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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20935 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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I do think there are some technological solutions, but many of them have nothing to do with pregnancy. From my perspective as a stay at home dad and parent of 3, in a neighborhood full of kids, I think most parents are accurately estimating the number of kids they can have and then having that many kids.

Shout-out to @HereAndGone2's post below pointing out the difficulties involved in potential surgery options. Throwing out surgery options feels easy, but actually going through with it is generally scary.

I'll go through the list of blockers and how I think Tech is impacting them:

  1. Conception. I've known plenty of couples that have fertility problems. There does however seem to be some kind of "breaking the seal" effect. Where a woman gets pregnant once and then it is much easier to conceive after that. Its stopped very few that I know of. Mostly it slows them down on having an initial kid. Tech - is being used to alleviate this problem already. Don't think you get much delta out of increased tech.
  2. Pregnancy. It absolutely sucks for some women. Worst case scenario its as bad as going through Chemo. Nausea and vomiting in 1st trimester is likely, lingering effects less likely. 3rd trimester is physical discomfort and limited mobility. For working women this means burning a bunch of PTO or sick leave before the baby even arrives. Typically pregnancies seem to be the same level of struggle across multiple kids for one woman. So if you have one really shitty pregancy experience, its likely gonna happen again for other kids. Tech - limited in this area, dangerous to do medical experiments on women with children. Having babies via pods or external wombs is like far future tech that could help a lot.
  3. Birth. As they get older it gets more and more dangerous to have kids. Modern medicine does a hell of a job of keeping them alive, but its still scary as hell for everyone remotely involved. My wife lost one of her childhood friends when she was giving birth (some kind of infection that killed the mother and child). I have multiple friends where the mother had to be taken in for emergency C-sections for various complications. Having kids younger is maybe safer in the sense that having major surgery while younger is safer. But having major surgery is still a base level of dangerous and scary. Tech - already heavily deployed in this area. Modern medicine is really a miracle. We are probably close to maxed out on this.
  4. Transportation. Car seats are a hassle. The number you can fit in a car is way less than the total seats. Lots of cars claim three seats per middle/back row. Only two car seats can fit in a row, even in very large American cars. Car seats as contraception is a known issue. Tech - is decent on this but its mostly a regulatory issue. Car designs are limited by safety concerns. Car seats are required.
  5. 0-6 months child care. Baby is not very mobile. Is very dependent on caregivers for everything. Feeding, clothing, diapers, etc. Tech - mostly still primitive here. Plenty of parents and adults enjoy this part of raising a baby so there aren't really attempts to automate it away. The main difficulty is that it is a 24hr job. A humanoid robot nanny might be really effective here at minimum just to turn it into a 16 hour job instead of 24. Price of them would have to come way down, and safety would be a massive concern.
  6. 0.5 - 3 years child care. Kid is mobile, still in diapers for most or all of this time. Will start communicating, but communication is not super useful. Tech - this is where things get interesting. I think the biggest innovation in recent years has been remote work. This is a good age where you can set the kid down in a play area they can have fun with toys and entertain themselves to some extent (or sibilings around the same age can entertain each other). They need periodic supervision and help with meals and diapers. Some work can get done in those periods, maybe half as much as an unencumbered adult. But we aren't well setup to have employees doing 4 hours of money work in an 8 hour time period. Or you burn out the parent and have them do 8hr of money work and 8hr of parenting work in a 16 hour period. The latter is a hurdle and leads to less kids, the former is not generally available. Cheaper gadgets and devices that can entertain the kids helps a little. Cheaper and easier meal prep helps.
  7. 4-6 years child care. Out of diapers, more independant, but also with growing social needs. pre-school and day care costs a lot of money Tech - mostly still primitive here. Some help from internet stuff that has made coordination and finding childcare for this age easier. AI humanoid robots that could serve as guardians would be helpful. But there is also a significant contingent of adults that like kids in this age range. Mostly women of course, but certainly enough of them that the wages for this job have been driven into the dirt.
  8. Older kid transportation. Kids start having a bunch of activities all over the place that they need to get to. With more kids they are also in more locations. I spend some activity days driving for 2 hours. Nothing is more than 10 miles away from my house. Traffic is not great, but even if it was gone that might only shave off thirty minutes. Tech - 19th century tech, the solution is just drive everywhere. Self driving cars might help, but usually a parent still need to accompany the kids up into the mid teens. Possibly some version of vr tech might help here (so they don't have to go anywhere and can do activities at home). But so would having larger homes.
  9. Bureaucracy and existing. Just having your kid exist on paper is a challenge. Adults have this challenge too. Things to sign up for, accounts to manage, healthcare signup stuff, etc. If you love filling out forms this is great, for everyone else it sucks. Tech online signup has made a lot of life way easier, but its also made it easier for everyone to expect more information, more release forms etc etc. LLM AI agents seem like they might be a solution, but I think it will be the same as the internet, they won't lower the burden on the parents, they will just make organizations more comfortable asking for more stuff up until the burden on the parents is similar.
  10. Everything and everyone else. This list is getting too long, but this is really important. Parents are a subset of everyone. If you make life easier for everyone you also make it easier for parents. Especially when there are time savings. tech - Delivery services are great. Grocery delivery is amazing. Online shopping is super easy. Remote work reducing commutes has been awesome.

I'll just end with the general observation that if you give parents more money but there aren't areas where they can trade money for more time then the money doesn't help them. As a single person you might think of money as the incentive in and of itself. But the calculations change a bit when you are a parent. Money is fully a means to an end. The ends being providing childcare, and enjoying your children. Technology that allows for that tradeoff is good. Technology that cheapens that tradeoff rate is great. Technology that adds a new time burden as part of the rat race or through regulation is terrible.

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