I’m aware of that. Those rights were lost in the Iranian revolution, which completely changed their system of government to a theocracy.
That is possible here, and anywhere, since if the government is overthrown then anything can happen. But if that happens, women’s suffrage isn’t exactly going to be on the top of my mind.
What do you think Project 2025 is, if not a Christian theocratic project?
Why would they need to overthrow it? They are the government. The people spoke, and this is what they want.
Moderating:
We’ve gotten pretty far afield of “increasing the birth rate”. If posters want to discuss the political collapse of the US or the ecological collapse of the world in depth, please start a new thread for it.
NVM just saw mod note
NVM just saw mod note
Yeah, that’s not helpful.
Does the geography in CA prevent cities expanding, or make it hard to build satellite towns? Or is it purely administrative issues that are causing the housing shortage?
Even if you got older people to move, with a rising population you’ll still need to build lots of new homes. And if you want to raise the birthrate, they need to be suitable for families, not shoebox apartments. Something that probably needs more research is the effect of housing types on birthrate. I suspect living in dense cities depresses it, because there are more fun things to do that you’d miss out on if you had children - as well as the simple lack of space being off-putting.
I saw a push for “family highrises”. There are some of these apartments in Israel - a normal apartment building but the units are a bit larger/have more rooms than you typically find, and the area between buildings is filled in with playgrounds, basic services, etc.
There are proposals for denser housing like this that could be built in places like New York. One idea I saw that looked really cool was to dedicate certain floors in the high rise as public areas, with indoor playgrounds and parks. So you can take your kid to play with other residents from nearby floors without going all the way to ground level.
Courtyard apartments. I heard they aren’t common in America because of laws requiring two stairwells in every apartment building, and this is one of the things YIMBYs are trying to change. Probably could work as long as you get residents who want to maintain the common area.
If you are going to have people living close together then you need to maintain order and punish antisocial behaviour, and that seems to be a problem in America right now. IMO it’s an issue YIMBYs need to address if they want to sell people on increasing housing.
That sounds like a lot of fun for kids. If it’s not open to the public and enough people use it so it’s well-supervised, would parents feel comfortable leaving older kids there alone? That would help solve the childcare issue too.
Yeah, if the common areas are big enough kids could have adventures again, haha. And it could be made relatively secure, if there are cameras in public areas, key cards needed to get in, and employees of the building are present in at least some areas.
The problem is paying for this stuff. I don’t think it would be enough to have a communal space and say “everyone takes care of this together”. You need to pay people to clean, supervise children, etc.
You’d need to charge some kind of building fee, and for a building with a bunch of amenities like this, it would probably be fairly expensive, compared to other apartments.
Maybe you could employ some of the teens who live in the building, though.
Also, it might help if only families with children could live in the building. Both to make sure there are enough kids around to use the facilities, and to keep away the sorts of people who might have nefarious reasons for wanting to live in a building full of children. But I’m not sure if you’re allowed to do that in the US? You can’t discriminate in renting against families with children, not sure if it also applies to people without children.
And there are lots of places in the US where I might have the vote, but I would die from an ectopic pregnancy or a fetal demise before I could vote in the next election. Not every woman has the agency to be flown or driven hundreds of miles for reproductive care or abortions.
A vote doesn’t do much for a woman if she’s dead. We’ve already regressed from where we were when I was a young woman just graduated from college in 1972.
Yes. Kids need adventures and unsupervised time. Younger generations are ridiculously anxious about everything and depression rates are through the roof; I’m sure this is a major reason. If we could eliminate ‘stranger danger’ and traffic, parents might feel more comfortable allowing it.
Yeah. Most of these suggestions are expensive. It’s quite ironic that we’re trying to solve a problem created by ‘too much’ wealth by spending more money, but all the alternatives are unpalatable.
Although maybe it would work in Japan, where they already have kids clean their schools and so on? I don’t know why the Japanese government isn’t trying harder to get the birthrate up; do they want the population to contract?
We don’t want only families to live there. We also want young couples to move in, discover all the social life is centred around kids, and think how nice it would be to have some of their own. And we want grandparents to be able to live nearby, but maybe they’d be happier in a separate building? 
If your want grandparents to help with childcare, it’s extremely valuable to have them under the same roof as the kids.
But you do reduce a lot of the fear of predators (and probably some of the actual predators) if you restrict it to adults who have their own kids. Although… People have guests over, and no one is going to want to live in a place with draconian guest policies.
“Stranger Danger” is a myth, it’s overwhelmingly relatives who prey on children.
Also, would people be required to leave when their kids moved out? I expect that would seriously discourage people from moving there.
Number of Republicans in the Senate in 1972: 55
Number of Republicans in the Senate in 2025: 52
Number of Republicans in the House in 1972: 252
Number of Republicans in the House in 2025: 219
Number of women in the Senate in 1972: 2
Number of women in the Senate in 2025: 26
Number of women in the House in 1972: 13
Number of women in the House in 2025: 125
Number of women who had ever been nominated for President or Vice-President (on major party ticket) by 1972: 0
Number of women who had ever been nominated for President or Vice-President (on major party ticket) by 2025: 4
Number of states in which abortion was illegal in 1972: 31
Number of states in which abortion was illegal in 2025: 12 (plus 19 with major restrictions)
Number of Blacks who had been President by 1972: 0
Number of Blacks who had been President by 2025: 1
Percentage of college students who were women in 1972: 43%
Percentage of college students who were women in 2025: 57%
Give me some specific areas that you think there has been regression and I’ll look it up.
The hell you can’t.
There are occupancy limits all over the place that effectively limit how many people can live in a place that effectively discriminate against families with children, and have been for decades. When my family moved to Michigan there were several apartment complexes that allowed only 2 children per family, and one of them asked “Isn’t there a relative who can take two of them so you [the adults] can live here?” Senior citizen residences (typically open only to people over 55 years old) bar children living with their grandparents.
But if you set up a building to have only families with children sooner or later you’re going to have a PR nightmare when a family loses their child(ren) to some horrible accident or disease and now that they have no living children they’re also going to be evicted from their homes.
Chicago is full of courtyard apartments - pretty sure they’re OK because every apartment has two ways in and out, so you have the enclosed “front” stairwell and you have the back, fire escape stairwell (which often doubles as a back porch).
However, local rules vary, so what’s allowed in Chicago or Illinois wouldn’t be allowed in, say, California. On the flip side, my current place wouldn’t be legal in Chicago because there’s only one way in and out of the unit. Except I got an escape ladder on my own dime for my bedroom window because I like having a plan B, but that still wouldn’t count in Chicago.
Maybe you reduce the fear of predators but everyone I’ve ever met in real life who shared that they had been molested/raped as a child was victimized by a close relative. Safety is important, but it’s not just strangers who can pose a risk to children.
Under the fair housing act, those are illegal if they are arbitrary.
If they are not arbitrary, I don’t see anything wrong with a reasonable limit.
How many bedrooms were these units?
Well, they bar anyone under 55 from living there.
It is a bit odd that age discrimination only counts if you’re discriminating against older people. I’m not sure why that is.
It seems like it would be trivially easy to not do that, though?
Three.
Family of six with four daughters. Considering that back in St. Louis all four of us kids had been sharing one bedroom going to two to a room sounded pretty luxurious.
Well, sure but we, you and I, are reasonable people. I assure you that in the US there would be some control freaks who would insist and tossing out adults who had just lost their children, shrug, and say “them’s the rules”.
What year was this? Familial status was added to the list of classes protected by the Fair Housing Act in 1988.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/1158
I’m sure there might be; but I’m not so sure those would be the people in control of these sorts of apartments, and I’m very sure they won’t be in control of every such apartment complex.
When my MIL was 5, she had an interaction with a total stranger who offered her candy. He took her to a basement and told her to take off her clothes. She burst into tears and refused. He was a pedophile but not a sadist, and he told her she could leave. She replied that she wasn’t allowed to cross the big road he’d taken her across by herself, and he took her back across the street.
These days, kids are warned not to accept candy from strangers. But once upon a time, that stuff actually happened.
And yes, relatives and “trusted members of the community” (teachers, ministers, etc.) pose a much greater risk to children than random strangers.
That exception was specifically to allow senior residences. Although age discrimination laws in general tend to apply only to people over a certain age - the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older and even states that protect younger workers don’t typically protect those under 18.
Maybe not - do people tend to stay in say 3 bedroom apartments after their children move out if a one bedroom would be much less expensive? I’ve known people who stayed in much larger apartments than they needed- but they were all in situations that incentivized not moving. For example, I know someone whose parents rented a three apartment in the early 60s , when they had two children. Because they were there in the early 60s, the apartment was rent controlled. When my acquaintance’s parents passed away , he stayed because the rent on the three bedroom apartment was less than a 1 bedroom would have been.