If the government wants me to have kids, they had better incentivize it. And when I say incentivize, I don't mean exclusively financial incentives. Ideological ones as well.
Right now, the primary reasons for having children are:
1. Personal desire to have children/biological drive to reproduce - so much so that you're willing to shoulder an enormous burden just to have children.
2. Social pressure from family, friends, and society at large - so much so that you're willing to shoulder an enormous burden just to feel like you're making them happy.
Sidenote: Folks from camp #2 often seem deeply unhappy.
Free universal pre-K childcare would help a lot toward sweetening the pot, as would substantial investment in public school systems.
Despite what you may think, this isn't about money or about us being greedy with our time.
I don't have a lot of faith in the idea of bringing a human life into the world as it is, but I also want to see evidence from my government that they're building a country worth living in for my future children. Otherwise, why would I bother to subject them to playing a game where the deck is stacked against them?
By all accounts, a child of mine would come into the world with their own enormous privilege and advantage over other children (white, born into a higher income family of college graduates, etc.) - but can I really stomach that while knowing it comes at the expense of some other child's opportunity? I felt this way before the pandemic and social unrest of recent months. Now I feel it even more acutely.
Personally, I'm completely content with not having kids. But if the government wants me and other people like me to have children, they'd better make the lives of parents easier, lower the barrier to entry, and massively increase my confidence level that this shit-hole country will be worth living in 100 years from now :)