Posted on 05/09/2023 12:52:20 PM PDT by anthropocene_x
Pro-natalist policies have a weak track record in every country where they've been tried. They're incredibly expensive, they produce few or no gains in fertility, and they can lead to a disturbingly authoritarian form of governance where individual choices about family formation are deprioritized. Meanwhile, birthrates have declined in tandem with several social upsides as well: better education, greater wealth, longer life spans, and more freedom for women.
Across the world, efforts to address these issues have focused entirely on attempts to reverse the underlying trend. Countries from Russia to Japan to Italy have tried an array of measures—from pressure campaigns to subsidized child care —to raise national birthrates. Yet fertility rates remain stable or continue to fall. Over and over again, officials have demonstrated that government-led efforts to induce higher fertility frequently fail entirely, often at high public cost.
South Korea spent more than $200 billion subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, President Yoon Suk Yeol said last fall. Yet the fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021.
The Japanese government almost quadrupled spending on families between 1990 and 2015, expanding child care provisions, paid family leave, parental tax credits, and more. The fertility rate went from 1.54 in 1990 to 1.3 in 2005 before rebounding slightly (1.4 in 2015) and then falling back to around 1.3.
Singapore, offers $8,000 for a first or second baby. The authorities have also tried offering tax rebates, guaranteeing 16 weeks of government-paid maternity leave for married mothers, giving housing subsidies to parents, matching Child Development Account savings up to thousands of dollars, and other schemes. None of this has stanched Singapore's plunging fertility rate. In 1990, it was 1.83. In recent years, it has hovered between 1.1 and 1.2.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
There are reasons why this is happening. I think it comes down to, that critical numbers of people, do not want children at all, or for those who do want children, they want fewer children that generations past have had.
How many families with 3 or 4 or 5 children do any of you know nowadays? How many of you older folks, recall your social circles from decades ago, and a number of families with that many children decades ago?
An attack on Hungary.
When you train women that their happiness is based on their career rather than their children, that being a housewife and mother is repression, do not be surprised that they do not have children.
You get married at thirty you generally will have one, maybe two. By which time you are tired.
You get married at twenty you will have four or five kids before you get tired.
Simple math.
Actually I do know a number of families with three and 4 children. I know one with 7.
In each of those families the mother is a stay at home mom. You want more kids, have FAMILY FRIENDLY policies that support MOTHERING. it is easier to convince a woman to have kid number 3 or 4 or 5 than to convince a Working woman to have her first child.
teach women that staying at home with children is a wonderful fun thing to do, which it is. teach men that fatherhood is rewarding and fun, that families are important work
a woman who can homemake can bring in as much money in savings than she can working and paying for child care.
True. When my wife stopped working to manage the household, our cash flow greatly improved. This was despite the loss of her salary.
There’s also fertility, or ability to conceive involved.
There are exceptions, but generally, it’s easier for most women to conceive at age 22 than age 38.
Doug Kenney. Very funny guy. I loved the Lampoon back when he was alive.
Yep.
Also some where between 10 and 20 percent of females have endometriosis. You start having kids in your early twenties you might have some problems but if you wait until you are thirty you will quite often be sterile and there is nothing they can do about it.
My son and his wife have five but unfortunately lost the sixth to a miscarriage. They may still have one or two more.
I know several young families, all conservatives, with 4 or more children.
Conservatives are having more children than liberals. If parents will just keep them out of the pubic school system, they will raise conservative children who retain their values.
Very quickly the tax burden was raised to meet the extra income that the mother now provided.
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