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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?
No. This is the exact issue under discussion.
However, places with less WASPy norms around extended family homes are also not having children at or above replacement. If you and your siblings are, go ahead and talk about that, it could be a useful perspective.
As someone with 4 siblings and who ideally wants 12 children of my own (my father had 11 siblings!) I think I can offer some perspective. Me and my siblings are basically going through the gamut of possibilities, which I find very interesting
My eldest brother moved away, currently works in some sort of research support role, and is part of a poly-amorous relationship. He drank the Blue-aid as deeply as possible, and he has no intentions of ever having children. If pushed he'll say something like "when I can afford it," but he doesn't seem to be too interested in saving up to do so. He takes international vacations, he lives in the core of a big city, and he spends what he makes. He is also perpetually miserable, God knows why.
My second eldest brother is severely physically disabled, and he has no real shot at procreation. He exists by still living in the childhood home, cared for by our mother. Sad, but he does okay. He actually tries his hand at creative projects quite frequently, but he's not particularly capable mentally either (though not retarded.)
My younger brother is the only one of the family who grappled with the challenges to religion and kept the faith, and he is in the process of steadily working himself into a well-paying trade job, buying some land in the middle of no-where, and intends to have a large family with the girlfriend he has had since he was a young teenager.
Then there is my younger sister. She wants to farm, and she does so. By the age of 10 she had convinced her parents to buy her a few dairy goats, which is now a sizable herd with impeccable lineage. She has maintained a rigorous schedule for as long as I remember, and refuses to break it for anything. I don't know what her plans are for children. I don't know if she's considered them. She just wants to farm.
Then there's me. I intended to become a journalist, run away to a foreign country, and experience interesting places and things. Once I learned that the whole field was rotten, discovered I hate working for other people and returned home, I have gradually grown in my desire to have children. I think part of it is being around a place where I have childhood memories. Part of it is knowing that I can bring them into a world where they have a future of something better than [school (which I hated and was worthless) --> college (same) --> Drone job (same).] Part of it may be reconnecting with family history, which I have records of going back a straight 130 years (not just names, but business records, letters, all sorts of things.)
More than anything though, I think my desire just grew as I began to hate life less. All these convoluted schemes seem to be missing the core idea that "people who are miserable and think life is meaningless don't really want to perpetuate that." But that's getting too into my own analysis, which I can share separately if anyone cares.
Thanks for sharing, that's interesting.
My father in law also had (19?) siblings, but had fewer children himself. Would you be giving birth to these children? I've given birth to two children, and it was fine, but I certainly wouldn't want to have 12, even if I were much younger! Maybe if we were a bit younger, four? Some friends are having a third in their mid thirties, and we're wondering if we should too, but not strongly enough to actually go in and remove the birth control. Low hanging fruit for slightly increasing birth rates might be for birth control implants to last two years instead of five. These friends are wondering if they should homeschool, or planning to do that. I was homeschooled, but do not want to, at least for elementary school. My older daughter is much more talkative than me, and I don't want to be either ignoring her or driving her to social events all the time.
It's interesting to hear you're still interested in a large family with a disabled sibling living at home. One motivator for my not wanting a third child is worry over having a baby with health problems as I get older, and not wanting to be in the position of either terminating a pregnancy, or raising a disabled child.
We aren't likely to move to be with extended family. Both sets of grandparents are quite old, and would be willing to help out a moderate amount, but are in places we don't want to live, or would have trouble living, and aren't willing to move. My brother isn't likely to have children, and one brother in law does, but in a place we don't want to move, and we don't get along all that well with his wife.
Neither of us has careers where we feel competent or any kind of career trajectory, and we're wondering what to do about that. I went back to work a month after both births, and it was very stressful for my husband to be at home with an infant for multiple years, so that's also something of a limiting factor. It was also quite stressful to be working full time and breastfeeding as well. We met living in a foreign country, and would like to take the children and live somewhere similar to where we met, but don't really know anything about how to do that as part of a family unit, most opportunities are for single people. The only people I've known who have managed, at least for a while, have been missionaries, or maybe in the State Department (but that didn't seem to be working out so well for their families). Part of our interest is missing life in actual, functional, historical villages, where women watch each other's kids, and they can play on the street with the neighbor kids.
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