I think this is where the vast majority of the meat in pro-family policy is. You're not going to convince people who don't want to have children to have them, and you shouldn't want to anyway.
Replies
You shouldn't try to convince them but I do think that the decision to have or not have children is driven in part by conditions that are responsive to policy levers.
sep 2, 2025, 3:59 pm • 5 0 • view
I know a lot of people who are choosing to have kids or not, and I know nobody who has decided not to have them at all because of costs.
sep 2, 2025, 4:01 pm • 15 0 • view
Old dad here, we waited until it was fiscally viable, and it was (still is!) still difficult!!
sep 2, 2025, 5:31 pm • 1 0 • view
Dads can do that. Less of an option for women.
sep 2, 2025, 7:49 pm • 0 0 • view
it was a contributing factor in my wife and i deciding not to try to have kids though not the most important one
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 3 0 • view
like the incentive to get past "we don't really see ourselves as parents" was super not there
sep 2, 2025, 4:09 pm • 5 0 • view
That's fair, although I think that was pretty clearly the main issue, that's not a thing to necessarily "get past"
sep 2, 2025, 4:10 pm • 4 0 • view
I am occasionally wistful about it, I think we would have had awesome kids, but she would have been taking the primary physical risk and again holy shit the economics are terrible
sep 2, 2025, 4:12 pm • 3 0 • view
*the entire significant physical risk
sep 2, 2025, 4:14 pm • 2 0 • view
Any serious pro-family policy should also involve a Manhattan Project for artificial wombs/making pregnancy safer
sep 2, 2025, 4:22 pm • 5 0 • view
They probably don’t talk about it. In MA, if you have no family to help with childcare, a lot of people can’t afford even one daycare slot.
sep 2, 2025, 7:48 pm • 1 0 • view
More than men taking 6 months off, which they should, you also need school coverage until 5 pm and should probably have both parents of young kids work 80% so that, on at least 2 days, there is a parent who does not need to miss work to go to a pediatrician etc.
sep 2, 2025, 7:48 pm • 1 0 • view
OTOH, I know many people who have smaller families than they'd ideally like because of costs.
sep 2, 2025, 4:01 pm • 17 0 • view
They mean they want white people to have more kids. People can't afford to have more kids due to Republican economic policies.
sep 3, 2025, 12:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Exactly. The right wing loonies are pro birth, not pro family or pro child.
sep 2, 2025, 3:59 pm • 4 0 • view
I get that, but we do need to convince liberals to have more kids. Obviously, all children don’t inherit the politics of their parents, but we can’t let reproduction become an R+30 process.
sep 2, 2025, 7:36 pm • 0 0 • view
Turns out the world is horrible, this country sucks, and the future is fucked is not a great sales pitch get people to have kids.
sep 2, 2025, 6:21 pm • 1 0 • view
Eh, I agree this is probably the best way to aggressively push fertility rates up, but I do think there's people who don't want to have children because we make having children is a stressful nightmare, not because they hate kids. But that just means pursuing good policy, not hassling those people.
sep 2, 2025, 5:39 pm • 4 0 • view
I think the real panacea is just figuring out how to have families where there's one job between two people and not have it be a poverty-level life style. When you give people that much free time, the idea of having kids will blossom a lot more than it does when we just treat it like a third job.
sep 2, 2025, 5:43 pm • 1 0 • view
IMO the way to do that is just to have people start younger. People who want to have 2 kids and start at 35 will have 2, maybe 1. People who want to have 2 kids and start at 25 will by age 32 be thinking about a 3rd.
sep 2, 2025, 4:59 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s the easiest way, but how does one incentivize it without disincentivizing women’s educational attainment/career development. I don’t believe it’s possible and thus it’s not a worthwhile policy goal.
sep 2, 2025, 6:20 pm • 4 0 • view
This isn't a policy solution, just an observation: doing a greater portion of the childcare work (including pregnancy/childbirth) will always be a burden to women's careers; but there's no reason that burden must be greater if it happens earlier in her career.
sep 3, 2025, 12:52 am • 0 0 • view
What do you mean? It is harder to get an advanced degree if you’re bearing and rearing children in your 20s. Likewise, it is harder to nail your critical first opportunities (and outcompete male or child-free peers) if you need to take maternity leave or leave work early for carpool.
sep 3, 2025, 12:57 am • 0 0 • view
As an example, I started my career in biglaw. In my office and practice group, there were no junior women who had children. Junior men, yes. Junior women, no.
sep 3, 2025, 12:59 am • 0 0 • view
There's no reason that a woman taking time off for kids as a senior associate or partner should be less disruptive for your career than doing so as a junior associate. The reason the latter hurts your career more is just ingrained ideas about how the career arc should look.
sep 3, 2025, 1:08 am • 0 0 • view
You must not be a lawyer because if you were, you’d understand that’s preposterous. Your primary value-add as a junior is 24/7 availability. Only when you advance and take on more supervisory responsibility do you have any semblance of control over your schedule.
sep 3, 2025, 1:11 am • 0 0 • view
I agree that the way the job is presently conceived is hostile to a junior associate taking maternity leave. I'm saying that isn't a law of nature, the way women doing childbearing is a law of nature. It's a law of human institutions designed around modern expectations of gender roles.
sep 3, 2025, 1:21 am • 0 0 • view
More senior people have high expectations on availability too. AFAICT the difference isn't that juniors inherently must be more available, it's that senior associates are established value-adds by the time they take time off, whereas a junior will be seen as "behind her class" when she returns.
sep 3, 2025, 1:21 am • 0 0 • view
I think it’s both, though tbf Gen Z associates were doing a good job of pushing back on unreasonable availability expectations before I went in-house. Not sure if things have changed with the market softening
sep 3, 2025, 1:31 am • 0 0 • view
Need to fully fund childcare and make all full time work 4 days a week.
sep 2, 2025, 7:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Zero chance a 4-day work week would meaningfully change expectations for salaried employees in the near to medium term. Even with funded childcare, you are asking women to kneecap their careers.
sep 2, 2025, 8:21 pm • 3 0 • view
And one more thing, in Quebec unlike Ontario, some of the parental leave has to be taken by the man or non-birthing partner.
sep 2, 2025, 8:29 pm • 0 0 • view
I do like that policy. There’s at least one Scandinavian country that got really good results by tying maternity leave to paternity leave. But it’s not a silver bullet. Being an early career professional with young children will always suck and disadvantage all but the very best performers.
sep 2, 2025, 8:40 pm • 2 1 • view
No, nothing is. I’d also support longer time to things like tenure and making partner. But basically, I think, as a culture, we need to accept a bit of reduced productivity for a bit and let people ramp up later and work longer if they want.
sep 2, 2025, 8:48 pm • 0 0 • view
My cousin had kids as a grad student, not planned. They got lucky with MediCal and the kid being super quiet so he could sit in the office. They thought it was actually easier than it would be with the responsibilities of an assistant professor.
sep 2, 2025, 8:48 pm • 0 0 • view
Depends on the field. As is, a lot of physicians find that the demands of FTE are too much, and they do 6 sessions instead of 8.
sep 2, 2025, 8:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Many people do not work salaried jobs. For non salaried employees, hours over 32, could be compensated at time and a half.
sep 2, 2025, 8:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Many people in professional jobs also have the freedom to flex their schedules and to work remotely when needed.
sep 2, 2025, 8:27 pm • 0 0 • view
High income, high performers will always work more (as they now work more than 40 hours) but the expectation needs to be that they are paid enough to cover more paid childcare or a nanny.
sep 2, 2025, 8:27 pm • 0 0 • view
If you just make it easier for people who WANT to have kids to be able to have them, that does a lot I would think!
sep 2, 2025, 4:26 pm • 3 0 • view
But you could probably get my wife and I to have a second one faster (and possibly at all) with truly generous family subsidies and a program of larger family-sized (4+ bedrooms) apartment construction.
sep 2, 2025, 3:59 pm • 109 6 • view
We would’ve considered a third if daycare expenses weren’t ruinous
sep 2, 2025, 4:03 pm • 2 0 • view
Me me me
sep 3, 2025, 4:24 am • 0 0 • view
More women who'd really like to have kids but haven't found someone they want to partner with might have kids alone if they got $20-40k a year to help them manage it.
sep 2, 2025, 4:00 pm • 106 6 • view
Agreed, cost is a huge limiting factor in family size (or even existence). Maybe especially so for folks who need to go through surrogacy, artificial insemination, even adoption to have the families that they want — those are all very expensive! Includes potential solo moms, but also many others.
sep 2, 2025, 5:02 pm • 1 0 • view
We used to have this in the US and it got labeled a "Welfare Queen"
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 7 0 • view
Right there are reasons we don't do this. It's just like, if these people actually cared about the birthrate qua birthrate, there's lots of untapped policy levers.
sep 2, 2025, 4:09 pm • 5 0 • view
There are both good reasons and bad reasons we don't do this!
sep 2, 2025, 4:12 pm • 3 0 • view
Honestly you'd probably need $40-60k/yr. Then you get into minefields about means testing.
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 6 0 • view
Depends on where in the country I think.
sep 2, 2025, 4:09 pm • 2 0 • view
You'll end up with a nightmare policy like social security
sep 2, 2025, 4:12 pm • 4 0 • view
Baseline pay for a surrogate is 60k if we’re talking the monetary value women put on just bringing a kid into the world.
sep 2, 2025, 5:25 pm • 1 0 • view
I think quantities matter a lot. child allowances are great but nowhere, not even the Nordics, is anywhere close to actually compensating for what the kid costs in money and opportunities
sep 2, 2025, 4:02 pm • 40 2 • view
I don’t know how this would be translated into policy but it is so hard to find time to be someone other than a parent the more kids you have. extended + weekend hour daycare centers?? something to recreate a Village for people without nearby family or money for babysitters
sep 2, 2025, 4:05 pm • 4 0 • view
Precisely, yeah. People talk about how these policies are failing to move the needle even when they're generous and like....listen man I spend more than four grand a month on childcare *alone*.
sep 2, 2025, 4:03 pm • 39 2 • view
In Norway that's state capped at like $200 per kid or something in that ballpark tho.
sep 2, 2025, 4:28 pm • 0 0 • view
you'd think the neoliberal crowd would be on this. rational profit maximizers can compare quantities of money pretty easily!
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 22 2 • view
You'd think! But they're homo economis believers until it touches their psychosexual hangups and then boy howdy we're in the Feelings Zone.
sep 2, 2025, 4:08 pm • 24 2 • view
anyway excuse to post I think the best bit Michael Moore ever did www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UwQ...
sep 2, 2025, 4:11 pm • 13 0 • view
The best entrepreneur-friendly market economies in the world have excellent social safety nets. Also the most family-friendly. My friends in the Netherlands with kids have it so, so much easier.
sep 2, 2025, 4:16 pm • 6 0 • view
It sucks that the birth rate weirdos have made the discourse like this. We should subsidize it regardless of whether it increases birth rates or not because it’s the right thing to do
sep 2, 2025, 5:28 pm • 3 0 • view
That's right
sep 2, 2025, 5:29 pm • 2 0 • view
There’s a solid amount of opportunity cost to kids as well, having nothing to do with finances. People not having children until they’re 35 because being child-free in your 20s kicks ass means that at best, you’re having two kids. You could have given me $50,000 extra per year - wouldn’t take it.
sep 2, 2025, 4:05 pm • 10 0 • view
Well that's just ridiculously unrealistic
sep 2, 2025, 4:37 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s spending <720k over the childhood of a kid. Does that kid grow up to produce more than 720k? Most stats I’ve seen say yes
sep 2, 2025, 5:50 pm • 2 0 • view
Possibly, but the alternatives to pretty out-there policies like this appear to be either 1) not doing anything about well below replacement fertility or 2) subjugating women, and #2 should obviously be beyond the pale.
sep 2, 2025, 5:21 pm • 49 1 • view
1 seems like the reasonable course to me although basically no one wants to say that. Some negative effects of people not wanting kids but not enough to warrant the actual cost to fix
sep 2, 2025, 5:25 pm • 6 0 • view
Pretty much, yeah. I think it's bad that desired fertility so consistently falls below actual fertility, but if we don't want to do what's necessary to address that problem, well, I guess we don't.
sep 2, 2025, 5:26 pm • 5 0 • view
I’ve always been a little skeptical of that stat tbh. If you asked me that question 5 years ago, I might have said 4. If you asked me today, I’d say 3. After my second is born and I’m in the thick of it, decent odds I might say 2.
sep 2, 2025, 5:40 pm • 5 0 • view
The survey also smooths over the bargaining problem. Woman wants 2 kids, husband wants 3. They eventually agree to 2. You put them both in a survey and you get desired 2.5, actual 2. Is it a societal problem the woman “won?” Idk. Just a dumb example but I suspect it might be more complicated.
sep 2, 2025, 5:47 pm • 7 0 • view
Hard for me to imagine a scenario where desired fertility from surveys <= actual fertility without extreme poverty, rules against birth control, or one side of a relationship consistently being a subject of the other
sep 2, 2025, 5:53 pm • 7 0 • view
Happened during the immediate postwar baby boom if you look at the Gallup time series but since I think 1960 it’s been desired < actual
sep 2, 2025, 5:56 pm • 2 0 • view
Sorry I screwed up the inequality lol but you know what I mean
sep 2, 2025, 5:57 pm • 1 0 • view
(Usually all three)
sep 2, 2025, 5:55 pm • 2 0 • view
I just don't think sub-replacement fertility is going to be a problem. It's going to dovetail nicely with the fact that AI is going to destroy white collar employment and everyone can just work as okd-age carers instead
sep 2, 2025, 5:39 pm • 0 0 • view
Like in 500 BCE there were only 100 million people and the world produced the Buddha, Mahavira, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Zoroaster, Heraclitus, etc. We don't need that many people.
sep 2, 2025, 5:43 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm also not sure 2 would work.
sep 2, 2025, 5:22 pm • 3 0 • view
I'm basically OK with #1, although I think parents and children deserve support anyway because they're much more likely to be poor than childless families.
sep 2, 2025, 5:25 pm • 35 0 • view
I want to point out that the problem ISN’T sub-replacement fertility. This is a discussion, basically, of the ratio of the population today to that we’ll have in 20, 50, 100 years. There’s nothing special about 1:1! 5:4 is probably fine. 3:1 is a fucking disaster.
sep 2, 2025, 5:29 pm • 4 0 • view
So, TFR anywhere in the 1.7-2.3 range is probably fine. 0.72 TFR, like in the ROK, is a fucking calamity.
sep 2, 2025, 5:42 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd like to add to this point that a lot of the problem is people freaking out about fertility rates because "we need our population maintenance level to be through 'white babies' not immigrants" not because there's actual imminent planetary population collapse
sep 2, 2025, 5:47 pm • 4 0 • view
America and Europe are creating their own problems by being racist. Your example, Korea, is creating their own problems by being racist AND hating the human beings they do have so much that nobody wants to bring children into the world.
sep 2, 2025, 5:48 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m a huge fan of immigration, but I think any scenario in which TFR is below *one* is going to result in huge social and societal dislocations even if there is no racial or religious animus towards immigrants
sep 2, 2025, 5:54 pm • 1 0 • view
Also this. Parenting needs to be broadly easier, less of the burden needs to fall on women, and men need to do more.
sep 2, 2025, 7:35 pm • 30 0 • view
I thought there was some study that men have drastically increased their time-spent-parenting (to the point where modern men parent more than their grandmothers), but in a blow for equality women have ALSO drastically increased their time-spent-parenting.
sep 2, 2025, 7:42 pm • 2 1 • view
I am open to coercive culture shifting on this. Mandatory paternity leave, for example. Not use-it-or-lose-it, but mandatory leave that you get penalized for not taking unless you have certain extenuating circumstances.
sep 2, 2025, 7:37 pm • 33 0 • view
Even beyond parental leave; ending the work day on time to enable kid pickup from school/daycare/aftercare, and normalizing this with work culture.
sep 2, 2025, 7:57 pm • 1 0 • view
Men simply need to take six months to take care of their fucking children!
sep 2, 2025, 7:38 pm • 40 1 • view
As a dad, I am extremely unhappy with other dads who don't at least try to pull their weight. What the fuck are you doing.
sep 2, 2025, 7:40 pm • 39 0 • view
Same. I judge people, especially dads, as how good of parents they are.
sep 2, 2025, 7:58 pm • 0 0 • view
don’t get me started on dads who say they’re “babysitting”.
sep 2, 2025, 8:15 pm • 3 0 • view
It does feel like a big problem is that human reproduction involves a 8-10 lb being ripping its way out of your genitals.
sep 2, 2025, 7:36 pm • 4 1 • view
Manhattan Project for artificial wombs/making pregnancy and childbirth safer and easier.
sep 2, 2025, 7:37 pm • 4 0 • view
Honestly, I think free, convenient daycare would do it.
sep 3, 2025, 1:32 am • 0 0 • view
There are dozens of social welfare policies that would make having kids easier/more appealing. Another element is reshaping the workplace so that having a kid isn't a complete career killer. There's been a lot of reporting on how return to office drove working mother's to leave the workforce.
sep 2, 2025, 6:08 pm • 2 0 • view
As a working father who wants to be home for bedtime every night if possible, I feel this intensely!
sep 2, 2025, 6:10 pm • 3 0 • view
assume this is why none of these guys actually want pro-natal policies. encouraging a middle class, urban family to go from 1 to 2 children is not only the demographic they personally hate but it also doesn't even remotely solve the "crisis" they are afraid of, which is primarily rooted in racism
sep 2, 2025, 4:00 pm • 8 1 • view
That's right. It's why I say I'm pro-family not pro-natalist. I care about families being the size people actually want them to be, whether that's no kids or ten, not MOAR BIRTHS
sep 2, 2025, 4:02 pm • 4 0 • view
Also like at scale for the planet we do probably want a steady-state and maybe smaller population, just not via population bomb ass shit.
sep 2, 2025, 4:17 pm • 0 0 • view
i think that if you only cared about raw fertility, you could offer 100k tax free per child and establish a network of orphanage like institutions to raise them if mother didn't want them. i do believe this would significantly boost fertility with horrific second order effects.
sep 3, 2025, 6:06 am • 0 0 • view
Trying to balance inevitable infant/toddler illness with a job feels impossible.
sep 2, 2025, 4:02 pm • 15 0 • view
And school holidays/early dismissal days, etc.
sep 2, 2025, 4:44 pm • 0 0 • view
Currently doing it and it sucks shit!
sep 2, 2025, 4:04 pm • 21 0 • view
The feeling of "I'm doing double duty to watch my kid and also try to get work done" coupled with "I'm falling behind on work and my colleagues must think I'm irresponsible / lazy" is really frustrating
sep 2, 2025, 5:29 pm • 1 0 • view
It particularly sucks when you can feel yourself catching the thing that bowled your kid over and you can tell its going to fuck you up in 24-48 hours.
sep 2, 2025, 4:05 pm • 21 0 • view
It's ok once your kid is old enough to amuse themselves/watch TV. When they're a baby? I just give up and burn through vacation.
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 6 0 • view
This was me last week. Now my wife is sick. I think I escaped.
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 4 0 • view
The only way I got through it is because I had been at my job for so long that I earned a month off per year
sep 3, 2025, 1:26 am • 0 0 • view
 This administration should shut the hell up about people having more kids. If people don’t wanna have children that’s their business nobody else’s business so just drop the subject. These people just want women trapped in a freaking abusive marriage when things aren’t working out.
sep 3, 2025, 4:42 pm • 0 0 • view