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.
Replies
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 • 12 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
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
I think my wife would cut me for saying something like that.
sep 2, 2025, 8:19 pm • 1 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