The U.S., relative to Europe at least, has family leave policies and child care institutions that are uniquely bad for young families, especially families at the low end of the economic scale. Not that Europe has solved this either. A society that was organized to allow young people to complete their life cycle when they are most fertile would look very different indeed. There's certainly a tradeoff between investing in the human capital of adults vs. investing in the human capital of children. But the main coping method of young Americans is to delay childbirth as long as possible, which becomes a tradeoff between fertility and infertility.
