These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
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If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.
In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.
I’ve been terrified of pregnancy my entire life and I’m a selfish adult who wants to do what I want.
So yes, nothing the governments do can ever make me want to have kids.
Not even you, Greg Abbott, you dickhole pathetic excuse for a “person”. I fucking hate you!
Edit: One of my sentences was exceptionally dark.
Not to address your fears specifically, but there’s a lot a government (society) can do to make more women feel safer and more comfortable about becoming pregnant and giving birth.
From high quality free healthcare, to maternity (and paternity) leave, to daycare, to schooling - at just a start - there are ways society can look after itself.
That is, I can understand (in a limited, “I’m not you” fashion) your POV.
Oh, also, I do hope you meant to include “want”, as is in, “can make you want to have kids”. Because government mandated pregnancy is a pretty horrifying concept.
Countries in Europe got most of that and they are still struggling with getting to the replacement rate.