How We Could Increase The Birth Rate Among Young People

Why is the birth rate in the West below replacement level, and what could be done to boost it? Government incentives like cash payments have failed from Europe to Singapore, while year long maternity leave and government childcare guarantees hardly make a difference. What would lead to a cultural change and stable native population birth rates?

Ensure that women know that their fertility drops at 30 and significantly after 35. You can't wait until you are 40 to start trying to have kids. It is already too late for many if you wait until almost 40 to try to have a family, and if you manage to have a child, it is likely to be only one, not the two children most would-be mothers say they want.

And egg-freezing isn't the solution it is held out to be, since the success rates with egg freezing appear to be lower than standard IVF.

End the threats of calling CPS if your 8 year old walks to school, if the kids play in the yard without parents supervising every moment. The pressure to have a parent always present makes raising children too hard to manage if you have more than one.

Children do not have to be involved in multiple activities outside of school. Parents are not neglecting their children if they aren’t constantly flitting from activity to activity.

A college education has become the minimum requirement for a middle class lifestyle. However, your children do not have to attend a much more expensive private school, much less an Ivy League school, to get a good job. And recognize that not all kids are college material, and those who aren’t should learn a well-paying trade from vocational schools from welding to plumbing to CNC programming to diesel mechanics. As Mike Rowe says, the “dirty jobs” are denigrated in society but pay very well. The problem too many face is the expectation to save as much as a house for each child’s college education, so they only have one child to ensure they can pay for that premium degree. If they were more realistic on routes to a good paying job, they would know they could afford to raise two or three children instead.

Stop telling women to have it all, because there is no such thing. And if you want children, children should not be last on the list to career and friends.

Stop harping on overpopulation. We've already hit peak child worldwide, with the projected population growth only the result of a 2 billion member generation filling up the population pyramid to turn it into a cylinder. In the developed world, the birth rate is below replacement rate, and relying on immigrants with very different cultures to fill in the gap is creating chaos.

The marriage pool is greatest in your twenties, yet our society says find yourself, then find someone perfect. Many women abandon great guys because he lacks on item on a long laundry list of requirements. Or they try to live the “single” life, flitting from relationship to relationship without commitment, ignoring the emotional toll of a woman’s nature to seek emotional intimacy with those she has sex with while he is more comfortable having sex without emotional intimacy. She ends up bitter and alone, desperate for a partner, and has to far too often settle in her 30s for a man far below her minimal standards to have someone to marry and have a child with. Where did all the almost-great guys go? They were married to women who did make finding a partner a priority in their twenties. The men who remained single enjoy a larger female pool each year, while single women face increased competition and decreased value in the field because of age. The inability to find a partner after having spent too long trying to enjoy being single, mostly because we don’t warn women of the ticking biological clock or the realities of limited prospects waiting until 30-something to try to find a partner, is why so many single women are relying on artificial insemination to make a baby while they still can. And most of these women won’t have the resources to have a second child.

If, as a society, we stopped celebrating women having the same free-wheeling sexual activity that men crave, and encouraging those who want children to find someone and have those children at a younger age, they would have the support of a partner and time to have two or more children.

We should also stop promoting pets as fashionable alternatives to children, and instead recognize the impulse to have children and support those who want to have kids instead of telling them "you're too young" when they are old enough and mature enough at 25 to have kids.