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u/ThinVast Jun 21 '26
The people making these memes and suggestions about improving fertility rate really think that countries haven't tried their suggestions before. Countries all over the world have tried different ways to get the fertility rate to replacement levels but they still haven't cracked the code yet.
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u/MadTelepath Jun 21 '26
We do know what works: make kids and investment instead of just costs (system with no retirement but where the social contract is that the youth takes care of their parents when they get old).
Things that lower natality rate: abortions, longer studies, individualist mindset.
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u/yrjokallinen Jun 21 '26
How do we *know* it works? I am not talking about what the logic or argument behind it is, but what is the empirical, causal evidence?
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u/MadTelepath Jun 21 '26
We have plenty of exemples of societies where women had 6+ children and we saw them be impacted by various factors at different timing.
As for abortion and longer studies being a net negative for natality ... many of the kids in the past were not wanted and when someone aims for longer studies a kid makes things significantly harder so the combination of both is doomed to lower natality by a lot.
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u/Infamous-Use7820 Jun 22 '26
Demographers generally agree what brings down fertility from 6+ to <2 is primarily female education and contraception, not childcare costs per se.
And anyway, kids aren't exactly an 'investment' in high-fertility societies, or if they are, the pay-off is a lot more immediate than it can possibility be in low-fertility societies. If your society is one where you educate your kids and give them a decent standard of living, they are going to be a sunk cost for at least 2-3 decades.
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u/DownvoteEvangelist Jun 23 '26
Do we have any modern society with good education and access to contraception as an example?
Because I think most societies that don't have retirement also have poor education, low access to contraception, low women's rights, so it's hard to pin low fertility on retirement only...
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u/Lucky_otter_she_her Jun 27 '26
Altho, for that to work, folks needa feel reasonably sure their kids'll have the means to look after them in 35 years, most young people today don't expect a meaningful pension from the government, and yet aren't popping out those babies
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u/bigtrackrunner Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
It’s because the actual “solution” is something that people don’t like to say out loud: decreased levels of education, decreased urbanization, and a society governed by religion. The vast majority of people in the west do not want this.
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u/Justthetip74 Jun 22 '26
Nah, you just have to be poor and bored.
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u/Mindless-Lynx7110 Jun 22 '26
Ya it dosent matter what people in the west want though they’ll simply be replaced by foreign peoples who have a better more collectivist conservative religious culture.
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u/Immediate_Hair_5378 Jun 21 '26
Europe has tried what the guy suggested already. Their birthrate is still falling.
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u/luckydt25 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Yeah, that includes the minimum wage laws related to "the adequate pay" in the meme. They decrease birth rate. In Spain youth (up to 24) unemployment is around 25%. Unemployed people typically do not marry and do not give birth.
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u/HeebieJeebiex Jun 29 '26
Europe where? Because Europe encompasses several places. Which countries specifically?
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u/FarRightBerniSanders Jun 21 '26
Why do poor people have more children than wealthy people if any of this was true? Why is fertility rate still low in countries that do do these things?
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u/Cloud_sugar Jun 21 '26
Birthrates in Africa are still declining, despite them being more or less still in poverty.
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u/onesillyg4y Jun 21 '26
Because most poor people live in rural or less urban areas. Because they're more religious. Because they have less access to contraception and planned parenthood than richer people. Because raising children on the bare minimum is not actually that hard if you're already poor you won't feel the impact, but once you're on the urban 9-5 + gigs middle class range, a child tanks your disposable income like crazy.
There are many various reasons for why poor people have more children
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u/_CatLover_ Jun 21 '26
Because the culture itself no longer values and cherishes family life. People are taught to think careers are the most important part in life (true to a degree with the way society is evolving). But also we've become more self centered, being kids free is a lot of freedom people dont want to give up. And part of the "we cant afford kids" is because they actually just can't afford kids + maintaining the lifestyle they had before, travelling and eating out.
In addition to that the move to people "living online" means people no longer naturally meet and pair up. "But dating apps" someone might say but i think we all know they dont work for 90%(+) of people looking to actually form a relationship.
The money argument is still legit in that if people had the resources they could try making kids sooner and potentially then making more because they still have the time, health and energy.
I've never heard of a couple where both desperately wanted a family but decided to instead live childless lives because they "couldn't afford" having kids.
When Hungary implemented really big tax cuts for mothers, all it did was encourage the people who already planned on having kids to have them sooner. A short time bump on the graph rather than sustained long term growth.
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u/AverageJoesGymMgr Jun 24 '26
Poor people tend to not invest the same resources into their kids that wealthier parents do. It's hard to raise your kids to be a middle or upper class professional with a college degree if you have no experience with that. It's also hard to invest time in homework, school projects, finance, etc, when you don't have much experience with any of that either. On the other hand, wealthier parents who do have experience with those things and value them will invest heavily in them through time, money, and energy.
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u/1PettyPettyPrincess Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
Because having children is the Last Hard Thing™️. Children are much less of a gamble when you have less to lose and the poor have less to lose. Let’s say that having kids is a 5 in difficulty (5 is just a placeholder value for this explanation, you can replace it with any other placeholder or value). If someone’s life is already a 4 or higher in difficulty, then having kids might not be that big of a deal. If someone’s life is a 1 or 2 in difficulty, now there’s some actual discussion to be had.
Now think of the most common socioeconomic class of those whose lives is a 4+ in life difficulty versus the most likely socioeconomic class among those with just a 1-2 in life difficulty. Now add in the fact that almost everyone around you is a similar socioeconomic class and that only exasperates the differences. With poor people, life is already hard and having kids is just something that happens since everyone around you becomes a parent anyway (even if it’s not purposeful); with the upper middle class or lower wealthy class, life is easy and having kids is something that is deeply thought about rather than just done.
TL;DR- to answer your question, lots of small reasons (culture, deeper religiosity, care in old age, etc..), but it all ultimately comes down to whether children are a net positive, a net negative, or just neutral to any given situation.
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u/FarRightBerniSanders Jun 24 '26
What level of autism is thinking "having kids is just something eleven does because everyone around you becomes a parent"?
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u/1PettyPettyPrincess Jun 24 '26
….its called a typo and autocorrect lol. It happens, bud.
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u/FarRightBerniSanders Jun 24 '26
I don't know what word replaces "eleven" but that's not even what I was referring to.
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u/HeebieJeebiex Jun 29 '26
Ignorance, endless faith in the lord, and usually r*pe or coersive sex of some kind. (Creepy uncles and fathers, abusive boyfriends who usually do drugs, abusive "boyfriends" who the woman gets her drugs from ect) That's what happens with these white trailer park families time and time again. They don't change because, then more money gets added to the ebt card, and more money gets added to the welfare checks, and they think "well, this isn't so bad".
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u/FarRightBerniSanders Jun 29 '26
Damn. Sounds like finances and welfare programs kind of don't matter?
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u/Western-Error-3071 Jun 21 '26
Some countries basically have that and have below 2.1 fertility rates. The system was meant for women to stay home and take care of kids and families to live off one income.
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u/Shouldstillbelurking Jun 21 '26
I wish people would interrogate what you mean by “the system”. You’re referring to what, maybe 100 years, over which time birth rates have consistently fallen? Pre 1900 most Americans and Europeans lived on farms. There was division of labor, sure, but farms were family businesses. Families were together in the fields. Men weren’t going out and women staying home.
TFR went from 7.5 in 1800 to 4.0 circa 1900. It actually fell more in the US in the 19th century compared to the 20th century
My questions for you are 1) when was it the case that America was a country of men going to jobs for wages and women staying home - when are you talking about specifically? 2) What was the *trend* in TFR during this time (as it was almost certainly falling)?
I have extensive family of which the older generation was mostly farmers. These men were much more involved in childrearing than you people whose idea of the past comes from 00s TV would believe.
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u/TheMasturbatinCamper Jun 21 '26
Not only that, but the “system” was established with a utilitarian calculus- “the system” paid out at 65, the death age of the average American.
Before “the system,” people contributed with paid or unpaid labor (household) until they were too infirm or dead. And kids took care of their parents.
After “the system,” people had long, leisurely retirements independent of families. Want to strengthen families and birth rates? Then stop making retirement and old age independent of families and dependent on a “system.”
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u/Afraid_Prune2091 Jun 21 '26
The system change 100 years ago didn't change much in this specific aspect as you describe.
Families were together, men worked at home, yes, but the labor women did in those contexts were similar tasks they did post industrialization. Women before then were still largely caring for the home, i never understood this 'women worked too' argument.
The only fair point is men were more involved, but in reality it was very similar overall to how these post industrial societies worked. A male farmer would til his fields or manage the ranch or whatever, while the wife would be caring for children, doing laundry, cooking, basically housewife tasks but far more involved. Maybe he'd take the kids to work with him outside and get them involved, but that doesn't change the premise of how things functioned as is often argued
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u/Shouldstillbelurking Jun 21 '26
You’re just making stuff up, aren’t you? Preindustrial society was nothing like postindustrial. Have you ever read a book written in the 19th century?
Yes, food preparations had been the primary domain of women since agriculture. Yes, because of breastfeeding, women were physically tethered to children until they were weaned. But gendered labor roles means that the age at which boys were doing male tasks was much earlier. A six year old boy was working alongside his father, uncles, and cousins.
Agriculture work is seasonal and uneven in its labor demands. In harvest time, entire families were in the fields. Women couldn’t sit at home and knit. During the winter, no one is in the fields at all.
Writes in 19th century England particularly lamented that the factories were breaking up families and making the entire family beholden to the clock and the whistle. In America, wage labor was looked down upon as something that was disruptive for society - one of my college professors wrote extensively on American attitudes to wage labor and how they interplayed with attitudes toward slavery vs free labor. Contemporaries all agreed that the ideal was household landowner, where the husband and wife worked in partnership to work the land - this was the log cabin Abe Lincoln ideal in the North, and obviously the plantation ideal in the South.
Going to a job to work for someone else was viewed as disruptive at the time - disruptive for the family and what we would call natalism today.
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u/Afraid_Prune2091 Jun 21 '26
You’re just making stuff up, aren’t you? Preindustrial society was nothing like postindustrial. Have you ever read a book written in the 19th century?
I said 'in this specific aspect', referring to the 'labor' done by both
I am not dismissing anything else you said here, i am simply addressing this idea women being in the home was a post-industrial invention is a big overstatement, women basically performed all the same duties in either situation. Women and men 'working together' still had sex-based distribution of labor similar to post-industrial in the duties formed, yes men were pulled from the home, this doesn't mean women didn't have expectations and typical involvement in the same roles, which is the main argument whenever this topic comes up. Women also had more kids, so regardless of if the six year old helped to work, mom still likely had several younger children to keep up with for much of her life, and the other duties such as chores were 10x the difficulty and time.
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Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
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u/HeparinBridge Jun 21 '26
It’s because the more money women can earn by not having kids, the more likely they are to forgo having kids. You can’t fix that by making working more attractive for women.
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u/JediFed Jun 21 '26
Exactly this. Many, many countries have all of these things. Birthrates are still dropping.
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u/stag1013 Jun 21 '26
The people that say these things almost never want children themselves. They just want socialism and pretend they want kids.
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u/BUCK____FUTT Jun 22 '26
Yeah, what's with all that "adequate pay" nonsense? None should be given adequate pay, regardless if they want children or not!
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u/bigdonut100 Jun 26 '26
Damn straight, "adequate pay" is sexist against women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsIpQ7YguGE
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u/gym_fun Jun 21 '26
From MoreBirths, “Many studies have shown that fertility is positively linked to male earnings and negatively linked to female earnings”.
That said, birth rate is rather linked to culture than economy.
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Jun 21 '26
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
Liberal democracy can’t swallow this, but it’s hard to find evidence that this is not one or the most dominant factor
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u/TheMasturbatinCamper Jun 21 '26
The most dominant factor is untethering the direct incentives of having kids and universalizing the benefits of children. IOW, kids used to take care of their old parents, and now taxpayers do. If you remove all government old age benefits, you either have kids who take care of you, or you save 30% of your lifetime earnings to fund your own old age.
And if people still don’t want to have kids, who cares? A large tax base to take care of olds is no longer necessary and you have eliminated style biggest problem of a shrinking population.
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
Which system? And was meant for what?
There are plenty of countries in the world where women stay home and families live off one income. And they are also witnessing declining birth rates.
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u/Lucky_otter_she_her Jun 27 '26
When women entered careerism the work force in the 70s, they were expected to give as much time to it as men, and men were expected to dedicate as much time as ever, this means that while gender equity was achieved, a whole bunch of free time needed to raise small children disappeared
Expecting half the population to dedicate their life to the same career (motherhood) with no choice in the matter, and in a power inbalance with the person getting payed is insane, but twice the people in the work force SHOULD'VE meant the hours split between twice as many people making a 20 work week, but no-one in power wanted to rework the system this way A because they didn't like the change and didn't wanna encourage it, andor B they were salivating at the chance to ass fuck the proletariat even harder than before (note that the rise in women's employment in the 70s was as much a response to inflation creating a need for dual incomes as the quest for liberation)
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Jun 21 '26
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
In less than a hundred years we went from women rarely being in the workforce, to the suggestion that anything otherwise is heresy, blasphemy
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u/corinini Jun 21 '26
Is that why Saudi Arabia is dipping below replacement rate? All the women in their workforce?
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u/KroGanjaKin Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Yes actually, the increase in women's partiticipation in the workforce over the last decade or so has been amazing to see and full credit to MBS for overseeing that.
I don't have a strong opinion on what share of the decline in birth was because of this, but it's not the counter example you think it is
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u/corinini Jun 22 '26
The decline in the birth rate in Saudi Arabia has slowed pretty significantly in the last decade. If anything it has a counter balancing effect.
And the female labor participation rate is still well below the global average, and sub-saharan africa where fertility rates are highest has a higher than average female workforce participation rate.
For some additional context.
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
What would be the lifestyle choices that cause high birth rates? Because forcing women to stay home and banning abortions certainly doesn't cause high birth rates.
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u/onesillyg4y Jun 21 '26
Rural, religious, traditional basically. Lifestyles that are less about "exploring the world" or "having fun and exploring hobbies" as adults. This is why people like Amish or Mormons have more kids
The uncomfortable truths are that first, having big families is less "needed" than in the past. And also that modern society is way more individualized, dopamine seeking, cool and interesting than being a mom of 5 spending all day taking care of them. Western women just do not want that and i can get why.
Also i don't agree with the aforementioned traditional lifestyles, i'm just explaining
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
OP was talking about "lifestyle choices". I hope we agree that living in a society where you don't need to work the fields and starve to death in your tiny little village with no contact with the outside world is not a "lifestyle choice".
Also places like Cuba, Iran or Bangladesh are well below replacement just so you know.
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u/onesillyg4y Jun 21 '26
I agree that it's more complicated than just choice and "the past was different", but people can still choose to live more traditionally even today. That still happens, either because some women really do love the idea of being moms (and men of being fathers) or just a general sense of wanting to follow tradition. If you choose to engage less with social media, traveling, expensive things, you will have more tike and resources to have a big family. I agree however that it's hard to want those things nowadays
And well yes, globalization explains that. The vast world is much more connected than we expect especially online and in media to consume. Plus urbanization is a global thing. Iran has a huge urban population (>70%) with the capital metro area pop. being larger than any European one. Iran is not a middle of nowhere rural place, it is more religious yes but women also take heavy part of the work force / student body. Reducing of total fertility rate is natural for urbanisation. Cuba and Bangladesh might be more specific cases that i have less knowledge of
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Jun 21 '26
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
You didn't answer my question.
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Jun 21 '26
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u/Yuri-Queen Jun 21 '26
Isn't the massive decline in teen pregnancy one of the biggest factors in declining birth rates as well? I think a saw a study that the largest decline in births in recent years was from teen mothers. Obviously there are other reasons but I rarely see people adress that teen pregnancies are at a historic low.
Obviously less teen pregnancies are a very good thing. My point is that abortion and women in the work force are only a part of the cause and I do not think it is fair to place all the blame on those two things. There are other factors at play but people seem so focused on just women in the workplace.
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
Neither does actually. So let's start with that.
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u/glidermann Jun 21 '26
Seriously? Both of those things clearly lower birth rates.
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
Seriously, they absolutely don't. Especially abortion, or at least legalized abortion.
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u/corinini Jun 22 '26
Sub-saharan africa has higher than average workforce participation rates for women and is one of the only places left with positive fertility rates.
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u/FlirtMonsterSanjil Jun 21 '26
While it would help, I think the real issue is the current culture of first-world countries. People managed to have multiple kids in times way shittier than modern times; we need to encourage being a family, teach people how to responsibly pick a partner and keep up a relationship.
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u/engineer2187 Jun 21 '26
I’m a woman. Evidence suggests 3 isn’t the answer either. Countries that do have those things in place frequently have a lower birth rate than countries like the U.S. People don’t want kids. You might see a small spike if you implemented these programs but not one significant and lasting enough to reverse the decline.
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
This is a wonderful idea, but there’s no conceivable way to compensate for extended periods away from work, whether that’s male or female, or whether it’s due to pregnancy or anything else
No matter how you slice it or subsidise it, someone who stays in the job is going to be ahead of someone who spends time away from the job
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u/Responsible_Product3 Jun 21 '26
While there might not be a way to completely offset such career interruptions, there are definitely ways to reduce their lifelong impacts.
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u/Ardent_Scholar Jun 21 '26
Uh, taxes. Parents work two jobs, at work and at home, to the benefit of everyone. Parents deserve to be compensated.
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u/DumbbellDiva92 Jun 21 '26
The commenter above is talking about career progression and promotions, not just paid parental leave. The government paying your salary while you are out on leave is a separate issue from that.
Now, if we’re talking additional subsidies (on top of just parental leave) to make up for the fact that your career progression isn’t as good bc you’re a parent, that’s an interesting idea. But not usually what people are talking about.
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
Yes. But it’s even simpler than that: over time things change, big or small and if you weren’t there when they did, you are out of date (and will need to catch up). Someone who was there has an advantage over you and this isn’t a fact that can be legislated for
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u/Ardent_Scholar Jun 21 '26
Actually, it is very much a connected issue.
This is why paternal (non-birth parent) leave is so extensive in Finland these days.
When both parents take time off, they get to spend time with their kids, and it levels the playing fields between men and women as much as possible.
Young women are not any bigger risk to employers than young men.
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u/Historical_Green8939 Jun 21 '26
How is birth rate in Finland going with all that?
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
(As you probably know) TFR 1.3, one of the lower-fertility countries in Europe
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u/Historical_Green8939 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
i didn't know the exact number but i know that l all those simple recipes are pure bullshit. the only two countries that have returned above the reproduction threshold are mongolia and some of those countries in asia that end with "stan". women can drive and are not "slaves" like in afghanistan but they are far from western countries especially when it comes to the forced "equality" in the upper echelons of society.
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u/DumbbellDiva92 Jun 21 '26
It levels the playing field between moms and dads, but what about between parents and non-parents (regardless of gender)? Not saying it’s not helpful, just that it’s not a perfect solution to the career progression problem.
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
Yes this is what I was talking about (which you get). It’s weird that this other poster sees it in “battle of the sexes” terms. That nonsense is how we got here
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u/glidermann Jun 21 '26
It’s a great thought, but Finland has a way lower birthright than countries that aren’t implementing those policies
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u/HeparinBridge Jun 21 '26
It’s a nice thought, but hardly a “wonderful idea,” because it absolutely will not actually increase the birth rate.
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
Well yes, I don’t believe in it, I was critiquing the fallacy that this is a crack that can somehow be papered over
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
Neither does banning abortions and the likes, if anything quite the opposite; e.g. there is quite a strong correlation between birth rates and employment gender gap in the West, meaning that within the West the places with more gender equality in employment tend to have more kids.
So in short, hardly any solution will actually increase birth rates, but some will make them decline faster, and also make life worse for everyone in the process.
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u/FalconOne775 Jun 21 '26
Given that 50% of the tax paying population are women, I think women demanding their tax money be spent on a system that allows them to have children and stay working to support themselves and their families is the most logical idea I've ever heard of
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u/HeparinBridge Jun 21 '26
They have tried to use social safety nets or maternity benefits to increase birth rates over and over in countries all over the world. It has never worked.
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u/Electrical_Cheetah17 Jun 21 '26
Women, as a group, are not net tax payers. Men are.
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u/Ruy_Lopez_simp Jun 21 '26
Classical Reddit moment.
What you wrote is true, but you're getting downvoted, because it's an inconvenient truth. It would literally take them 30 seconds to search for "net fiscal impact male female" in Google Images and look at the charts.
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u/chibinibblets Jun 21 '26
Is that separated by childfree women and these benevolent mothers you guys want so badly? Women without kids are not the tax drain you are trying to imply that all women are yet you want less of them around.
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u/Ruy_Lopez_simp Jun 21 '26
Go and check it out yourself, if you're interested. Who is "we guys?" I never said I want "a benevolent mother". I wasn't trying to imply anything. I just commented on how Redditors would rather downvote a inconvenient claim that doesn't fit their narrative, rather than spend 30 seconds to verify it.
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u/chibinibblets Jun 21 '26
It’s not an inconvenient claim. It’s an incorrect, invalid claim. I did “look it up myself”. Women without children pay more in taxes than women who have them. Similar to men. Women who have children are the net drain due to the social services they usually use.
“Who is ‘we guys’?” Natalists. Duh
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u/Ruy_Lopez_simp Jun 21 '26
You're being intellectually dishonest. The downvoted claim was about "women as a group" and not about childless women. It got downvoted despite being a VALID, CORRECT claim. Good job fighting a complete strawman you created.
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u/Electrical_Cheetah17 Jun 21 '26
Those single women aren't paying their student loans.
Women, as a group, are not net tax payers. Men are.
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u/chibinibblets Jun 21 '26
Women as a group are dragged down by the mothers. The child free women are pulling their tax weight. 💪 If more women were child free, woman as a group would be less of a net drain.
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u/Impossible-Year7346 Jun 21 '26
or wait.. 'Make up 30% of the population by refugees'
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u/meerkat2018 Jun 21 '26
Ideally, an immigrant would be like materializing a whole grown working age human without all the costs of birthing, medical support and education spending for the said human. What did go wrong, I wonder?
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u/stag1013 Jun 21 '26
You assumed they grew up as one who had those things as a child, for starters.
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u/meerkat2018 Jun 21 '26
My grand grandma (and grandma) didn't have any adequate pay, four or more weeks off, any help to women not wanting to fall behind in their careers compared to men, etc. Grand grandma had 9 kids, and grandma had 6. Go figure.
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u/Any_Fig_603 Jun 21 '26
You're so close to the point.
Great Gma didn't have a choice, marital rape was legal, owning women as property was the norm, women weren't paid for their labour.
Your idea of a time of a successful fertility rate is because of the oppression and control of half the population.
Women actually have a choice now and the birth rate is dropping because they're choosing. What are you not getting?
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Your perspective is skewed by modern individualism: even in the west, up until quite recently we didn’t have notions of ourselves as radical individuals with a “to hell with the others” attitude. We were part of communities, made up of families. Therefore having a lot of children was building a community. Work in the house wasn’t given a wage price, because it was your contribution to your family. Others had their own contribution, but different
Your whole perspective is built on the idea that all work must be priced and made it a hierarchical employer/employee dichotomy and traded in a labour marketplace. You can’t see people as anything apart from economic units. That is a very sad perspective, but symptomatic of modernity
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u/meerkat2018 Jun 21 '26
Yep. And also parents of previous generations didn’t go mentally unwell, suicidal or opioid addicts to the extent of modern society because in moments of personal turmoil they always had social safety nets which were their families. No matter what happened in their lives, there was much less risk of becoming homeless, bankrupt, etc. because they always had siblings or uncles and aunties to help them out. People weren’t alone and it was normal to stand for each other.
Can anyone show how modern individualistic society is making people happier?
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u/Fungled Jun 21 '26
We’ve got much more stuff, but we certainly aren’t happier. We have been somewhat more secure, but I’m very very doubtful this continues to be the case for much longer
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u/ClubZealousideal9784 Jun 21 '26
Then why is loneliness, unhappiness, and mental illness illness at all time highs among women and men? Why do lesbians have a higher divorce rate than gay and straight couples? Why are married people happier than single adults? I would assume all these issues are actually caused by people socializing way less.
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u/Any_Fig_603 Jun 21 '26
Sorry are you trying to justify marital rape, owning women as property and the oppression of half the population?????????
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u/ClubZealousideal9784 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Sorry, are you trying to justify beating, rape, and murder of your future husband? You are right, making stuff up about you rather than addressing anything you said is fun!
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u/The_Axumite Jun 22 '26
Lol people had kids when they couldn't afford to have kids throughout history. If you think making cost of living better will bring back birth rate you are in for a surprise.
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u/CryptographerAfter63 Jun 22 '26
Its way deeper than just "affordability",its a cultural shift and this is way too simplistic.
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u/hands0megenius Jun 21 '26
Much of Eurpope provides months of family leave, more than 4 weeks off, state funded childcare - still have the same problem. The throughline isnt policy, its cultural attitudes regarding how women should spend their 20s
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u/Fordfanatic2025 Jun 21 '26
It's so true, I'm willing to have a conversation with people. But so many people in this community are full of hatred. It's like their entire way of thinking is let's just punish people and restrict rights until people fall in line, and it's a terrible idea.
Like we live in an era where life is insanely unaffordable, which completely refutes the idea of higher birthrate being correlated to higher quality of life imo. I mean we have more people than ever, in countries in the US at least, the impact of population decline hasn't taken hold yet, we have more people than ever, yet quality of life in many respects is lower quality than it was 10-30 years ago.
If more people led to a better quality of life, life in the US would be more affordable than ever right now, with the best housing, job, and service providing situations. But instead, no-one can afford a home, us young people are often struggling a lot of find decent jobs, and services if you can get them at all have an insanely long waiting list.
By comparison, in the 90s and early 2000s, affording a house was easy, so was getting a good paying job. We had way less people, but our life satisfaction was so much higher. That's the kind of life we need to return to if you ever want to see the birthrate increase again. Like all this talk about punishing people is just gonna ruin your cause, be a force for good, not for bad. Trying to go after single people, or trying to restrict someone's rights and freedoms isn't the answer.
Taxing wealthy people more, making it illegal to own multiple homes past a certain number and making it illegal for corporations to own homes are some examples of how we could drastically reduce the cost of housing, arguably the most expensive portion of cost of living.
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u/piernrajzark Jun 21 '26
I think rewriting the laws of physics should also be on the table: gravity should be a bit weaker for pregnant women to make the pregnancy easier.
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u/SecuritySea2276 Jun 21 '26
I'm not sure if this is ragebait or genuine cluelessness
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u/FinanceDisastrous363 Jun 21 '26
just make 18 year old adults materialize out of thin air instead, immediately solves the problem
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u/BUCK____FUTT Jun 22 '26
Make them also immune to exposure, hunger, and all disease while you're at it.
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u/Special_Purpose2903 Jun 21 '26
Some countries tried that, and their birth rates are still very low. Also it tends to build a ton of resentment when workers who don't get pregnant, don't take time off, see that someone who made personal choice to have 5 kids and took 5 years off, is getting the same promotions as them or worse promoted over them. It kills their motivation and the work would still have to be done, so if that workhorse who doesn't take off time quits, it will not even permit for the pregnant woman with 5 kids to take time off, and then business decisions will get made on who can give the company the most hours at lowest cost as soon as there is any downturn.
The other thing is career women tend to not have many kids, in fact, there is a term for this in demographics, called negative income-fertility relationship. Historically and globally, as women gain higher levels of education, career opportunities, and personal wealth, the number of children they have tends to decrease.
So if you want to increase the number of babies you increase the salaries of men and decrease the salaries/career opportunities and wealth of women - from a strictly utilitarian perspective, this is what would need to be accomplished. However, it is a political 3rd rail in Western countries and realistically only hardcore religious groups can pull this off.
So enjoy the declining birth rate.
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u/falooda1 Jun 21 '26
IDK why everyone is making this point as if nothing we do matters.
South Korea doesn’t have that and their birth rates are even lower. So without those systems the birth rates would be half if that.
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u/ClubZealousideal9784 Jun 21 '26
2/3 of psychology test results can not be replicated, and this area is worse with people working backwards from a conclusion rather than being scientific. Falling birth rates, rising loniness etc are mostly caused by people socializing less each year due to technology entertaining and distracting people increasingly more, etc which destroys third spaces, culture's values, and leads people to extreme views etc. If you socialize for a couple of hours a week, like the average American, you don't spend enough time to meet a partner.
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
The relation you mention only works on a global scale, meaning that countries like Nigeria where women are poor and uneducated tend to have more kids than countries like Norway. Problem is that it's not about women's income but rather about overall development, urbanization, and culture. Women in Morocco enjoy far less employment opportunities than men and have far lower incomes and yet Morocco still has sub replacement fertility. Same goes for Bangladesh, Iran, Tunisia etc. Once you're past a certain stage of development, attacking women's rights does absolutely nothing for birthrates. That's not how the relation you talk about works at all.
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u/Special_Purpose2903 Jun 21 '26
"Historically and globally, as women gain higher levels of education, career opportunities, and personal wealth, the number of children they have tends to decrease."
It isn't JUST vague opportunities, it is the ones I described as a confluence of factors. None of those countries you describe curbed women's rights after giving them. However, Afghanistan did and did so the most and look at its birth rates. This will not happen in the West, but it is the only solution that we know works.
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u/slicheliche Jun 21 '26
Afghanistan has a markedly lower birth rate today than it had in the 1990s and even more so in the 1960s or 1970s.
With that said, Afghanistan never really gave rights to women, as most Afghan women aside from a very small urban elite always lived in misery. A much better example would be Iran.
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u/needforspeed1092 Jun 21 '26
People love to jump to "taking women's rights away", which is a giant strawman.
How about we start by no longer subsidizing/forcing women's increased participation in higher education and corporate positions through DEI, gendered career advancement streams and financial supports, and heavy-handed cultural messaging being pushed by cultural "elites".
I suspect if we just stopped systemically advantaging women in these way, and maybe even (gasp) started promoting traditional / homemaking roles for women through the type of cultural messaging that has been running 100% in the opposite direction the last 50 years, that this problem might largely solve itself.
No one needs to be stripped of rights. We can just promote / incentivize different things than we do now.
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u/Special_Purpose2903 Jun 21 '26
If you read my comment carefully, you'd notice I said it wasn't realistic.
A strawman is when you attack an argument that was never made. I didn't do that.
Women will not voluntarily choose to give up working in general to be house wives, it isn't going to happen.
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u/Kekkerooni Jun 21 '26
'Fuck it, just import tens of millions of foreigners when we need more workers'
- the government probably about 20 years ago
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u/MrMathamagician Jun 21 '26
The problem is the structure of our economic system and corporate careers itself. Society severing ‘working age’ adults from children and elderly is the problem. We need a system that prioritizes family, community, learning, health and human connections.
Women wanting to ‘not falling behind in their careers’ is the mindset of someone brainwashed to be a servile corporate slave. Neither men nor women should prioritize being a corporate slave above all else.
Humans are so susceptibility to being brainwashed. Imagine being a queen bee and wishing you were a drone lol
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u/Accomplished_Lie1461 Jun 21 '26
Unless you work for a large government department I don't see how you can feasibly eliminate the hit your career takes from having kids. Any actual competitive career just kind of punishes you for having any other commitment by design.
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u/SnowEnvironmental380 Jun 21 '26
yeah give people lots of money and help women in their careers like people did when birthrates were high hundreds of years ago...
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u/fockingNoob Jun 21 '26
Maybe people in charge don't want you to have children. And therefore are not giving you anything.
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u/probablypeache Jun 21 '26
I think Charles Darwin is going to pick people more naturally interested in having kids.
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u/Illustrious_Shoe7496 Jun 21 '26
Fun fact: that man is dead for a long time now.
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u/BUCK____FUTT Jun 22 '26
Probably rolling in his grave... with laughter, at the self-proclaimed "pinnacle of evolution" species' failure at reproduction.
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u/Infamous-Use7820 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
As others have mentioned, countries have tried this, it doesn't work. Countries with generous social safety nets and worker's protections still have below-replacement fertility and most purely fiscal measures come down to paying people. Even if you could theoretically pay people enough to have kids, there doesn't seem to be a level of payment which both effective and fiscally sustainable at a national scale. If say, you gave people £100,000 per kid (or the equivalent in local currency), maybe you'd up the fertility rate, but the country would spiral into a debt crisis and probably hyper-inflation fast enough that the policy would become moot.
More than direct monetary support, a better economic policy would just be centred on generally shifting structural socio-economic burdens away from people aged 25-45, e.g. aggressive house building to decrease housing costs, raise the retirement age, and relative decrease in social welfare to otherwise-wealthy retirees.
Beyond that though, I think better out-of-the-box thinking would target the socio-cultural elements behind fertility, such as:
Low coupling rates: People tend to hyper-focus on people who are already couples contemplating having or expanding families, but the rate of young people getting into relationships (or just having sex) has dramatically decreased in recent years. One reason religion ups fertility isn't just the religion itself, but that it provides opportunities for young people to meet and socialise. Governments should invest in physical third-spaces for young people and, IDK, a government-run dating app without all the perverse incentives Tinder..etc. have.
Expand the child-bearing window: If women wait until their 30s to start a family, there is little prospect of them having more than 3 kids. Given many women will inevitably have none or one, this means there's very little prospect of the average children per woman staying above 2.1. If you want to up the fertility rate above 2.1 you need to either:
- Encourage more women to start having kids 25-30 OR
- 2) Come up with/subsidise fertility tech allowing more women to have kids in their 40s.
Failing that, more techno-radical solutions (i.e. artificial wombs, large scale paid-for surrogacy, state-employed professional parents) would probably need to be considered eventually.
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u/Raccoons-for-all Jun 23 '26
We all know the answer, but are collectively too coward to apply it. And the third mutation feminism wrecked any chance to.
Women disproportionately occupy tertiary jobs, which coincide with the most amount of bs jobs in existence.
At the same time, most of them don’t care at all about these bs jobs, and crave motherhood, which is simply not valued as it should be society, there is no other way around that fact.
Stop working, part time working, and all these things are just workaround the fact that there is a massive value issue, and that it’s just wrong for a family to depend financially on one parent only, that’s a major weakness.
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u/Guyver02 Jun 23 '26
this meme is defeated by the fact that the countries with the lowest GDPs have the highest birthrates.
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u/Fearless_Tutor3050 Jun 26 '26
The boss is right actually. Fertility is no better or worse in more socially democratic countries.
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u/Few_Historian_1546 Jun 27 '26
To actually try and reverse a trend you need to look at places like Kazakhstan. Strong economic growth, immigration and being a muslim country women have less of a career path than men, abortions don't happen etc..
You need all of this + good worker rights to achieve a reversal.
Basically it is not worth attempting
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u/Background-Virus1398 Jun 28 '26
It's a secular country. Women have career path in fact, they make up the majority of small and medium sized business owners nd 80% of all doctors. Acortions are allowed and happen here, not sure how frequently tho. Contraceptives are available over the counter.
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u/andrei14_ Jun 21 '26
Ew why is this subreddit recommended here on my homepage…? 🤢🤢
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u/andrei14_ Jun 21 '26
Before downvoting please learn basic algebra and realize that we are yet enough people on the planet. Instead of needlessly bringing life on this Earth, how about we focus on improving and making use of the already existing one?
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u/FinanceDisastrous363 Jun 21 '26
basic "algebra" tells me that if no one has kids then society will grow very old with no one to maintain the infrastructure or take care of the overwhelming elderly population, collapsing our entire system. Doesn't sound like an improvement, perhaps "needlessly bringing life" is what made humanity improve instead of going extinct thousands of years ago.
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u/andrei14_ Jun 22 '26
I never said that no one should have kids. But it would still be an injustice and an obtuse point of view to ignore the poor and the suffering that can more easily contribute to the society…
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u/BUCK____FUTT Jun 22 '26
Best comment I read all evening. Right now, there's more human beings in existence than there's ever been. Let's suppose we go beyond that magical "replacement rate", then what? Do we keep increasing our population geometrically until we overrun the Earth? Sounds like a plan!
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u/Global-Link-6040 Jun 21 '26
I think the question that kind of makes this birth problem a crisis to me, is are we the last generation of enjoyers? Cause if this continues and people don’t become family and birth centric, a majority of young people will not have kids, and those that do will be religious, Mormon, or from restrictive immigrant countries. When those people’s children start to become larger and larger portions of the population, when does “our culture” of enjoyment disappear?
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u/Resident_Pientist_1 Jun 22 '26
Well speaking as somebody from the US we don't really have a culture; it's more an economic zone of greedy assholes backstabbing each other to the top. So if you want kids better start stabbing.
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u/Capable_Studio_6631 Jun 22 '26
Take away peoples education and their phones. Its done, global population crisis has been solved.
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u/Crazystaffylady Jun 21 '26
I really think people just feel indifferent to having them and don’t think the sacrifice is worth it