A child might cost its parents somewhere beyond $200k, the parents only get a tiny fraction of this from the state.
And the public paying for education is not a subsidy for parents in my view, but an investment into the children, i.e. future taxpayers (=> the parents don't really gain from that).
I think you are arguing inconsistently here. You can't claim at the same time that we should recognize all of the benefits of children (in their adulthood) and at the same time not recognize the cost to society to educate them. It's a subsidy, a wise subsidy and money well spent, but it's still a cost.
My point is: Society itself recoups the investment into education very easily (from competent taxpaying workers some years later), but the main cost of raising children is paid by parents, and they don't get back anything (economically).
All the benefits that used to be there (adolescents helping with farm/work, children taking care of aging parents) became more and more irrelevant, but general costs of raising children (to parents) have not decreased at all (and "reputational" cost of just skipping parenthood is at rock bottom, too, so that is no longer pushing prospective parents towards economically irrational decisions, either).
Not necessarily. It's possible that no amount of money would solve this problem. Birth control inherently broke the previously built evolutionary mechanism that insured that the extremely strong built in desire for sex would result in kids. That's no longer the case, and a lot of people would decide to not have kids even if money were no object.
As you point out, Finland famously has incredible family support, and also a birth rate under 1.3.
This sounds extremely plausible to me, but I would be very careful about conclusions from such studies, because I believe the general expectations of society as a whole regarding child-raising matter a lot and you can't easily quantify that.
Anecdotally, when my grandmother did not birth a child for two consecutive years in her thirties the village priest came to investigate (!!). Expectations have shifted massively since, and the single/dink lifestyle is way more "acceptable" now.
I know a big factor in Korea is social relationships between the genders (expectations about housework, childcare, etc). The current arrangements are not attractive to many women.
not much. the reality is that women still take a hit on their potential careers and income, and are expected to do most of the childcare work. another problem that i see not only in germany is that men are not trusted with children or being capable of doing housework.
also on the attractiveness for women, germany being less traditional means that more women are willing to break traditions, so even if the situation there is better for them, women are still less interested, which means the effect in the end is the same.
A child might cost its parents somewhere beyond $200k, the parents only get a tiny fraction of this from the state.
And the public paying for education is not a subsidy for parents in my view, but an investment into the children, i.e. future taxpayers (=> the parents don't really gain from that).