pbmonster
5d ago
I don't think I have ever, in my entire life, heard anyone discuss fertility rates "in real life", outside the Internet.
Interesting, is this in the US? In Europe in general, but especially in France and Germany, the "demographic transition" has been a permanent fixture in the media and in public discourse for at least 30 years. I have childhood memories of seeing inverted age pyramids in newspapers.
Understandably, since the fertility rate (or "children per family", the more palatable euphemism) has cratered earlier here, and the financial scheme behind their social systems is reliant on young workers. Which means they are even more fucked than all the other countries with low fertility, so at least they are aware of the problem.
pbmonster
6d ago
And if they don't die, they need to change. The doctors know the stats, at the very least they could/should be frank with their patients.
A friend of mine was told during her first consult with the IVF clinic that a chance of success at "high confidence" would require a number of eggs equal to her age at implantation - so to prepare for 3 rounds of egg retrievals at the bare minimum, and as soon as possible. She got unlucky, and the first round only retrieved about 4, so the number of cycles was immediately upped. When she asked if they couldn't try those 4 first before cycling again, she was advised to not waste time and get the inventory as young/soon as possible, and to expect more setbacks.
Sounds like this lady did a single (more successful) retrieval cycle, and nobody showed her the math.
It's all of those, right? There's women who want children but lack partners; but there's also women who have stable partners and never end up having children anyway; and women who have children, but stop after 1/2 - either because they started to late, or because of lifestyle choices (housing/career/hobbies being in conflict with having a larger family). I suspect each of those groups to be significant. "Conscription" could help with the latter two.
I think there's pragmatic ways. Allow women to delay their non-military national service until they're 25, and wave it if they have children by then. Hell, do the same for men. Allow the women to drop out immediately upon reaching the second trimester while still maintaining their pay. Have the non-military national service use mandatory barracks for unmarried personell, and co-locate those with the military bases that do basic training for the conscripts. Don't actively hinder the inevitable parties to much.
Still, no way this gets you TFR > 2. That requires a pretty radical social change. I suspect making parenthood high status might be the only way.
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