[spicyusername]

Everyone is going to want to reach for their favorite modern problem, but every point in history is fraught with sociopolitical and economic challenges. Today is not special, in that regard.

My personal favorite reason is just that this is the outcome of birth control. At no other point in history could people decide how many kids they want, and when you give people the choice, they just aren't going to choose very many.

[rdm_blackhole]

Is it possible that many people simply fail to acknowledge that for one, not everyone wants to be a parent and two, if given the choice between a new car or a vacation in the Bahamas every few years and having kids, people will most likely choose the car and/or the holiday?

It is also possible that many young women have seen what the previous generation lived through with "stay at home" spouses and decided to opt out? Who could blame them really?

[gwd]

Birth control was available to the Baby Boomers's parents, and the result was... a baby boom. My two grandmothers had 7 and 5 children respectively in spite of the availability of birth control.

[UncleMeat]

Griswold was in 1965. We had laws banning birth control.

The Pill was first used in 1960.

Yes, condoms existed. But they were stigmatized, sometimes criminalized, and substantially less effective than hormonal birth control methods developed and popularized during the 60s and 70s.

[spicyusername]

The percentage of the population taking birth control has increased significantly since that time.

Cultural shifts, in this case due to the availability of birth control, take time to materialize.

[sanderjd]

You've just moved the problem to explaining why "the percentage of the population taking birth control has increased significantly since that time".

Your initial claim was that it was the availability of birth control. That is, that birth control was the cause. But this new claim is that it is the choice to use birth control. That is, choosing to use birth control is now an effect, which must have some other cause.

[spicyusername]

    when you give people the choice, they just aren't going to choose very many.