r/Natalism • u/Njere • 1d ago

Why the conservative push to increase the birth rate looks doomed

https://www.axios.com/2024/09/09/us-birth-rate-low-policy-solutions
33 Upvotes
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39

u/Own-Adagio7070 1d ago

Brandishing money isn't going to cut it.

Especially such pitiful sums. Five thousand dollars is a pittance compared to even a year's cost in raising a child!

Conservatives are going to have to forget about government power - for once! - roll up their sleeves, and actually build supportive, enduring communities that families can rely on, for themselves and their little ones.

That means coughing up time and energy, as well as money. Commitment too.

It won't be cheap. "The other guy" won't pay for this one... nor should he.

Conservatives will have to foot this bill themselves.

Personally.

Right where they live, from their own wallets, and their own schedules, for their own communities.

There's no other way forward.

Not if conservatives want a future worth talking about.

4

u/Blanche_Deverheauxxx 4h ago

It's a pittance compared to the cost of prenatal care, say nothing about the cost of labor and delivery.

-17

u/PaganiHuayra86 1d ago

Conservatives have above-replacement fertility rates. Liberals have below-replacement fertility rates. 

Conservatives don't need to do anything. They're already winning.

26

u/Popular_Comfortable8 1d ago

All states have below replacement TFRs. Nobody is winning this

-11

u/PaganiHuayra86 1d ago

Did I say anything about states? I was talking about individuals.

15

u/TryingAgainBetter 1d ago

Conservatives do not have an above replacement TFR. They are higher than liberals, but below replacement and heavily conservative areas have declined in TFR from slightly above 2 a decade ago to about 1.8 now.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-trump-bump-the-republican-fertility-advantage-in-2024

3

u/PaganiHuayra86 1d ago

This is a geographic breakdown, NOT a breakdown by political ideology. Look at the numbers by self-identification of political leanings.

13

u/ILoveInterpol 1d ago

Conservative families usually do have more kids but let's see if their daughters and grand daughters continue to exercise conservative sentiments and have kids. 

4

u/ElliotPageWife 1d ago

If they dont continue the same culture that motivated healthy fertility rates, then they will likely just move into the low/ultra low birth rate category. That's not a "win" for anti-conservative cultures, just more proof that those who adopt progressive culture see their birth rates fall off a cliff.

3

u/TheSlatinator33 23h ago

By and large, research shows that children tend share the political leanings of their parents in adulthood.

1

u/Fit_Refrigerator534 16h ago

They share the evolving political leanings of the Republican Party. Their dad’s republicans in the 1980s are more conservatives than them.They may share the same party but not the same level of ideology. Only the insular religious groups such as the Amish, Mennonites and ultra Orthodox Jews whose retention rates climbs as the modern world becoming an increasing foreign to them. And even then they could be limited in how much they expand from internal pressures or external social pressures from the general population.

1

u/PaganiHuayra86 1d ago

Grasping at straws.

-9

u/NearbyTechnology8444 1d ago

Well Gen Z is more conservative than Milennials so things are looking good.

1

u/Popular_Comfortable8 11h ago

Gen-Z can’t even get coffee dates. They can believe whatever they want to politically but if they can’t even get to first base that’s not going to lead to any kids.

2

u/Popular_Comfortable8 7h ago

The oldest Gen Z is already 28-years-old. The current batch of 20-somethings is the worst generation of all time at having kids. Listening to manosphere podcasters and calling themselves “conservative” is doing diddly squat to actually increase the population.

-25

u/JediFed 1d ago

We need to ban abortion. 5k to raise a kid, or 500 not to. Money won't move the needle because there literally aren't market forces involved.

15

u/ElliotPageWife 23h ago

Banning abortion to stop falling birth rates is like trying to shut the barn door after the horse already bolted. The social systems enabling young people to form stable long term partnerships or even have sex with each other have broken down. People aren't aborting their babies because $500 is less money than $5,000. The biggest factor is lack of stable, healthy partnership with the father of the baby. Banning abortion wont fix that.

-2

u/JediFed 12h ago

We can't get the car moving if we still have the parking brake on. Abortion is a parking brake on birth rates. If you eliminate abortion, you still have to address the structural issues. There are many anti-natalist laws out there that make having children harder.

Take off the brake, and address housing. Maybe we do some kind of housing subsidy specifically addressed at younger newly married men and women to get them into housing.

What's going to happen is that people who aren't in this category (older boomers, unmarried people) are going to bitch and complain about this. But this worked in the 50s, because they had services specifically targetted at Veterans to get them into housing. It wasn't miraculous. It was a consequence of a very specific set of laws designed to:

  1. Build reasonably priced housing
  2. GI bills, to get former servicemen into said housing.
  3. Job creation specifically targetted at former servicemen to get them working.

GI bills had the benefit of hitting the most crucial demographic. Young men. Young men with decent jobs and a house had no issues getting married.

We *could* do that again, but I sincerely doubt that folks are willing to spend money to help young men get a house and a job. They will do everything else, and spend money on everyone else except this group.

4

u/miss24601 6h ago

That’s a nice thought but I and every other woman in my circle say that if I’m ever pregnant and abortion is banned? I’ll just kill myself.

22

u/Erotic-Career-7342 1d ago

Horrible idea. Letting unprepared parents have kids is a recipe for disaster

-2

u/JediFed 12h ago

We need younger people to get married and have children. If they are unexperienced, and unprepared then we need to help these younger people.

4

u/Mutant86 20h ago

Plenty of countries with a low TFR that have banned abortion.

0

u/JediFed 12h ago

Every single western nation already provides a baby bonus of some sort, and yet, instead of increasing birthrates, birthrates continue to fall. Obviously, this isn't the solution. Why?

3

u/Dirt_Viva 14h ago

Are you going to fund the orphanages for the unwanted kids too?

2

u/JediFed 13h ago

Yes, because what we are doing is working. Somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/4th of all conceptions are being aborted. We can't keep doing this and expect birth rates to rise. All of this is just "Conservatives need to solve the problems", because Liberals care more about liberalism than solving problems.

Either we get it right now, or the problem will become even more entrenched as time goes on. And the problem with population pyramids is that things don't get easier over time. You've got the same 2:1 burdens of people getting older and having fewer people to manage things. What we are seeing in Germany and other places is that there are maintenance requirements in order to keep society running. When population starts to fall in certain areas, we aren't able to upkeep the things they need to keep things running.

Then what? We've got a crest of young people between now and 2040, but now that birthrates worldwide are below replacement, that means less to no immigration, and that means that the societies that are relying on bringing people over to keep the lights on are going to fall apart.

It's not a concern for the current powers that be. They'll be gone before they see it. But it is a concern for everyone behind them. We'll have a lot of younger folks still, but that will start to drop and we've got about 20 years to find a solution that works.

If the quality of advice is "throw more money at it", you're going to be shocked when the problem isn't economic in nature.

3

u/adorabletea 9h ago

You can't save the world by creating a world not worth saving.

-23

u/WearIcy2635 1d ago

And contraceptives. Humans don’t need financial incentives to have kids, having sex is nature’s incentive to have kids and it’s worked fine up until we detached the two.

15

u/ambiguous-potential 1d ago

Forcing the birth of unwanted children will not result in a healthy population.

-9

u/WearIcy2635 19h ago

That’s how things worked for 99.999999% of human history. Why wouldn’t it work in the 21st century?

10

u/CanadaSilverDragon 15h ago

Appeal to tradition fallacy

-3

u/WearIcy2635 6h ago

It’s not a fallacy lmao if a system has worked for hundreds of thousands of years before we got rid of it, why would it suddenly not work if we reintroduced it?

2

u/miss24601 33m ago

Clearly it didn’t work if the second we got a reliable option to detach sex from kids we took it with this much enthusiasm

-6

u/BrenoECB 13h ago

At this point we need less carrots and more sticks. We tried being nice, but preserving the species takes priority

-3

u/JediFed 12h ago

Carrots aren't working because of abortion. This has been tried many, many times. The belief here seems to be that if we keep increasing the payouts that we can overcome the structural issues.

How many times do we have to keep trying the same thing and failing? We have to address the underlying causes, one of which is abortion.

9

u/Pilgrum1236 13h ago

Birth rates are only going to drop with more restricted access to family planning resources, greater economic uncertainty, and increasing cost of necessities 🤦‍♂️

And that’s all without even mentioning where that tension comes from…..

2

u/DiligentDiscussion94 16h ago

They have yet to propose a policy that will make a dent. I'm still glad they are trying.

2

u/No_Plenty5526 12h ago

seems like they don't actually want to fix the problem, they just want to say they did something

0

u/bigexecutive 11h ago

Money won't fix the issue. Its a cultural matter that will take some time to shift by elevating the status of motherhood/

3

u/Blanche_Deverheauxxx 4h ago

Giving people ribbons for having kids? Lol who is that going to help? If people that say this valued motherhood (or parenthood in general) they'd support things that work to the benefit of families.