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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”.
You mention being 24, so I was curious if you'd ever seen The Life of Julia. It was heavily criticized at the time for taking a "nanny state will care for me cradle to grave" approach.
Now honestly... in a hypothetical world where all of these items were attained, do you honestly think you'd even want children?
Yes! I think that a world like that would be wonderful, and I would likely have many more children than I plan to have. Maybe have them forever. The life of Julia is a life that had a robust system of safeties designed to help her when she fails and when she suceeds, such as healthcare coverage until she turns 26 to help with sudden medical emergencies and programs like Head Start to protect her from the effects of abusive parents. If any of these government programs actually forced Julia to do something she didn't want to do, I would agree that The Life of Julia promotes a "nanny" state, but nowhere did I see any federal agency or legislation that forced Julia to make a life choice. I see, in fact, Julia has many more choices and freedoms given to her with the strong social safety net I believe those programs provide.
Can you think of any countries in, say, Europe, who have many or all of these policies you say would encourage you to have more children where women actually go and have more children?
I mean, I'm not sure I believe it totally, but I wouldn't totally throw out an argument that the reason why countries in Europe aren't at South Korean-levels of fertility are those programs, and if they had a less robust US-style welfare system, they'd even be lower. Obviously, impossible to prove a negative, but yeah, considering our increase religiosity as a country, etc., if the US had European-style welfare, I could see our TFR being a notch or two higher. Not high enough for natalists, but better overall.
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I am not familiar with countries in Europe, much less their economic policies, so I cannot think of any.
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