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Dr. Kristensen talks with his mother about these generational patterns. “The biggest difference, watching her narrative and my narrative, my feeling is that these things should be in order first”

I think this is huge. Personally, I'm not financially stable. I rent. I love my job, but my company is enshittifying, so I'm overworked and underpaid more and more. A $2,000 "home child care equalization credit" isn't going to incentivize me to have a kid. Even the South Korean company-equivalent $153,000 probably wouldn't. It's a nice chunk of change, but it's also a one-time token bonus to accept the responsibility of raising a child in a world where everything is constantly getting worse and more expensive. And I still can't get past that impulse to do things in the "correct" order: I need to own a home outright or with an affordable mortgage. My financial and professional futures need to not just be stable, but promising, and the world I bring a child into needs to not feel like it's crumbling...