Man, don't get too hung up on the last sentence, that is more my personal opinion on how one should approach life, I don't expect anyone to share it, I haven't discovered the ultimate truth. Yet. So, my clearly marked personal opinion:

Don't get me wrong, I hate helicopter parenting as much as anyone. "Back in my days", we'd fuck off into the woods after school, doing all kinds of bullshit, and as long as we were home at dinner time and didn't lose any teeth, all was fine. On the other hand, I can't say that that stopped me from becoming a weirdo. I have seen plenty of people have kids who wanted them and really should not have kids, and I have seen some people go above and beyond for their children, although they were in bad situations, or got them by accident and so on.

If one gets a kid out of boredom, I would argue one is exactly the kind of person who parks their kids on youtube in order to watch their own tiktok slop in peace. Or the kind of person who gets a pet and then neglects it. Only that tying up a kid at the highway truck stop is, much to my surprise, still illegal.

Now, to the facts: the data looks pretty clear to me. Higher standard of living, more education, less kids. I don't know why this is really seen as such a bad thing, since apparently, not all people have the inherent drive to have kids, and in a more "developed" society, there is no hard push that one has to have children or else. Not pushing people who don't want to do something is good, in my not very humble opinion.