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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...
Well, I guess it is a slow day.
I’m in favor of balanced parental leave and related benefits. But I also group them roughly in the category of subsidies, and I thought those didn’t have much effect on fertility.
You might see some effect from rolling back no-fault divorce. I argued before that “really strongly socially enforced monogamy” was fundamentally illiberal, and I’ll stick with that, but it does oppress both sexes equally.
For an even more drastic shift, bring back heavy industry. Women are just as good as men at the service economy. They aren’t so good at hammering steel. Unfortunately, automation and outsourcing makes this an implausible intervention, but if the American economy looked more like 1950, so would the households.
I actually think this is one of those "can't put the genie back in the bottle" situations. If we went back to requiring cause for divorce today I suspect what would not happen is a return to traditional marriage. What would happen instead is marriage rates would crater. My impression is understanding of the downsides of this arrangement are well known and lots of people, women especially, would not be interested in risking it.
Women are not the people you need to convince to get married - men are.
But that said, I don't think "requiring cause for divorce" is really what the trad people want - that's one component of it, but it still wouldn't fix the problems with marriage as it exists now. I think you can make a compelling case for bringing traditional marriage back, but just taking bits from it and the modern equivalent piecemeal seems to me like it could create some horrific outcomes.
Is that true? The research is that men benefit more from marriage and are much, much more likely to remarry if a marriage ends (in death or divorce). I can't find polls for first marriages/singles but I'd be curious how they relate.
How do men benefit more from marriage and what research are you referring to?
Keeping in mind that men are uniquely screwed over by divorce/family courts and that ~80% of divorces are intiated by women (of the top of my head).
Divorces being initiated by women would support the claim that it's not men who need to be convinced to be married. The benefits I was referring to was married men living longer, reporting higher life satisfaction, etc, than single men (the opposite direction was true of married women)
Being screwed over by family courts is only relevant if you're having kids with someone, and in that case being married/not married is irrelevant, as not being married to the mother of the child you are claiming paternity for doesn't release you from child support payments or grant you more visitation rights.
I agree with you on this point
I straight up don't believe this unless you have a source.
Alimony and asset splits can be and often are brutal to the husband even if no kids are involved. Kids just make it worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert
Standard caveat re replication crisis, bad science reporting, etc.
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Or the claim that women are more interested than men both in getting married, and also in getting divorced afterwards? That tracks with stereotypes, at least.
Likewise, pretty sure the divorce courts can screw you over even without kids, and the combination of marriage and kids can lead to worse outcomes from separation than either alone.
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