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.
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.
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.
People with your argument are stupid and annoying. Kids are great. They deserve better than our society.
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.”