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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10066 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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Conscripting women to die in wars is gonna be a hard sell, but I can easily imagine a western government conscripting women for the kind of non-military national service that Israel does for its Orthodox women. The young men go to learn and fight wars, while the young women go and work in hospitals and care homes. They could even frame it as feminist!

Of course, conscripting women for motherhood is gonna be tough, given that the birth rate decline is being caused by less coupling, and not by mothers having fewer children. You would also need to conscript men for fatherhood. Basically, you'd need forced marriages, organised by the state.

given that the birth rate decline is being caused by less coupling, and not by mothers having fewer children.

I thought that was precisely what the main problem was: mothers stopping at 1-2 when they should be having 3+.

The gradual long-term decline in fertility from the Baby Boom until things stabilised around 2000, which was manageable in the west and only civilisation-threatening in first-world Asia, was mostly couples who would previously have 3-4 stopping at 2. It appears to be multi-causal, with child seat laws being a surprisingly large contributor (because they mean that if you want 3 kids in the burbs you need 3 child seats, and therefore a minivan). The post-2010 collapse in fertility is mostly due to less coupling, with increasingly conventional wisdom that smartphones and social media are at fault.

Would free minivans to all families with 2 kids help?

I someone gave me a minivan, I would have considered a fourth child, though really getting married two years sooner would have helped more with that.

Couldn't you just... buy a minivan?

If you can afford one. Yes minivans are cheaper than total childcare costs but that's not how families make budgeting decisions.

We have state funded childcare.

Total childcare costs isn't limited to literal daycare expenses. Kids are expensive, even if people exaggerate how much, and you can still use a minivan like the normal car you probably need anyway.

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