare, childcare, time, and margin have eroded to the point that adding a child feels like stepping off a cliff. This is a system failure, not a spiritual one.

From a family’s perspective, none of this is abstract. You feel the pressure in grocery bills, rent, medical premiums, childcare costs, and the constant guesswork of whether one sick day or one broken car will throw everything off. The margins are thin. Friends delay having kids because they can barely afford themselves. Couples who want children fight over numbers, not values. This isn’t about faith. This is about a country that stopped making space for families to survive.

Men are told to provide, be steady, be responsible, and lead their households. At the same time wages have flattened, job stability has evaporated, housing has priced out entire generations, healthcare bills can wipe out a savings account in one night, and childcare costs more than rent. Men get blamed for not stepping up while the tools they need to do that have been stripped away piece by piece. It’s not a moral failure. It’s economic sabotage dressed up as personal weakness. (Read more.)