I'm trying to think what would have pushed me and people I know to have more kids. I'm not convinced that more social services is the most important thing. We've been indoctrinated since before high school that getting pregnant is a negative outcome. A lot of society, especially middle class and above really down weights having kids as a priority until people are old enough to push for it themselves. So you have everyone being told career etc is more important, pregnancy is a bad thing, and then they realize often too late they want kids and either have fewer or find they can't.
I think the real solution is education about the upside of having kids and normalizing parenthood in one's 20's as a good life choice and as being successful.
Peer pressure encourages children. When many people around us have them, we feel like having them.
But in America, most millennials and gen Z are so stressed they cannot imagine a life with a dependent child.
If someone wants chimes in with a "avocado toast" comment, save your energy. We know about it. That $5 is not enough to pay the rent, let alone raising a child.
Poor people have more kids. Look at developing countries especially. Low fertility is a problem of the affluent. That's part of why I say I think it's cultural, it's seen as such a negative (including as a financial burden) instead of as a positive thing to be aspired to, at least that's what's pushed on younger people.
Historically, poor people's children started being "profitable" (as in doing more work than they take) much more quickly - they were raised communally (spreading the required work evenly), and they started working and helping earlier. This made having many children a legitimate strategy to deal with poverty. This has completely turned around - community is almost non-existent, and children will really only be "profitable" once they are adults.
The situations are simply too different for your argument to make sense.
>We've been indoctrinated since before high school that getting pregnant is a negative outcome.
I recently had a similar thought. When I was a kid I remember a lot of emphasis being put on reducing and avoiding teen pregnancies, especially ad campaigns. This internalized the message that pregnancy is something to avoid.
But when I got older there was no ad campaign to try to undo that notion (if that's even possible). I wonder if there are now a bunch of adults going around with that same feeling internally.
I also remember the same thing about "healthy food" - if you eat these healthy things like milk, bread etc then you'll be fine. Now that I'm older I know that that was just bs. But no ad campaign for that either.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 35.7 ms ] threadI think the real solution is education about the upside of having kids and normalizing parenthood in one's 20's as a good life choice and as being successful.
But in America, most millennials and gen Z are so stressed they cannot imagine a life with a dependent child.
If someone wants chimes in with a "avocado toast" comment, save your energy. We know about it. That $5 is not enough to pay the rent, let alone raising a child.
It's very difficult to have a single income family with kids.
It's very difficult to raise kids with both parents working.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/no-ring-no-baby
Historically, people in the countries that now have low fertility rates were much poorer and yet were having far more children.
In fact, the countries with the highest fertility rates globally are very poor.
The situations are simply too different for your argument to make sense.
I recently had a similar thought. When I was a kid I remember a lot of emphasis being put on reducing and avoiding teen pregnancies, especially ad campaigns. This internalized the message that pregnancy is something to avoid.
But when I got older there was no ad campaign to try to undo that notion (if that's even possible). I wonder if there are now a bunch of adults going around with that same feeling internally.
I also remember the same thing about "healthy food" - if you eat these healthy things like milk, bread etc then you'll be fine. Now that I'm older I know that that was just bs. But no ad campaign for that either.
how could this go wrong?