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.
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.