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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”.
Sorry, but I can't help but think you're mistaken here - the statistics and science are extremely clear on this point. By encouraging your children to adopt binary gender roles and preventing them from becoming trans or non-binary, they're actually helping to protect your children, rather than making the environment more dangerous. Trans people encounter all sorts of negative outcomes when compared to their cis cohorts, and making sure that your child does not grow up trans is not just going to protect them from those deleterious outcomes, but also save them from the rampant transphobia encountered all through society. You should actually be thanking these social conservatives - the difference in life expectancy, suicide rates, etc for trans people is so stark that keeping your children cis is one of the most powerfully positive things you can do for their life outcomes.
Trans people encounter negative outcomes from social conservatives attempting to enforce a gender binary, so if I wanted to protect my trans children from transphobia, I ought to keep them away from social conservatives, not ko-tow to them. I can do nothing about my children being trans, because it is not a choice. And if my children were not trans, social conservatives would emotionally and verbally abuse them for stepping outside of the gender binary. My sons would grow up misogynistic with little success with women, emotionally closed off from himself, his friends and his family, abusive (see misogyny) and lonely like I have seen every single conservative son of conservative parents turn out as. My daughter would have poor self esteem, be victim to abusive relationships due to that, anger issues and extreme emotional immaturity, like every conservative daughter of a conservative father I have seen.
Just to be clear, are you saying that all conservatives raised in conservative households are abusers/abuse victims based on their gender? This is such a comically uncharitable view(all members of my outgroup are mentally ill and morally repugnant) that I cannot believe you are posting here in good faith.
"My outrgroup are uniformly engaged in a crime" is a position you can definitely hold and argue in good faith. I think all culture wars in history have basically been about that.
I am operating under the assumption that justawoman is a liberal (they have said as much, so I don't think this is being uncharitable) - and that does actually preclude you from making the argument that she just made in good faith. Social conservatism is essentially the norm outside of WEIRD nations, so when she says that all conservatives are mentally ill abusers she's also making some incredibly racially inflammatory and culturally insensitive claims. As someone who has experience with a lot of people from different cultures, I think most of them would find the idea that they don't actually like their culture and have essentially been tricked into not being a western liberal because they're abuse victims deeply offensive. The idea that every single woman who was raised in a traditional buddhist culture has poor self-esteem, anger issues and extreme emotional immaturity is just farcical.
That argument and conclusion absolutely do not match what I see liberals believing and arguing, which is why I expressed my doubt as to that argument being made in good faith and hence asked for clarification.
Every single woman who is raised to believe that they are lesser than others and grows up to believe they are lesser than others for no other reason than their biology has poor self esteem, that is my belief yes. That goes the same for a man. I think that all men and women are equally capable of the same range and rate of thoughts and feelings, and so to be told otherwise and lead to believe otherwise leads to natural misery.
I don't believe you're correct. I have a disability which means that a certain type of feeling is forever closed off to me - my body is imperfect, and as such I am fundamentally incapable of certain perceptions. In my case, to believe that I am not handicapped in this way would actually lead me to greater suffering as I attempted to perform tasks which I am simply congenitally unable to do. Not recognising my own limitations is actually far more dangerous, whereas appreciating and accepting them allows me to account for my limitations and live a more satisfying life within those bounds. Similarly, I think that if I tell a small filipino woman that she is just as capable of lifting heavy weights as an icelandic bodybuilder (or getting to experience what that feels like) then I am actually harming her if she tries to act on that information. There are actual physiological differences between men and women, and a lot of feelings and thoughts are downstream from that.
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