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How does one start a high ability career at age 30 after spending one's 20s having babies instead of going to school or building skills? This seems pretty impractical and unlikely, though I do not doubt there are various individual cases of women bootstrapping themselves into a high-achieving technical career after close to a decade of childrearing.
Presuming that compensation follows ability, shouldn't we just expect high ability people to be able to afford nannies and so forth? Why wouldn't we look at policy such as expanded EITC for kids that would make it more affordable for careerwomen to have bigger families?
College degrees are mostly signalling, but even if you assume that they are a literal requirement for a professional career, they only take 3-4 years, putting our hypothetical woman at 21-22 years old.
At which point she can either alternate years between working and having kids, as is typical in the UK (women can take up to a year of maternity leave and still return to their old job). This is in no way incompatible with later career advancement. Or she can take 4-8 years and give up work entirely, before returning to the workforce in the same position as a new graduate. She'll be a few years behind her childless peers, but crucially she won't then need to interrupt her career in her 30s to have children. She'll have done the hard part while she's young and full of energy. Given that the average woman born today probably won't retire until she is 70, losing 5-10% of her working years to maternity really isn't a big deal.
And don't think I'm just speculating here. I'm literally describing a couple that I know in their mid-20s. Two young professionals who will go on to earn high salaries, and who will probably have four children (number two is due next year).
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I have a female coworker who got married at 19, has 3 kids, and I'd estimate her career is approximately 2 years behind where it would be at her current age if she had not had any kids and just went nose to grindstone from 17-current. Most of those 2 years is time she actually took off postpartum. Any other woman in the company would probably have to take off MORE time to have those same 3 children from 30-40 (and often times spend lots of money to achieve conception) as compared to her doing it 19-27.
But, people really overestimate how hard college is. You can easily get a high GPA with pregnant with one and breastfeeding another. What you are actually losing by taking that path is 4 years of alcohol soaked hookups which you (as a female) are statistically likely to regret.
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People do start high value careers at 32 years old. Every elite law school has a few people in their 30s in every class. It's rare, but it doesn't have to be.
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No, taxes and the general cost of employing someone, and cost disease, have made that impractical for anyone who isn't a C-level executive.
Because policies of that sort have been used throughout the Western world for decades, and TFR has done nothing but drop. It just doesn't work.
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