Your comment does a pretty good job of illustrating the main reasons: further wealth inequality, difficult housing market, and a crazier society that's becoming more accepting of school shootings/shootings in general...not to mention climate change, more wars, and batshit politics becoming the norm globally. How bout that response to covid? If anything had ever disgusted me about this country it's how brazenly people were willing to risk other people's lives because they couldn't be bothered to even attempt to be safe or consider others safety. As if i didn't have enough reasons not to have kids before... it seems almost cruel to bring them into today's world.

For sure, turning a blind eye to all that and escaping into a relationship and starting a family sounds great. You need a good job to do that...or you and your partner may both need good jobs to do that. Who watches the kids then? How much time will you actually get to spend with them? Are you going to saddle your parents or in-laws with the responsibility of raising them? Day care? What point is there in having children if you're spending most of your time away from them? Disregard all that of course, if you're rich ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just don't think I'm ready to spend all of my waking hours endlessly trying to produce enough income to maintain all the expenses that come with a family, while still putting aside money for the kids to go to college and a retirement fund to boot.

It would be nice to have a family, i just don't think it's practical anymore. I don't believe it's the simple choice you make it out to be (at least that's how i interpreted the last sentence of your comment)