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Notes -
I mean, in theory all "throwing money around" programs are just giving back to people money they gave the government. Plus the overhead of all the salaries of all the bureaucrats involved in the process. Being allowed to keep more of what you earned because decades of government policy have made it borderline impossible to afford to raise a family is kind of a solution. But then boiling it back down to "The government pays you to have children" seems to just assume the government owns all the money and we just borrow it.
Fuck. That might actually be more accurate.
God damnit. Nevermind I guess. I had a point I was striving to get to, but I think I just black pilled myself out of it.
Edit: I guess to talk about the cultural aspects of having kids, I was talking about that with my wife a few nights ago. She was lamenting, and I was in a similar situation, that we never grew up around babies. We had vanishingly few, and inconsistent, examples of how to be parents to babies. Our aunts and uncles, mostly white collar, spread to the 4 winds following career and education opportunities. They provided us with vanishingly few cousins that we rarely saw. And zero of those cousins ever had kids of their own. Both our family trees have gone through the shredder of modernity and we're basically all that's left.
Compared to my friends who are more religious, it's night and day. They all have large extended, mostly blue collar, families that they live near and see regularly. Some cousin or sibling is always having a kid, because they have like 20-30 of them. There is almost always a new baby they see at least once a month. The institutional knowledge of how to be a family is always being renewed and passed on.
Not so for myself or my wife, and it's been a struggle. It's had consequences. Namely utterly dashing my hopes of having a larger family. Frankly it's been depressing.
Yes, this is a hugely important aspect of this all that doesn't seem to get much attention. It's clear to me that, generally speaking, the more rare babies and small children are in your vicinity, the more it erodes your inclination to have children of your own, and not just for the reason you mentioned. After all, you know that if you have a child of your own, there'll be vanishingly few children of similar age for him/her to play/socialize with, that playgrounds will be sparsely visited or even empty on occasions etc. It's one reason why I believe that demographic implosion is a self-reinforcing trend that ultimately results in the extinction of the affected genus/population as it existed.
It's not clear to me that being around more kids moves the needle one way or another. As an anecdotal counterpoint, I have 11 nieces and nephews and it hasn't increased my inclination to have children at all.
I think it can go not only either but indeed both ways:
During university years I found myself living in a very strongly communitarian, church-oriented subculture, which made me excited about the idea of having kids of my own one day: I was surrounded by good models of strong families and the kind of "village" that makes raising kids seem not too daunting. Alas, things didn't work out as I might have hoped, due to my poor social skills and atheist (or at least strongly agnostic) views disqualifying me as a partner for essentially my entire peer group.
Latterly, during the pandemic, I had front row seats to my sibling's family; I still love my nephew and niece a great deal but seeing the day-to-day reality of raising a family absent a strongly family-positive community—and the strain it put upon the parent's relationship, which eventually dissolved—makes me now terribly reluctant to consider that path for myself.
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How many kids do you have? What is the sticking point for more kids? An older nanny might be able to help you with some informal child-rearing lessons.
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There really is a Yes Minister quote for every occasion.
Jim - 5 billion for tax cuts, and what do I find? -
Humphrey- What do you find, Prime Minister?
J- The Chancellor opposes me. A great chance to be popular with the voters and he says no. Doesn't that surprise you? H- No.
J- Why doesn't it surprise you?
H- He's advised by the Treasury and they don't believe in giving money back.
J- It's not theirs, it's the taxpayers'!
H- That's one view, it's not the view the Treasury takes
Having said that, I actually agree with the Treasury here, and it I don't think that's cause for despair. After all, without the state there would be no society at all in which one could earn a living.
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