People forget that there's been a multi generational messaging of preventing women from having kids without economic security; this used to be done by the parents rejecting marriages that didn't bring enough dowry and extreme punishment for extra-marital relationships.
Now contraception has decoupled these things. You can have the relationship you want, and put off children until "sufficient" economic conditions have been reached.
(It is good news that India is at or below replacement rate! The conversation would be very different if in a few decades time India had to find twice as much food and oil!)
> People forget that there's been a multi generational messaging of preventing women from having kids without economic security
I think it's probably a wise thing to advise against having children you can't afford to take care of. I don't think it was something that was explicitly hammered into me or my peers growing up, but we all saw enough examples of kids being raised in poverty to know that we wanted something better for our own children.
The framing as such makes a systemic issue into an individual one. If you can't afford children don't have one... until everyone can't afford them at the same time, then there are none and that civilization dies out.
(Even when it's not affecting everyone at the same time, isn't it a form of eugenics? Who decides which individuals can afford children? It's not the individuals.)
Now contraception has decoupled these things. You can have the relationship you want, and put off children until "sufficient" economic conditions have been reached.
(It is good news that India is at or below replacement rate! The conversation would be very different if in a few decades time India had to find twice as much food and oil!)