Thanks; you state it well that our choices more than anything else are causing this.
My sister recently gave me an older car she was replacing; it is now 14 years old (running reasonably well), and is the first car I’ve ever owned that only used one key (my four previous cars had separate keys for the doors & ignition). I felt lucky to get it, as the ‘93 Chrysler I was driving would never pass inspection, and it was due (head gasket was going). I always knew from the moment my wife and I started having children that I would never have a newer car or a nice home (I come from a large family), and that turned out to be correct; we have three now and the chance of having either is even more remote.
As we get older, we see a lot of people we know who chose otherwise are starting to regret their decisions, especially as they reach the age where the women would have difficulty bearing a child. They feel excluded from any conversations about children, and tend to cluster with other cat/dog people.
We all make choices about what we value more or less, at the personal level ... and the Church (as well as people’s parents) should be helping young people not only to recognize this but to recognize that some goods, such as family, are objectively of a higher value than others, such as granite countertops.
It seems, from some posts, that with a level of affluence of which I have no experience, there comes a type of fear, even to paralysis, of which I also have no experience. This is something the Church should be addressing, if it’s really affecting the lives of many people.