Even people who do want kids frequently don't want many of them. Even back in the old days, a lot of people didn't have kids; not everyone actually got married. But people who did get married had lots more kids, so they more than made up for all the people who didn't. (Don't forget, women frequently died in childbirth.) They didn't have reliable birth control, so women didn't have much choice about how many kids they'd have.
These days, people can choose, and many women are happy to stop after 1 or 2 kids. Going through childbirth is, by many accounts, very difficult and not that much fun. All the pro-natalists (generally men) seem to completely dismiss actual women's feelings on this matter for some reason.
Anyway, when you have a society where a bunch of people aren't having kids, and the ones who are are only having 1-2, sometimes 3, the overall average is going to be well under 2, which isn't enough to maintain the population level.
As I've said many times before in these discussions online, societies need to come up with a new model, because obviously the old one isn't working, and it isn't going to come back.
These days, people can choose, and many women are happy to stop after 1 or 2 kids. Going through childbirth is, by many accounts, very difficult and not that much fun. All the pro-natalists (generally men) seem to completely dismiss actual women's feelings on this matter for some reason.
Anyway, when you have a society where a bunch of people aren't having kids, and the ones who are are only having 1-2, sometimes 3, the overall average is going to be well under 2, which isn't enough to maintain the population level.
As I've said many times before in these discussions online, societies need to come up with a new model, because obviously the old one isn't working, and it isn't going to come back.