These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.

In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.

  • @calypsopub
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    1410 months ago

    At least in the USA and I presume other places, having a child is not only an increasingly insurmountable financial burden, but also society and school are actively anti-discipline to the point you can’t even stop a kid from running wild and dominating the household. I am constantly amazed at parents who seem completely unable to keep their children from running amok and bothering people or destroying things in public, skipping school, eschewing homework, and disrupting class, yelling, punching, and kicking their own parents, etc.

    Why anyone should want to subject themselves to a lifetime of hassle and heartache is the question. I have one kid and he is pretty awesome, but he was raised before the Internet and smartphones became the world’s nannies. If I were of childbearing age, I would get my tubes tied if I could get somebody to do it.

    Not to mention climate change is probably going to doom any child born now to life in a physical and political hellscape.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      1910 months ago

      but also society and school are actively anti-discipline to the point you can’t even stop a kid from running wild and dominating the household

      This is my only grievance with what you said. Wtf are you smoking. Yes, the method of discipline has changed but the only kids running wild and dominating the household are the ones where the parents aren’t doing their damn job.

      Source - am parent of 3 kids under 13 and none of them run wild or dominate my household because a household isn’t a goddamn democracy it’s a dictatorship.

      • @[email protected]
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        fedilink
        010 months ago

        It varies by region or state. Some places you can discipline pretty easily, others your ex will use your any discipline at all as a reason to take your kids away.

        • @HerrBeter
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          210 months ago

          Thou shalt not hit thein offspring

            • @HerrBeter
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              19 months ago

              The way you worded your arguments made it seem like you were implying that it was unjust to not be allowed to send some punches or smacks and such

        • @Fosheze
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          English
          110 months ago

          It sure sounds like you’re beating your children which is not dicipline. It’s abuse.