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If you were going to increase the birth rate how would you do it?
There's lots of suggestions, most of them bad. For example, Scandinavian countries have been touted as "doing it right" by offering generous perks to families such as paid family leave. But these efforts, despite outrageous costs, have done little or nothing to stem the falling birth rate. Sweden's fertility rate is a dismal 1.66 as of 2020, and if trends hold, the rate among ethnic Swedes is far lower.
I think that, like everything, deciding to marry and have a family comes down to status.
Mongolia is a rare country that has managed to increase its fertility rate over the last 20 years, from about 2.1 children per women in 2004, to about 2.7 today. This feat is more impressive considering the declines experienced worldwide during the same period. It's doubly impressive considering the fertility rate in neighboring Inner Mongolia (China) is just 1.06!
What is Mongolia doing right? Apparently, they are raising the status of mothers by giving them special recognition and status.
https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1827418468813017441
In Georgia (the country), something similar happened when an Orthodox patriarch started giving special attention to mothers with 3 children:
https://x.com/JohannKurtz/status/1827070216716874191
Now, raising the status of mothers is more easily said than done. But I think it's possible, especially in countries with a high degree of social cohesion like in East Asia. In Europe, a figure like the King of Netherlands could personally meet and reward mothers. In the United States, of course, this sort of thing would be fraught as any suggestion coming from the right might backfire due to signalling. Witness the grim specter of the vasectomy and abortion trucks at the DNC. But the first step to fixing a problem is to adequately diagnose the cause. To me, the status explanation is more compelling (and fixable) than any other suggestion I've seen.
I think status, at the societal level, is a chicken and egg problem. I'll use a sort of related historical example.
Through the 1960s and maybe 1970s, if a family had a son decide to become a priest, there was a good chance it would be met with esteem in the community. An honorable decision informed by faith seen as something to be respected if not quite emulated (after all, we want grandkids). Flash forward to today, and outside of religious sub-communities, it's probably looked at as an extreme personal journey decision. "Oh, wow, the Johnson boy went to the seminary." Community pillar? Not really. Invited to speak at the High School? Definitely not. Probably awkwardly danced around at supermarket aisle run-ins.
Why the change? This one's pretty obvious. Religiosity in America has declined precipitously since the 1960s/1970s. The society level value (and, therefore, status) has evaporated. It's not longer a "worthwhile'' decision.
Maternity is different because it's never (well, I hope) going to decline by 30-40% in one or two generations. Even in PMC circles today that make a lot of noise about not having children for environmental reasons, a public pregnancy announcement is always met with excitement (side note: if the pregnancy isn't announced publicly, there's a decent chance it isn't going to come to term for one reason or another. That's a different post). It's never going to be "oh, wow, really?" weird to be a mother.
That being the case, I'd gesture at trying to status boost a lot of maternity adjacent things - kids, first of all. But also "homemaking" pursuits, I suppose. I think the fundamental tension, however, is between women-in-relation-to-children and women-in-their-own-right. Is it possible to applaud a woman for her personal and professional accomplishments? Sure! But is this done at the expense of praise for family and maternal pursuits? The kneejerk reaction may be "No, of course not! We can praise a woman for being an accomplished scientist and a Mom!" ... but if you walk through the incentives in a hyper-individualistic society, it gets complicated and uncomfortable. As a quick example - I bet people know the best player on their favor sports team immediately, but can they name the official captains? (There's a bit of a hack in that, in a lot of cases, these individuals are one in the same, but the point still stands).
If you want to raise the status of a role that is fundamentally non-individualistic, you have to raise the status of communal accomplishment as a category in a society. I have no idea how to begin doing that in the west today.
Not to be a mother, no, but in many circles, it already is to be a mother of more than two or at most three children. Several friends of mine have expressed frustration at the extremely negative reaction they received—even from family members!—when they announced they were expecting child four or five. Most of these friends also have stories of being scolded by strangers at Costco for being so stupid or selfish to have so many kids. I’m not so fortunate as to have so many kids myself, but I’ve repeatedly witnessed a bizarre resentment from even generally pro-natal folks when discussing these families.
When society looks so completely askance at anyone who has more than two kids, is it any wonder that we can’t keep the birth rate above replacement?
Thanks for this, it's a useful demonstration of revealed preference and attitudes in folks who will vocalize their support for "families" while demonstrating their true feelings later on.
These strangers are monstrous and evil.
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