# Is There Any Practical Way to Increase the Birthrate? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 6, 2025, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655 "2025-01-06T20:41:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 70
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1381 "2025-06-15T10:58:23Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Okay; maybe these suggestions do not fall into the category ‘practical ways to increase the birthrate’, but we really don’t have to worry too much about a global population crash for at least a hundred years, by which time some or many of these advances will have been made, or our civilisation will have collapsed. > [@DemonTree](#): > > What is this defeatist attitude? I would call it not a “defeatist attitude” but “not borrowing trouble”. Or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Alongside that, rates of marriage are falling, the number of young people who are single is rising, loneliness is increasing, and the average person has fewer friends. People in Western countries are not just having fewer children, but also less sex. These are separate issues, but it’s not nearly as simple as “everyone is home alone”. The single young people i know mostly have romantic partners, they just haven’t married them. And most of those other items are hard to measure, not being marked by legal documents. But if you want to suggest ways to improve the social lives of people in Western countries, that seems like a good project. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1382 "2025-06-15T11:14:09Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Worrying about declining populations among particular ethnic groups is just racism. Who cares if white people disappear; they’ll all go eventually, thanks to interbreeding. A couple of hundred years from now, anybody will be able to have any colour of skin they like. Those are two very different scenarios: whole peoples dying out vs becoming part of something new. * * * > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > _Women_ had children because they weren’t allowed to opt out. Men could choose not to have sex, or not get married. Women were slaves in all but name and had nearly no rights; men on the other hand were considered to _literally_ have a right to force sex on their wife. She was his property, after all. And our society never developed any customs for _convincing_ women to have children since there was no point; not when their men could legally just solve any refusal by beating her until she submitted. That’s incorrect. In many societies there was considerable pressure on men as well as women to marry - in some cultures close to 100% of both sexes married young, so there was little chance of getting out of it. In places with arranged marriage, young men often did not have much more choice than young women in whether or even who they married. And AFAIK, in both Islam and Judaism both sexes have an obligation to have sex with their spouse, and a woman could get a divorce if her husband refused to perform this duty. More realistically, the negative aspects of having kids were less negative in the past - all of life was hard, so pregnancy and childrearing were no worse than anything else - and there were far fewer pleasures, so kids were comparatively more rewarding. You don’t need to convince people to have children when the alternatives are so much less attractive. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1383 "2025-06-15T11:37:08Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > More realistically, the negative aspects of having kids were less negative in the past - all of life was hard, so pregnancy and childrearing were no worse than anything else - and there were far fewer pleasures, so kids were comparatively more rewarding. No, pregnancy and childbirth were worse; because of the less advanced medicine of the time, because it was often forced, and because it was regarded as a punishment on women in the first place. The use of painkillers during childbirth was opposed when the idea was first introduced, [because](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_management_during_childbirth#History) in the eyes of the prevailing culture pregnancy and childbirth were literally a divine punishment inflicted on women for their innate evil, and therefore doing anything to lessen it was wrong. And I guarantee you that there was less affection for their children in the past from women for the same reason. Children conceived in rape for the purpose of tormenting their mother are simply not going to be regarded with as much affection, if with any at all. We see that even now; societies like Communist Romania that force women to have children end up with a large number of neglected or abandoned children, because women tend to not bond with children _forced_ on them. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1384 "2025-06-15T11:40:07Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I would call it not a “defeatist attitude” but “not borrowing trouble”. Or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I disagree that it’s not broken. IMO several decades of low birth rates are the root cause of many of the political problems Europe is experiencing: poor economic growth and low dynamism due to aging populations, NIMBY policies due to politics being dominated by older people that worsen the preceding trends, and a looming social security crisis where the only solutions - benefit cuts or record rates of immigration - are both immensely unpopular. Hence the rise of radical parties in general and the populist right in particular. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > These are separate issues, but it’s not nearly as simple as “everyone is home alone”. The single young people i know mostly have romantic partners, they just haven’t married them. And most of those other items are hard to measure, not being marked by legal documents. > > But if you want to suggest ways to improve the social lives of people in Western countries, that seems like a good project. The measures we do have show declines in all these areas. They are all reductions in different types of interpersonal relationships - friendly, romantic, and parent-child; it’s at least plausible they are all connected. And in general these relationships are essential for human flourishing, so I think its something we should be looking at. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1385 "2025-06-15T11:44:35Z")
I doubt that there’s a way of improving social lives that _doesn’t_ involve people working less, which is politically unacceptable. As long as our society remains obsessively focused on work, _everything_ else but work will inevitably suffer; relationships just being one example. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1386 "2025-06-15T13:30:02Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s not a coincidence that as soon as women were allowed _any rights at all_ the birth rate started dropping. As already cited: > Family size declined between 1800 and 1900 from 7.0 to 3.5 children And then reversed a bit during the ‘40s and ‘50s. Is the 1800 to 1900 period well correlated with women begging to “have any rights at all”? The period of US involvement in WW2 and the immediate post war period correlated with women losing any rights at all? > [@DemonTree](#): > > What is this defeatist attitude? Realism is not defeatism. The analogy I made and that I stand by is to climate change. It _is_ worthwhile to continue to work on mitigation _and_ there has to acceptance that current mitigation efforts are unlike to prevent significant climate change, that it is already starting; the focus has to increasing turn to adapting to the change, dealing with it. That is simply reality. Likewise it is unrealistic to expect that any realistically possible or desirable policy change will reverse the trend. If some want to believe it is possible and invest in efforts to change, well I am for many of the proposals just because supporting families is a positive thing in my mind anyway. But we also need to have focus on how to adapt to this long term trend. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1387 "2025-06-15T15:03:16Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Those are two very different scenarios: whole peoples dying out vs becoming part of something new. That’s right. And we should always choose becoming something new, rather than dying out. Trying to cling to old ideas of cultural purity will end in disaster. There will be plenty of new cultures in the future to choose from. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1388 "2025-06-15T16:09:56Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > why higher status people, particularly higher status women, have fewer children - less time outside of work The people with the most children on average at present are those who have a family income of $500,000 (U.S. dollars) are more. They have slightly more than three children. This is more than the poorest people, who have a little more than two children on average. These are people who were born in rich families or people who become rich early in life (like actors, musicians, athletes, entrepeneurs, etc. who make it big relatively quickly). The people who have the least children are those from working-class or middle-class families who have to go to college and then graduate or professional school and then take beginning jobs in their professions before having some free time. > [@Broomstick](#): > > There seems to be a hard limit of human lifespan of around 120 years. There is no hard limit on human lifespan. Until the late twentieth century, there hadn’t been enough people with good records of their lifespans. There have now been enough people living to very old ages to say some more accurate things about them. We have discovered the rule of the age of 105. In general, the older a person is, the shorter their remaining years are on average. So a person of 10 years has an expected further years of life on average than one of 24 years on average, who has more expected further years of life than one of 37 years, who has more expected further years of life than one of 49 years, who has more expected further years of life than than one of 66 years, who has more expected further years of life than one of 98 years, etc. But at 105, you no longer have a longer expected years of life than someone of 106, or 106, or 107, etc. At any age from 105 on, you can be expected to life one more year on average (or, equivalently, you have a 50% chance of living one more year). The same is true for any age above 105. We now have reliable statistics about several tens of thousands of people who lived to at least 105. The number who lived to 106 is half the number who lived to 105. The number who lived to 107 is half the number who lived to 107. And so on. This accounts very well to all the people who have to lived at least 105 that we have statistics on. One person lived to 122, and she was slightly lucky. If the human race lives for another 100 billion years and expands to the planets of 100 million stars in each of 100 billion galaxies, we can expect someone to live much longer than 122. And that’s assuming that we don’t make any scientific discoveries about lifespan in those 100 billion years. I would expect us to do so. We may be able to increase human lifespan from those scientific discoveries. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1389 "2025-06-15T16:34:20Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The people with the most children on average at present are those who have a family income of $500,000 (U.S. dollars) are more. They have slightly more than three children. This is more than the poorest people, who have a little more than two children on average. These are people who were born in rich families or people who become rich early in life (like actors, musicians, athletes, entrepeneurs, etc. who make it big relatively quickly). The people who have the least children are those from working-class or middle-class families who have to go to college and then graduate or professional school and then take beginning jobs in their professions before having some free time. These are also the wives of those successful men. I’d wager that among the 3+ kids set, more of those women married or inherited money than made it themselves. Which is not meant to disparage either them, or the women who made serious money on their own. Just to contrast between the two cases. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1390 "2025-06-15T16:42:46Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The people with the most children on average at present are those who have a family income of $500,000 (U.S. dollars) are more. They have slightly more than three children. Yes, [way back](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/501) you noted that the top 1.3% have the highest fertility rate. And as I recall the rate was about as low for families making $300,000 a year as those at poverty level. Yeah these people: > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > middle-class families who have to go to college and then graduate or professional school and then take beginning jobs in their professions before having some free time. They’ve made it to the top quartile. Even the top 10%. Double income but education debt. No kids has its attraction to them. Lots of kids and losing one of those incomes for significant swaths of time, being off the advancement pathway, less. The 1%ers are a special case, and even they are different than the 0.1%ers. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1391 "2025-06-15T21:49:15Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Is the 1800 to 1900 period well correlated with women begging to “have any rights at all”? The period of US involvement in WW2 and the immediate post war period correlated with women losing any rights at all? Yes, and yes. 1800-1900 was the period when the whole idea started to come into existence in the first place, and the post war period is _notoriously_ a time when women’s rights and their treatment in general underwent a huge backslide. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2025, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1392 "2025-06-15T23:29:34Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > One person lived to 122, and she was slightly lucky The truth of that claim has actually been disputed for a number of years now (since the 20-teens). Given the shaky nature of past record keeping that may never be entirely settled, but the two oldest _undisputed_ humans lived to be 119. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2025, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1393 "2025-06-16T00:19:23Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > 1800-1900 was the period when the whole idea started to come into existence in the first place, and the post war period is _notoriously_ a time when women’s rights and their treatment in general underwent a huge backslide Huh. Really? I’m no historian but I thought women’s rights as a Western movement traced more into the 1700s, with The Enlightenment? By 1792, when American fertility rates were at 7, there was already Mary Wollstonecraft writing “Vindication of the Rights of Women” … Actual rights though went the other way in the first portion of the 1800s: women lost the right to vote in the state they had had it, New Jersey. Best I can find the first success at actually getting any rights again at all wasn’t until 1849 with property rights in California. But by then there were decades of decreasing fertility rates. And the suffrage movement didn’t really start until 1869. 1940 through 45, a period of increasing birthrates, was not postwar. Obviously. It was a period of women in the workforce, the origin of Rosie the Riveter and “we can do it”. I’m not seeing the tight correlation you are claiming. And mind you I actually _agree_ with the basic premise! Women being able to exert control over timing and spacing, which correlated roughly with an interest in rights to have the power to implement their preferences, generally results in starting families later, spacing farther apart, and as result smaller families on average. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2025, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1394 "2025-06-16T00:49:47Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > The truth of that claim has actually been disputed for a number of years now (since the 20-teens). Other people have researched it and are convinced that she did indeed live to 122. Suppose the age that we would expect the oldest people to live to is 120. There have been about 20,000 people that we have good records of that have lived to 105. So about 1/(2 to the first power) of them have lived to 106, about 1/(2to the second power) of them have lived to 107, etc. Then about 1/(2 to the 15th power) of them have lived to about 120. This is one person. Just by luck, Jeanne Calment lived two years more than that, which is what would happen about one-quarter of the time. ---
**Author:** ![keeganst94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@keeganst94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeganst94)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2025, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1395 "2025-06-16T02:03:13Z")
The [recent ig nobel](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/sep/ucl-demographers-work-debunking-blue-zone-regions-exceptional-lifespans-wins-ig-nobel-prize) prize in demography may be relevant here. It showed that areas that claim their people have unusually long life spans actually usually have poor record keeping. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2025, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1396 "2025-06-16T03:34:08Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > More realistically, the negative aspects of having kids were less negative in the past - all of life was hard, so pregnancy and childrearing were no worse than anything else - and there were far fewer pleasures, so kids were comparatively more rewarding. You don’t need to convince people to have children when the alternatives are so much less attractive. Again, I think this approach is rather downplaying the key issue that you don’t need to convince people to have children when it’s so difficult, in practical terms, to avoid having children. If you’re an average woman in a pre-modern society who wants even a reasonable chance of a secure livelihood and societal respect, you’re going to have to get married. (And as you noted, in many such societies, men’s social status is also partly dependent on marriage.) If you’re an average married woman in a pre-modern society, you’re going to have to have sex pretty much whenever your husband wants to: marriage is taken to imply, if not outright enforce, women’s consent to sex. And if you’re an average sex-having woman in your fertile years in a society without effective contraception, you’re overwhelmingly likely to get pregnant repeatedly. It’s not a matter of parenthood merely being seen as comparatively less onerous back in the days with no air conditioning or streaming services, and hence being perceived as a more appealing choice than the available alternatives. It’s a matter of parenthood not really being a choice at all for the vast majority of non-celibate people back in those days. No, we shouldn’t try to go back to that mindset. Let’s focus on trying to make a workable society structured around what people want, rather than trying to social-engineer what we think they should want. And yes, that means, among other things, that people who do want to be parents should be getting a lot more support for it. But we shouldn’t be trying to browbeat people with threats of “racial extinction” (oy) or “economic collapse” in order to coerce their choices in such highly personal decisions. If having kids is really so great (and I’m firmly convinced that it is, on the whole), then we won’t need to threaten or coax individuals to participate in it. And we won’t need to shame or denigrate or disprivilege the individuals who choose not to participate in it. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2025, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1397 "2025-06-17T10:19:12Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I couldn’t have been happier to return to work I get the impression you and @puzzlegal both enjoy(ed) your jobs more than I do. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I had two significant tears and on top of my mental health wasn’t dealing well. Probably four or five weeks post-partum, someone inquired about me to my husband. When he told them I was still healing, they were confused. “Oh, was it a cesarian?” I had read enough beforehand to not expect to feel fully like myself for a good while. We couldn’t see anyone, so I have no idea if they would have asked similar questions. But I think having many months of maternity leave as standard helps avoid expectations that new mothers will be back to normal immediately. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Since the insults are trending male, I should probably point out she was a woman. My far-more-sympathetic boss was a man with two grown up daughters, ex-Airforce. Not exactly confirming stereotypes. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2025, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1398 "2025-06-17T10:51:29Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I had two significant tears and on top of my mental health wasn’t dealing well. Probably four or five weeks post-partum, someone inquired about me to my husband. When he told them I was still healing, they were confused. “Oh, was it a cesarian?” I think the meme that “pregnancy isn’t a sickness” and “women used to give birth in a farm field then get right back to work” has been pushed far too much. No, pregnancy isn’t a sickness but it IS a huge physical effect from start to finish and afterward. When I was younger I heard much about how awful it was that women used to be “shamed” and forbidden from attending church and so forth for 40 days after birth but as I got older I really started to wonder if that was actually a _blessing_, reducing a woman’s obligations so maybe she could get some rest and heal up? I don’t know, other than extremes of any sort are usually a bad thing. Anyone, that’s yet more fallout from more people having less exposure to children and everything around pregnancy and childbirth. Prior to the experience few people have any idea of what is and isn’t normal. Also, a difference between what you can do in extreme circumstances vs. what is actually ideal for health. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2025, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1399 "2025-06-17T11:26:53Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I doubt that there’s a way of improving social lives that _doesn’t_ involve people working less, which is politically unacceptable. As long as our society remains obsessively focused on work, _everything_ else but work will inevitably suffer; relationships just being one example. I don’t think it’s politically unacceptable, even in America. Might be a moot point due to AI. > [@DSeid](#): > > Likewise it is unrealistic to expect that any realistically possible or desirable policy change will reverse the trend. If some want to believe it is possible and invest in efforts to change, well I am for many of the proposals just because supporting families is a positive thing in my mind anyway. But we also need to have focus on how to adapt to this long term trend. In another thread I suggested that notions of masculinity and feminity weren’t likely to disappear anytime soon, and it would be better to accept this and provide young men with a positive model of masculinity rather than continuing to try and convince them they don’t need one. As I recall, you poo-pooed this idea. IMO trying to change something that has been present in every known human society is far more unrealistic than changing something that is specific to modern societies, and where until now the majority of the pressure has been applied in the opposite direction. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Again, I think this approach is rather downplaying the key issue that you don’t need to convince people to have children when it’s so difficult, in practical terms, to avoid having children. I guess I’m just not seeing much evidence that large numbers of women in the past didn’t want kids. Fewer kids, with bigger gaps between them, sure. Especially with the fall in child mortality that meant you could be reasonably sure they’d survive to adulthood. But wanting none was AFAIK unusual. And it doesn’t seem to be the main issue today, either: the UK has a huge fertility gap, where for every 3 children desired by women, only 2 are born. You can argue about expressed vs revealed preferences, but it’s at least plausible that the problem is not women preferring not to have children now they have the option, but rather other things getting in the way for prospective parents - perhaps particularly the pursuit of status via education and career. > [@Kimstu](#): > > If having kids is really so great (and I’m firmly convinced that it is, on the whole), then we won’t need to threaten or coax individuals to participate in it. And we won’t need to shame or denigrate or disprivilege the individuals who choose not to participate in it. Most likely what is needed is to change incentives, which can be accomplished in many ways, some ethical and some not. We should at least try the ethical ones. As for browbeating people about economic and civilisational collapse, it’s not unethical in general - governments have been doing plenty of that on the subject of climate change. I’m really not sure how effective it has been, though. Better support for parents is at least one thing we can all agree on, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2025, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655/1400 "2025-06-17T12:09:22Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > I guess I’m just not seeing much evidence that large numbers of women in the past didn’t want kids. You probably don’t see a lot of evidence that people in the past wanted to live on Mars, either. Heck, i bet you can’t find a reference in 1200 to anyone in England wanting to drink tea. People don’t spend a lot is time writing about things that are unthinkable. You can find plenty of pre-modern writings about women dreading childbirth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655.md?page=69) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655.md?page=71)