There is another way to look at children, which is from the societal level.
New humans are still the most important inputs to human society. As societies become more specialized and productive, the powers and burdens of new humans go up. Thus, richer societies need fewer people, but each person needs to be more specialized and capable. And inversely, a society that is not producing new humans who are more specialized and capable, is a society that will have trouble advancing.
Evaluating public policy from this perspective produces some different conclusions than the more traditional family-oriented perspective which is often used to look at policies related to children.
Policies that empower women professionally and reproductively mean that only women who affirmatively choose to have children will have them--increasing the chance that they will have the means and will to invest heavily in each child.
And policies that give each child the chance to maximize their potential can be seen as long-term investments, not handouts.
Conversely, policies that permit or force children to develop sub-optimally are wastes that should be eliminated. Today many societies promote policies that encourage procreation (no access to sex education or contraception, incentives for more kids), but don't invest in children (no early childhood education, bad primary and secondary education, poor health care, poor food programs, etc.).
If someone bought a car but refused to pay for gas and oil changes, you would probably say they are making some damn bad decisions. Either maintain the car, or if you can't afford to do that, don't get one until you can.
Traditionally, the analogous kid blame game has fallen on the parents themselves. But parents are part of a larger society, and ultimately, given an ~80 year life span, will only manage about 25% of a new human life. Society will manage the other 75%, but in a lot of ways, our thinking about policy has not caught up to that reality.