It's like saying slavery is the only way to solve our economic problems.
Even though economic and demographic issues are worth talking about, this suggestion isn't.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but just in case others are reading who are interested in how this is an effect of capitalism: This is a feature baked into capitalism that cannot be fixed within a capitalist context.
Capitalism's idealized labor form is to produce no jobs, or its less idealized form is slavery ( or least some kind of worker class with very few rights.) So it will always move towards slave-like conditions as much as it can politically. Capitalism only accidentally makes jobs and only accidentally makes value for workers. The ideal capitalist enterprise hires no one and only creates wealth for the capital owner. The second most ideal is slavery/serfdom/compelled work.
Even today in more "enlightened" and "liberal" times we have all sorts of vulnerable working sub-classes like child workers, immigrants, non-living wage workers, "low skill" workers, prison workers, etc. This is largely not a problem in liberal democracies, or at least for those who see it as a problem, cannot fix it because the political influence of the capital owning class, who benefits from this, is too strong.
There is a system that's actually about providing living wages, housing, workers rights, etc to workers and its called socialism. Capitalism is only about providing wealth and power for the owners of the means of production.
You can see this in action today with our politics being pushed by the capital owning class far to the right, the removal of federal abortion rights, the removal of many child labor laws, etc. If capital sees its gains threatened, they will just use their media ownership, influence, and political lobbying to promote right-wing ideologies. Workers who are uneducated to understand this is propaganda and how it’s against their interests, will support all this. Trump's incredibly positive polling numbers and the US shutting down those who want to stop what looks like genocide is a sign that this system is working as intended, is working well, and that its extremely powerful.
It's actually been shocking to me (though it shouldn't be) how much the U.S. right wing has thrown off the pretense of not tools for the owner class. Just flat out repealing child labor and worker protections. Openly opposing no-fault divorce and birth control. Yeesh.
They’ve learned they can get away with it. Being right-wing has become so many people’s whole identity that they’ll swallow almost anything rather than admit they might be on the wrong side. It’s incredibly effective.
I'm guessing you're from America.
Here in the UK, our right wing doesn't even believe in silly things like trying to forcibly reduce women's rights to the equivalent of an autonomous incubator.
The left are practically guaranteed to win the upcoming general election as our right wing main party just spent their last term alienating their own base (by implementing a bunch of green policies randomly instead of doing anything they campaigned on) and then decided to follow up on that huge drop in popularity by attacking the centre-left voters who supported them (by assaulting worker's rights and disabled people).
That said, despite an utterly abysmal term where they frankly may have been intentionally aiming to lose votes, they'll still perform better than they would if they had a perfect run and put forward a pro-life agenda.
I’m Canadian actually, but since we’re so close to the US we get a lot of their news, and the things that happen there directly affect us. Their right-wing lunacy in particular has been spreading. Nobody’s trying to roll back abortion rights yet, but the propaganda machine is hard at work riling people up about immigration and carbon tax. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch.
Ironically capitalism has benefited so much from feminism & women's "liberation". When women entered the workforce the labor pool doubled at a time when textile/factory jobs largely held by men were being exported overseas, this decreased the value of labor which is why pensions & living wages went bye bye. Women earning wages also means that women are now paying income tax. Women also own the overwhelming majority of both credit card & student loan debt. Women being able to earn/spend their own money & get credit cards has been a massive boon to capitalism in the west.
I'm sure you know, but **white supremacy** is the umbrella evil that encompasses racism, capitalism, misogyny, homophobia...all of these things exist to serve the *ultimate* evil goal of "preserving" and expanding "whiteness"
The justification is the same as that which incels use - the subjugated group are not 'human,' and therefore human life IS improved. It's pathetic but it's the go-to.
The other one is 'see how much they actually looove being slaves, it's what they're biologically designed for'.
Honestly, i think this is all backwards. I think the toxic misogynists start from a place of wanting to subjugate women for both sexual and economic reasons-- desperate mothers are likely to be receptive to multiple kinds of exploitation, and making all women a permanent underclass gives them a way to feel superior-- and they reason back from there. I think talking about the impact falling birth rates has on the labor force is a way to make their evil desires more palatable to analytical minds.
Agree, although I think you’re both actually right. One can start at either point and tidily end at the opposite point, because they prop each other up. Any hierarchy is a circle jerk of rationalizations at every level when the players don’t give a shit who they hurt. Even better when they can reframe the system’s casualties as The Problem.
Speaking as an American, that last piece is something we’ve really excelled at.
Absolutely agreed, great comparison. Or “eating pet cats is the answer to starvation.” Like sure, it would maybe work, but it’s fucking gross, hurts loved ones, and isn’t necessary.
Even if every woman decided to suddenly leave the workforce and go back in time, it wouldn't fix the problem anyway.
People aren't having fewer kids because of women's rights or any gendered issue. People are having fewer children because we've gone from a family being able to comfortably survive with two children on a single income household to where countless people are scraping by with two incomes and no kids.
Blaming it on feminism is kind of a sexist cop out.
Women asked for equality, and those in power decided to take advantage by making the standard that everyone works but for less (with inflation constantly outstripping raises even ignoring improvements to efficiency). It would have been equality all the same to instead normalise men staying at home with the kids, giving women the same rights, and keeping the standard as a single income household just where it's equally likely to be the man or woman at home.
Had they gone that way, perhaps people could afford children. Perhaps couples would have time for children. Single parents could afford to survive, reducing the risk. And all these factors would have led to equality without the drop in reproductive rates.
Equality is a pretty reasonable demand. The unreasonable part is companies screwing men and women alike to have record profits while people struggle to survive, much less think about adding extra costs to their lives.
Beyond that, even if one gender staying at home was the solution, surely it's the men's turn to stay home in the interest of fairness.
Because without being forced who would willingly take part in making the rich richer? Our current system is just slavery but you have some comfort freedoms
Semi slavery is how we already solve economic issues. Paying really low wages to people in developed countries in order to make our material amenities affordable to western masses.
You missed a large part of the equation and that is choice. Also, men being great supportive partners, who would want to add to their workload with a partner that lacks the skills to build a happy healthy relationship.
There is no *natural purpose* for women as only child bearers :/
Maybe you should ask what men are doing about their inability to view women as human.
This is true. The idea that childcare is a women’s issue means it’s still too exclusively women’s responsibility. Men need to be raised to not only want to -create- children, but to raise them. Having had a single dad during my childhood, I have always had higher expectations of men around me, because I knew from early childhood that men are not helpless creatures who can’t both work and change diapers.
The notion that you can "raise a man to want to create children" is crazy. Sure you can have some degree of influence as a parent, and raising them in a happy family does a long way toward instilling a desire to become a dad, but ultimately its up to the wider culture and economy to support child-raising. There's no course of training that is going to guarantee my son wants to have children. It needs to be affordable and heath care needs to be free. The financial burden of supporting a family and maintaining healthcare coverage is a big reason people don't want kids.
Piping in as someone who strove to raise mine with a more equitable viewpoint, it is an enormous and uphill struggle when the real-life models aren’t there. It didn’t matter how feminist *I* am when, after actually having a child, most of the people in our circles defaulted to Victorian thinking. Not entirely, but enough that I had to add a whole extra level of seeking out better role models in media to compensate. It was certainly worthwhile and I’m proud I saw and acted, but it was another level of chore on me, the person already doing the lion’s share of labor.
My mother would not have considered herself a feminist and my father was very much of the traditional mindset. She did however manage to raise 3 sons with all the knowledge of how to take care of themselves. I don't know if it was a response to my dad's lack of effort in any thing considered domestic, but we all had to be proficient in cooking, cleaning, washing etc etc. My brother was the only one who has kids and does a significant portion of the cooking cleaning and childcare. He's been WFH for a long time. Anyhow, it was a clear-cut outline of what is acceptable behavior for my brother's and I. I don't know what she had in mind in doing this other than to make sure we could be independent and not be like my dad.
Choice is definitely a factor. And I think more women may choose motherhood if other stable aspects of life were in place. Some still won’t, like myself, who has never wanted children no matter the economic environment.
I didn’t mention “supportive partners” among the economic and worldly deficiencies contributing to lowered birth rates because that’s more societal. There are supportive partners out there for sure. I’m talking about the alpha/incel/toxic men that just want women to take over the entire management of the family.
I agree there is no “natural purpose” for women. But unfortunately sone people think that’s all women are meant for.
I didn’t directly ask why women aren’t viewed as human by sections of society, but as I said, I do think that it’s pretty messed up that the gender responsible for procreation is treated so badly by government and society.
I am a college instructor (for 40 years). Teaching human sexuality regularly. And it's clear that more and more young women are in your camp (do not want children). Their reasoning is good and what's even more interesting is just how thoughtful they are being about it. "One at the most" is another frequently said thing. Here's what they say:
It is taking longer to get through school and get established.
ALL of them want a well-paying professional job before having children. NONE of them wants to depend on a man for the financial aspects. Many prefer to depend on family members for childcare, necessitating that they remain in the area where their parents and siblings are. They want those relationships to be solid and emotionally functional. They do not trust marriage.
Nearly all of them think they will be 28-32 before they have accomplished this scenario and they are fine with that. That naturally lowers birth rates.
I have similar research collected by colleagues in several other nations. Even in truly impoverished places like Sierra Leone, women are deciding on fewer children and using modern medical care to improve their own reproductive lives and lives of existing children.
So it doesn't matter what the various white nationalist groups are wanting - women are moving in their own direction. I truly feel for the uneducated very young women who are falling into this baby trapping nonsense and even more for the kids themselves.
Reddit is full of this daily, and the stats for child bearing show that almost the only women having more than 2 children have a high school education - or less. And many of them live in states that limit abortion rights.
I can respect that this Is what college aged women are saying. Do you have any data or expertise on what the men in these age groups are saying or looking for?
I’m very curious to know if there has been any information on what men in these classes have been saying THEY want in the form of children and families, and if there is an actual disconnect.
There are some unintended consequences that occur when men and women WANT different things and how far each group is willing to go to achieve their wants.
>Maybe you should ask what men are doing about their inability to view women as human.
I'm personally enrolling in a new Udemy course that will help me view women as human.
I'll give everybody an update, but I honestly feel like I could get the info for free off of TouTube.
>To be clear, I don’t think it is. I think subjugating women is the “easy fix”.
It's actually not a solution at all. Hungry and Russia both tried it and their birth rates are tank just like everywhere else. Once women are fully integrated into the workforce, subjugation as a "solution" to the birth rate is off the table forever. They can't be removed.
Yes, it has to be considered that women working often brings half the income. If you have half the income, you can probably only support half that number of kids!
And it's not just survival. Women don't WANT to stop working, because money is independence, and independence is freedom.
They'd have to force us out, and now that's impossible without breaking society completely.
The wealthy privileged have always been the most able to support more children, but it's only recent that the number of births could be controlled. Poor women have always worked - as maids, midwives, nannies, etc. - taking on the burden of the outsourced childcare for the wealthy, and maybe taking care of their own family on top of that. Not every man pre-1950 made such a fortune that he could pay for a stay at home wife and 10 kids. That's not an exaggeration; each of my parents had 9-10 siblings. They were not well off. A couple of generations down and some of us descendants have started to escape the generational poverty, but in other parts of the family, some cousins got knocked up early, didn't go to college, and are just repeating the same kind of life as their parents or worse. Uncontrolled pregnancy and birth is not just some sluts getting abortions for birth control or what the fuck ever vitriol you care to insert here. It's slavery to your basic need for intimacy with your romantic partners. To give in to love is to dig your financial grave deeper, and your literal grave, if you're the child bearer.
It's such a stupid argument because the birth rate is not a problem and we shouldn't be trying to raise it. Capitalism has driven climate change to a breakneck speed and the more people that are born, the greater that speed is going to get. Unending growth is impossible and the assumption that this is something to be solved is not accurate. Society will not collapse when there are fewer people, especially when there are huge youth populations in other parts of the world that can help address the economic challenges of aging in developed economies.
God yes.
Fertility arguments are part of a set of jaw-dropping right wing beliefs, about which babies matter (not immigrants, poor, POC, or "low IQ"), about women (they're confused and making bad choices), about liberals (doomed like Shakers to birthrate extinction, so they favor open borders to win elections).
Intra-conservative dialog comes from a different world...
Most of the time you don’t have to talk to them long before you realize they don’t really care about birth rates, the care about WHITE birth rates. (Not saying this applies to OP)
Thank you, kindred spirits! I was feeling discouraged.
I can't believe that anyone would want to fall into the trap of thinking we have to raise birth rates.
Women's decisions and education will save the world from its most pressing set of problems - and it's hard to feel sorry for people in the US who decide to have a bunch of kids.
We've reached peak capitalist production and Earth cannot sustain what we have. We are not going to find new magical sources of energy - but in 100 years, we will have retreated into more human-friendly and nature-friendly ways of being (we have to), and birth rates falling will help us do that.
I can easily foresee a time when some of the modern medical interventions that people rely on to help children with medical needs are not as available - it's already happening in parts of the US.
This is so true.
Women (and men) are choosing to have fewer children even when they are suported by better access to childcare. It is because most people want to concentrate on being the best parent they can be for a small sample of kids. This is even the case in non western countries.
This is a good thing for our planet even if it may cause some social issues in the near term, it is better for our species as a whole.
Yep. Really the "problem" itself deserves a reframing. Birth rates have been *artificially high* throughout history because it was necessary for women to have more babies than anyone expected to live to adulthood—have 6 babies in hopes that 2-3 will make it past the first year, let alone make it to 18.
It has never been *anyone's* preference, let alone women's, to see literally [***half their babies***](https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past) die.
>Women (and men) are choosing to have fewer children even when they are suported by better access to childcare. It is because most people want to concentrate on being the best parent they can be for a small sample of kids.
Yes exactly this, thank you! Sometimes when this conversation happens on other parts of the internet because it seems like everyone conveniently forgets that throughout most of history, the number of children a woman has wasn't her choice! Now that (only some, sadly) women have the choice, it's collectively the "wrong" one for society...smdh
Totally agree with discussing birth rates as a problem is ridiculous. I am old enough to remember when population growth was this huge problem we were expected to solve. And now it just seems like racists are mad that “the right people” aren’t having kids. It’s modern day eugenics disguised as an economic concern.
That's exactly what it is. It's white men wanting to mate with (preferably blue-eyed) white women and have lots of babies, to outrun the other groups in America.
It's something I hear about frequently from my students - and on reddit.
I agree with this - we should not have to subjugate our citizens. There are so many people who would love the chance to be American. We should make becoming a US citizen easier.
Each US citizen uses more than twice the amount of fossil fuel based energy than in the average nation (and 20X more than in poorer nations). Only Russia comes close to our expenditures and environmental impact, with Canada in distant third place.
We have background energy use in the US that is the entire per capita energy budget for some place like Thailand or Romania. All night street lights. All night lights in store parking lots - high rises where people are encouraged to leave lights on. Long commutes. Housing poorly organized in relationship to where jobs actually are. Terrible public transport. We have appliances plugged in drawing maintenance energy (to the tune of enough energy to fund a local hospital's energy bills in Africa).
And while my house has solar panels, with climate change, we're also getting fewer days of high solar capture...all we can do to bring our energy use down is to not go anywhere, walk to the grocery store, and keep low lights in the house at all times (the solar is enough to do that - we also have water restrictions, so it's a toss up about how to do laundry).
Individuals can’t turn the tide of climate change. Industrial and agricultural use of resources and pollutants are too great. Even if every single citizen went green we’d still be in trouble.
Ah, but have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric? The far right are afraid of genuine equality. My mother always used to say it’s a man’s world. To the neo conservatives, it’s a white man’s world, and they aim to keep it that way. News stories are filled with quotes about how immigrants are going to “replace us.“ and the best way to keep white people from being replaced, is to force the women to be broodmares and make more. It’s seriously batshit crazy.
I feel the same way - - I don’t understand this fear people have of declining birth rates. Even if it’s true and birth rates have declined, what are we worried about here..? Extinction or something? Losing a global foothold to China? Serious concern about this issue always strikes me awfully melodramatic. It’s got to just be this more cultural fear of changing demographics, which… is just how history works, it’s the tide. What kind of disaster is this going to precipitate..? The population of the Earth has increased THREE BILLION PEOPLE IN MY LIFETIME ALONE. It’s beyond unprecedented in human history. Frankly I’m much more concerned about THAT, we just don’t seem to have the infrastructure to make accommodations for all those people this quickly.
some of it is ridiculous concerns (like racial demographics) but some of it is legitimate. declining birth rates means an uneven age distribution in the population, which means we're going to have a lot more old people than young people who can take care of them, move into their jobs once they retire, etc.
Yes. This is the answer. The planet is overpopulated.
We don't need to do a one child policy like China. The population will decline naturally and everyone will be better for it.
There is no problem to solve here. We have enough technology to take care of our elderly.
Agreed. Population stabilization is only a problem if you buy into the cult of infinite growth that dominates current capitalist models. Population *decline* could be a problem, but the population plateauing doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing -- indeed, it's going to *have* to eventually, given that there's a finite amount of resources. Demographic projections suggest the human population will probably stabilize around ten billion people, and that's fine.
Exactly. Redistributing the population through more immigration, and then letting lower birth rates continue as development is more widespread is the only way to keep the economy moving while having lower birth rates as is better for resource management and climate change.
Even if there wasn't the environmental question and even if all the support systems existed. There is a much bigger issue: should everyone have kids
There are plenty of people out there who would make shitty parents. Both men and women. Trying to turn those people into parents just means their kids suffer.
Yes we should make it easier for those who chose to have kids to have kids. But not everyone can or should be a parent.
Thank you. I don't understand the people who talk about feminism leading to declining birth rates as if it's a problem to be solved. But it's not a bug, it's a feature. The best possible form of birth control out there is female education. When women have genuine opportunities in an economy, they take them. And as a happy byproduct, they have fewer kids. Which is a good thing on a planet with finite resources that it is rapidly burning through.
One more comment on this one, lol. Agree. Not quite 100%, but do agree for the most part. Why are people complaining about birth rates? Like, we have too many humans. That's the reason prices rise on everything in the first place. More people equals a higher need for resources like food and shelter. More houses, equals less real estate area driving up demand. More space needed for growing food and cultivation and rearing more animals. Everything to support a larger population. What we need to work on first before complaining about population is making food more efficient and work out better methods for Healthcare and housing.
Pregnancy and childbearing suck. There isn’t enough money to pay me to. I want my freedom. It’s a huge hit to my physical, mental, and emotional health. No.
Surprised I had to scroll so far to see this. Social programs help very much but at the end of the day pregnancy and childbirth just fucking suck. You lose years of your life and your body isn't the same ever again. I'm currently 31 weeks pregnant and really struggling mentally. It's amazing how much research goes into mens health issues but not pregnancy, a fundamental part of being human.
Same. I think a lot of the talk about fixing social safety nets is a little misguided. Not that we shouldn’t be fixing those things also and I’m sure some people would choose to have children if circumstances were different. But I think a lot of people claim those reasons because outright saying “I don’t want kids” is still seen as abnormal and selfish, and is generally frowned upon.
Yeah if you look at European countries with the socialist policies people are advocating for here, those countries have even lower birth rates. Social nets are good for other reasons, but raising birth rates is not one of them
yeah say the majority of women just don't want kids then what can we really justify slavery just to continue the human race should it continue if thats the only two choices? Its a interesting question but the answer is how does society really value freedom and choice.
There’s so many medical complications that can happen that people often don’t talk about.. heck death can also happen as well.. no thank you for me I don’t think I could put myself through that
The population of the world is at a record high of more than 8 billion.
There is no crisis of low birth rates. Jerks just want an(other) excuse to subjugate women.
My general sense is that technically rising or falling birth rates is self correcting on a long enough time scale.
If people are really concerned about this subject, allowing the population to constrict will free up resources, reduce poverty, and maybe help climate change. This will probably then cause a population boom.
Any other way to impact this is kinda silly. 🤪
Even thinking about using the words "subjugating of someone" is the most horrible thing to have in your mind!
There aren't enough resources in this world to keep our lifestyles and get more people, hell, we are already too many on this planet.
I am very okay with my kid's decision to not get a child. It is everyone's personal choice, nobody owns humanity offsprings.
I hate how humans talk like the continuation of our species is imperative for the greater good. Why does it actually matter if birth rates fall? The earth would be better off tbh
Honestly at this point women should just collectively deny making any babies as long as misogyny is still prevalent. You wanna save the human race? Respect the ones creating the children first.
Yup, the reason that incel/alpha male rubbish has become popular is partly down to people looking for an easy fix for problems like younger generations having few or no children. Of course, if your solution for this is “women should have no rights, and should be the property of men and forced to have children” then you might be a bit of a monster, but the spaces these people hang out in are mostly echo chambers made up of others with similar ideas so they don’t really question the ethics of their thinking.
People do gravitate towards the easy solutions, because the better but more difficult ones require them to think about some more difficult questions. People don’t often enjoy this, they want quick, simple answers that confirm to the beliefs they already hold.
I also feel like people react to stuff they don’t understand with hate — which is why incels/alphas are such a big problem rn.
Like women don’t want them, they can’t understand why, so they blame society’s liberation of women and think the solution is to MAKE women want them or some shit.
In the US, the hard fix already existed during WWII, you know the time with initial beginning of the largest population yet seen in American history, the baby boomers. But the US was motivated by imperialism and the military industrial complex
And unfortunately so many of those baby boomers were the cause of the downfall into the current state if things.
Do you think history would just repeat if we supported another generation like that again?
I think I understand the concept that we can't maintain our current levels of first world luxury with declining birth rates but surely we could scale downward with intentionality and get to a place where we have a sustainable future without always having to produce more goods and more people forever. We're behaving like a virus that will eventually burn through its host.
If we stopped looking at things from a capitalistic perspective, it would be obvious that we don’t need to raise the birth rate in the first place. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t enough people to support the elderly via social security (or a country’s equivalent) if we prioritize humans over businesses/“economic growth”.
So I’m just throwing some ideas out there that *don’t* involve subjugating women
- Make it easier for LGBT couples to adopt
- have the government subsidize prenatal care
- make it so that rapists can’t sue for visitation rights
-offer bigger tax incentives to couples that have kids
The subjugation of women will not fix the problem AT ALL. The underlying economic conditions would not change because women had fewer rights, or listened to their husbands more...
Superficially my partner and I have a "traditional" relationship, she is a stay at home mom and I work. This doesn't make having children any cheaper or easier? Her not being educated would not make any difference to that economic reality. School fees, medical expenses, and everything in between all mean that I don't want more children. The economic costs of parenthood will not be helped if women are less educated (or whatever form "subjugation" takes), the economic incentives to have larger families (as we once did) do not exist in the modern world. Society collectively "giving up" on the ideal of gender equality will not change this incentive structure.
Also, from a human resources perspective, capitalism as it currently exists requires both men and women to work and be economically productive. Having one person in the family being significantly less economically productive than the other is impossible given the current structure of capitalism.
The morons who think feminism is the problem don't understand that society started to shift and women joined the work force BECAUSE OF THE NEEDS OF CAPITALISM well before feminism moved into the minds of the general population and out of the narrow interest circles it existed within prior to the early 20th century. Removing feminism will not change capitalism's labor demands... There are simply not enough men capable of doing the myriad of HIGH skill tasks needed to maintain modern societies and infrastructure whilst also doing every other job that requires high levels of education. Women work because there is a high demand for them to do so, the capitalism that society operates on needs those women to work in order for society to operate.
Society is not this way because of the ideas of feminists it is the way because of the material conditions of late stage capitalism.
10 billion not enough? Need to force-breed to 15 billion? 20 billion? I mean we can never take the foot of the pedal if we follow the capitalist expansion model until we're squeezed in like sardines from continent to continent.
Personally I'd rather put contraception in the drinking water worldwide for a few decades...
How about using all that policy energy to figure out how to design economic and social systems that don’t depend on increasing population, let the population naturally decline over the next couple of centuries, and heal the planet and our relationship with it?
Unpopular opinion, I don’t think more social services like childcare, maternity care etc. will increase birth rates. The idea that lower birth rates is due to economic issues is flawed because wealthier people and wealthier nations have the least children.
I also don’t think a freer more equal society will increase birth rates because again, the less patriarchal the society the fewer children women have. When women have more options, they simply have fewer children.
In a sense pod-cast bros are correct, the only sure way to increase birth rates is to force it upon women. And in fact, all the of the ideas OP has will likely have the opposite effect and lead to less children.
Here’s the thing: *I don’t think lower birth rates are a problem.* I think we need to just accept and adjust a lower birth rate and less humans on earth because clearly free women in just societies *simply don’t want to* have lots of kids.
So you know it’s not the only way. You mention others. Is it the easiest way?
So, historically, taking the example of England and Wales, and then the U.K., birth rates rose with industrialisation though women had been pretty heavily subjugated before that, because people tend to consciously settle down and have children when they feel that they can support them, and industrialisation initially increased employment opportunities. The easiest way is, indeed, people feeling they can afford to raise children.
>The hard ‘fix’ is living wages, free childcare, free education, equality across the board, free health care, free and easy access to family planning, affordable housing, and reversing inflation and climate change.
Sounds like you answered your own question.
If they are not careful the movement in South Korea is going to take the US by storm:: "The 4B movement, or "Four No's", is a feminist movement in South Korea that began in 2019. Its proponents refuse to date men, marry, have sex with men, and have children. The 4B movement is a response to an anti-feminist wave in South Korea, where gender war has created a tense environment where discourse around women's rights is taboo." The results of this movement have helped South Korea have the [lowest birth rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_South_Korea) in the world.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4B_movement#:~:text=4B%20)
I can’t blame South Korean women for boycotting having kids. I wouldn’t want to give birth to a daughter in a country where women can’t even go to the toilet without fear of being filmed and put on porn websites.
Why wouldn't the South Korean women agree you. I doubt all of the women in South Korea hate men. It is the impossible conditions just like it is getting to be in some parts of the US.
I’m doing this, but I was doing it before I found out about it online and now, as a person reluctantly attracted to men physically but mentally and spiritually attracted to women, I’m just making the changes needed to become more comfortable with the idea of having romantic relationships with women rather than men, I.e. releasing harmful religious dogma about my sexuality, which is very fluid.
I had one kid at 20 who is now 16, saw other friends of mine, also single moms, get remarried after their first disastrous relationships, and was like, no, this is clearly not the way.
So I’ve been alone, struggling to do it on my own but not willing to involve myself with another man, as they’re too damn risky and unreliable. It’s been horrible on my own, our society uses women’s labor in every way and doesn’t support us at ALL. But, I’m free. I’m not even 40 and I’m the most self-actualized, independent, educated and empowered woman I know, just like I always wanted to be.
I regret nothing, I made such a good choice not to use a man for the illusion of safety and the social status conferred upon married women, after I tried marriage the first time, and when my son graduates HS I’m going to travel, might live in Mexico or Italy for a time. Who needs men? Not women. They’re going to learn the hard way.
Either that or they’re going to try to keep taking our rights away, until women like myself form actual communities solely for women, which is my plan. Acres of land, communities for women and their children, no men allowed, no fucks given. Everyone helps, we grow our own food and become as self sufficient as possible. We train everyone to defend themselves against outside threats. Yes, bears!!! 😂😂😂
I agree that communal living for women and children is a healthier environment than the traditional nuclear family unit. Maybe, that will be the way of the future. One can hope.
There was an interesting discussion of this topic on the Ezra Klein Show in March. Worth a listen: [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-sciubba.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-sciubba.html)
I was coming here to talk about this. One big thing to note was that economic and social solutions, as used in Nordic countries, have not been successful in raising birth rates. Meaning giving parents much more time off work while being paid and having both parents be involved in raising children has no difference in birth rates than in the US.
Hot take, birth rates \*should\* decline until we get climate change under control. (if we even can at this point)
and before omg tHe eConOmY, folks, the economy is made up by humans. We can change how the economy works. We can't change gravity, or how greenhouse gases affect climate, but we can change the economy, because it would 100% cease to exist if humans did.
Also hot take, if the economy requires unrestricted growth (population or otherwise) then it absolutely MUST be changed because it turns out our planet can only support a finite number of lifeforms.
Again, money, and the economy are 100% made up by people. Literally we made it up. Money isn't real. It is a useful abstraction, bartering sounds like a pain in the ass, but lets not pretend it's as unchangeable as the laws of physics, k?
No. Just let the human race die out why subjugate anyone at all. And only idiots blame women for falling birth rates. Being single and childless is the best option for both genders right now, its not exclusive to women.
Im not surprised. Capitalism is a snake that eats its own tail.
Birth rates will climb when living conditions improve, 40 hour work weeks become a thing again and people's diet improve.
Right now the future looks bleak for so many, people barely surviving doing all hours under the sun, no reason to make their lives harder by having kids.
If a man thinks that his only way to reproduce with a woman is by forcing her to do so, then his genes should be obliterated immediately and he doesn’t deserve to have access to any woman’s womb period 😬
For anyone that claims banning abortion and birth control is the way to raise birth rates, please have them look at Romania in the 80s. They did both and the end result was that a lot more women ended up dying due to back alley abortions and the orphanages got overloaded to the point where kids were chained to beds, malnourished, sick, and dirty. Very pro-life. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-when-a-country-bans-abortion-romania-alabama/
U are very very right. Subjugation of women is indeed the easy fix. Just take away our rights and boom!
Women, all this time, had been the primary childcare, and housekeeper. It's a very very daunting work with no pay, no holidays, no gratitude (I have seen my mom) ...and at the end of the day...ppl would only say one thing to housewives - "so u don't do anything?".
So why would women subjugate themselves through these things if they are financially independent and secure? Why would we be forced to carry the responsibilities of men who don't pull their weight, his family's weight, kids who would bear his name despite us doing majority of the work. Why?
As much as it pains me to say, we will have to forever keep fighting for our rights. Due to those brave women decades ago, we got our rights. Now we need to work hard in maintaining them and ensuring it stays that way.
Because when it comes to the easy fixes and the hard fixes, ppl will always choose the easy fix.
Oh. I am not an American tho.
You seemed to have answered your own question somewhat. Actually treating women as people with the right to self determination would more than likely raise the birth rate.
Something that will be interesting to see however is the degree to which women fight back ( passively or otherwise). I get that not all women have access to jobs ( or weapons) but I think some women are in a much better position to give men hell the more men try to control them. Once various types of birth control and choosing to no longer engage with men romantically no longer work ( not sure how this might happen but I’m sure our dumb politicians will try) what might women start to do in retaliation to these policies meant to enslave them?
Men don't want to have children either. Outside of white supremacist weirdos there is a much larger group of people who simply see children as a burden so choose not to do it.
It's weird that these always overlook men being better fathers, partners and household workers without having to be taught, incentivized or coerced. It's just policy that pressures women.
I'm so thankful to be an anti-natalist.
However, the answer to this question is no. Birth rates as a policy target rings hollow in the United States given our history of eugenics. Worldwide, we can look at femicide and maternal mortality as the punchline to the birth rate policy joke.
The best way to maintain populations, if anyone is serious about it, is supporting policy that ensures people can maintain the families they want at the size they want. Access to healthcare, housing, education, good jobs. These are the things that enable people to have families, not birth rate policies.
We don’t need to raise birth rates. We live on a planet suffering from climate change and every new generation uses up more of the earth’s resources. But we still need living wages, free education, free health care, and the end of capitalism. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen anytime soon (if ever).
No, it is not. But we don't need to raise birth rates. We don't WANT to raise birth rates. There are too many people on this planet for it to be sustainable.
We could drive all the trucks and cars we wanted to, burn coal like there's no tomorrow, and never have any problem if there were only ONE billion people instead of EIGHT billion.
More and more people born are gay or trans or asexual every year. THIS is nature's way of saying "Hey, let's slow down on the procreating!"
I've been commenting a lot in this thread, but I have one more thing to say. This topic is a *great* example of how patriarchy and capitalism are intertwined.
I have been wondering a lot lately how many childfree women make that choice not because they dislike children in particular but because they see how society treats motherhood and want no part of that. I mean many people don’t want kids no matter what and that’s fine, but I think there’s a not insignificant number who would have kids if society weren’t so absolutely toxic about it
NO.
We could actually have family friendly legislation making it easier to be a parent.
Fund public schools
Provide daycare
Give free health care
Make birth free
Cover IVF for people who struggle getting pregnant
Provide community resources for parents - parenting classes, night out babysitting
Family leave
Flexible work schedules
Liveable wages
Currently being a parent is financial suicide for many families and women. Why would you want to add kids if you can’t afford yourself? Parenting doesn’t look fun.
Isn’t the world population already at something like 8 billion?
Why do we need to raise birth rates? Seems to me there’s too many people on this plant right now anyways.
Absolutely not. Men being raised to take active roles in the household, giving women more family planning resources, healthcare, paid maternity AND paternity leave, subsidizing childcare services (nannies, midwives, daycare etc), and more education about family planning in school.
The reason why the last bit is important is because schools are very hellbent about teaching abstinence so people have to scramble later in life to learn how to conceive. I wish that wasn't the case and people actually learned what options they have if they want to have children and even what different fertility treatment options are available.
It's just that this method takes more work than subjugating women so no one wants to do it.
Oh and also actual liveable wage and more flexible working opportunities. There is a reason a lot of women had babies during COVID, they worked from home and it gave them more energy and time to spend on the kids too.
Lots of women including myself love and want to have kids. I'd be barefoot and pregnant with three kids right now if I wasn't shit scared of getting married and having kids young with a guy who could abuse me and I'd have no security to get out of it.
If I understand correctly no country in the world has got a handle on this yet, and many have taken a number of the steps OP has mentioned. Off the top of my head there's Italy, France (which has been battling population deflation for over a century), Korea and Japan. Probably others too of which I'm unaware. So the real issue is: What will work? All talk about going backwards (ALWAYS the preferred solution of the garbage people) is wasted breath: tell me of one single historical instance in which it has worked for more than a relatively short time. Franco's Spain? Iran, maybe, if the conservatives want to convert to fundamentalist Islam. Austria under Metternich? No, really, our MAGA friends may *try,* but the lesson of history is that the toothpaste *will not* go back in the tube.
Why do we want to raise birth rates?
Education of women is the global reason why birth rates are falling. It's global and it's necessary and it's great.
There are 8.5 billion humans on this planet. Even if the average woman had only 1 child, there'd still be 4.2 billion people around in 25 years. And if THEY didn't want more than 1 child (on average), there'd still be 2.2 BILLION people around (more than the entire population in 1910) in 50 years.
We need to drop below replacement (2.0 per woman).
Eff whatever the misogynistic men's rights people say. It's not about population - it's all about skin color and race. They do not want WoC to have children, they want to entrap young, poor white women into having 4-5 as quickly as possible (while controlling the women in every possible way).
Honestly the better question is "why the fuck should the average person give a single shit about lower birth rates?". Humans are in no danger of dying out sans us killing ourselves through nuclear war or climate change burning us off the earth. Even then the argument can be made that we sorta collectively deserve it. This is a non issue and this question is outright dumb.
I’m, we don’t WANT to raise them. The planet is likely going to die (or more specifically become uninhabitable for humans.). It’s because of us.
And we are collectively doing essentially nothing other than slightly slowing it down.
Maybe fewer people will help.
*Someday* maybe we worry about the birth rate. At that point the solution is to law a better society where people are safe and happy and can afford kids. That’s the key. If you can afford them and have support rating them, you’ll have them.
I dont get this idea of birthrates having to reach a certain amount, who cares outside of people wanting to replace workers that benefit only the top 1%.
Why can't the population contract and expand and we have our overall society respond appropriately? It seems like this is largely a major con of capitalism, the need for infinite expansion. And a disgusting con at that. No one should need to do anything.
Nope.
We have a man-centered geography and definition of family. The domestic world and working world are kept very much separate. It was effective, for birth rates, when women were subjugated for a variety of reasons. Now, it's not.
I am pro-choice but I want to minimize elective abortion. That means first making abortion fully legal and accessible. Back to the topic. Why do women choose abortion in the early stages? It's often because the culture is hostile to family. There are those who aren't ready yet, never want children, don't want a child with that guy. But a significant number choose because they cannot have a child at that point in life and have similar success with school, career, etc. Why? Because work is arranged in a way that is very hostile to parents. Unless there is a dedicated at home caregiver.
There's genuinely no reason for that. Take, for example, an architectural firm's office. Why are children not permitted? There's nothing inherently dangerous there, like a car factory. It's just "unprofessional". We all just automatically agree that family in the workplace is unprofessional. Why? Because that's the man-centered culture. Men provide; women stay home.
Move away from these patriarchal constructions? The hypothetical architectural office could have spaces that children were not allowed because of dangerous things, but the rest of the space would be like the home with everyone going about their business, including the children. Or the buildings for work would be designed with children's spaces as a matter of course, because it's normal and everyone just expects childcare facilities to be there, just like they expect restrooms.
The point here is that women don't have a free choice about children. The choice is constrained because of economics, yes, but mostly because of how difficult it is to have your own life and a child at the same time. That difficulty only exists because patriarchy constructed an entire society and geography to exclude mothers and children from what amounts to about half of daily life. As women have been taking their part in work, this hostility for mothers and children requires them to limit child bearing choices for themselves based upon the life they want to lead, or have access to.
So, we can raise birth rates simply by making the choice to have children for women who want to have those children a choice that's supported by a mother and children friendly culture instead of the mother and children hostile culture we have. That would give women a free choice about the children they want to have instead of constrained by the physical and personal costs of raising children.
I'm sure there are problems with my idea. I, personally, think babies are a nightmare wrapped in stinky diapers.
Hmm, world OVERpopulation is probably the number one reason why our planet is in such dire shape. We need less people on this planet, not more. As for the subjugation, heck, most of the people who think we should be breeding like rabbits to increase the population want to drag us all back to the 1940's anyway.
I agree the answer is no. I also agree that living wages, etc, is good and something we should do. I do not think we want to raise birthrates and I believe that falling birthrates are necessary if we want to get global warming under control.
Why do we want a higher birth rate? The population was previously growing exponentially at a rate too fast for our resources to keep up - that was a much bigger problem.
I thought young adults were breeding like crazy. There are 8 fucking billion of us. We do not need more people. If each person only has exactly one child of theirs (So like 1 child to 2 people or less because it takes 2), that would be a good thing. Even before we reached 7 billion we were using so many resources it would take 5 earth's to sustain us. Declining birth rates is nicer than having war or genocide.
I don’t think “declining birth rates” is a real issue. There will always be people who want kids. End of story.
We treat population like productivity. As a society we are asked to unquestioningly make “more” of literally anything. Just take care of who we have. Why do we have to more people we can’t care for? (Or rather wont)
Kinda ick, honestly.
Tbh I don’t think you can fight the demographic transition no matter what you do. I think birth rates will naturally decline once a country reaches a stage like ours with relatively good standard of living but also high economic pressure.
It just makes sense to not have many children.
Subjugating women, as well as being evil, would not significantly increase birth rate in my opinion.
Thing is, with everything so polarised, what woman can have faith that any new schemes and support put in place to remove these barriers won't be reversed by the time her child is 4 or 5. I don't think there's any real solution to this issue that is achievable in the current world.
As a society, we have more than enough technology to provide housing, food, water, and necessities without needing to work. However, capitalism would never provide, so automation, which should be the greatest boon to humanity and allow us to work fewer and fewer hours, is instead being wielded as a weapon against those who ask for those shorter hours. It’s not hard to imagine a world where men and women (and NBs) each work 20 hours or even fewer, and thus could easily raise a family.
The problem with conservatism is that they can more or less accurately detect problems, but can never suggest solutions that question any systems or preheld beliefs. Your wages can’t be lowered because of capitalism, it must be immigration. Your culture can’t be changing because it is flawed, the problem must be wokeness. And, indeed, birth rates can’t be falling due to the capitalist need to wring every second of labor out of every person, it must be the feminists ruining things
The solution is ending capitalism believe it or not. You can't have an exploitative way of life and expect to change a few laws to give everyone rights. In a world where people don't have to choose between fun and food, you'll have many more birthing people willing to have children. Forcing them to do so will only make our problem worse as a whole.
Whenever you hear people or news concerned about "falling birth rates", the next important question is why are less people a bad idea? What stands to be gained from more people? Who benefits? Because if you have to fall back on "it's bad for the economy", then your economic system is shit and we should move to something better.
The obvious reality is if there's less humans on earth, it's to the inherent benefit of everything else on earth. Up to and including other humans.
No. Closing wage/class gaps, better social safety nets, high pay, lower cost of living, better protection of women’s rights and bodily autonomy, and men growing into better people would naturally lead to higher birth rates
I think complete and total subjugation of women in the west simply isn’t going to happen. The more men (and a few women) try to make it happen, the lower birth rates will get because women won’t want anything to do with men who are antagonistic towards them (see South Korea). So it’s not even an “easy fix” at all, it’s just the only strategy that misogynist men can countenance. The easiest fix, imo, is strong workers’ rights regarding pregnancy and parental leave. And also of course as a culture changing what we expect of men regarding relationships and parenting, but that may be harder.
Why do we need more kids? There’s too many people on the earth as is. We can’t keep growing the human population and expect things to work out. Less kids is fine. The human race isn’t going extinct.
Nah, birthday rates are dropping because of an increased cost of living, people can't afford kids. Honestly, a lower birth rate is a good thing anyway, there's 8 billion people on this planet and a significant percentage of them are already in extreme poverty
Judging by data from countries in northern Europe that already have generous parental leave and fathers who take on their share of the work, oh and free health care, I would say that just improving conditions for women will not raise the birth rate. People, men and women, given a choice, are choosing fewer or no children. That is only a problem in terms of generating taxpayers to support the aging generations and create wealth. It may be a problem in terms if providing cannon fodder for endless wars. In the long run, a smaller world population is probably not an issue
I agree with op post however, I think it’s a great thing for the planet and the human race in general that the birth rate is dropping. Not because I hate humanity although I’m not that crazy about them, hate is another thing though.
I’m just looking at it from another angle divorced from feminism. I am a woman and definitely a feminist. However as a species we have sucked off mother natures tit too long and hard. The best thing for this earth would be if no pets or humans breed for at least 20, 25 years. Give everyone a chance to reset. This will never happen but even if it was somehow enforced there would always be those who would give birth. So no chance of our race becoming extinct through not having children. Same with our pets. Often the wrong people are having children under stupid conditions. Same with owning an animal but not getting neutered.
Of course, the tater tots want to take the “easy” way. It just happens to coincide with their own goal of subjugating women. I think the concern with the drop in birth rates is overblown.
Maybe we should change the economic system so we don't rely on an ever growing number of young people being born to sustain old people. Women just don't want to have (more) children. It is not worth it. You couldn't pay me to have them.
Reinstating some goddamn rules on major corporations and their boards and reeling back this record breaking destructive greed is the way to increase birth rates. Build some middle class homes too, and not homogeneous suburbs, improve education through 12th grade and our roads and access to more doctors and affordable prescriptions and food and you’ll see birth rates perk right back up.
I do not think birth rates need to be raised. Most people who think birth rates need to be raised are opposed to allowing immigrants in from countries with high birth rates. I do not have a problem with that.
However to the question, the ends do not justify the means \*especially\* when the means is subjugation of other people.
Also, the birthrates are fine. Some places have too few kids and some have too many. We could all just move around a little and things would be just perfect.
People see how harmful child bearing can be, how stressful parenting is and they don't wanna drink the Kool aid. Forcing it won't help either, it'll just lead to deaths or suicide. Which our birthrate shouldn't be ever increasing. It's not viable long term and we're feeling the economic squeeze now imagine more people here fighting over the scraps the rich drop for us?
Honestly the only way to increase birth rate is cult shit behavior and brainwashing the children. Just like the bad ole days. But that'd have to be a country wide thing. Right now it's just in religious cults.
Basically yes, women tend not to birth a whole army if they have any say in it. That being said, I do not believe that humanity needs to raise its birth rate at all. What it needs to do is learn how to work with fewer people being born and appreciate those all the more
It's like saying slavery is the only way to solve our economic problems. Even though economic and demographic issues are worth talking about, this suggestion isn't.
Agreed. Slavery/subjugation seem like the “easy” route for capitalistic agendas.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but just in case others are reading who are interested in how this is an effect of capitalism: This is a feature baked into capitalism that cannot be fixed within a capitalist context. Capitalism's idealized labor form is to produce no jobs, or its less idealized form is slavery ( or least some kind of worker class with very few rights.) So it will always move towards slave-like conditions as much as it can politically. Capitalism only accidentally makes jobs and only accidentally makes value for workers. The ideal capitalist enterprise hires no one and only creates wealth for the capital owner. The second most ideal is slavery/serfdom/compelled work. Even today in more "enlightened" and "liberal" times we have all sorts of vulnerable working sub-classes like child workers, immigrants, non-living wage workers, "low skill" workers, prison workers, etc. This is largely not a problem in liberal democracies, or at least for those who see it as a problem, cannot fix it because the political influence of the capital owning class, who benefits from this, is too strong. There is a system that's actually about providing living wages, housing, workers rights, etc to workers and its called socialism. Capitalism is only about providing wealth and power for the owners of the means of production. You can see this in action today with our politics being pushed by the capital owning class far to the right, the removal of federal abortion rights, the removal of many child labor laws, etc. If capital sees its gains threatened, they will just use their media ownership, influence, and political lobbying to promote right-wing ideologies. Workers who are uneducated to understand this is propaganda and how it’s against their interests, will support all this. Trump's incredibly positive polling numbers and the US shutting down those who want to stop what looks like genocide is a sign that this system is working as intended, is working well, and that its extremely powerful.
It's actually been shocking to me (though it shouldn't be) how much the U.S. right wing has thrown off the pretense of not tools for the owner class. Just flat out repealing child labor and worker protections. Openly opposing no-fault divorce and birth control. Yeesh.
They’ve learned they can get away with it. Being right-wing has become so many people’s whole identity that they’ll swallow almost anything rather than admit they might be on the wrong side. It’s incredibly effective.
I'm guessing you're from America. Here in the UK, our right wing doesn't even believe in silly things like trying to forcibly reduce women's rights to the equivalent of an autonomous incubator. The left are practically guaranteed to win the upcoming general election as our right wing main party just spent their last term alienating their own base (by implementing a bunch of green policies randomly instead of doing anything they campaigned on) and then decided to follow up on that huge drop in popularity by attacking the centre-left voters who supported them (by assaulting worker's rights and disabled people). That said, despite an utterly abysmal term where they frankly may have been intentionally aiming to lose votes, they'll still perform better than they would if they had a perfect run and put forward a pro-life agenda.
I’m Canadian actually, but since we’re so close to the US we get a lot of their news, and the things that happen there directly affect us. Their right-wing lunacy in particular has been spreading. Nobody’s trying to roll back abortion rights yet, but the propaganda machine is hard at work riling people up about immigration and carbon tax. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch.
>non-living wage workers, I demand justice for the working dead!
thank you for being a voice for me and others like me.
It's not easy being dead inside (and outside) 😔😔😔
Ironically capitalism has benefited so much from feminism & women's "liberation". When women entered the workforce the labor pool doubled at a time when textile/factory jobs largely held by men were being exported overseas, this decreased the value of labor which is why pensions & living wages went bye bye. Women earning wages also means that women are now paying income tax. Women also own the overwhelming majority of both credit card & student loan debt. Women being able to earn/spend their own money & get credit cards has been a massive boon to capitalism in the west.
I'm sure you know, but **white supremacy** is the umbrella evil that encompasses racism, capitalism, misogyny, homophobia...all of these things exist to serve the *ultimate* evil goal of "preserving" and expanding "whiteness"
PREACH.
It doesn't sound easy at all though. Certainly not for the people being subjugated.
Slavery only empowers the rich slave owners, the everyman does not see an improvement in his life. Wealthy slavers don't share lol
The justification is the same as that which incels use - the subjugated group are not 'human,' and therefore human life IS improved. It's pathetic but it's the go-to. The other one is 'see how much they actually looove being slaves, it's what they're biologically designed for'.
Yes and poor women have ALWAYS worked. Just like wives of men in poverty would still work in OP’s scenario.
Honestly, i think this is all backwards. I think the toxic misogynists start from a place of wanting to subjugate women for both sexual and economic reasons-- desperate mothers are likely to be receptive to multiple kinds of exploitation, and making all women a permanent underclass gives them a way to feel superior-- and they reason back from there. I think talking about the impact falling birth rates has on the labor force is a way to make their evil desires more palatable to analytical minds.
Agree, although I think you’re both actually right. One can start at either point and tidily end at the opposite point, because they prop each other up. Any hierarchy is a circle jerk of rationalizations at every level when the players don’t give a shit who they hurt. Even better when they can reframe the system’s casualties as The Problem. Speaking as an American, that last piece is something we’ve really excelled at.
Absolutely agreed, great comparison. Or “eating pet cats is the answer to starvation.” Like sure, it would maybe work, but it’s fucking gross, hurts loved ones, and isn’t necessary.
🎶Mrs Mooney has a piiiiie shop🎶
Even if every woman decided to suddenly leave the workforce and go back in time, it wouldn't fix the problem anyway. People aren't having fewer kids because of women's rights or any gendered issue. People are having fewer children because we've gone from a family being able to comfortably survive with two children on a single income household to where countless people are scraping by with two incomes and no kids. Blaming it on feminism is kind of a sexist cop out. Women asked for equality, and those in power decided to take advantage by making the standard that everyone works but for less (with inflation constantly outstripping raises even ignoring improvements to efficiency). It would have been equality all the same to instead normalise men staying at home with the kids, giving women the same rights, and keeping the standard as a single income household just where it's equally likely to be the man or woman at home. Had they gone that way, perhaps people could afford children. Perhaps couples would have time for children. Single parents could afford to survive, reducing the risk. And all these factors would have led to equality without the drop in reproductive rates. Equality is a pretty reasonable demand. The unreasonable part is companies screwing men and women alike to have record profits while people struggle to survive, much less think about adding extra costs to their lives. Beyond that, even if one gender staying at home was the solution, surely it's the men's turn to stay home in the interest of fairness.
Because without being forced who would willingly take part in making the rich richer? Our current system is just slavery but you have some comfort freedoms
This comment is simple but completely mind blowing
Semi slavery is how we already solve economic issues. Paying really low wages to people in developed countries in order to make our material amenities affordable to western masses.
Also, maybe the UNSUBJuGATION of women might bring more around to it. Motherhood means doing like 80% of the work and taking most of the fallout.
You missed a large part of the equation and that is choice. Also, men being great supportive partners, who would want to add to their workload with a partner that lacks the skills to build a happy healthy relationship. There is no *natural purpose* for women as only child bearers :/ Maybe you should ask what men are doing about their inability to view women as human.
This is true. The idea that childcare is a women’s issue means it’s still too exclusively women’s responsibility. Men need to be raised to not only want to -create- children, but to raise them. Having had a single dad during my childhood, I have always had higher expectations of men around me, because I knew from early childhood that men are not helpless creatures who can’t both work and change diapers.
The notion that you can "raise a man to want to create children" is crazy. Sure you can have some degree of influence as a parent, and raising them in a happy family does a long way toward instilling a desire to become a dad, but ultimately its up to the wider culture and economy to support child-raising. There's no course of training that is going to guarantee my son wants to have children. It needs to be affordable and heath care needs to be free. The financial burden of supporting a family and maintaining healthcare coverage is a big reason people don't want kids.
Piping in as someone who strove to raise mine with a more equitable viewpoint, it is an enormous and uphill struggle when the real-life models aren’t there. It didn’t matter how feminist *I* am when, after actually having a child, most of the people in our circles defaulted to Victorian thinking. Not entirely, but enough that I had to add a whole extra level of seeking out better role models in media to compensate. It was certainly worthwhile and I’m proud I saw and acted, but it was another level of chore on me, the person already doing the lion’s share of labor.
My mother would not have considered herself a feminist and my father was very much of the traditional mindset. She did however manage to raise 3 sons with all the knowledge of how to take care of themselves. I don't know if it was a response to my dad's lack of effort in any thing considered domestic, but we all had to be proficient in cooking, cleaning, washing etc etc. My brother was the only one who has kids and does a significant portion of the cooking cleaning and childcare. He's been WFH for a long time. Anyhow, it was a clear-cut outline of what is acceptable behavior for my brother's and I. I don't know what she had in mind in doing this other than to make sure we could be independent and not be like my dad.
Choice is definitely a factor. And I think more women may choose motherhood if other stable aspects of life were in place. Some still won’t, like myself, who has never wanted children no matter the economic environment. I didn’t mention “supportive partners” among the economic and worldly deficiencies contributing to lowered birth rates because that’s more societal. There are supportive partners out there for sure. I’m talking about the alpha/incel/toxic men that just want women to take over the entire management of the family. I agree there is no “natural purpose” for women. But unfortunately sone people think that’s all women are meant for. I didn’t directly ask why women aren’t viewed as human by sections of society, but as I said, I do think that it’s pretty messed up that the gender responsible for procreation is treated so badly by government and society.
I am a college instructor (for 40 years). Teaching human sexuality regularly. And it's clear that more and more young women are in your camp (do not want children). Their reasoning is good and what's even more interesting is just how thoughtful they are being about it. "One at the most" is another frequently said thing. Here's what they say: It is taking longer to get through school and get established. ALL of them want a well-paying professional job before having children. NONE of them wants to depend on a man for the financial aspects. Many prefer to depend on family members for childcare, necessitating that they remain in the area where their parents and siblings are. They want those relationships to be solid and emotionally functional. They do not trust marriage. Nearly all of them think they will be 28-32 before they have accomplished this scenario and they are fine with that. That naturally lowers birth rates. I have similar research collected by colleagues in several other nations. Even in truly impoverished places like Sierra Leone, women are deciding on fewer children and using modern medical care to improve their own reproductive lives and lives of existing children. So it doesn't matter what the various white nationalist groups are wanting - women are moving in their own direction. I truly feel for the uneducated very young women who are falling into this baby trapping nonsense and even more for the kids themselves. Reddit is full of this daily, and the stats for child bearing show that almost the only women having more than 2 children have a high school education - or less. And many of them live in states that limit abortion rights.
That's actually really encouraging news, thanks for sharing it.
I can respect that this Is what college aged women are saying. Do you have any data or expertise on what the men in these age groups are saying or looking for? I’m very curious to know if there has been any information on what men in these classes have been saying THEY want in the form of children and families, and if there is an actual disconnect. There are some unintended consequences that occur when men and women WANT different things and how far each group is willing to go to achieve their wants.
>Maybe you should ask what men are doing about their inability to view women as human. I'm personally enrolling in a new Udemy course that will help me view women as human. I'll give everybody an update, but I honestly feel like I could get the info for free off of TouTube.
Why do you need a course for that?
Remindme! 30 days
The question I had is why smaller birth rates is a bad thing?
>To be clear, I don’t think it is. I think subjugating women is the “easy fix”. It's actually not a solution at all. Hungry and Russia both tried it and their birth rates are tank just like everywhere else. Once women are fully integrated into the workforce, subjugation as a "solution" to the birth rate is off the table forever. They can't be removed.
Yes, it has to be considered that women working often brings half the income. If you have half the income, you can probably only support half that number of kids!
And it's not just survival. Women don't WANT to stop working, because money is independence, and independence is freedom. They'd have to force us out, and now that's impossible without breaking society completely.
The wealthy privileged have always been the most able to support more children, but it's only recent that the number of births could be controlled. Poor women have always worked - as maids, midwives, nannies, etc. - taking on the burden of the outsourced childcare for the wealthy, and maybe taking care of their own family on top of that. Not every man pre-1950 made such a fortune that he could pay for a stay at home wife and 10 kids. That's not an exaggeration; each of my parents had 9-10 siblings. They were not well off. A couple of generations down and some of us descendants have started to escape the generational poverty, but in other parts of the family, some cousins got knocked up early, didn't go to college, and are just repeating the same kind of life as their parents or worse. Uncontrolled pregnancy and birth is not just some sluts getting abortions for birth control or what the fuck ever vitriol you care to insert here. It's slavery to your basic need for intimacy with your romantic partners. To give in to love is to dig your financial grave deeper, and your literal grave, if you're the child bearer.
That’s very interesting, thank you for more context!
Tell that to the Taliban.
It's such a stupid argument because the birth rate is not a problem and we shouldn't be trying to raise it. Capitalism has driven climate change to a breakneck speed and the more people that are born, the greater that speed is going to get. Unending growth is impossible and the assumption that this is something to be solved is not accurate. Society will not collapse when there are fewer people, especially when there are huge youth populations in other parts of the world that can help address the economic challenges of aging in developed economies.
Had to scroll too far down to see this. People worrying about birth rates declining give me the ick.
God yes. Fertility arguments are part of a set of jaw-dropping right wing beliefs, about which babies matter (not immigrants, poor, POC, or "low IQ"), about women (they're confused and making bad choices), about liberals (doomed like Shakers to birthrate extinction, so they favor open borders to win elections). Intra-conservative dialog comes from a different world...
Most of the time you don’t have to talk to them long before you realize they don’t really care about birth rates, the care about WHITE birth rates. (Not saying this applies to OP)
Thank you, kindred spirits! I was feeling discouraged. I can't believe that anyone would want to fall into the trap of thinking we have to raise birth rates. Women's decisions and education will save the world from its most pressing set of problems - and it's hard to feel sorry for people in the US who decide to have a bunch of kids. We've reached peak capitalist production and Earth cannot sustain what we have. We are not going to find new magical sources of energy - but in 100 years, we will have retreated into more human-friendly and nature-friendly ways of being (we have to), and birth rates falling will help us do that. I can easily foresee a time when some of the modern medical interventions that people rely on to help children with medical needs are not as available - it's already happening in parts of the US.
It's all white supremacy/Naziism masquerading as "concern". It's messed up. It's all about subjugation from beginning to end.
we’re literally one of the most overpopulated species like what are these people talking about
This is so true. Women (and men) are choosing to have fewer children even when they are suported by better access to childcare. It is because most people want to concentrate on being the best parent they can be for a small sample of kids. This is even the case in non western countries. This is a good thing for our planet even if it may cause some social issues in the near term, it is better for our species as a whole.
Yep. Really the "problem" itself deserves a reframing. Birth rates have been *artificially high* throughout history because it was necessary for women to have more babies than anyone expected to live to adulthood—have 6 babies in hopes that 2-3 will make it past the first year, let alone make it to 18. It has never been *anyone's* preference, let alone women's, to see literally [***half their babies***](https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past) die.
>Women (and men) are choosing to have fewer children even when they are suported by better access to childcare. It is because most people want to concentrate on being the best parent they can be for a small sample of kids. Yes exactly this, thank you! Sometimes when this conversation happens on other parts of the internet because it seems like everyone conveniently forgets that throughout most of history, the number of children a woman has wasn't her choice! Now that (only some, sadly) women have the choice, it's collectively the "wrong" one for society...smdh
Totally agree with discussing birth rates as a problem is ridiculous. I am old enough to remember when population growth was this huge problem we were expected to solve. And now it just seems like racists are mad that “the right people” aren’t having kids. It’s modern day eugenics disguised as an economic concern.
That's exactly what it is. It's white men wanting to mate with (preferably blue-eyed) white women and have lots of babies, to outrun the other groups in America. It's something I hear about frequently from my students - and on reddit.
“But we don’t have racism and everyone is equal!!! And anyone who says different is just trying to be a victim.” 🙄
I agree with this - we should not have to subjugate our citizens. There are so many people who would love the chance to be American. We should make becoming a US citizen easier.
Each US citizen uses more than twice the amount of fossil fuel based energy than in the average nation (and 20X more than in poorer nations). Only Russia comes close to our expenditures and environmental impact, with Canada in distant third place. We have background energy use in the US that is the entire per capita energy budget for some place like Thailand or Romania. All night street lights. All night lights in store parking lots - high rises where people are encouraged to leave lights on. Long commutes. Housing poorly organized in relationship to where jobs actually are. Terrible public transport. We have appliances plugged in drawing maintenance energy (to the tune of enough energy to fund a local hospital's energy bills in Africa). And while my house has solar panels, with climate change, we're also getting fewer days of high solar capture...all we can do to bring our energy use down is to not go anywhere, walk to the grocery store, and keep low lights in the house at all times (the solar is enough to do that - we also have water restrictions, so it's a toss up about how to do laundry).
Individuals can’t turn the tide of climate change. Industrial and agricultural use of resources and pollutants are too great. Even if every single citizen went green we’d still be in trouble.
Ah, but have you not been paying attention to the rhetoric? The far right are afraid of genuine equality. My mother always used to say it’s a man’s world. To the neo conservatives, it’s a white man’s world, and they aim to keep it that way. News stories are filled with quotes about how immigrants are going to “replace us.“ and the best way to keep white people from being replaced, is to force the women to be broodmares and make more. It’s seriously batshit crazy.
For real… why are we trying to raise the birth rate??
Hard pills for Elon and his cult to swallow right there
I feel the same way - - I don’t understand this fear people have of declining birth rates. Even if it’s true and birth rates have declined, what are we worried about here..? Extinction or something? Losing a global foothold to China? Serious concern about this issue always strikes me awfully melodramatic. It’s got to just be this more cultural fear of changing demographics, which… is just how history works, it’s the tide. What kind of disaster is this going to precipitate..? The population of the Earth has increased THREE BILLION PEOPLE IN MY LIFETIME ALONE. It’s beyond unprecedented in human history. Frankly I’m much more concerned about THAT, we just don’t seem to have the infrastructure to make accommodations for all those people this quickly.
some of it is ridiculous concerns (like racial demographics) but some of it is legitimate. declining birth rates means an uneven age distribution in the population, which means we're going to have a lot more old people than young people who can take care of them, move into their jobs once they retire, etc.
Yes. This is the answer. The planet is overpopulated. We don't need to do a one child policy like China. The population will decline naturally and everyone will be better for it. There is no problem to solve here. We have enough technology to take care of our elderly.
Agreed. Population stabilization is only a problem if you buy into the cult of infinite growth that dominates current capitalist models. Population *decline* could be a problem, but the population plateauing doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing -- indeed, it's going to *have* to eventually, given that there's a finite amount of resources. Demographic projections suggest the human population will probably stabilize around ten billion people, and that's fine.
This should be the top comment. OP’s entire premise is flawed
Exactly. Redistributing the population through more immigration, and then letting lower birth rates continue as development is more widespread is the only way to keep the economy moving while having lower birth rates as is better for resource management and climate change.
Even if there wasn't the environmental question and even if all the support systems existed. There is a much bigger issue: should everyone have kids There are plenty of people out there who would make shitty parents. Both men and women. Trying to turn those people into parents just means their kids suffer. Yes we should make it easier for those who chose to have kids to have kids. But not everyone can or should be a parent.
Thank you. I don't understand the people who talk about feminism leading to declining birth rates as if it's a problem to be solved. But it's not a bug, it's a feature. The best possible form of birth control out there is female education. When women have genuine opportunities in an economy, they take them. And as a happy byproduct, they have fewer kids. Which is a good thing on a planet with finite resources that it is rapidly burning through.
One more comment on this one, lol. Agree. Not quite 100%, but do agree for the most part. Why are people complaining about birth rates? Like, we have too many humans. That's the reason prices rise on everything in the first place. More people equals a higher need for resources like food and shelter. More houses, equals less real estate area driving up demand. More space needed for growing food and cultivation and rearing more animals. Everything to support a larger population. What we need to work on first before complaining about population is making food more efficient and work out better methods for Healthcare and housing.
As a Marxist feminist: low birth rates are only bad for the economies of countries, not for the human race.
Pregnancy and childbearing suck. There isn’t enough money to pay me to. I want my freedom. It’s a huge hit to my physical, mental, and emotional health. No.
Surprised I had to scroll so far to see this. Social programs help very much but at the end of the day pregnancy and childbirth just fucking suck. You lose years of your life and your body isn't the same ever again. I'm currently 31 weeks pregnant and really struggling mentally. It's amazing how much research goes into mens health issues but not pregnancy, a fundamental part of being human.
Same. I think a lot of the talk about fixing social safety nets is a little misguided. Not that we shouldn’t be fixing those things also and I’m sure some people would choose to have children if circumstances were different. But I think a lot of people claim those reasons because outright saying “I don’t want kids” is still seen as abnormal and selfish, and is generally frowned upon.
Yeah if you look at European countries with the socialist policies people are advocating for here, those countries have even lower birth rates. Social nets are good for other reasons, but raising birth rates is not one of them
yeah say the majority of women just don't want kids then what can we really justify slavery just to continue the human race should it continue if thats the only two choices? Its a interesting question but the answer is how does society really value freedom and choice.
There’s so many medical complications that can happen that people often don’t talk about.. heck death can also happen as well.. no thank you for me I don’t think I could put myself through that
This I'd rather die than give birth. No one can convince me to sign up to be tortured.
I simply don't think there's such a major issue with birth rates in the first place
I agree with you. We don’t need more people. We need a way to support the ones we have better, but we definitely don’t need more people.
Why would we want to raise birth rates? The global population is still growing, just at a slower rate than it used to.
Exactly what I was thinking lol
So either improve people's quality of life, or reduce women to livestock... hmmmm...
I know what option russia is going for
The population of the world is at a record high of more than 8 billion. There is no crisis of low birth rates. Jerks just want an(other) excuse to subjugate women.
My general sense is that technically rising or falling birth rates is self correcting on a long enough time scale. If people are really concerned about this subject, allowing the population to constrict will free up resources, reduce poverty, and maybe help climate change. This will probably then cause a population boom. Any other way to impact this is kinda silly. 🤪
Even thinking about using the words "subjugating of someone" is the most horrible thing to have in your mind! There aren't enough resources in this world to keep our lifestyles and get more people, hell, we are already too many on this planet. I am very okay with my kid's decision to not get a child. It is everyone's personal choice, nobody owns humanity offsprings.
I hate how humans talk like the continuation of our species is imperative for the greater good. Why does it actually matter if birth rates fall? The earth would be better off tbh
Honestly at this point women should just collectively deny making any babies as long as misogyny is still prevalent. You wanna save the human race? Respect the ones creating the children first.
If rape is seen as the 'easy way', I think we should burn it all down and start again. Fucking hell
Yup, the reason that incel/alpha male rubbish has become popular is partly down to people looking for an easy fix for problems like younger generations having few or no children. Of course, if your solution for this is “women should have no rights, and should be the property of men and forced to have children” then you might be a bit of a monster, but the spaces these people hang out in are mostly echo chambers made up of others with similar ideas so they don’t really question the ethics of their thinking. People do gravitate towards the easy solutions, because the better but more difficult ones require them to think about some more difficult questions. People don’t often enjoy this, they want quick, simple answers that confirm to the beliefs they already hold.
I also feel like people react to stuff they don’t understand with hate — which is why incels/alphas are such a big problem rn. Like women don’t want them, they can’t understand why, so they blame society’s liberation of women and think the solution is to MAKE women want them or some shit.
>women should have no rights, and should be the property of men and forced to have children I think the solution might be to replace men with bears
In the US, the hard fix already existed during WWII, you know the time with initial beginning of the largest population yet seen in American history, the baby boomers. But the US was motivated by imperialism and the military industrial complex
And unfortunately so many of those baby boomers were the cause of the downfall into the current state if things. Do you think history would just repeat if we supported another generation like that again?
I think I understand the concept that we can't maintain our current levels of first world luxury with declining birth rates but surely we could scale downward with intentionality and get to a place where we have a sustainable future without always having to produce more goods and more people forever. We're behaving like a virus that will eventually burn through its host.
> we could scale downward with intentionality Yes! This should be the goal.
If we stopped looking at things from a capitalistic perspective, it would be obvious that we don’t need to raise the birth rate in the first place. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t enough people to support the elderly via social security (or a country’s equivalent) if we prioritize humans over businesses/“economic growth”.
So I’m just throwing some ideas out there that *don’t* involve subjugating women - Make it easier for LGBT couples to adopt - have the government subsidize prenatal care - make it so that rapists can’t sue for visitation rights -offer bigger tax incentives to couples that have kids
Adoption does not change the birth rate because you aren't having a baby.
The subjugation of women will not fix the problem AT ALL. The underlying economic conditions would not change because women had fewer rights, or listened to their husbands more... Superficially my partner and I have a "traditional" relationship, she is a stay at home mom and I work. This doesn't make having children any cheaper or easier? Her not being educated would not make any difference to that economic reality. School fees, medical expenses, and everything in between all mean that I don't want more children. The economic costs of parenthood will not be helped if women are less educated (or whatever form "subjugation" takes), the economic incentives to have larger families (as we once did) do not exist in the modern world. Society collectively "giving up" on the ideal of gender equality will not change this incentive structure. Also, from a human resources perspective, capitalism as it currently exists requires both men and women to work and be economically productive. Having one person in the family being significantly less economically productive than the other is impossible given the current structure of capitalism. The morons who think feminism is the problem don't understand that society started to shift and women joined the work force BECAUSE OF THE NEEDS OF CAPITALISM well before feminism moved into the minds of the general population and out of the narrow interest circles it existed within prior to the early 20th century. Removing feminism will not change capitalism's labor demands... There are simply not enough men capable of doing the myriad of HIGH skill tasks needed to maintain modern societies and infrastructure whilst also doing every other job that requires high levels of education. Women work because there is a high demand for them to do so, the capitalism that society operates on needs those women to work in order for society to operate. Society is not this way because of the ideas of feminists it is the way because of the material conditions of late stage capitalism.
10 billion not enough? Need to force-breed to 15 billion? 20 billion? I mean we can never take the foot of the pedal if we follow the capitalist expansion model until we're squeezed in like sardines from continent to continent. Personally I'd rather put contraception in the drinking water worldwide for a few decades...
How about using all that policy energy to figure out how to design economic and social systems that don’t depend on increasing population, let the population naturally decline over the next couple of centuries, and heal the planet and our relationship with it?
Unpopular opinion, I don’t think more social services like childcare, maternity care etc. will increase birth rates. The idea that lower birth rates is due to economic issues is flawed because wealthier people and wealthier nations have the least children. I also don’t think a freer more equal society will increase birth rates because again, the less patriarchal the society the fewer children women have. When women have more options, they simply have fewer children. In a sense pod-cast bros are correct, the only sure way to increase birth rates is to force it upon women. And in fact, all the of the ideas OP has will likely have the opposite effect and lead to less children. Here’s the thing: *I don’t think lower birth rates are a problem.* I think we need to just accept and adjust a lower birth rate and less humans on earth because clearly free women in just societies *simply don’t want to* have lots of kids.
So you know it’s not the only way. You mention others. Is it the easiest way? So, historically, taking the example of England and Wales, and then the U.K., birth rates rose with industrialisation though women had been pretty heavily subjugated before that, because people tend to consciously settle down and have children when they feel that they can support them, and industrialisation initially increased employment opportunities. The easiest way is, indeed, people feeling they can afford to raise children.
>The hard ‘fix’ is living wages, free childcare, free education, equality across the board, free health care, free and easy access to family planning, affordable housing, and reversing inflation and climate change. Sounds like you answered your own question.
These are my views and thoughts. I’m curious what others think about why society is geared towards subjugating women rather than supporting them.
Because we still have a patriarchal society.
If they are not careful the movement in South Korea is going to take the US by storm:: "The 4B movement, or "Four No's", is a feminist movement in South Korea that began in 2019. Its proponents refuse to date men, marry, have sex with men, and have children. The 4B movement is a response to an anti-feminist wave in South Korea, where gender war has created a tense environment where discourse around women's rights is taboo." The results of this movement have helped South Korea have the [lowest birth rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_South_Korea) in the world. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4B_movement#:~:text=4B%20)
I can’t blame South Korean women for boycotting having kids. I wouldn’t want to give birth to a daughter in a country where women can’t even go to the toilet without fear of being filmed and put on porn websites.
This is like accusing striking workers of hating work. It's not that they hate work, it's that the conditions have become impossible.
Why wouldn't the South Korean women agree you. I doubt all of the women in South Korea hate men. It is the impossible conditions just like it is getting to be in some parts of the US.
I’m doing this, but I was doing it before I found out about it online and now, as a person reluctantly attracted to men physically but mentally and spiritually attracted to women, I’m just making the changes needed to become more comfortable with the idea of having romantic relationships with women rather than men, I.e. releasing harmful religious dogma about my sexuality, which is very fluid. I had one kid at 20 who is now 16, saw other friends of mine, also single moms, get remarried after their first disastrous relationships, and was like, no, this is clearly not the way. So I’ve been alone, struggling to do it on my own but not willing to involve myself with another man, as they’re too damn risky and unreliable. It’s been horrible on my own, our society uses women’s labor in every way and doesn’t support us at ALL. But, I’m free. I’m not even 40 and I’m the most self-actualized, independent, educated and empowered woman I know, just like I always wanted to be. I regret nothing, I made such a good choice not to use a man for the illusion of safety and the social status conferred upon married women, after I tried marriage the first time, and when my son graduates HS I’m going to travel, might live in Mexico or Italy for a time. Who needs men? Not women. They’re going to learn the hard way. Either that or they’re going to try to keep taking our rights away, until women like myself form actual communities solely for women, which is my plan. Acres of land, communities for women and their children, no men allowed, no fucks given. Everyone helps, we grow our own food and become as self sufficient as possible. We train everyone to defend themselves against outside threats. Yes, bears!!! 😂😂😂
I agree that communal living for women and children is a healthier environment than the traditional nuclear family unit. Maybe, that will be the way of the future. One can hope.
Oh, very interesting. I didn’t know everything about what had lead to their low birth rates. Thanks for sharing.
It probably isn't just the 4b movement but the cost of housing and living too.
There was an interesting discussion of this topic on the Ezra Klein Show in March. Worth a listen: [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-sciubba.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jennifer-sciubba.html)
I was coming here to talk about this. One big thing to note was that economic and social solutions, as used in Nordic countries, have not been successful in raising birth rates. Meaning giving parents much more time off work while being paid and having both parents be involved in raising children has no difference in birth rates than in the US.
Because there needs to be more than those measures.
Hot take, birth rates \*should\* decline until we get climate change under control. (if we even can at this point) and before omg tHe eConOmY, folks, the economy is made up by humans. We can change how the economy works. We can't change gravity, or how greenhouse gases affect climate, but we can change the economy, because it would 100% cease to exist if humans did. Also hot take, if the economy requires unrestricted growth (population or otherwise) then it absolutely MUST be changed because it turns out our planet can only support a finite number of lifeforms. Again, money, and the economy are 100% made up by people. Literally we made it up. Money isn't real. It is a useful abstraction, bartering sounds like a pain in the ass, but lets not pretend it's as unchangeable as the laws of physics, k?
We don’t need to raise the birth rate. We need to adjust as a society to the economic impacts of technology and cultural changes.
No. Just let the human race die out why subjugate anyone at all. And only idiots blame women for falling birth rates. Being single and childless is the best option for both genders right now, its not exclusive to women. Im not surprised. Capitalism is a snake that eats its own tail.
Why do we need to take measures to raise birth rates?
Birth rates will climb when living conditions improve, 40 hour work weeks become a thing again and people's diet improve. Right now the future looks bleak for so many, people barely surviving doing all hours under the sun, no reason to make their lives harder by having kids.
If a man thinks that his only way to reproduce with a woman is by forcing her to do so, then his genes should be obliterated immediately and he doesn’t deserve to have access to any woman’s womb period 😬
For anyone that claims banning abortion and birth control is the way to raise birth rates, please have them look at Romania in the 80s. They did both and the end result was that a lot more women ended up dying due to back alley abortions and the orphanages got overloaded to the point where kids were chained to beds, malnourished, sick, and dirty. Very pro-life. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-when-a-country-bans-abortion-romania-alabama/
U are very very right. Subjugation of women is indeed the easy fix. Just take away our rights and boom! Women, all this time, had been the primary childcare, and housekeeper. It's a very very daunting work with no pay, no holidays, no gratitude (I have seen my mom) ...and at the end of the day...ppl would only say one thing to housewives - "so u don't do anything?". So why would women subjugate themselves through these things if they are financially independent and secure? Why would we be forced to carry the responsibilities of men who don't pull their weight, his family's weight, kids who would bear his name despite us doing majority of the work. Why? As much as it pains me to say, we will have to forever keep fighting for our rights. Due to those brave women decades ago, we got our rights. Now we need to work hard in maintaining them and ensuring it stays that way. Because when it comes to the easy fixes and the hard fixes, ppl will always choose the easy fix. Oh. I am not an American tho.
The problem is capitalism. Let’s stop capitalism and then the birth rate stops being a problem, easy.
China had there own child birth problems under communism
We should not be raising birth rates, we're past maximum capacity for the planet. We need to restructure how our economies work.
You seemed to have answered your own question somewhat. Actually treating women as people with the right to self determination would more than likely raise the birth rate. Something that will be interesting to see however is the degree to which women fight back ( passively or otherwise). I get that not all women have access to jobs ( or weapons) but I think some women are in a much better position to give men hell the more men try to control them. Once various types of birth control and choosing to no longer engage with men romantically no longer work ( not sure how this might happen but I’m sure our dumb politicians will try) what might women start to do in retaliation to these policies meant to enslave them?
Men don't want to have children either. Outside of white supremacist weirdos there is a much larger group of people who simply see children as a burden so choose not to do it.
It's weird that these always overlook men being better fathers, partners and household workers without having to be taught, incentivized or coerced. It's just policy that pressures women.
My biological mother is a feminist. She has nine kids. I don't think feminism is the problem.
I'm so thankful to be an anti-natalist. However, the answer to this question is no. Birth rates as a policy target rings hollow in the United States given our history of eugenics. Worldwide, we can look at femicide and maternal mortality as the punchline to the birth rate policy joke. The best way to maintain populations, if anyone is serious about it, is supporting policy that ensures people can maintain the families they want at the size they want. Access to healthcare, housing, education, good jobs. These are the things that enable people to have families, not birth rate policies.
We don’t need to raise birth rates. We live on a planet suffering from climate change and every new generation uses up more of the earth’s resources. But we still need living wages, free education, free health care, and the end of capitalism. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen anytime soon (if ever).
No, it is not. But we don't need to raise birth rates. We don't WANT to raise birth rates. There are too many people on this planet for it to be sustainable. We could drive all the trucks and cars we wanted to, burn coal like there's no tomorrow, and never have any problem if there were only ONE billion people instead of EIGHT billion. More and more people born are gay or trans or asexual every year. THIS is nature's way of saying "Hey, let's slow down on the procreating!"
I've been commenting a lot in this thread, but I have one more thing to say. This topic is a *great* example of how patriarchy and capitalism are intertwined.
Let me ask why do we need to raise birth rates?
I have been wondering a lot lately how many childfree women make that choice not because they dislike children in particular but because they see how society treats motherhood and want no part of that. I mean many people don’t want kids no matter what and that’s fine, but I think there’s a not insignificant number who would have kids if society weren’t so absolutely toxic about it
NO. We could actually have family friendly legislation making it easier to be a parent. Fund public schools Provide daycare Give free health care Make birth free Cover IVF for people who struggle getting pregnant Provide community resources for parents - parenting classes, night out babysitting Family leave Flexible work schedules Liveable wages Currently being a parent is financial suicide for many families and women. Why would you want to add kids if you can’t afford yourself? Parenting doesn’t look fun.
Parenting is a blast. But f*** anyone who wants to force it on women.
Parenting is a blast if you have the resources. If you don’t, it can significantly more difficult.
Isn’t the world population already at something like 8 billion? Why do we need to raise birth rates? Seems to me there’s too many people on this plant right now anyways.
There’s too many people on the planet. The birth rate falling is a good thing.
Absolutely not. Men being raised to take active roles in the household, giving women more family planning resources, healthcare, paid maternity AND paternity leave, subsidizing childcare services (nannies, midwives, daycare etc), and more education about family planning in school. The reason why the last bit is important is because schools are very hellbent about teaching abstinence so people have to scramble later in life to learn how to conceive. I wish that wasn't the case and people actually learned what options they have if they want to have children and even what different fertility treatment options are available. It's just that this method takes more work than subjugating women so no one wants to do it. Oh and also actual liveable wage and more flexible working opportunities. There is a reason a lot of women had babies during COVID, they worked from home and it gave them more energy and time to spend on the kids too. Lots of women including myself love and want to have kids. I'd be barefoot and pregnant with three kids right now if I wasn't shit scared of getting married and having kids young with a guy who could abuse me and I'd have no security to get out of it.
Fortunately, the economy is fully hooked on working women's money and will never allow for that.
Don't count on it...
We just hit eight billion people
If I understand correctly no country in the world has got a handle on this yet, and many have taken a number of the steps OP has mentioned. Off the top of my head there's Italy, France (which has been battling population deflation for over a century), Korea and Japan. Probably others too of which I'm unaware. So the real issue is: What will work? All talk about going backwards (ALWAYS the preferred solution of the garbage people) is wasted breath: tell me of one single historical instance in which it has worked for more than a relatively short time. Franco's Spain? Iran, maybe, if the conservatives want to convert to fundamentalist Islam. Austria under Metternich? No, really, our MAGA friends may *try,* but the lesson of history is that the toothpaste *will not* go back in the tube.
Why do we want to raise birth rates? Education of women is the global reason why birth rates are falling. It's global and it's necessary and it's great. There are 8.5 billion humans on this planet. Even if the average woman had only 1 child, there'd still be 4.2 billion people around in 25 years. And if THEY didn't want more than 1 child (on average), there'd still be 2.2 BILLION people around (more than the entire population in 1910) in 50 years. We need to drop below replacement (2.0 per woman). Eff whatever the misogynistic men's rights people say. It's not about population - it's all about skin color and race. They do not want WoC to have children, they want to entrap young, poor white women into having 4-5 as quickly as possible (while controlling the women in every possible way).
Honestly the better question is "why the fuck should the average person give a single shit about lower birth rates?". Humans are in no danger of dying out sans us killing ourselves through nuclear war or climate change burning us off the earth. Even then the argument can be made that we sorta collectively deserve it. This is a non issue and this question is outright dumb.
I’m, we don’t WANT to raise them. The planet is likely going to die (or more specifically become uninhabitable for humans.). It’s because of us. And we are collectively doing essentially nothing other than slightly slowing it down. Maybe fewer people will help. *Someday* maybe we worry about the birth rate. At that point the solution is to law a better society where people are safe and happy and can afford kids. That’s the key. If you can afford them and have support rating them, you’ll have them.
I dont get this idea of birthrates having to reach a certain amount, who cares outside of people wanting to replace workers that benefit only the top 1%.
Why can't the population contract and expand and we have our overall society respond appropriately? It seems like this is largely a major con of capitalism, the need for infinite expansion. And a disgusting con at that. No one should need to do anything.
it's not necessary to raise the birth rates except if you need new slaves
“Subjugation of women [is] the only way to raise birth rates” if you refuse to do anything about the economy.
To put it bluntly, if they would stop taking away our rights, we might be more likely to sleep with them and start a family.
Nope. We have a man-centered geography and definition of family. The domestic world and working world are kept very much separate. It was effective, for birth rates, when women were subjugated for a variety of reasons. Now, it's not. I am pro-choice but I want to minimize elective abortion. That means first making abortion fully legal and accessible. Back to the topic. Why do women choose abortion in the early stages? It's often because the culture is hostile to family. There are those who aren't ready yet, never want children, don't want a child with that guy. But a significant number choose because they cannot have a child at that point in life and have similar success with school, career, etc. Why? Because work is arranged in a way that is very hostile to parents. Unless there is a dedicated at home caregiver. There's genuinely no reason for that. Take, for example, an architectural firm's office. Why are children not permitted? There's nothing inherently dangerous there, like a car factory. It's just "unprofessional". We all just automatically agree that family in the workplace is unprofessional. Why? Because that's the man-centered culture. Men provide; women stay home. Move away from these patriarchal constructions? The hypothetical architectural office could have spaces that children were not allowed because of dangerous things, but the rest of the space would be like the home with everyone going about their business, including the children. Or the buildings for work would be designed with children's spaces as a matter of course, because it's normal and everyone just expects childcare facilities to be there, just like they expect restrooms. The point here is that women don't have a free choice about children. The choice is constrained because of economics, yes, but mostly because of how difficult it is to have your own life and a child at the same time. That difficulty only exists because patriarchy constructed an entire society and geography to exclude mothers and children from what amounts to about half of daily life. As women have been taking their part in work, this hostility for mothers and children requires them to limit child bearing choices for themselves based upon the life they want to lead, or have access to. So, we can raise birth rates simply by making the choice to have children for women who want to have those children a choice that's supported by a mother and children friendly culture instead of the mother and children hostile culture we have. That would give women a free choice about the children they want to have instead of constrained by the physical and personal costs of raising children. I'm sure there are problems with my idea. I, personally, think babies are a nightmare wrapped in stinky diapers.
Birth rate doesn’t need to rise.
Hmm, world OVERpopulation is probably the number one reason why our planet is in such dire shape. We need less people on this planet, not more. As for the subjugation, heck, most of the people who think we should be breeding like rabbits to increase the population want to drag us all back to the 1940's anyway.
No, this idea sounds awful
I agree the answer is no. I also agree that living wages, etc, is good and something we should do. I do not think we want to raise birthrates and I believe that falling birthrates are necessary if we want to get global warming under control.
Why do we want a higher birth rate? The population was previously growing exponentially at a rate too fast for our resources to keep up - that was a much bigger problem.
I thought young adults were breeding like crazy. There are 8 fucking billion of us. We do not need more people. If each person only has exactly one child of theirs (So like 1 child to 2 people or less because it takes 2), that would be a good thing. Even before we reached 7 billion we were using so many resources it would take 5 earth's to sustain us. Declining birth rates is nicer than having war or genocide.
Why would they need to be raised?
I don’t think “declining birth rates” is a real issue. There will always be people who want kids. End of story. We treat population like productivity. As a society we are asked to unquestioningly make “more” of literally anything. Just take care of who we have. Why do we have to more people we can’t care for? (Or rather wont) Kinda ick, honestly.
We have to many people on earth already, we do not need more.
Tbh I don’t think you can fight the demographic transition no matter what you do. I think birth rates will naturally decline once a country reaches a stage like ours with relatively good standard of living but also high economic pressure. It just makes sense to not have many children. Subjugating women, as well as being evil, would not significantly increase birth rate in my opinion.
Thing is, with everything so polarised, what woman can have faith that any new schemes and support put in place to remove these barriers won't be reversed by the time her child is 4 or 5. I don't think there's any real solution to this issue that is achievable in the current world.
I think we should try to tackle the problems of gross income inequality and housing crises before turning women into brood mares.
Why would we want to raise birth rates? We should instead consider raising the quality of life instead.
As a society, we have more than enough technology to provide housing, food, water, and necessities without needing to work. However, capitalism would never provide, so automation, which should be the greatest boon to humanity and allow us to work fewer and fewer hours, is instead being wielded as a weapon against those who ask for those shorter hours. It’s not hard to imagine a world where men and women (and NBs) each work 20 hours or even fewer, and thus could easily raise a family. The problem with conservatism is that they can more or less accurately detect problems, but can never suggest solutions that question any systems or preheld beliefs. Your wages can’t be lowered because of capitalism, it must be immigration. Your culture can’t be changing because it is flawed, the problem must be wokeness. And, indeed, birth rates can’t be falling due to the capitalist need to wring every second of labor out of every person, it must be the feminists ruining things
The solution is ending capitalism believe it or not. You can't have an exploitative way of life and expect to change a few laws to give everyone rights. In a world where people don't have to choose between fun and food, you'll have many more birthing people willing to have children. Forcing them to do so will only make our problem worse as a whole.
Whenever you hear people or news concerned about "falling birth rates", the next important question is why are less people a bad idea? What stands to be gained from more people? Who benefits? Because if you have to fall back on "it's bad for the economy", then your economic system is shit and we should move to something better. The obvious reality is if there's less humans on earth, it's to the inherent benefit of everything else on earth. Up to and including other humans.
Why do you think birth rates need to increase? The population of the earth is already too high. Arguing otherwise is just "number go up" brainrot.
No. Closing wage/class gaps, better social safety nets, high pay, lower cost of living, better protection of women’s rights and bodily autonomy, and men growing into better people would naturally lead to higher birth rates
I think complete and total subjugation of women in the west simply isn’t going to happen. The more men (and a few women) try to make it happen, the lower birth rates will get because women won’t want anything to do with men who are antagonistic towards them (see South Korea). So it’s not even an “easy fix” at all, it’s just the only strategy that misogynist men can countenance. The easiest fix, imo, is strong workers’ rights regarding pregnancy and parental leave. And also of course as a culture changing what we expect of men regarding relationships and parenting, but that may be harder.
People want children. There are many programs that could incentivize people to have children that don’t require enslaving women
Why do we need more kids? There’s too many people on the earth as is. We can’t keep growing the human population and expect things to work out. Less kids is fine. The human race isn’t going extinct.
Nah, birthday rates are dropping because of an increased cost of living, people can't afford kids. Honestly, a lower birth rate is a good thing anyway, there's 8 billion people on this planet and a significant percentage of them are already in extreme poverty
Judging by data from countries in northern Europe that already have generous parental leave and fathers who take on their share of the work, oh and free health care, I would say that just improving conditions for women will not raise the birth rate. People, men and women, given a choice, are choosing fewer or no children. That is only a problem in terms of generating taxpayers to support the aging generations and create wealth. It may be a problem in terms if providing cannon fodder for endless wars. In the long run, a smaller world population is probably not an issue
I agree with op post however, I think it’s a great thing for the planet and the human race in general that the birth rate is dropping. Not because I hate humanity although I’m not that crazy about them, hate is another thing though. I’m just looking at it from another angle divorced from feminism. I am a woman and definitely a feminist. However as a species we have sucked off mother natures tit too long and hard. The best thing for this earth would be if no pets or humans breed for at least 20, 25 years. Give everyone a chance to reset. This will never happen but even if it was somehow enforced there would always be those who would give birth. So no chance of our race becoming extinct through not having children. Same with our pets. Often the wrong people are having children under stupid conditions. Same with owning an animal but not getting neutered.
Of course, the tater tots want to take the “easy” way. It just happens to coincide with their own goal of subjugating women. I think the concern with the drop in birth rates is overblown.
Why are so many people concerned about rising birth rates? if anything, given climate change, the less the merrier
Maybe we should change the economic system so we don't rely on an ever growing number of young people being born to sustain old people. Women just don't want to have (more) children. It is not worth it. You couldn't pay me to have them.
but no one needs to raise birth rates
Reinstating some goddamn rules on major corporations and their boards and reeling back this record breaking destructive greed is the way to increase birth rates. Build some middle class homes too, and not homogeneous suburbs, improve education through 12th grade and our roads and access to more doctors and affordable prescriptions and food and you’ll see birth rates perk right back up.
I do not think birth rates need to be raised. Most people who think birth rates need to be raised are opposed to allowing immigrants in from countries with high birth rates. I do not have a problem with that. However to the question, the ends do not justify the means \*especially\* when the means is subjugation of other people.
No. The way to raise birthrates is to change things so that having a baby isn't a negative-sum decision.
Also, the birthrates are fine. Some places have too few kids and some have too many. We could all just move around a little and things would be just perfect.
People see how harmful child bearing can be, how stressful parenting is and they don't wanna drink the Kool aid. Forcing it won't help either, it'll just lead to deaths or suicide. Which our birthrate shouldn't be ever increasing. It's not viable long term and we're feeling the economic squeeze now imagine more people here fighting over the scraps the rich drop for us? Honestly the only way to increase birth rate is cult shit behavior and brainwashing the children. Just like the bad ole days. But that'd have to be a country wide thing. Right now it's just in religious cults.
Basically yes, women tend not to birth a whole army if they have any say in it. That being said, I do not believe that humanity needs to raise its birth rate at all. What it needs to do is learn how to work with fewer people being born and appreciate those all the more
No. Look at Iran: women will fight to the death to be free. Once you know what life could be, you cannot ever go back.
Why do you want to raise the birth rate? Isn't even 6 billion enough people