"Some regions are giving lump-sum bonuses to women who become mothers while they’re still in school, and a Russian version of MTV’s '16 and Pregnant,' which originally discouraged teen pregnancy, has been rebranded as 'Mom at 16,' in order to promote it. One politician encouraged women to wear miniskirts to increase births, while an official in the country’s Education Ministry advocated 'school discos' to foster 'romance for children.' A regional health minister has told Russians to have sex during work breaks. Now, a hodgepodge of religious conservatives and techno-futurists are leading the United States into the fray...."
From
"A Bold Idea to Raise the Birthrate: Make Parenting Less Torturous" (NYT).
The article is by Anna Louie Sussman who says she's keeping "a running list of harebrained schemes various governments and officials have proposed to raise the birthrate in their aging countries."
"It’s possible that within the MAGA bubble, some aspiring tradwives might genuinely be motivated by the prospect of a medal, or perhaps a memecoin, from Mr. Trump (though whether they’ll get all the way to baby No. 6 by the time his term ends is an open question).... The ideas currently being floated... prompt mockery and horror, at least among my cohort of reproductive-age women. 'This is nuts,' said one friend.... 'God help us,' wrote another."
The incentives will just have to get better, but they probably won't until the decline becomes more obvious, and then, they still won't, because it will be too late, and who will want to pay for all that free childcare and so forth when it's easy to see there's no hope? But aren't those Russians crazy?