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Notes -
I think one problem is looking at it as a purely financial issue. Sure, that's an element of it: families unable, or sometimes just unwilling, to take on the financial burden of child-rearing, which we've managed to raise in various ways like requiring car seats and larger vehicles or an expectation of how many kids fit in a given room. But it's also a cultural one: we need to convince people that the costs and burdens of raising kids are worthwhile. Governments like to treat every problem as a financial one, and that's certainly one facet to approach, but I think culture leaders and trendsetters need to play a part too. How many kids does the average popular fiction character have? Of the 7 hero characters in The Avengers (2012), one is shown to have kids. I realize child actors are difficult to work with (for well-intentioned reasons), but I feel like there's a big space for positive portrayals of "family" (maybe I'm ignoring The Fast and the Furious franchise?) in the stories we tell each other beyond kids movies.
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