I am surprised and perhaps impressed by the tremendous number of commenters dropping by to post that children are beneficial, we should all be working together to help parents, the purpose of society is to raise children...while omitting to mention that having children is also incredibly rewarding and represents evolutionary success of the highest order. No one would say, aerospace is beneficial, so we should give all the employees with private planes extra time off to pursue their avocation. Some of those planes are going to participate in search and rescue some day. People would recognize that this is robbing the poor to feed the rich and that is exactly what taking from single people -- overwhelmingly people who are less able, socially or financially, to have children -- represents. The many people who had children while expecting to rely on society for the whole ~20 years of it -- who had not backup plan involving extended family and didn't consider that a problem -- weren't thinking straight and made a mistake. It's amazing that so many people made imprudent choices and imprudency is not something we can ask our coworkers to cover for.