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So, motteizeans, thought experiment- you’ve been hired by the government of a country you’ve conveniently never noticed before, let’s call it genericland. Genericland has a problem- they have an economy dependent on high tech manufactured exports using highly skilled labor that can’t be imported, it has to be homegrown, and has had a TFR of 1.5 for long enough that the government is seriously worried about a labor crunch taking them from an upper to a middle income economy in 20 years or so. They’ve hired you to raise the birthrate enough to save the economy in the long run, and are willing to spend .5% of GDP to get it to 1.8 or 1% to get it to 2.1. You don’t have reserve currency status, but genericland has excellent credit ratings. The government is dominated by long-running consensus politics and will stick with your recommendations long term. They aren’t concerned with feminism, but are dependent on remaining in American good graces and are well aware that they cannot get away with saudi-level black sheep behavior. The population is homogenous and speaks a language not spoken elsewhere, but 90% are fluent in English. Family norms are perhaps slightly more conservative than PMC American ones, but not by a wide margin. And, of course, because the government wants future factory workers, it’s strongly preferred if the fertility increase doesn’t come from genericland’s underclass and doesn’t care how it affects the elites, it needs to target the working to middle classes.
What do you do?
For myself, all women with white collar jobs get two year’s entitlement to WFH after every childbirth in addition to parental leave, in which they can’t be required in the office more often than 1x week. Renters who get married have access to a government loan to buy the apartment or house they rent, and the government issues loans to couples having a 3rd child to help buy a bigger home. At a fifth child these loans are forgiven and payments pause for three years after a fourth. The ministry of culture is directed to work with generican-language pop culture producers to promote pro-family memes, female pop stars are paid to give interviews and sing about how much they love being a mom. High schools now require ‘family formation’ classes to graduate in which teens assist existing families with childcare(particularly for girls this is strongly associated with wanting kids) and learn social skills for forming relationships, along with some basic home ec. New fathers get an automatic 5% raise regardless of employer. Female civil servants have the option to go part time if raising a child, and genericland’s many factories are enrolled in a subsidy program that pays them to allow female workers with a child under ten to work part time.
Gender segregate k-8 schooling, preferentially hire new mothers(ideally married) and expectant mothers as the girl's teachers and co-locate state sponsored daycare for faculty mothers with the girl schools. All mothers at the school are given significant amounts of breaks to be with their babies and infants during the day comingled among the students. The girl's schools have an elective period where the students can help care for the children with some kind of status attached to it. You want this to be paid well enough to be a very attractive option for young couples that would normally be right on the edge of two income households being viable. Don't skimp on the math and career useful subjects, this is not a sham school, it's just infused with high status instances of maternity while at the same time making motherhood look communal and safe rather than isolating and scary.
Fashion the boys school such that the boys start a year later and are put in a much more competitive upbringing, really go wild with the ability to tailor a school experience that helps young men excel and be prepared to take on responsibility. This part doesn't really matter as much, as long as they enter integrated highschool a little older than their female classmates.
Honestly I don't think this would cost you call that much and I think it would have the largest impact of anything realistic I can imagine.
I am beating my head off the desk here because FAMILIES, DO NONE OF YOU PEOPLE HAVE FAMILIES? AUNTS, COUSINS, RELATIVES LIVING IN THE SAME TOWN WHERE YOU PLAYED WITH A RAKE OF COUSINS AND KNOW ABOUT BABIES BECAUSE PEOPLE IN YOUR FAMILY ARE HAVING BABIES AND GETTING MARRIED AND SO FORTH?
If you lot have created the nightmare scenario of "nobody has siblings, nobody has cousins, nobody lives near their family" then why the hell are you surprised about dropping birth rates?
It's not quite so bad as you say but it is in that direction and that's kind of the thing I'm proposing to help with. My family is scattered across several cities separated by hundreds of miles, I live near some family but it really isn't a critical mass that if we had a little girl she'd be consistently exposed to women going through pregnancy and motherhood. Growing up neighbor kids were more likely to be more playmates than cousins who I would see on most holidays but lived a number of miles away.
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