[dgoldstein0]

The economics almost certainly play a role, but I think the better way to think about it is how we economize time too.

if you are chasing a career, putting in 40,50,60 hours a week - how can you take time off to have a kid? who is going to take care of the kid?

Increasingly having kids has gotten more expensive - housing, childcare costs, and general expected investment/supervision of children. In agricultural societies, kids often helped out with the farming; send them to school and they are around less to help. Say that kids can't roam around outdoors unsupervised, and caregivers have to spend even more time watching (older) children. Etc. And as people increasingly move further from where they grew up to chase good jobs, that means they are on average further from their families who would have helped with childcare in previous generations.

The economic realities factor in too - people are waiting longer to get married because they want to date financially stable people, and financial stability is on average taking longer to achieve. But if you had to move to a more expensive city, further from family... that's a recipe for couples where both work and perhaps have to work to make their finances work. Babies have become a luxury item in these higher cost of living places.

if we want more children, we need to make it easier to be a parent. Cheaper / free childcare, better parental leave policies, and cheaper cost of living so that people who want to be stay at home parents can have that option.

[Ntrails]

> Cheaper / free childcare, better parental leave policies, and cheaper cost of living so that people who want to be stay at home parents can have that option.

As GP states, heavily pushing subsidies has not been shown to work.

The one thing we know works is restricting access to birth control - I'd bet good money that ups the birth rate in no time. Leave as an exercise for the reader whether it is a good idea xD

[pastage]

> heavily pushing subsidies has not been shown to work

Subsidies only come into affect after you have children. They can not work alone society has a much greater affect. They work wonders at making parenting possible while being part of the work force. You only get the subsidies when you have children, the question is how you are supposed to feel secure enough to have children.

[acdha]

One thing to remember is that “heavily pushing subsidies” needs to be more comprehensive than it tends to be when you look at the details: people decide to delay kids for many reasons and societies often fail to address all of them – e.g. if you subsidize childcare but still have a work culture which expects long hours or sidelines mothers, the existence of the subsidy lessens the impact but probably doesn’t get too many people to change their answer. It’s fairly common to find reports of gaps in the supports for even the more generous societies which lead to people stopping at 1-2 kids when they might otherwise have wanted more.

These days, the big factors include not having dealt with climate change: parents are being asked to make a big gamble that the future will be better, and having all of the evidence suggest otherwise is a widely-cited deterrent.

[boston_clone]

Let's not speak so airily of forced pregnancies.

[jiggunjer]

Literally what china is doing now

[GoblinSlayer]

I was home alone, it was fine. What do you mean by "kids can't roam around outdoors unsupervised"?

[dgoldstein0]

In the US at least, we've gotten to the point that kids under 10 are rarely trusted to be alone and parents risk neglect charges by leaving them. Even the 10-13 range could be a risk. The problem is if someone calls the cops or social services, enough of those departments will take it seriously that as a parent, you really don't want to risk it.

It's a problem, because it's raised the bar for expected supervision effort, likely far beyond what is really needed.

[makeitdouble]

Depending on where you live, police will be called.

[somenameforme]

Then pass Karen's Law and start fining the people making those calls if made without good reason to believe of imminent or reasonable danger to the child. It not only screws up society, but is a complete waste of resources.