These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
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If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.
In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.
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Have they tried raising the salaries so that one parent can stay at home and actually take care of the children, instead of sending them to way too expensive daycares. Having children is a “luxury” nowadays.
Just limit work to 35 hours (10-10-10-5) and have parents alternate schedules
Fuck that, have you worked 10 hour shifts? Pretty sure studies have shown you max out productivity at 6. I say 24 hour work week, 6 hours 4 days a week.
Yes, it is so much better
This is beyond out of touch with reality lol, you’ve been in your internet bubble for far too long
If you’re going to boil it down to bare economics, daycare should come out ahead. 2 people can take care of 9 babies versus a stay at home parent taking care of 1 or 2. And realistically today, advocating for a stay at home parent is telling women to go back to the kitchen. It’s regressive, unnecessary, and not actionable advice.
I would instead argue that modern life is not supportive of real-life, tight communities and lasting relationships. Online social lives are a starkly inferior substitute for real life but they’re easier to access and give the equivalent dopamine hit.
And realistically today, advocating for a stay at home parent is telling women to go back to the kitchen. It’s regressive, unnecessary, and not actionable advice.
No, what YOU said is regressive. The commenter never mentioned women; men can just as easily be house spouses, and that’s also without mentioning non-binary partners. You just assumed they meant women and ran with it
Edit: grammar
Also if more families could have a stay-at-home parent or could have the parents taking turns (for example, first parent A goes to work while parent B is with the kids for a week, and then do the opposite next week), then daycares would still have more resources to take of children whose families don’t want to or can’t have this kind of arrangement. And this would require bigger salaries so that families could afford to have only one working adult.
Are you seriously claiming that we’re done with equality in the workplace (positions, salary, respect)? No? Then stop misrepresenting what I said as some neanderthal spiel. We need daycare to give people options. Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.
Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.
Disagree with you there. Kids need to see their parents in person, and exploring humanities instead of prioritizing work over family and personal close relationships. Work isn’t the most important thing. I don’t care of it’s a gay couple, bi-couple, or a transgender couple with an adopted child. I think intrinsic to the support of LGBTQ communities should be every right afforded straight people, and I think income inequalities between genders needs to go away. At the same time, the value of the worker is what truly needs to change to help bolster all of the above. When we can get back to a much more regulated system (bringing back the regulations that make stock buybacks illegal), reducing the work week to just 32 hours but requiring that no TC concessions happen as a result, and forcing a more equitable share of prosperity from the corporate world to the workers, THAT will do more to help with many of the social issues we face.
Not to mention, the de-gentrification of communities, more rights for workers, affordable housing, and the tremendous benefits that would lead to in reducing our climate change risks, it’s asinine to split hairs over red herrings that distract us from who our true adversaries are: the rich. If you want to counter populism and win over Trump voters, you focus on the areas we have common ground with real life issues we’re facing.
Are you seriously claiming that we’re done with equality in the workplace
Can you make a point without a straw man? I said nothing of the sort.
And I don’t disagree with your point about daycare; I think people need options, but I disagree with your point about online relationships being dopamine-equivalent to “real” relationships, personally. I’d LOVE to have a family but I have neither the space nor the money to have kids.
Personally I think communal child raising should be more normalized; I think children experiencing many different and at times contradictory viewpoints is good for their development of critical thinking. But I don’t presume to fully know the solution to lose birth rates. I DO however claim that whatever financial incentives are being given, they aren’t enough.
You’re correct that my comment was not inclusive. That was not intentional on my part and I’m sorry if I offended anyone. However, this is a distraction from the main point.
It was not a strawman. I was making a statement about how society is right now, not how it should be. “men can be house spouses”, etc is true but until we have better workplace equality and in absence of daycare, the vast majority of prospective families are going to do some very simple budget math to figure out who can afford to be a stay-at-home parent. It is exactly the “kitchen” crap from years gone by but with some populist indirection to avoid calling it that.
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They don’t need a daycare, they need a parent/family
Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.
Why so they want to be some corporate slave for labor, fuck off
You raise another good point. Some people are simply not cut out for raising kids. Or interacting with normal people, for that matter.
Hmmm I’d like to stay at home and I’m the man. We both earn about the same, she earns more. I don’t trust daycare workers. You optimize for what you value, if you value economics you’re simply not going to optimize for what’s best for the child. Because at all the cross roads where the biological needs or psychological needs conflict the economical value you’ll not be making those choices.
At a coarse level, children from families with more money are better off so I disagree. Daycare is a small part of a child’s life. Really 3-4 years out of 18 and of those, only 9-5 at that. In exchange, you afford a nicer, safer town with better schools. If your family chooses a stay-at-home parent, you won’t afford those places when competing against dual income families.
At a coarse level, children from families with more money are better off so I disagree
And that seems like a correction that needs to happen.
I think of this daycare idea like public school, you ever notice the high income rich areas have a good public school system whereas the low income don’t?
If you’re on the whole okay with a certain percent of kids failing then on the coarse level it does seem like a good idea.
Sure, but people wanting families are facing these decisions right now. They don’t want to wait for society to get its head screwed on straight. The root comment was “stay at home parents! no more daycare!” but sailed right over all the macro and micro consequences of that.
Aldous Huxley described your vision of Utopia in brave new world. I think it’s ridiculous, unobtainable, and overall a terrible approach to society. Life is all about lasting and meaningful relationships, so any approach that views these as optional or outdated is broken before it even starts. Your entire premise is flawed from the start.
I think you read my comment backwards. I guess to follow your analogy, social media is “soma” and is a problem today.
I do believe that nobody “belongs in the kitchen” as far as gender roles go. What we’re up against is the weakness of the family unit in society and the breakdown of lasting friendships contributing to mental health issues. Online social lives are objectively bad for us, and I’d argue that the dopamine hit is just helping burn our dopamine receptors even more.
Regardless this reminds me of the classic argument that was had back in the 80’s about the kitchen itself, that it’s more “efficient” for people not to cook at home but to go to a place that prepares food en masse for a community. This was during the Soviet Communism era and there was a side debate going on. Western culture favored the family unit, while a communist concept favored social efficiency at the cost of liberties.
I don’t think it’s regressive to desire to have more time to be with your kids, whether it’s day care, school, etc. The real issue isn’t economics and progressive concepts, I think we’d all agree that a robust public education system is valuable, and that we should have economics that let us pick our kids up from school rather than send them to a day care. It’s not about sending anyone to the kitchen.
I like our kitchen, I like cooking food for the family, and I even enjoy it as a way to wind down after work. Modern life not supportive of tight knit communities and lasting relationships is complete bullshit. Modern life in that viewpoint is the continuous hustle culture and prioritization of work over a fulfilling life experience, and in my opinion your viewpoint is regressive for that reason alone. Kill hustle culture, eat the rich, and let’s have economics that give us a choice.
The food analogy is great. But I think there’s a quantitative difference in effort and long term commitment between what to have for dinner and how you’ll afford to raise your family.
Here’s a crazy idea, what if we end this second gilded age and return dignity to the working class? Instead of pushing for EV’s, how about we push for sustainable lifestyles and strengthen the family unit by returning much needed time back to workers? Instead of saying women belong in the workforce instead of the kitchen, how about we say nobody “belongs” in either and that we have the choices and freedom to make the decision? What if, thanks to an 8 hour workday four days a week, we drastically reduce the need for day care and allow parents to be more involved directly with their kids instead of setting a soulless worker drone example?
Lastly, how about you take a hint?
Plain raising of salaries would only drive hyperinflation.
Or the could offer free child care, but that’s socialism.
Assuming that additional income isn’t being wrestled back from the “profiteering rich” class: yes.
Even rightoid economists like Friedman disagree with this.
Most birds don’t lay eggs without a proper nest
Is a declining birth rate a bad thing? 50 million people live in a country (South Korea) the size of Indiana. Maybe, just maybe the economy should just take a hit for a change so there can be fewer people here. I know rich people don’t want that, but I bet the country would be a better place for it.
Korean here. The problem is the steepness of the trend. We are not ready for such dramatic change over short period. Gradual decrease in population will cause economic downfall for sure. But we can deal with that. But in current speed, it’s going to be economic airplane crash. Claiming that it’s only bad for the 1% is just delusional at best. The crash will overwhelm any social/economic structure.
I’ve noticed some people here practically yearn for disasters because it might hurt the rich. The absolutely staggering collateral damage to everyone else is ignored or waved away. It’s very much a desperate “nothing left to lose” philosophy that’s both sad and scary.
Multiple generations have had all the doors slammed in their faces, and all the ladders pulled up before them. Instead of acting like crabs in a bucket, they’ve decided they would rather have nothing so long as the people who trapped them suffer too. It’s pure spite but can you blame them? I’d probably do the same thing.
You are ignoring the fact that there’s going to be several times the loss in human workers added to the workforce by way of virtual laborers within 20 years.
This is just one of the many recent instances of humans being unable to adequately forecast consequences due to anchoring biases. While we typically see it in the other direction (minimizing increasing risks because of lower historical risk) here it’s something that would have been concerning decades ago but won’t be nearly as risky decades from now.
Maybe the chaebols should stop constantly putting up new apartment blocks now.
That’s very far from what’s happening right now. I’m curious where did you get that idea from.
Maybe the evidence is anecdotal, but I’ve lived in Korea for 20 years, and there’s always a huge new, self-contained apartment complex going up nearby. If anything, they’ve ramped up production in that time. While older population centers are left to decline. Maybe not in Seoul which is shoulder-to-shoulder apartment complexes already, but the smaller cities are full of decaying apartment complexes since they put them up, then completely fail to maintain them as they know their market is full of people who will move into the next complex since “gotta have the latest and greatest” is a problem here.
There’s good evidence though. When you drive from Incheon Airport into Seoul, you see a ton of new apartment / condos going up. Every time I visit, I see more and more buildings put up.
I mean, in the short term (50-100 years), yes it is. Unless people start dying at a younger age, there’s going to be a lot of orphaned seniors, which isn’t good. We won’t really see the benefits of a declining birthrate in our lifetimes, but we will see numerous negatives.
In the long term, it’s probably more nessecary then “not bad,” but again, you don’t want to be the one of the people living during the population collapse.
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It’s bad for capitalism and the 1%. You can’t have infinite growth with falling population numbers.
Edit: A lot of people claiming it’s also bad for the young and old people. It depends on how you’re social services are structured. Where I live the system is set up so that everyone only gets back the money they put into the system. That’s what the EU recommendations are and where all the EU countries are moving. Yes, the retirements will be lower in the future but that’s the only way to make the system sustainable without major cuts to everything else. IMHO it’s better than the idea of infinite growth.
No, it’s actually bad for everyone, because few young people have to support loads of old people. Politics will cater to the old people, because they have more voting power in numbers and will cut budgets for young people (education, social security and so on).
As opposed to now? That’s literally what happens here, no one wants any of these old fucks’ laws. They were born when the first plane was taking off and haven’t kept to date with anything in the modern world. We have no choice because the only people who seem to have any time to do anything in this country are the old people. Therefore we get shit on for simply trying to exist.
Yeah, that’s getting even worse.
It’s bad for capitalism and the 1%.
It’s bad for the Old who will have their Pensions cut and bad for the young who have to pay for more Pensions.
It’s not bad because we’re such a capitalist Society but exactly because we’re not. Because we expect to pay Welfare to older People to retire. And that whole Concept lies on the Assumption, that there will always be more People paying for the Welfare than People receiving it.
Lol. What pensions?
Just like national health insurance, every workers in SK is mandated to pay for the pension insurance. You give x% of your earnings and 국민연금공단(National Pension Service) gives you back(with x more amount, in consideration of interest rate and everything) as pensions after you retire(from 65, that is). Problem is steep decline in taxpayers and increasing number of pensioners have resulted in NPS not having enough money to pay everyone who already paid for their pensions.
Nice of you to just go lol what pensions when you don’t seem to know anything about the system.
Sounds nice for SK. But lol pensions don’t exist for most of the US anymore
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It’s bad for humanity too. You can’t replace all the old people that cannot create what we desire for living without having kids.
(it’s the economy and political landscape)
It’s also that people do not need a lot of children anymore, so that some survive to take care of them, when they’re old.
Sure you can. We could limit the work week to 32 hours, pay higher salaries such that homes and goods are affordable again.
That’s great for the short term needs, but I’d rather not bring life into the world that will be faced with a dying planet and the extreme geopolitical unrest that comes with that coupled with the likely major but unpredictable disruptions of tech advancing at compounding rates.
We might be heading towards a utopia or a dystopia - but in one direction or another it’s going to be getting more extreme.
I take great comfort in the idea that I’ll be leaving this world without worrying about a child left behind in a collapsing society nor if that happens earlier on that I’ll need to watch their suffering or demise.
There’s no amount of money or shortened workweek that would make me give up that comfort given what lies ahead.
Same here and I’m fortunate enough that my fiancee, non of my brothers or their partners are interested in kids either. Won’t be leaving any kids or nephews in this hellscape.
Free fucking childcare…
And healthcare
Europe got both, we are still below replacement rate.
Because it’s a natural consequence of high education, lack of benefit for having a lot of kids, and our overall population having gotten too high.
I agree with this except for the bit about the size of the overall population. I can say with a great deal of certainty that most Americans (for example) are not giving a single thought to how many people live in China and India when deciding to have kids or not.
There is a third thing that people often miss in this discussion: legacy. If you own nothing then you have nothing to give to a child. The people who had the most children owned things, particularly land and business. The suburban nuclear families being as large as they were was a cultural artifact from their own parents’ way-of-life, single-income households, and religious beliefs. It will not repeat itself.
With nothing to inherit, little individual hope for the future, a plurality of world leaders intent on pushing us into a world where “you will own nothing and you will be happy”… what did people expect would happen?
You can actually by making the families cost of living and housing needs affordable on one parents income. One off baby bonus bribes and stuff that governments do will never actually work when both parents have to work themselves Into dust just to make ends meet.
People just want fewer kids now, or they want them later. It’s not the money, it’s that kids are a drag.
Heck why would anyone want kids? You couldn’t ever pay me enough to ever get pregnant and deal with kids. I’m not a brood mare. Religious conservative breeding bs is going the way of the dodo.
Tell me you weren’t loved as a kid without telling me you weren’t loved as kid. xD
Kids are not affordable or cute or have fur, plus they take time l, a lot of time. For me there’s no reason to have kids.
The problem with dogs and cats as a child replacement is you usually outlive them.
I can live with that, atleast I can take care of them until the end. And it’s not like life is certain, I can die before them.
I can live with it too. I have twice now. But it is a very difficult heartbreak. I haven’t had one of them for 13 years and I got her when I first moved out of my parents’ house, so she was with me my entire adult life until she died. I still miss her.
That can happen with kids too, and it’s far worse. At least with pets you know they’re only going to live around ___ years.
True. Outliving my daughter is my greatest fear.
And your daughters I guess would be extatic to know you’ll one day ditch them to be on their own after making them?
Most children outlive their parents and I’m not sure why you think I don’t care what she will feel.
That’s not a con… why would you make someone exist so they can experience your old age and death. That’s fucked.
I said nothing about a con.
Raising a kid in America starts around $200k, conservatively. A 2-3k incentive or even 6 months of paid leave worth around 25k aren’t gonna make a dent.
You absolutely can pay people to do just about anything including having kids.
Give me a credit card that can pay ALL of my bills and i will both adopt a kid and find someone who wants to have one.
The problem is kids are a huge burden when you can barely afford to live your own life let alone provide and be responsible for another human being
Pay people to retire early and you will see a huge boom in population
Giving birth to someone is the worst thing you can do to them. I’m not taking money for that.
Terry Gou, a candidate in next year’s Taiwanese presidential election, has even proposed giving people a free pet if they have a child.
Okay, so your solution for people who don’t want children is to give them “children lite”?
Even if you think adopting a pet is a reasonable thing to do at the same time you adopt a child, that’s just an insulting small incentive. May as well just offer a free cup of coffee.
There’s no fucking way I can take care of a coffee and a child at the same time. They’ll both be cold in minutes.
A “free” cup of coffee that you need to buy food and pay medical bills for.
You sonnova bitch, I’m in.
According to your quote, it’s children plus children lite.
Children²
People don’t want to bring children into this capitalistic hellscape. Color me surprised.
It is more about too much centralization of power than any one economic system as this issue is a near global issue.
reducing work hours in japan lead to a spike in pregnancies. If you want to raise birth rates a 4day work week should be at the top of the list.
The real reason why people don’t have kids is because they suck. Kids are stupid and annoying. More and more people are waking up to this fact and starting to resist the social pressure.“I can actually live my life instead of dedicating all my time and resources to something I don’t even need? I’ll have two of that please!”
If government wants kids let them raise the kids. Pay women to give birth and then put the kid in public system. Problem solved.
I mean, kids only really suck in a world where both parents have to work 40+ hours a week. You really don’t have to dedicate all your time to them, but in a world with less and less community to help raise them and more and more work to grind your energy down, you have to dedicate far too much of your limited free time to them. I would love to be able to raise a kid or two myself. I loved working with kids. We should not be throwing them into some nebulous “public system.”
Yeah, I’m not talking about the public system seriously. It’s just to show it’s not really about systematic solutions. We can come up with government supported solutions and they would be bad.
And I totally agree that if you don’t have to work raising kids is not that terrible but it’s also not really a solution because most people do actually want to work. If you give people a choice between kids and meaningful career a lot of people will still choose career and birth rates will still be low. And a lot of people will still simply choose not to have kids because even when you don’t have to work bringing up a kid is actually really really difficult. My friends and co-workers keep having kids and yeah, sleep deprivation, no social life, no time for hobbies, lots of extra expenses, constant infections, hard time travelling even short distance… And that’s only the first year or two, before any behavioural issues start or you have to decide if you prefer to give you’re 10 yo unrestricted access to the internet or have him excluded from everything his friends do.
The information you get might be biased, because people love to vent about bad stuff, but do not mention the rewarding stuff, that makes it worth it.
Yeah, I’ve heard that argument and I don’t buy it. What I see is people that are really burned out and borderline depressed. I don’t believe a hug from their child before sleep fixes that. I believe it keeps them from going crazy but I don’t think it makes it all worth it. Most people will simply not admit it because it’s taboo.
Well since we are at anecdotal evidence. I am in the academics bubble, where quite a few of my friends also got children and they love it. You don’t like kids, so you see all the problems that come with having children. You are looking for confirmation bias. There are more than enough people that do not hate children. I mean, we are kinda biologically programmed to procreate.
I totally get what you’re saying but I think there’s just so much pressure from society that it’s all terribly biased. Last week I saw another very long article from a woman wondering if she should have kids or not and the comment section was full of people talking like they just realized having kids is optional. Watch any American TV show and you’ll see how ingrained the idea that having kids is mandatory is. Average person is so programmed by society and media to have kids people think it’s just what you have to do and yes, they will try to justify it but saying that it’s actually very rewarding. I’m not saying that no one should have kids but I actually think that very few people have kids because they enjoy it. We’re talking couples with good jobs, good benefits, lot’s of family support and lot’s of money. Most people don’t have any of this but they still have kids.
My friend lost his apartment to a fire so I took him in with my wife and kids while he got back on his feet. He was working class, his parents were neglectful and died young, his other family hated him, and he was left to fight for scraps and fend for himself.
He saw me give love to my kids, he saw the freedom we gave them to explore the world around them and their feelings, to exist without fear. One day my friend got home from work and the two kids ran over screaming “UNCLE!” and hugged him. He teared up a little and hugged them back, then he asked me to chat outside for a bit.
He laid it all out and said he wants kids. He never thought he could subject them to the life he lived but after seeing mine he realized he didn’t have to. He said watching them grow up and being a part of it has been very rewarding. He has since started a business, almost entirely stopped drinking and smoking, invested his money in multiple places, and is now dating.
Kids are a lot of work, but they’re also fantastic at showing you what actually matters in life. So much of the bullshit we think matters is just fluff.
So? You want to have kids then have kids. No one is saying kids should be forbidden. What I’m saying is that a lot of people decide to have kids when they don’t have enough time and money for it and have lousy experience. And a lot (and like really really a lot) of people are simply bad at parenting and their kids also have lousy experience. You were lucky to have the resources and skills to raise your kids right. Good for you. Problem is that when you say ‘kids and fantastic’ a lot of people think they are fantastic for everyone. We should be saying ‘kids are fantastic if you have the resources, time and skills needed to take care of them properly’ instead. The ‘why don’t you have kids? kids are fantastic!’ attitude that’s the problem. It makes people think they are missing out on something great when they don’t have them and puts a lot of needles pressure on couples. Having kids shouldn’t be the default, it should be an option for the right people.
You were a kid, though. Adults aren’t just spawned, they grow from kids. Everyone seems to be talking about them (and old people, for that matter) as though they are a separate species of being. Kids are just immature people. Of course they suck. You did too, so did I.
But they are also awesome, and grow up to be adults. I had fun having kids. Taking them places, watching them grow and change, the funny things they say and the flashes of insight. Now most of them are adult people. I don’t care if they have kids, they should do whatever they want. But I did enjoy the parenting. Sure, it’s not convenient, it’s life.
As a woman of almost 40 fucking thank you. I’m educated enough to know I don’t have to fall for that bs.
People with your argument are stupid and annoying. Kids are great. They deserve better than our society.
Sorry, I didn’t meant to say you’re stupid. Some kids are great, I’m sure you’re one of them.
Lol!
