Government Can't Fix America's Baby Bust

[BeatMan]

Is the American family doomed?

Fewer than half of U.S. adults are married. The nation's fertility rate has fallen below replacement level. The percentage of children living with married parents has fallen drastically. There's no denying the trend lines.

That trajectory has spawned a public panic that sometimes verges on the apocalyptic, along with a related discussion about how best to use money and power to reverse course. Journalists, sociologists, and public intellectuals, most but not all of them right-of-center politically, have called for everything from tax credits to tariffs to transformations of the American welfare system in hopes of changing the way Americans conceptualize and form families.

But the declinist narrative doesn't tell the whole story—and the calls for big, centralized solutions misunderstand the issues at hand. The relevant obstacles to more marriages, more babies, and more stable families can't be moved by tax incentives, marriage promotion campaigns, or federally subsidized day care.

https://reason.com/2024/06/14/families-need-a-vibe-shift/

 

[Chernosoth]

Birthrates fall in urbanized industrialized nations, where babies become liabiilities and expenses instead of farm workers. That becomes a moot point as America deindustrializes back to an agricultural economy without fossil fuels. But the postindustrial birthrate will be still low for a long while due to all sorts of crap affecting fertility, plus the lower food supply of an environment damaged by industry and commercial farming.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Is the American family doomed?

Fewer than half of U.S. adults are married. The nation's fertility rate has fallen below replacement level. The percentage of children living with married parents has fallen drastically. There's no denying the trend lines.

That trajectory has spawned a public panic that sometimes verges on the apocalyptic, along with a related discussion about how best to use money and power to reverse course. Journalists, sociologists, and public intellectuals, most but not all of them right-of-center politically, have called for everything from tax credits to tariffs to transformations of the American welfare system in hopes of changing the way Americans conceptualize and form families.

But the declinist narrative doesn't tell the whole story—and the calls for big, centralized solutions misunderstand the issues at hand. The relevant obstacles to more marriages, more babies, and more stable families can't be moved by tax incentives, marriage promotion campaigns, or federally subsidized day care.

https://reason.com/2024/06/14/families-need-a-vibe-shift/

Why do you always look to government to solve issues?

 

[MajorRewrite]

Is the American family doomed?

Fewer than half of U.S. adults are married. The nation's fertility rate has fallen below replacement level. The percentage of children living with married parents has fallen drastically. There's no denying the trend lines.

That trajectory has spawned a public panic that sometimes verges on the apocalyptic, along with a related discussion about how best to use money and power to reverse course. Journalists, sociologists, and public intellectuals, most but not all of them right-of-center politically, have called for everything from tax credits to tariffs to transformations of the American welfare system in hopes of changing the way Americans conceptualize and form families.

But the declinist narrative doesn't tell the whole story—and the calls for big, centralized solutions misunderstand the issues at hand. The relevant obstacles to more marriages, more babies, and more stable families can't be moved by tax incentives, marriage promotion campaigns, or federally subsidized day care.

https://reason.com/2024/06/14/families-need-a-vibe-shift/

Interesting article. Well balanced, I thought.

The family panic is driven by a narrative of decline and disarray. But there is another way to view shifts in family formation—one where much of what is happening is actually good news. Americans today are marrying and procreating, or not, on their own terms. This, in turn, is leading to happier relationships, happier families, and more fulfilling lives all around.

In this largely celebratory tale, the happy facade of the baby boom masked miserable marriages, desperate housewives, and unfulfilled aspirations. Then the loosening of laws and taboos around divorce and working women allowed many people to leave unhappy situations behind. When today's Americans decide to marry and have kids—not always in that order, and without one always implying the other—it's for the right reasons, rather than a feeling that it's obligatory.

This has led to stronger marriages, and alternative arrangements—including couples happily co-parenting without tying the knot—that are just as good. And while Americans are having fewer children, they're investing more in the ones we do have: quality over quantity. Single parenting may have reached an equilibrium, holding stable since 2009 after rising for decades. Divorce rates are down about 40 percent from 1980.

Any concern over falling fertility rates is just dumb, IMHO.

In every case worldwide, nations with high birth rates are poor. Nations with low birth rates are prosperous. Spitting out oodles of kids is a prescription for economic disaster.

Individual quality of life is far more important than the aggregate size of the national economy. In other words, it’s better to be a Swiss citizen than an Indonesian.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Why do you always look to government to solve issues?

You’ve got it backwards. The article is titled:

Government Can't Fix America's Baby Bust​

It doesn’t advocate big government initiatives.

 

[jaF0]

Less people is better than more people.

 

[coati]

Less people is better than more people.

Yes, we need less people, less mindless consumption of energy and other resources, and more biological diversity. A smaller population of humans within a more sustainable ecosystem.

 

[RoryN]

Other than a rapidly-collapsing education system complete with classrooms where children might be shot, a democracy that's deteriorating monthly, horrible financial prospects for kids once they're of age, exploitation of children worldwide, having to co-exist with garbage adults, daily examples of miserable households who do have kids, and the crippling expense of raising them, I really can't think of why someone wouldn't want to pop out a baby in the U.S. right now.

(Oh wait - I did think of one possible reason: reproductive rights are being assaulted nationwide, so family planning is getting more difficult.)

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

Birthrates fall in urbanized industrialized nations, where babies become liabiilities and expenses instead of farm workers. That becomes a moot point as America deindustrializes back to an agricultural economy without fossil fuels. But the postindustrial birthrate will be still low for a long while due to all sorts of crap affecting fertility, plus the lower food supply of an environment damaged by industry and commercial farming.

Are you suggesting we take the Year Zero pill?

50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as they can. There is strong scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a significant extent inherited. No one suggests that a social attitude is a direct outcome of a person’s genetic constitution, but it appears that personality traits are partly inherited and that certain personality traits tend, within the context of our society, to make a person more likely to hold this or that social attitude. Objections to these findings have been raised, but the objections are feeble and seem to be ideologically motivated. In any event, no one denies that children tend on the average to hold social attitudes similar to those of their parents. From our point of view it doesn’t matter all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or through childhood training. In either case they ARE passed on.

 

[Bray123]

There's only one thing you can do.

Find a woman who'll let you fertilize her.

 

[HisArpy]

Somebody hasn't been paying attention because Gov CERTAINLY CAN "fix this."

All it takes is a law requiring mandatory pregnancy of all women of child bearing age.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Somebody hasn't been paying attention because Gov CERTAINLY CAN "fix this."

All it takes is a law requiring mandatory pregnancy of all women of child bearing age.

The first step was outlawing abortion.
The second step will be outlawing contraception.
Outlaw homosexual relationships and pass laws banning miscegenation and the birth rate will recover quite nicely without "mandatory pregnancy laws".

 

[Chobham]

Somebody hasn't been paying attention because Gov CERTAINLY CAN "fix this."

All it takes is a law requiring mandatory pregnancy of all women of child bearing age.

*chuckle* How far do you think that'll go?

 

[HisArpy]

*chuckle* How far do you think that'll go?

As far as any majority group will push it.

The concept springs from an understanding that the abortion issue is a cesspool of governmental intrusion. If the government can insert itself into reproductive decisions to legislate abortion, it can also insert itself into laws mandating pregnancy.

 

[Lazaran]

As far as any majority group will push it.

The concept springs from an understanding that the abortion issue is a cesspool of governmental intrusion. If the government can insert itself into reproductive decisions to legislate abortion, it can also insert itself into laws mandating pregnancy.

Preach, Derpy.

“republicans” are control freak fascists.

 

[Pad_Foot]

Well? Obviously we need give herds all the fertile women to the right men as soon as they can bring a baby to term. Perhaps dress them in such a way that we all know they have been chosen.

 

[HisArpy]

Well? Obviously we need give herds all the fertile women to the right men as soon as they can bring a baby to term. Perhaps dress them in such a way that we all know they have been chosen.

And of course, only a "certain class" of men will be the ones "eligible" to reproduce. All of whom are chosen at birth of course.

 

[RobDownSouth]

As far as any majority group will push it.

The concept springs from an understanding that the abortion issue is a cesspool of governmental intrusion.

Well. that is certainly one way of looking at it.

I prefer to think of abortion...specifically a woman's access to abortion... as an existential threat to the survival of the dwindling white male Christian Patriarchy.

It appears that most of the Republican party agrees with me.

 

[v_indigo]

It’s almost as if an economic system that keeps even many working people one missed shift away from losing their shelter, or food, doesn’t encourage people to take on the burden of a child.
It’s so weird.