* * Where are the grandkids?

I’m in my 60’s now, the second child in a family of four. Many of my friends were from families with equal or more kids. Nowadays, family sizes are smaller and young married couples are postponing children or not having them at all. It’s no surprise why.

Here are just a few obstacles to childbearing in America today:

First, giving birth is exceedingly expensive, in fact the most expensive developed nation on earth. Average rates for uninsured mothers are around $32,000, then upwards of $50,000 for C-section births. This is the financial equivalent of a new car, the down payment on a house, or a couple of years at a university. If there are problems during delivery, the cost can arch over $100,000, and far beyond if the baby is deformed or disabled. In many other developed nations charges are a tenth of ours, and they have lower, not greater, mortality rates for both mother and infant.

Second, once the baby is born, unlike most industrialized countries, there is no national mandate for parental leave. Most young couples cannot afford not to work.

Third, over the first few years of the child’s life, because most couples can’t afford to live on the father’s income alone, there is no national mandate for child care either. Most new moms are too exhausted to work full-time jobs. Because part-time jobs pay notoriously poor wages, if she does choose to work, often she needs to pay all her income to the care provider. Each child can cost the parents the monthly equivalent of rental on an apartment. With childcare fees being based on a per-child rate, having multiple children is prohibitive for most couples. Only when the child reaches kindergarten age are the parents somewhat relieved from daily care duties and expenses.

Wages have remained stagnant for most blue-collar and many white-collar jobs since the Reagan administration, yet costs continue to rise. Therefore, many people simply can’t afford to procreate and adequately take care of a family.

Ironically, it seems that those couples, and sometimes single moms, least financially able to take care of their kids are the ones having them, placing a burden on the rest of us through various assistance programs.

One friend of mine in his early thirties is pursuing a unique solution; he and his wife are moving to New Zealand!

Admittedly, Tom (not his real name, as he’s in the visa process and asked not to be identified) and his wife’s intentions to start a family are not the only reasons for moving to the other side of the world. But it’s a big reason.

He said both his and his wife’s parents often ask, “‘Where are the grandkids?’ We tell them it’s not easy to afford them.”

Tom has a graduate degree in engineering from Virginia Tech where I met him, so he’s been able to secure good, high-paying jobs in the past. But when he was laid off from his last job as an aerospace engineer, he decided to broaden his horizons to encompass the rest of the world, including New Zealand where he and his wife spent their honeymoon. They’re now planning their move.

In New Zealand, the cost to the family to deliver a child is a fraction of ours. A national program of socialized medicine covers most of the cost, and another program of nationalized childcare means both Tom and his wife can continue their careers if they wish without the weighty burden of day-care.

As I mentioned, the benefits they see to starting a family there are not the sole reasons they want to move. They’re tired of the rancor and political instability they feel here in the USA. And they’re eager for adventure that living in a new country will bring. But still, having and raising a baby in here has become a major roadblock, not just for them but for millions of other couples in prime child-bearing age.

He told me about his future home, “Their pace of life there is slower, and people seem to live more peacefully, not always feeling like someone is taking money from their pockets.”

In America, births are occurring slower than deaths. We’re making up this loss of population through immigration, something the current administration is trying to curtail. Countries with aging populations struggle to maintain entitlement programs because contributions from younger people paying into the system are needed as older people pull money from it. And of course, we lose on the skills and contributions people like Tom and his wife bring to our national economy.

Obviously, moving to another nation is not a common solution to this problem. But it’s a shame it’s a problem at all for young American to have more difficulty raising a family than their parents or grandparents.