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?
Posts
113 comments:
If people don't want children because that drive is not in them, it's best not to try to bribe them to do something to get something out of them. Just like if another country is incapable of overthowing its leaders, you can't lead the horse to drink. Can you imagine what you're advocating buying? Children nobody really wants by a government seemingly in need of soldiers and serfs to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat. Wouldn't it be better to free people and let them afford to be happy and reproduce naturally? Haven't you boomers meddled artificially in life enough? This is what your work bought us: a work perpetually at war and younger people too smart to keep playing your game.
What's wanted is a new lifestyle that in itself will make having children not only more affordable but more satisfying as well. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Change the child seatbelt laws.
I really depise these "Aren't foreigners funny?" articles in the leftwing MSM. Now do Israel, NYTs. Maybe an article on those "Wacky Orthodox Jews".
"A regional health minister has told Russians to have sex during work breaks."
A Costanza's paradise!
Yes, the Russians are crazy. But at least they're trying, unlike these dingbats the Times quoted (along with their obligatory Trump diss).
System posted before I was done.
Kids *everywhere* around here. Lots of families with 4 or more. Having to build more schools. Store of little kids and pregnant mums.
I think it's because out here we still have extended families and broader **community**. I even see it to a lesser degree in the suburbs. Trader Joe's is full of strollers, kids in backpacks, and soon to come kids in huge bellies.
Go to Whole Foods, by contrast, and you might see two in 15 minutes. Same adult ages ... but shockingly different social demographics. I doubt the full-belly crowd is big on abortion and "fur-babies", and I equally doubt the WF crowd is *not*.
In the US, it's illegal to have more than 2 children because that's the number of car seats that fit in the average vehicle in America.
Keep women affordable, available, reusable, and taxable?
There are also women serving on womb farms for transgender couplets, infertile couples, feminist females, and other modalities of social progress. Ca-ca-crazy.
..."It’s possible that within the MAGA bubble, some aspiring tradwives..." 'Gorillas in the Mist', or 'Elephants in the Must'? . They'd be clutching pearls, if only they had a boyfriend that could afford to give them.
What @Bart Hall said. My daughter's community has plenty of young families with multiple kids. My neighborhood here has lots of young families with multiple kids, and it's great hearing them let off steam, playing outside, going bananas.
I don't have any doubt that Roger Pielke is correct about population decline, but I am not worried, not yet anyway.
One-child, selective-child, and girls just want to have fun.
A burden is a "burden" is a burden... Abort. Sequester. Hee Haw.
Too many, not enough, just right is a Goldilocks policy.
Neither Venus nor Mars nor Uranus. Earth, perhaps.
Might want to think about fighting alcoholism instead. "[Alcohol] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance." William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Russia man: "knock knock"
Russian woman: "who's there?"
Russian man: "surprise!"
Many women will like the husband to support her and children. Since Carter it took two salaries to pay a mortgage and stay at home wives and moms decreased.
Plus the push for women to have degrees led to more women in college then men. College was a great spot to meet a future spouse.
Not now.
sneak up on Putin - and kill him.
The parents might get deported, Bart...
but the children get left behind. That's how you grow America, not sure if it makes it greater.
Just a mayor? In Russia? What about China now encouraging families to have 2 to 3 children by offering subsidies and free housing? I’m sure she must have mentioned China.
The mayor encouraged men to 'sneak up on their women so that 10,000 children will be born in exactly nine months.
All of life's answers can be found in Seinfeld and Scarface.
Frank Lopez: You gotta jump on her when she's not looking.
Tony Montana: That's the best time.
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?
Non-reciprocal duties exist because only some people are capable of carrying them out.
Only men can protect society and provide order.
Only women can birth the next generation.
Men are expected to fight and die. Women are expected to endure childbirth.
The current issue is that women have decided the no longer have a duty to society so society is a on a course to doom.
Women have to decide to be adults or society ends.
It is that simple.
Hey, at least Russians have a plan, unlike those doomed South Koreans.
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."
How's her list of *reasonable* schemes coming?
No one affiliated with NYT thinks any scheme other than "more immigration" is reasonable.
"Only men can protect society and provide order."
Yeah, why don't those women want to quit voting, stay home, and hope for Gilead?
Where is the authoritarianism when you really want some? Make it mandatory with penalties for women not making the quota on attempts per week. Men can do the reporting online with a simple app.
Parenting is “torturous”? NYT is cementing its position as one of the top evil forces in America. Although it would be a boon if NYT readers had no children.
Note to the author: Maga people are not the demographic requiring incentives to have babies. Check with the group who views abortion as an almost religious duty.
Achilles notes: "Women have to decide to be adults or society ends."
I know a few who would gladly step up if only they could lead a life of Julia without an icky rethuglican man.
10:00am - Coffee break.
12:30pm - Lunch. Borscht and vodka.
3:00pm - Knock boots with the missus.
Get rid of Social Security and Medicare. You want security in your old age? Raise some children into productive, functioning adults who don't hate you.
The last thing we should be doing is transferring money from young adults to senior citizens.
waiting for prog-fems to scream about Handmaid's Tale.
Wasn't Julian Assange suppose to be guilty of "sex by surprise" which surprised me by being an actual crime in England
John Henry
as i've said before..
Let's ASSUME, that there are TWO SOCIETIES..
A: the GOOD society; treats women as FULL citizens
B: the BAD society; treats women as chattel
in A;
MOST women have NO children, and FEW women have more than one.
in B (the BAD society)
MOST woman are FORCED to be breeding stock, and have LOTS of children
In three generations.. WHICH society is STILL THERE?
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP
ps.. Remember! i'm NOT saying that it'd be good to treat women as livestock.. in fact, i'm EXPLICITLY calling that BAD!
I'm JUST SAYING..
Do you want a live BAD society? or a dead GOOD one?
we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth...
Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing, but it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless, distinguishable environments. One, where you got 20 million people left;
and another where you've got 150 million people left!!!
Maybe Elon can pinch hit
Society will eventually prioritize its young over its old.
we've TRIED Freedom, and Liberty, and Rights, and Choice..
LOOK where it's gotten US!
maybe (just MAYBE) it's time to put aside our childish ways
It's IN the Book! (1 Corinthians 13:11, Genesis 1:28, etc)
It used to be possible to just let the kids out to play and they came home at dinner time. Today you get arrested for that.
We need to encourage Irish twins. The Irish know how to do it.
Russia had one of the highest abortion rates if I recall. It may still. Seems like that probably had and has an impact on birth rate.
My probably outlandish concern here, but the thought that ran through my head almost right away after reading the post, was "Are they expecting the Ukraine war to go on that long?"
John and Ken discuss Sarah Palin pregnancy and Irish twins with the news lady Terri Rae Elmer who had Irish twins.
More diversity and less Diversity.
More affordable and less shared.
More unPlanned and less Planned Posterity.
More alacrity and less adversity.
Equal and complementary.
More friends and less "benefits".
Not all productivity need trigger a taxable event or process.
Life is not so short that we cannot reconcile.
Make America Healthy Again
The problem for the writer and her reproductive cohort is that they’re all members of the lesbian matriarchy.
“ Wasn't Julian Assange suppose to be guilty of "sex by surprise" which surprised me by being an actual crime in England”
I think that was in Sweden, and the law had to do with the person who had given consent being surprised by what the conditions actually were — specifically that a condom was not used.
So I think the surprise isn’t oh suddenly we’re having sex. It’s we had sex, but I’m surprised to find out what really happened.
Next thing you know Russia will allow rape as long as it is not rape-rape... and Whoopi will be ok with that.
Valentine Smith said, "The problem for the writer and her reproductive cohort is that they’re all members of the lesbian matriarchy."
I knew those lesbian jedis in the acolyte were up to no good.
"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..."
It's also possible that the reporter is just making stuff up.
Everything does not have to be a crisis. When did we flip the switch from over-population to under-population? AI and robots were going to take everyone's job, so we needed universal basic income.
There are 8 billion people on the planet. When we get down to 4 billion people, we can start worrying.
Screw the article. I want to smack the bitch that talks about MAGA Trad Wives like she knows ANYTHING AT ALL about being a traditional wife. She’s got some screwed up idea in her head fed to her by who knows.
Pound sand Anna.
If you're concerned about a society wanting to have more kids, then the quickest way is by Decree. But of course, for a royal decree, you need a King.
Raise some children into productive, functioning adults who don't hate you.
Women who have children today have a 14-year-old's mentality, they have high-pitched teenage voices for the rest of their adult lives because they never grow up, never mature into an adult. These women get married to men who never left childhood themselves, stuck in the terrible twos forever. I don't see that these procreators are capable of raising functional adults with conscience, resilience, ability to manage their emotions, social skills, humility to not care about the spotlight and so on. Why do we encourage these self-absorbed, narcissistic, dangerous fools to have children? Their presence in society is already a problem, why do we need them to mangle up another generation, because they will.
We know how to increase birthrates. First you raise children during a Great Depression then have world war. This caused those coming of age during the war and right after to marry younger and have more children. The fertility rated had dropped to 2 in 1940 but shot up to 3.5 in 1960. But then it dropped back to 2 in 1975 where it dipped below until 1995, then back to hover at 2 until 2010 when another dip started.
The interesting anomaly that people miss is how dating which was for reputation and social competition with marriage a separate phase in life until the war, became "practice marriage" with pinning and monogamous going steady with marriage at a younger age until it became a jumble in the 1970s. Till today when "dating and rating" is dominate among many and marriage is when the looming age 40 induce grab a spouse.
The real impact on babies has been the 72% decline in births to mother 15-19 and the 49% decline in births to mother 20-24 from 1970 to 2021. Births to mothers over 30 have risen but obviously not by enough.
The anti-natalist writers at the Times can be expected to ridicule natalist thinking. Consider Hillary Clinton's recent comments about how women should concentrate on leaning into their careers and let the immigrants give birth to children.
Randomizer: "When did we flip the switch from over-population to under-population? AI and robots were going to take everyone's job, so we needed universal basic income."
Exactly right. Easy 3-step process to deal with both crises:
1. Everyone displaced by AI/robotics becomes an old-age caregiver. The money saved in their old industries goes to raise the wages in caregiving, so you can lead a comfortable middle-class life wiping old people's butts, leading Boomer singalongs, etc.*
2. By the time AI/robots become sophisticated enough to wipe old people's butts, the caregivers in Step 1 will be old and can be taken care of at low cost by the robots.
3. The much smaller third generation of humans (children of the high-paid butt-wipers) can take the few jobs that still need actual people to do them.
*Someone will ask how the money from industrial wages gets transferred to caregiver wages. Well, the market can do that. One old-folks-home company can't get workers. A manufacturing company no longer needs workers. They merge and move the workers around, keeping the income stream from both business lines. Lots of other possible permutations. If you really want to speed it up, socialist variants on this theme could take place: nationalize (or state-or city-ize) the old-folks homes and hire laid-off industrial workers as civil-service butt-wipers.
JSM
Also, no one is talking about human cloning anymore. Combine human cloning with artificial wombs, and you can make your workforce as big as you like in 18 years. Make the clones from a wide variety of donors, train them in traditional values, and you can stop cloning after the first generation.
Tell me the ChiComs aren't working on this.
JSM
My grandparents on my mother's side were share croppers. They had eleven children, one died of pneumonia and another of diabetes. Of the remaining nine, half went to college. Something has gone badly wrong when it is too expensive and labor intensive to raise and educate children.
Sounds like something Musk would come up with.
There are still plenty of Muslims living in the Russian Federation, particularly in the southwest. Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kalmykia, Chechnya, North Ossetia-Alania -- all in the southwest and all Muslim-dominated.
Get rid of car seats and the car seat mentality, for starters.
rhhardin said...
It used to be possible to just let the kids out to play and they came home at dinner time. Today you get arrested for that.
Direct result of the 19th Amendment.
Feelings vs systems.
Children are now a consumption decision for most middle class people. They are no longer a normal progression into adulthood but rather an expense to manage. Housing, transportation, medical expenses, education are all costs that need to be examined when having kids. And don't forget the loss of freedom and the time to raise them. These pressures have overwhelmed societal pressure on having kids. The exception are immigrants from cultures that still value families.
Good luck fixing this. The government getting in the way of this is not going to help.
Why listen to people who most likely have no children and, most probably, no clue.
After the World Wars many countries, especially France, gave silver and even gold medals to mothers of multiple children. You’d think these “sophisticated” leftist twits would know this. They are quite collectible now. They were done in multiple styles. Romantic. Classical. Art Deco. Art Nouveau. They were designed by the famous designers of the time. Really, to say this is a bizarre idea is to show how uneducated in the fine arts and European culture and history you are. Sad. Leftists know almost nothing about the world they claim to be able to control.
They playin’ hide teh potato over in mofo russia.
Jim said...
Get rid of car seats and the car seat mentality, for starters.
That is actually a factor. You'd have more fatal accidents as the downside, but more then enough children to make up for the increased deaths.
Every decision is a trade off.
At age 70 it seems like the childless friends and family our age are dying off faster then those, like us, with children and grandchildren. Less to live for? Who knows... Yeah, they travelled more, had nicer things, newer cars, because they didn't have the expense of raiding children. We raised 5. But overall, IMHO, they're losers in life. Well, not all of them. Quite a few I know were the oldest female who never married and lived at home taking care of Mom and Dad until they passed. Then have become the elderly live in aunt helping out. They lived a useful life.
We did our part. On one income, without childcare subsidies. My take home pay was less, because, of course, others got that and I paid for it via taxes. We did it without SNAP benefits, also paid for by me, which went to subsidize others. We did it without "FREE" school lunches, paid for out of taxes. Well, except for the last two years of school, when everyone in our "poor" rural district got them.
And as we've seen through DOGE audits, our tax money was going to an incredible amount of fraud...
And we lived through the great American children's die off, the year that the IRS started requiring social security numbers for children. Not going to look up the exact percentage, but a large percentage of America's children simply disappeared that year.
We never qualified for the EITC- a program full of fraud. We could have benefited from a larger tax deduction, but alas, fraud filled programs were much more popular.
We're up to 10 grandchildren, so our children are doing their part. One has 5 himself- with a stay at home wife... My youngest is going to set a wedding date soon. We have 19 years from youngest to oldest- a pretty big spread.
And in my area- there are the Mennonites, like my neighbor. 12 children. About 17 years from oldest to youngest. Oh, a mention of my son with 5- he attends Latin Mass, and the only couples attending that mass that don't have 3 or more children haven't been married long enough yet to have them. The future belongs to those who show up.
Attended 95th birthday yesterday thrown by the 3 children of woman with 9 great grandkids. Youngest 9 months and central casting adorable. People still want to have babies.
The future belongs to those who show up.
I'm delighted by the inevitability of the coming leftist self-immolation, and the unchallenged hegemony that the pro-natalist far right will enjoy after I'm gone.
You Go Girl, right to the abortion clinic, with your purple hair and nose rings and tattoos. The kind of kids you'd spawn are worthless to America, just as you are.
thats the 64,000 question, now Russia, really is like the handmaids tale, with all the pollution radiation, et al that it expended over 74 years, add to that the serious social collapse that happened in the 90s, which brought Putin to the fore front under different circumstances, Orban has pushed for more incentives for children,
the Western way apparently is to scare the hell out of child bearing women, with skydragon porn, and antinatalist garbage, but the cohort that is replacing them is more resistant to this type of indoctrination,
People without a stake in the future shouldn't be allowed to have any say in the way we run the country. If I could, I'd restrict the vote only to men with an honorable discharge from the military, and women who have given birth to 2 legitimate children.
Has no one been watching the endless speeches and videos from Peter Zeihan? He's been a broken record for years. It's too late for most countries, especially China and including Russia. The US is in relatively better shape.
Isaac Newton never knew dinosaurs existed.
Trump
Remembering the old days pre-birth control pills and no-fault divorce.Those two changes alone would double the births.
Love wins? Is cultural appropriation the problem or the exposition? The hypocritic burden of liberal conceit.
The evolutionary fitness function, the secular choice, is: be fruitful and multiply... with as many "friends" as possible... and abort, neutralize your competitors and Posterity to reduce environmental impact. Fortunately, we... most of us are not hedonistic ethicists. Women are not held captive in the kitchen, not herded on a womb farm, not even reserved as vassals, vessels to remain affordable, available, reusable, and taxable commodities of state and selfiesh pleasure.
traditionalguy said, "Remembering the old days pre-birth control pills and no-fault divorce.Those two changes alone would double the births."
Most Western women would prefer deportation to North Korea before giving up either. Norks would let them keep the pills, but in Dear Leader's socialist paradise everyone is at fault except Kim Jr.
You can buy him phosphorescent,
glows in the dark,
he's Pink And Pleasant ...
I am in the backseat sinnin',
Jesus on the dashboard grinnin'.
Cross-media mix of lyrics.
Though I wouldn't mind Paul Newman (RIP),
sneaking up behind me.
RCOCEAN II said...
I really depise these "Aren't foreigners funny?" articles in the leftwing MSM. Now do Israel, NYTs. Maybe an article on those "Wacky Orthodox Jews".
6/16/25, 10:01 AM
Donald Trump (and Ann Althouse!) likely have more Jewish grand children than most of Susman's friends. Some pro-birth ideas night sound silly, but then not everyone lives in an ethnostate determined to slaughter all non-approved minorities.
Yet the Trump Administration is clearly sincere about the best way to restore demographic balance. Purge criminals who aren't supposed to be here, and vacancies will open up for desirable populations. This doesn't have to be hard.
Start discriminating against women in the workplace. Career-minded women find it very hard to partner up with a man who isn't at least as professionally successful as she is, but generally want him to be more successful. If women decide later in life, 35+ that they are fine with a not as professionally successful male partner that might improve their individual life, but provides no real societal benefit because there are likely no children. This discrimination against women is morally justified because for the previous 2 generations or so men have been discriminated against in favor of women, so we are now at a moment in the periodic cycle of discrimination where it is once again justified to discriminate against women and in favor of men. Plus it will be overall better for society since there will be more families and children.
"The Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960. Within 2 years of its initial distribution, 1.2 million American women were using the birth control pill, or the "pill," as it is popularly known."
After the pill, and legal abortion, more wives were able to enter the workforce.
Also, was still shameful to have a bastard out of wedlock.
So, more wives were working. With dual income, more family money available. More money causes inflation. Housing goes up.
Housing goes up, more difficult for single income household.
Combination of birth control high cost of living, difficulty of transportation due to car seat and seat belt laws.
High cost of daycare all contribute.
"So, more wives were working. With dual income, more family money available. More money causes inflation. Housing goes up."
There is definitely something to this. And the price of housing is absolutely linked to the decrease in family formation. But the pervasiveness of dual-income households has created a 'Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-effect.' Now young folks have a much higher standard of the absolute minimum standard of living they need before they even think about starting a family. Social media has worsened this.
What are the odds of a New York City female having children? Or a husband for that matter?
I'd like to learn more about this sneaking up on women thing.
1) Is it legal?
2) Are there seminars available?
3) Can you also learn to sneak away?
Hey girl, I betcha
There's someone out to get you
You'll find him anywhere
On a bus, in a bar, in a Five and Dime
He'll say "Excuse me, you got teh honey, I got the time
Sneak-a, sneak-a, sneak they call him the Sneaker
Sneak, sneak, sneak can it get any bleaker
Their wives?
Friends with "benefits" is liberal ideology.
Equity and inclusion follows progressive principles.
#NoJudgment #NoLabels is transformative dogma.
Taking a knee is the hallmark of social justice. Just do it!
50 shades of knock up game.
How about this: Married couples get two votes in elections for every child they have, as long as the family stays together.
RideSpaceMountain said...
Valentine Smith said, "The problem for the writer and her reproductive cohort is that they’re all members of the lesbian matriarchy."
I knew those lesbian jedis in the acolyte were up to no good.
Even then it took 40 women to make 2 babies one of which turned out nuts.
This is not replacement rate.
Joe Bar said...
How about this: Married couples get two votes in elections for every child they have, as long as the family stays together.
Some form of this needs to be implemented. Key roles and responsibilities in society necessary for the functioning and continuance of society need to be identified and given the responsibility to vote. Military and limited forms of civil service should offer a path to citizenship.
Only People with a stake in and contribution to the future of a society should be part of determining the future direction of that society.
Hedonists and basement dwellers and welfare recipients should not be voting.
What about China now encouraging families to have 2 to 3 children by offering subsidies and free housing? I’m sure she must have mentioned China.
Leland at 6/16/25, 10:27 AM
************
I was reading comments while thinking, "outsource the population decline problem to China - once the Chinese decide to get busy and reproduce - problem solved".
bagoh20 said...
“I'd like to learn more about this sneaking up on women thing.
1) Is it legal?”
The Mayor actually said, “Cozy up to your Beloved…”, so it must be Legal. He ended with exhortation “…to fall in Love again”.
At the same time, we need to have statewide, high-density, transit-oriented zoning laws forced down our throats and massive "affordable housing" programs to support the exploding population!
ALP said...
I was reading comments while thinking, "outsource the population decline problem to China - once the Chinese decide to get busy and reproduce - problem solved".
China has too many men not enough women.
There are 2 parts of the equation: Babies per Woman x Number of Women.
It looks to me like there was a concerted effort to reduce the number of fertile women all around the world starting about 50 years ago.
They were successful.
"as long as the family stays together."
Too gimmicky. Define "stays together". Prove it... how?
Readering said...
"Attended 95th birthday yesterday thrown by the 3 children of woman with 9 great grandkids."
WOW! Readering, that is SO wonderful/extraordinary/impressive!
Out of curiosity..
What would be the replacement number for a person's great grandkids?
Let's Find Out!
2 parents..
4 grandparents..
8 great grandparents..
so, the replacement number for great grandkids would be EIGHT.
You're Blowing a horn, about this wonderful/extraordinary/impressive lady with *NINE* great grand kids..
Which is *ONE* more than the replacement rate. Sounds like;
her family really DOESN'T "want to have babies" all that much, does it?
But..as Barbie said: Math Is Hard!
"Only People with a stake in and contribution to the future of a society should be part of determining the future direction of that society."
Do people paying taxes today contribute to the continuation of a society?
RideSpaceMountain said...
"Hey, at least Russians have a plan, unlike those doomed South Koreans."
Thanks for the link. The comments on that video are remarkable and well worth reading in their own light.
Achilles said...
It looks to me like there was a concerted effort to reduce the number of fertile women all around the world starting about 50 years ago.
They were successful.
Led by the Chinese with their one baby per couple policy- which led to an enormous number of female infanticides so the couple could try again to get a cherished male heir. Now with pre-natal testing for sex- worldwide abortion of female babies before birth dwarfs the the number of male abortions. Not certain if that's true in the US. So if you're pro-abortion- you are really anti-woman, not pro. And who leads the pro-abortion anti-woman movement? Women... Western women in particular.
You get more of what you incentivize, but it sucks when your government is so focused on their political sides winning they forget that without people, there are no sides. Right now, we incentivize along narrow political lines, on short term goals. Both sides do this. Having vision means coming under attack. But only one side has the vision of a death cult, where its proudest members are incapable of reproduction because of surgery, and the next set is proud of terminating pregnancies as inconvenient, even close to birth, and the whole bunch is focused on reducing consumption and lowering the standards of living by regulation.
"and the whole bunch is focused on reducing consumption and lowering the standards of living by regulation."
This is why (well, one reason, anyway) the left is evil. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from refusing to reproduce and lowering their standards of living to whatever level they think is appropriate. But that freedom is not good enough for them- they demand the power to inflict their beliefs on everybody else.
What’s people’s perception of small/medium/large families by the number of kids?
1 kid - Starter
2 to 3 - Small family
4 to 5/6 - Medium family
6/7 to 9 - Large family
10 & up - Rapper/Pro athlete
The solution, Axlotl tanks.
The last project of the American eugenics society aka Society of Biodemography and Social Biology was to raise the birthrate among the eugenically valuable who were, obviously, secular liberals of European descent. The eugenicists studied every known scheme for achieving this goal at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. They concluded that nothing would get the eugenically valuable to have children like themselves and then the Society disbanded.
The basic problem is that the mother-to-be must believe in the future and she must have assurance that people, not programs, will be there to help her. Every society that survives does this so there isn't just one way to support mothers. But there is one kind of society that cannot assure women that motherhood is good - a society based on socialism or atheistic humanism of any kind. All of these societies are plunging off the cliff in terms of reproducing themselves. That's just a fact. Look at the birthrates. Within these socialist societies are little traditional or religious enclaves where men and women are now raising families and that's the future because that is where the next generation is living.
In short, there are individuals without traditions or religion who are raising wonderful families but there are no societies doing it. So the good news is programs won't work and there's no need to spend money on them or bother with them in any way. Work to help an individual, existing family.
As a couple of comments have noted tangentially, it's basically too late. (Link is to a SubStack article by Roger Pielke). Even under relatively generous assumptions the world population is projected to peak around 9 billion within the next three decades and then begin an accelerating decline. We'll be down to world population of *1* billion population in around 300 years. Fertility rates are falling well below replacement everywhere, not just rich countries. The fundamental problem is that even increasing the fertility rate back to just over 2 only gets us to a stable population. As noted, it's going to have to go well over 2 to build population and it's going to have to stay well above 2 for more than just a generation. In a reversal of the old project management joke that 9 women can't have a baby in a month, the millions of women who were never born aren't going to have any babies.
Quality is more important than quantity. Encouraging ghetto baby mamas to breed isn't going to help.
" So if you're pro-abortion- you are really anti-woman, not pro. And who leads the pro-abortion anti-woman movement? Women... Western women in particular."
the thing i've learned, from observation is:
women (nearly ALL women) really Really REALLY hate other women
Once you stipulate, that women are Actively Trying to drag down other women, the world makes Much More Sense
"Only men can protect society and provide order."
Yeah, why don't those women want to quit voting, stay home, and hope for Gilead?
Mark's irrelevant snark aside (you could have made it relevant snark, I think, Mark), isn't Achilles right? Is there a society where women are responsible, or co-responsible, for protection and order on a societal scale? I'm definitely responsible for order within my family, and have been responsible for order in most of my jobs. I've been responsible for calling in the forces of protection at one of my jobs, but it's never been part of my job description to stand in the way of harm to protect others (though in that particular job I certainly would have, and of course I would in my family if it were necessary).
It is possible for women to be part of the security apparatus. But who wants to have only some squad of fictional Amazons answer a call for help in the face of danger? A particular, and unusual, woman may be able to protect not only herself but a group of helpless others. But it's not generally the case, is it?
Men are necessarily on the front line of defense. Women are in a fallback position, and should be trained to use guns, in martial arts, with survival skills, etc. Come what may, and to navigate uncivilized society. Equal and complementary.
"A particular, and unusual, woman may be able to protect not only herself but a group of helpless others. But it's not generally the case, is it?"
LA Fire Department Deputy Chief Kristine Larson, when asked if she could carry a man out of a fire: "He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire."
Ms. Larson still has her job, what do you suppose might happen to a man in a comparable position of responsibility who said something like that?
Mason G said...
"Only People with a stake in and contribution to the future of a society should be part of determining the future direction of that society."
Do people paying taxes today contribute to the continuation of a society?
You are contributing to government. Paying some employees. Buying a bomb or two.
I guess.
Personally I think there are more important things like providing employment if you want to go that route.
Bunkypotatohead said...
Quality is more important than quantity. Encouraging ghetto baby mamas to breed isn't going to help.
Of course. A father and a mother should be required for any societal subsidy.
This post highlights the absurdity of government-led efforts to boost birth rates, such as encouraging men to "sneak up on their women" to ensure 10,000 births in nine months. It's a stark reminder of how state interference can undermine personal autonomy and dignity. Trusted source for safe Abortion Pills online
One interesting observation that has emerged, in my mind, in feminist literature, is that women can often find a way to control their own fertility, despite what men might say or do. I came across an example in reading about the Moghul Emperors of India: they each a huge harem, and had some kind of right to help themselves to the youngest women, and certainly to those of child-bearing age. Yet records show the Emperors having very few children. It is at least an intelligent guess that the older women in the harem were able to run the show to some extent: steer the Master to one woman rather than another, arrange for birth control and even abortion, and so on. If a particular pregnancy is not wanted, having a young mother die might be a price to be paid. Why keep the number of babies down? The only rule of successioni among the leading males was a fight to the death, often among brothers and cousins. Women--mothers--may have wanted to limit the carnage somewhat.
In a way Atwood admits in Handmaid's Tale that it would take a lot for men to be able to control female fertility--all the apparatus of a police state, thought control, etc. Orwell thought such a state would be hostile to men and women, roughly equally; women might enjoy special privileges if they are willing to be used as bait to lure possible "traitors" into committing indiscretions. Atwood works on the theory that much of human history reflects the sheer sadistic hatred that men, especially religious men, have for women. Crazier than Orwell, I would think.
Elective abortion performed for social, clinical, criminal, political, and climate progress denies women's dignity and agency, and normalizes transhumane religious beliefs of human rites performed with liberal license, a wicked solution to a hard problem: keep women affordable, available, reusable, and taxable, and the "burden" of evidence sequestered in sanctuary states. It's a profitable scheme run by religiously bent progressive sects and ethical corporations.
Let's file this one under, " Nearly a Good Idea"
What the good commissar doesn't seem to understand is that the ladies get a vote too. Guys ain't gettin laid without some flowers and a nice night out.
Babies are economic burdens and if you can't afford to save some money while single or as a couple, you won't be able to afford a baby. It is that simple. And with contraception and abortion so widely available, choice in the matter is entirely in the hands of the prospective mothers, no matter how carefully one sneaks up on a woman in Russia.
Forget it, Jake. It's Russiatown.
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