The richer a country gets the more individualist you can become, is my basic theory.

Raising a kid as an atomic couple apart from extended family and community is a horrible experience for the parents. It takes a village and all that. Parenting is utterly exhausting if you are doing it alone with a partner and responsible for every waking moment of childcare.

You see this in immigrant communities in the US. The demographics with the most children universally are those with "old world" style family and community situations. More or less communal child care without the weirdo expectations that the "richer" parts of society has on parents. Parents are allowed to actually be adult human beings with real lives that are not hyper-scheduled to death. Kids tend to be more independent and "roam" between family and friends without official activities being scheduled every day for them. Ironically this typically results in more engaged parenting overall.

That's my theory at least - it's not much better than anyone else's though.

As someone with unsupportive family, I feel this.

I have a single child, we both work. It is tough.

I grew up in a small town in EU, my parents had a lot of help from their parents and I was able to play outside with friends early on. Everyone knew each other. My life in the US is nothing like this.

The first 5 years, I've spent $100k on daycare, and this is relatively "affordable".

I try to be an active and involved parent, add home projects/maintenance, and other things like health issues and I have zero energy and a lot of burn out.

When I was younger I did not understand why people stick around jobs for long. Now, I do.