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The quality contributions roundup has a lot of discussion of fertility. I found it pretty disconcerting to read, since it all seemed to assume that the only way to get women to have kids is to enforce a top down dystopia. This is not my personal experience in my social surroundings★, but of course I live in Israel so I don't count‡.
Anyway, here is my follow-up question:
If you had the ability to set policies that will encourage increased fertility, what policies would you be implement across the board for both men and women simultaneously?
In other words, not "women can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children", but "people of child-bearing age can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children". Or "new parents of children are given twenty additional paid vacation days", or whatever. Are there any such policies you think could actually be effective?
★ if anything what I see is women regretting not being able to have more kids
‡ In Israel, fwiw, having kids is simply by default assumed to be a shared responsibility of men, women, and society. It is expected that men take (government paid) sick days to stay home with sick kids. It is not blinked at for the manager to show up to a meeting remotely with a sick kid in his lap. It is expected that men will leave work early several times a week to pick up kids from school — at least in all the places in Israel I have lived I have seen reasonably close sex splits of the parents at pickup/dropoff. I am not clear on whether or not this is equally the case in America — I don't get that impression, but as my knowledge of America is limited to TV and internet discussions, I could be wrong. But I see fathers at the park supervising their kids all the time, and the internet discourse re America is about men getting assumed to be pedophiles for being around kids... So I assume there must be some difference...
What would I do to make myself have more children? Hmm. At the age of 24, the barriers preventing me from having children with my boyfriend are;
I do not have enough money to afford diapers, much less food for another person, so I would increase the minimum wage to the proper rate it should be, which is $20 an hour. I would, in the same vein, eliminate tipping as a substitute for wages as well to eliminate the hostile tipping environment and poor wages encouraged by my state’s poor labor laws. That would include eliminating all Republicans from my state’s government, as they have opposed all measures to do what is listed above.
I am not confident that, should I approach trying to build a career in my state with a child, that I have protections from corrupt, lazy and immoral business owners who would abuse their position of authority over me to compromise my work/life balance. So, I would replace my state’s labor laws with laws similar if not exactly to California, so that I could, for example, have a lunch break and maternal leave for my post-pregnancy complications.
I cannot afford medical care for myself, much less my children. I suppose with higher wages that would be solved on it’s own, but if not, I would change whatever policies need to be changed to decrease the cost of medical care. I am not too verbose on medical care policies to know what the causes for high costs are and how to solve them.
My social network is dangerous for children, as it consists of social conservatives who will try to shame my children into gender roles and disrespect my choices as a parent, and I would not want to reach out for help from them in an emergency. If I had higher wages, I would not need to work so much and I could spend time developing friendships to replace my network. If not that, reducing the cost of interstate travel so I could move to a state with a locale more suitable to my personality would solve that problem. I am not too sure what policies need to be enacted to solve high-cost interstate travel, as I am not verbose in those policies as well.
Emotionally, me and my boyfriend are recovering from the effects of growing up in an abusive, socially conservative household, and need therapeutic services to confirm we won’t pass our issues to our children. I supposed lowering the cost of therapists falls in the same category as “decrease medical costs”.
I do not believe any of your complaints are relevant because they not only apply, but apply much harder, in countries with high fertility rates.
If anything, a blind adherance to the data would show that the exact opposite of your prescriptions would be useful, if increasing fertility is the only value we're optimizing for. Make people poorer, more conservative and intolerant, add corrupt and dysfunctional governments, remove welfare and social comforts, etc.
EDIT: I should clarify that your complaints may be valid for other reasons, but in terms of increasing fertility, the variables you're suggesting tweaking not only are unrelated but inversely correlated with the desired effect.
EDIT 2: Actually, to avoid being guilty of the same thing I suspect you of, I should clarify that I think you're playing dumb and are putting forth spurious arguments to passive-aggressively poke the bear here.
These are all, like it or not, probably the median opinion among 20-something year old liberals. There's definitely a tension in modern society where prime biological fertility corresponds to the most financially vulnerable and lowest-earning part of a typical career. Its also well known that young healthy people are overcharged for health care in order to prop up the insurance market.
Purely economically speaking, points #1 and #3 are common. But if you read past that, each of the points has an element of "conservativism is the root cause of low fertility", which seems to me like a frustrated parody of "feminism is the root cause of low fertility", something people do unironically believe. I think point #5 in particular stands out as something even the most progressive of progressive would not blame on low fertility rates. "The problem is, religious bigotry such as my parents subjected me to is supressing birth rates" is an argument that is both bizarre on the surface, and one I have never heard anyone make. Even very very anti-religious people will concede social conservatism tends to pump out the babies.
You're thinking too meta. Having a bad relationship with your parents almost certainly makes you less enthusiastic about becoming a parent yourself.
Hm... I think you're being a bit of a quokka here, but let's wait and see. She just concluded a fairly heated debate with @f3zinker in the previous thread and I get the impression she's kinda done with us. Would love to be wrong though.
No, I am not done with ya'll. I just don't know what you mean by "wait and see".
There's a bit of a pattern among left-leaning users who depart here that, before they leave in a huff, they'll start posting provocative inflammatory things that parody the tone and style of the people they're fighting with. @PmMeClassicMemes is a recent example, but unfortunately they deleted their profile so I can't show you.
"Wait and see" means that, if I see you continuing to debate in good faith, I'll know I was wrong and your blaming social conservatives for low fertility rates was a sincere belief rather than a dig at redpillers who blame feminists.
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