“Women’s time is the biggest input into childbearing; if that input has become more expensive in terms of opportunity costs, only those with an extraordinarily high demand for children will still have children—whether they go to medical school or not. No social welfare policy in the world is (or could be) generous enough to change that calculus. What you need is the conviction, captured in Steph’s considered answer to the rude lady at Goofy’s Kitchen: “Because this is where the joy in life comes from.”
―
Catherine Pakaluk,
Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth
