The 2020s has seen the rise of a new kind of influencer – beautiful young mothers, usually with bountiful litters of children – who talk about how much they love being a stay-at-home mum. Sarah Therese is a home-schooled Canadian Christian fundamentalist and YouTuber, she’s under thirty and has five children. Classically Abby (Ben Shapiro’s sister) makes a series of half political, half lifestyle content about motherhood and “classic living”. She talks about how being a parent is your duty and without parenthood you are wasting your life. Hannah or @ballerinafarm is a retired ballerina and mother of seven, who quit her “city career” to run a farm with her husband and run in beauty pageants. The internet is full of them.
You have to look at this trend over time and within specific populations as well. While socially liberal Sweden has a higher birth rate than socially conservative Poland, you’ll probably find that socially conservative Swedes (including of non native origin) have a higher birth rate than social liberals. If you do a longitudinal study on any population up to the baby boom you’ll probably find similar results. I think that makes it clear the social attitudes are not sufficient causes. Understanding the causes of the baby boom might be interesting however as it happened across geographies and in a specific context from which you can extrapolate.
In addition it might be interesting to see birth rate differences in similar populations living under different contexts such as east and west Germany.
An extreme counter example here is the wealthy East Asian countries, which are far more socially conservative than European or North American countries in general and also have rock bottom fertility rates.
The correlation in the second chart is to be expected, if one expects that socially conservative countries, which presumably do not want the state to play much of a role in families' lives, provide smaller quantities of lower quality subsidised child care than do liberal countries, which presumably try to make it easier for women to be in the workforce.
Assuming, of course, that the same economic and social forces are in play in both groups: low wages that create a "two income trap", forcing women to work, and a culture of nuclear families meaning that each household has to provide all of its own needs for child care (to a first approximation).
If people know that there is little childcare available, and that they would need to use childcare if they had children, they are likely discouraged from having children.
I think this might be a Jonathan Haidt problem. If you're naturally religious, you're more happy with a Conservative tradition of parenting. If you're naturally secular, you're more happy with a Liberal tradition of relationships and children. Basically, you can't force secular people to become religious, nor religious people to become secular. If you can't change the culture, then giving child-free benefits to encourage child rearing is probably the best option in modern Capitalism.
I think you should really try this concept to Asia. South Korea and Japan massively struggle with low fertility as advanced societies. Singapore is really disappointing for a strong central government. China too. On the other, the deeply religious Philippines has some of the most highest birth rates in Southeast Asia. I think Indonesia too although I'm not too sure.
My solution is basically if your country is still religious, promote pro-religious family values alongside the child-free tax credit stuff and if you're a secular nation, follow France and the Scandinavian approach of giving both parents time off to raise their kids and child tax cuts. I think China theoretically should be the most capable of fixing this, as an authoritarian technocratic state, but of course Western democracies can't do that.
You have to look at this trend over time and within specific populations as well. While socially liberal Sweden has a higher birth rate than socially conservative Poland, you’ll probably find that socially conservative Swedes (including of non native origin) have a higher birth rate than social liberals. If you do a longitudinal study on any population up to the baby boom you’ll probably find similar results. I think that makes it clear the social attitudes are not sufficient causes. Understanding the causes of the baby boom might be interesting however as it happened across geographies and in a specific context from which you can extrapolate.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/understanding-the-baby-boom
In addition it might be interesting to see birth rate differences in similar populations living under different contexts such as east and west Germany.
An extreme counter example here is the wealthy East Asian countries, which are far more socially conservative than European or North American countries in general and also have rock bottom fertility rates.
The correlation in the second chart is to be expected, if one expects that socially conservative countries, which presumably do not want the state to play much of a role in families' lives, provide smaller quantities of lower quality subsidised child care than do liberal countries, which presumably try to make it easier for women to be in the workforce.
Assuming, of course, that the same economic and social forces are in play in both groups: low wages that create a "two income trap", forcing women to work, and a culture of nuclear families meaning that each household has to provide all of its own needs for child care (to a first approximation).
If people know that there is little childcare available, and that they would need to use childcare if they had children, they are likely discouraged from having children.
I think this might be a Jonathan Haidt problem. If you're naturally religious, you're more happy with a Conservative tradition of parenting. If you're naturally secular, you're more happy with a Liberal tradition of relationships and children. Basically, you can't force secular people to become religious, nor religious people to become secular. If you can't change the culture, then giving child-free benefits to encourage child rearing is probably the best option in modern Capitalism.
I think you should really try this concept to Asia. South Korea and Japan massively struggle with low fertility as advanced societies. Singapore is really disappointing for a strong central government. China too. On the other, the deeply religious Philippines has some of the most highest birth rates in Southeast Asia. I think Indonesia too although I'm not too sure.
My solution is basically if your country is still religious, promote pro-religious family values alongside the child-free tax credit stuff and if you're a secular nation, follow France and the Scandinavian approach of giving both parents time off to raise their kids and child tax cuts. I think China theoretically should be the most capable of fixing this, as an authoritarian technocratic state, but of course Western democracies can't do that.
It’s probably that low birth rates create my conservative attitudes, not the other way around.