A friend who recently had a kid said that when she and her husband were building up to having children, she became acutely aware of the government discussing “why are people having fewer kids and how do we ensure that we have a sufficient workforce in the future” and she became increasingly exasperated to hear how out of touch politicians spoke about it, when the actual answer was so simple.

Affordable housing is one of the biggest no-brainers. For example, she is one of only a handful of friends my age (millennial) who owns a home. As someone who has been homeless multiple times due to landlord fuckery, I can’t imagine choosing to have kids if renting a home. That seems so obvious, but she said that she never heard them connect the dots in this way — the government would sometimes talk about the need for more affordable housing, but never in the context of “hmm, we don’t know why people are having fewer kids and how to encourage people to start families”. They literally don’t understand how living in precarity gets to you and it’s depressing