[roenxi]

The average woman in a Scandinavian country has 1.6 kids. That suggests it is quite common. Going by averages, literally every woman has a child, and half the men.

In actual practice there will be particularly fertile women that have more children and their childcare needs will be draining resources from others, making it harder for them to form families.

I should stress that I don't think childcare costs are the big driver of low fertility. But to say that resource reallocation is going to help is a bit ... I mean, where are these resources going to come from? Everyone was already putting their resources towards their families, diverting money away from those families is the engine that powers the state. That is where the soldiers come from, the welfare comes from, all the labour, where the goods get produced, etc. We'd be asking them to stop caring for their families and instead spend all day caring for their families but according to how the government wants instead of what they actually think they need. You can't take from them, give it back to them and expect them to have more. They aren't even going to have the same.