You can’t even pay people to have more kids
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.
I've been terrified of pregnancy my entire life and I'm a selfish adult who wants to do what I want.
So yes, nothing the governments do can ever make me want to have kids.
Not even you, Greg Abbott, you dickhole pathetic excuse for a "person". I fucking hate you!
Edit: One of my sentences was exceptionally dark.
I don't think it's selfish to not want kids. With how fucked the world is, maybe we should be thinking about if it's instead selfish to have kids.
I determined from about age 12 that I didn't want kids. 10 years later and I still don't want them, so I removed the possibility of accidentally having them. The government can't make me have kids - seeing as I yeeted my uterus.
If that's selfish, we should all be selfish. Fuck it we don't owe the world shit. What's it ever done for us?
Not to address your fears specifically, but there's a lot a government (society) can do to make more women feel safer and more comfortable about becoming pregnant and giving birth.
From high quality free healthcare, to maternity (and paternity) leave, to daycare, to schooling - at just a start - there are ways society can look after itself.
That is, I can understand (in a limited, "I'm not you" fashion) your POV.
Oh, also, I do hope you meant to include "want", as is in, "can make you want to have kids". Because government mandated pregnancy is a pretty horrifying concept.
Countries in Europe got most of that and they are still struggling with getting to the replacement rate.
Most isn't good enough. All of it might be enough to make me think about having a kid.
Truth, I'll go back and edit it to say "want". It does seem extra dark with the way its written.
But also, yes, there are a lot more things that society can do to make women feel safer and cared for when having children. And women who do want and choose to have a child should do so with comfort and support, because their body is literally making a human being - which is awesome, even if it's not for me.
It's just, here in the US, and red states specifically, maternity and infant mortality rates are fucking abysmal considering the level of Healthcare were supposed to be provided. It's unfortunately even worse if you're a WOC. I'm not sure what maternal care looks like in your neck of the woods, but hopefully better then here.
But I've been just...not materially inclined ever since I was a kid. I've never really felt the draw for it, and luckily found my husband whose cool with that.