Whenever I see this question asked I am missing any numbers on the first question that comes to my mind: How many people would actually want to have (more) kids if X, Y and/or Z were different/improved. Any data on how many parents of, say, 2 kids actually would want to have a third or fourth, but don’t for reason X that could be changed by specific measures X1 and X2. How many couples decided against children (because of non-medical reasons) although they actually would like to have some and what would have to change for them to do as they secretly want?
Because the people I know who want to have children, they have them. The ones who wanted two, had two and took measures to ensure there aren’t more. The ones who wanted more than two, had more than two, without a sudden increase in money or living space.
And personally, there is no financial stimulus you can provide for me or my partner to change our stance on being childless.
Just make it not prohibitively expensive, you can’t reliably pay off the mortgage of 3 bedroom apartment on 1 salary + parents pension in urban areas. This means you need to have savings or study longer to be able to afford it making the time of birth later in life. When women’s fertility has begun to go down. Biologically women are not meant to birth after 30. Make living healthy cheaper than pre-made crap for example lower vegies tax rate to 11%. Once again obesety has effects of fertility and viability of pregnancy. Quit doomsday cult mass media scare tactics of basically telling young adults that if we want to save planet you can’t have children. Push back on gender ideologies like feminism that blames blights of 1 gender on other and seek to have open and productive discussions where everyone gets to express their opinion without being canceled. Quit reinforcing idea of there being a thing like NB person and get these people the therapy they need. Fix these and I am sure we will at least get over the 2.1 birth rate that is needed to sustain population.
There is a strong trend with societies becoming less fertile as they become wealthier – specifically, as women become wealthier. Western fertility is low across the board, but we also have the wealthiest, most empowered women in the world. Making it easier for mothers to work/having better daycare will only do so much. Women who can choose not to have children simply _will_ in many cases; it’s another thing entirely if you live in a more traditional society where procreation is an imperative expectation.
I wouldn’t say the root of this is unfortunate, because I’d take an enlightened, educated society over a baby-spamming one any day, but you might say that the effect is unfortunate, because we are after all in demographic decline.
The only realistic way to offset demographic decline in Western societies is immigration, which is why so much anti-immigration rhetoric is economically and socially short-sighted.
I am willing to help in this noble effrort, but I have unfortunately not found yet found a partner for this undertaking.
Pretty much the single biggest challenge the world faces in the next 30 years or so is overpopulation. How about we start figuring out how to be just fine with less people instead of fussing with the impossibility of constant population growth?
More women want children than actually have them. Since it is hard to find a mate, make it easier to have a kid alone. The birth trauma and/or injuries of the first one is often enough not to do it again. Make it safer to give birth, take better care of moms, easier to get cesarean, etc.
Edit: also most of the moms work. Having had kids quite old, their parents are rather old to help. Or due to decades of people moving into larger cities, parents are too far to help. There should be more short time help/nannies/nurses available to families with small kids.
Edit 2: women are afraid to miss out on career because employers discriminate, because maternity leave causes costs. The costs should not fall only to the women’s employers, but should somehow be divided to all employers.
Edit 3: women who have more kids spend more maternity leaves, getting less salary and less pension. Their pension should be subsidised somehow. After all the have made more workers to pay those pensions.
Labour immigration propably.
/s
Well offer to buy with good price all the children that I produce and take care of those. I don’t want one.
Men develop the ability to get pregnant and give birth.
I believe the root of the problem is that people generally do not enjoy raising kids, even though they wouldn’t mind having them. The little spare time we have after work, we want to invest in resting and other things we like. Having and looking after kids feels like extra work.
The fact there’s no social pressure to have kids anymore or its effectiveness has reduced could also play a part. Also people have smaller social networks to depend on to get some time off.
To radically boost fertility rate is to setup an alternative state run facility where kids can be given away after birth. Parents who do this are paid (more to women as they are doing the labor). Parents do not need to know each other or have sex. Of course genetic background checks should be in place to avoid inbreeding.
The kids are raised by professionals and without biological parents, but are supported by the state as much as possible to grant them an equal opportunity in life.
Sounds odd, but a facility life beats bad family 100-0. A system like this would give parenting way greater recognition as the caring professionals must be top notch and must be evaluated periodically. All for the good of the kid in order to produce a content citizen. Content citizens make great societies.
I know its a pipedream and likely too expensive. Plus the kids would always wonder why they were given out. They probably would want to become parents themselves as the family life would intrigue them.
Yea… This could get sinister… But we want babies, do we not?
IMHO more people have no children today because there are so many more alternative lifestyles to live, and there is so much more stuff to do nowadays. One can travel anywhere in the world, take any job wherever you want, have as many partners as you want, do whatever hobby you want.
Children are the last thing in the world from which you can’t opt out anymore, and they will limit you in all of these things dramatically. People don’t like to be limited in their options. That means, there is no incentive or aid that can turn these people to have children.
Dont increase child support, oh wait.
– Need more beautiful women in finland
– no need to pay for elatusmaksut when making multiple babies with multiple women
– accept moniavioisuus (haarem)
Permanent employment for young people. Lack of financial stability is a big reason that many in my generation (around 45 now) didn’t get as many kids as we wanted. I had my only kid at 38, would have loved to have one or two more, but it wasn’t possible. Lots of my friends had their first kid between 35 and 42, and many of them ended running out of time before they we’re able to have as many as they wanted. If we had been more financially secure before hitting 35, many of us would have started earlier and ended up with more children. At this point we could well be grandparents already, instead of having kids who are still in kindergarten or just started school.
15 comments
Whenever I see this question asked I am missing any numbers on the first question that comes to my mind: How many people would actually want to have (more) kids if X, Y and/or Z were different/improved. Any data on how many parents of, say, 2 kids actually would want to have a third or fourth, but don’t for reason X that could be changed by specific measures X1 and X2. How many couples decided against children (because of non-medical reasons) although they actually would like to have some and what would have to change for them to do as they secretly want?
Because the people I know who want to have children, they have them. The ones who wanted two, had two and took measures to ensure there aren’t more. The ones who wanted more than two, had more than two, without a sudden increase in money or living space.
And personally, there is no financial stimulus you can provide for me or my partner to change our stance on being childless.
Just make it not prohibitively expensive, you can’t reliably pay off the mortgage of 3 bedroom apartment on 1 salary + parents pension in urban areas. This means you need to have savings or study longer to be able to afford it making the time of birth later in life. When women’s fertility has begun to go down. Biologically women are not meant to birth after 30. Make living healthy cheaper than pre-made crap for example lower vegies tax rate to 11%. Once again obesety has effects of fertility and viability of pregnancy. Quit doomsday cult mass media scare tactics of basically telling young adults that if we want to save planet you can’t have children. Push back on gender ideologies like feminism that blames blights of 1 gender on other and seek to have open and productive discussions where everyone gets to express their opinion without being canceled. Quit reinforcing idea of there being a thing like NB person and get these people the therapy they need. Fix these and I am sure we will at least get over the 2.1 birth rate that is needed to sustain population.
There is a strong trend with societies becoming less fertile as they become wealthier – specifically, as women become wealthier. Western fertility is low across the board, but we also have the wealthiest, most empowered women in the world. Making it easier for mothers to work/having better daycare will only do so much. Women who can choose not to have children simply _will_ in many cases; it’s another thing entirely if you live in a more traditional society where procreation is an imperative expectation.
I wouldn’t say the root of this is unfortunate, because I’d take an enlightened, educated society over a baby-spamming one any day, but you might say that the effect is unfortunate, because we are after all in demographic decline.
The only realistic way to offset demographic decline in Western societies is immigration, which is why so much anti-immigration rhetoric is economically and socially short-sighted.
I am willing to help in this noble effrort, but I have unfortunately not found yet found a partner for this undertaking.
Pretty much the single biggest challenge the world faces in the next 30 years or so is overpopulation. How about we start figuring out how to be just fine with less people instead of fussing with the impossibility of constant population growth?
More women want children than actually have them. Since it is hard to find a mate, make it easier to have a kid alone. The birth trauma and/or injuries of the first one is often enough not to do it again. Make it safer to give birth, take better care of moms, easier to get cesarean, etc.
Edit: also most of the moms work. Having had kids quite old, their parents are rather old to help. Or due to decades of people moving into larger cities, parents are too far to help. There should be more short time help/nannies/nurses available to families with small kids.
Edit 2: women are afraid to miss out on career because employers discriminate, because maternity leave causes costs. The costs should not fall only to the women’s employers, but should somehow be divided to all employers.
Edit 3: women who have more kids spend more maternity leaves, getting less salary and less pension. Their pension should be subsidised somehow. After all the have made more workers to pay those pensions.
Labour immigration propably.
/s
Well offer to buy with good price all the children that I produce and take care of those. I don’t want one.
Men develop the ability to get pregnant and give birth.
I believe the root of the problem is that people generally do not enjoy raising kids, even though they wouldn’t mind having them. The little spare time we have after work, we want to invest in resting and other things we like. Having and looking after kids feels like extra work.
The fact there’s no social pressure to have kids anymore or its effectiveness has reduced could also play a part. Also people have smaller social networks to depend on to get some time off.
To radically boost fertility rate is to setup an alternative state run facility where kids can be given away after birth. Parents who do this are paid (more to women as they are doing the labor). Parents do not need to know each other or have sex. Of course genetic background checks should be in place to avoid inbreeding.
The kids are raised by professionals and without biological parents, but are supported by the state as much as possible to grant them an equal opportunity in life.
Sounds odd, but a facility life beats bad family 100-0. A system like this would give parenting way greater recognition as the caring professionals must be top notch and must be evaluated periodically. All for the good of the kid in order to produce a content citizen. Content citizens make great societies.
I know its a pipedream and likely too expensive. Plus the kids would always wonder why they were given out. They probably would want to become parents themselves as the family life would intrigue them.
Yea… This could get sinister… But we want babies, do we not?
IMHO more people have no children today because there are so many more alternative lifestyles to live, and there is so much more stuff to do nowadays. One can travel anywhere in the world, take any job wherever you want, have as many partners as you want, do whatever hobby you want.
Children are the last thing in the world from which you can’t opt out anymore, and they will limit you in all of these things dramatically. People don’t like to be limited in their options. That means, there is no incentive or aid that can turn these people to have children.
Dont increase child support, oh wait.
– Need more beautiful women in finland
– no need to pay for elatusmaksut when making multiple babies with multiple women
– accept moniavioisuus (haarem)
Permanent employment for young people. Lack of financial stability is a big reason that many in my generation (around 45 now) didn’t get as many kids as we wanted. I had my only kid at 38, would have loved to have one or two more, but it wasn’t possible. Lots of my friends had their first kid between 35 and 42, and many of them ended running out of time before they we’re able to have as many as they wanted. If we had been more financially secure before hitting 35, many of us would have started earlier and ended up with more children. At this point we could well be grandparents already, instead of having kids who are still in kindergarten or just started school.
Viimeinen sammuttaa valot.