U.S.—A new study from JAMA Pediatrics found that most millennials choose not to have kids because their parents just can’t afford it right now.
The study followed 900 millennials nationwide, just under half of which had full-time jobs. 90 percent were completely reliant on their parents for financial support, and three-quarters of these financially dependent adults want to have children someday.
There’s only one problem: parents of millennials can’t afford to support both their children, and their grandchildren anymore. This troubling reality has been stressing out millennials from coast to coast. Unfortunately, many boomer parents had children without preparing themselves financially to raise multiple generations and spend more and more money the older they got. Now their millenial children are paying the price for their lack of foresight.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” said Gretchen Hillerman, a millennial from southern California. “It’s like, I know I’m fit to raise a child, I just can’t afford it," she complained during an interview at a local Starbucks. "Apparently my parents can’t afford it either. College was, like, super expensive, and they're still paying off my student loan. I wish my mom would just get a second job or something.” Gretchen says she had big plans to not reveal the child's gender and to name them something nonbinary like Threshgar.
Gretchen studied Gender Non-Binary Statistics at Northridge, but dropped out after six years in the program. Her parents said they helped her every night with homework, but it didn’t seem to improve her performance.
While many of today's Gen X and Boomer parents strongly desire grandchildren, they say they just can't imagine supporting more children on top of all the concert tickets, Starbucks, European vacations, seafaring voyages around the world, the latest iPhone, dolphin rides, avocado toast, battery-powered sports cars, and VR headsets.
"You also have to take retirement into account," said Gretchen's father Ron Hillerman. "I mean my daughter's retirement. I already cashed mine out to pay for her forty-day vegan yoga hot spring hike in India."