We have no known way of increasing birth rate other than letting society collapse and letting whichever society survives to continue.
That or something horrible like abolishing woman's rights, decreasing rate of survival, etc.
That or something horrible like abolishing woman's rights, decreasing rate of survival, etc.
I mean you're talking about religion here. It's almost a universal that religion takes some of the best and brightest people it has and then has them dedicate their lives to something that has no material rewards, much less "financial independence".
I do not know any aunts or cousins that wanted to have more than 2 kids, maybe one or two that had 3. And almost all came from moms or grandmas that has 3+ kids, usually 4 or 5.
It has nothing to do with Western feminist or STEM or whatever political nonsense, it is simply a result of giving birth and breastfeeding being a very costly event with very real risks for almost all women.
Natural selection suggests that women who find giving birth and breastfeeding more difficult than average women, will die off over time and be replaced by the descendents of those women who found it easier than average women.
However you must consider that the mother and the father are in an arms race with respect to the carrying capacity of the mother. The selection pressure from the father will always tend towards an offspring that is the maximum capacity at which the mother can bear.
Of course if everyone defects, the group as a whole is worse off.
It makes difference in terms of who gets to decide whether you have another kid or not. Or, whether you will be in couple in the first place. Religious people still have all the human issues and needs. They have disagreements or even power struggles within their families, they have mix of failing and working families. And when you and your kids completely depends on somebody else that someone else will by able to make quite a lot of decisions for you.
Also, regardless of religion, ability of women to be financially independent and make decisions for herself in fact does lower average birth rates pretty consistently.
Also most of these benefits can’t be provided on a per employer basis, they need to be mandated across City/State/Country for it to have systemic effects on the society at large (eg building more housing or funding school districts better).
I do think it's unfair, and untenable, to leave this to companies. My perspective is from Sweden where things mostly work as you describe. But whether companies or the government do it, the money will come out of everyone's pockets in the end. I don't see how it being government-led would make it any cheaper, but maybe you could clarify?
i don't disbelieve this, but this is the first i'm hearing of it. the obvious counter-example i have at hand is Bernie Sanders and others on the left pushing for free college education (which is a benefit to all the parents out there who start college funds for their children). and didn't last year's stimmy checks/tax breaks give more benefits for parents with children than parents without children? i swear early revisions of Biden's infrastructure bill had stuff for childcare, too, though idk if that made it into the final revision.
i can believe that there's people who oppose these things, but is the trend really against providing benefits for child-raising parents, or is it just that the roll-out of these benefits is too slow for your taste?
A blatant generalization, in the face that it wasn't much of a priority for now. Or is there any proof that it was much of a priority, for example in terms of media influence, % of budget, etc?
I've heard of examples that increased it, but only like +0.2 on 1.7 replacement rate. Nothing substantial enough to actually reverse the trend.