Is it possible we are simply hitting a tipping point where middle-class parenting has become so challenging it can no longer be used as The Example of your Best Possible Life Choice and this childfree vs parents argument is just a manifestation of that anger and frustration?

Ppl bought into the dream that two parents and a baby was having it all and that has crumbled for many b/c work is impossible and the average family can’t afford childcare (poor families never could) and the pandemic has exacerbated the unfair division of labor between parents

Childfree women, routinely shamed for failing to live up to the expectation to mother, are now grappling with both the evidence of parenting's many challenges and are considering the possibility that they didn’t make the worst choice

If it even WAS a choice. Very few women are like "yay! not having kids!" In my experience, the feelings range from ambivalence "if it happens cool" to sadness. And at this moment—missed opportunity as life is on hold.

Having a nuclear family has always had a kind of social privilege over the people that don't have that - especially across race/class/gender differences - so as that's crumbling people are having a lot of realizations about realities that many families have already been facing

Meanwhile, parents are dealing with raising kids in the hardest of conditions in recent history, having wanted so much more and better for them. And kids are awesome, they deserve the best!

And MANY of the moms in my life either discourage me from having kids (lol) or themselves feel ambivalent and they love their children as do I! Parenting has become impossible and that's ultimately the issue here, not people's choices or lack thereof