Those things you mention aren’t really the chains you make them out to be. You can sell your house and move somewhere affordable. Poor people have kids all the time, a lot of times they are even smart! What you feel chained to is your ritzy lifestyle. Your wife and kids won’t resent you for not providing all that fancy shit, but they will resent you for working yourself until there’s nothing left for them.
Not for nothing, but what you're saying is both classist and doesn't take into account the reality of friendships and roots that can take hold in a place after you've settled in.
Things may be expensive, and you may feel trapped on the hedonic treadmill, but moving to a new city or a lower COL area may not be a realistic option for many people.
"Poor people have kids all the time, a lot of times they are even smart!" is extraordinarily classist. It makes a joke that based on the assumption that the majority of the time poor people are stupid.
I think there is a charitable interpretation of that sentence where they were being tongue-in-cheek with the understanding that readers would all agree that obviously being born to a poor family does not determine your intelligence.
Though in theory I agree, I think this is simplistic. I know a lot of people who don't live a "ritzy" lifecyle but are still stuck where they are. And yes, in theory, they could move somewhere affordable, but they may not have enough of a cushion, or they may have roots where they live now (for instance, their kids might have friends, or they may have family that are either helping them with their kids or require being helped).
It’s also unfortunately the case that there are wives (and husbands) and kids that WILL resent someone for giving up the ritzy (or materially comfortably) life for somewhere calmer and better for someone’s mental health. It happens.
And when it happens, the side effects can be downright crushing - Google ‘child support imputed income’ for an example of the legal framework that can be brought to bear against someone.
I do empathise with people in that bind - it's hard to know if a job paying much less will actually be significantly less stressful - big gamble to make with lots at stake. Affordable areas generally have fewer jobs - just moving somewhere more affordable isn't a trivial thing to do and there are overhead costs in moving house so you need to downsize considerably.
