How might a modern baby boom occur?

[Mechadogzilla]

The explosion in western birthrates between ~1945 and ~1970 was not ever a stable trend that could realistically be expected to go on forever. Birthrates have always fluctuated with the times, and there is no reason to expect current trends to go on forever. Even if they do, a much more realistic solution than attempting to force women to have babies they don't want would be to just loosen migration laws and take in new migrants from areas in the global south that are in the process of undergoing the demographic transition.

Because that's the crux of this entire thread and all of the ones like it; that women are no longer legally second class citizens with little rights or autonomy confined to the dual social role of baby factory / domestic laborer. You can not force them to have children they don't want to have anymore, and you certainly can't bribe them into doing it either. Having a child and raising it for the better part of three decades consumes thousands of hours of your limited time and is so expensive it almost guarantees you will be living a worse life because of it. There are no incentives that a government could realistically offer to make such commitments appealing; not on a national scale anyways. Lowering the barrier to entry could possibly convince some sitting on the fence and therefore 'improve' things around the margins, sure. But that doesn't change the fact that now that they were no longer socially obligated to be mothers, women simply won't choose to have children at the rates they had before.

The genie is out of the bottle and it's never going back in. And, like, good. For the first real time in the record history of agricultural states, the traditionally marginalized half of the population finally has achieved some semblance of equality with the traditionally privileged half. Lowered birthrates are more than an acceptable trade off for this. I hope that's something that no one disagrees with.

The fact of the matter here is that most of the 'solutions' offered in this thread are completely unworkable and would do nothing more than produce social dysfunction as millions of unwanted babies are born and subsequently abandoned, abused, neglected, or otherwise mistreated by parents who either did not have the resources to take care of them or simply did not want to in the first place. Far from being the thing that saves capitalist nations from themselves, these proposals would only worsen the economies of developed nations as half the workforce (Disproportionally in various key industries like nursing, education, and childcare ironically enough) would disappear overnight, the crime rate explodes as entire new markets open up for illicit birth control items and abortion medications, millions of more families go on welfare as they become 'child poor', and who knows how many women become radicalized into being anti-government activists thanks to state-enforced sexism.

I never thought I would have to say this, but you guys know The Handmaid's Tale and The Stepford Wives were cautionary tales and not the blueprints for a utopian society?

 

[Fratsup]

I mean all of those functions liberties only apply of the state and society is stable and functional. If the demographics get bad enough it's like that quality of life will start to go down and then fall as all of the problems come quickly in short order greatly destabilizing society. Really while it would remain an issue once people start acting on the problem it would be too late and everyone will have to deal with the consequences.

 

[Twiggierjet]

I never thought I would have to say this, but you guys know The Handmaid's Tale and The Stepford Wives were cautionary tales and not the blueprints for a utopian society?

I mean, yeah, no shit? At no point did I suggest this was something I desired or wanted to see happen, even if it seems some people interpreted it that way. I was just working on a worldbuilding project that involves a noticeably higher then otl population with a modern POD and wanted to know if anyone had ideas for how I could explain that instead of just handwaving it away.

 

[Otakuninja2006]

Making life better enough for a modern boom could work.

 

[TuberAlloy]

Gut all forms of retirement benefits, pensions and social security, make it socially unacceptable and tantamount to failure that you end up in a elderly care home, and either get women out of the workforce or encourage creches/babysitters. Honestly the biggest change you can make is cultural rather than financial, normalizing bigger families in entertainment media would have a far bigger impact than any sort of government subsidies.

 

[Gabingston]

Making life better enough for a modern boom could work.

We in the modern developed world have a level of material security and comfort even wealthy people throughout most of human history could've only dreamed of. The problem here is with the economy's incentive structure and the anti-natal tendencies of modern culture, not with material standards of living (which are either the highest in history or only beaten by the immediate post-WW2 era).

 

[Gabingston]

I never thought I would have to say this, but you guys know The Handmaid's Tale and The Stepford Wives were cautionary tales and not the blueprints for a utopian society?

Can you point to some examples of people making Handmaid's Tale-esque suggestions in this thread?

 

[Admiral Matt]

The explosion in western birthrates between ~1945 and ~1970 was not ever a stable trend that could realistically be expected to go on forever. Birthrates have always fluctuated with the times, and there is no reason to expect current trends to go on forever. Even if they do, a much more realistic solution than attempting to force women to have babies they don't want would be to just loosen migration laws and take in new migrants from areas in the global south that are in the process of undergoing the demographic transition.

Because that's the crux of this entire thread and all of the ones like it; that women are no longer legally second class citizens with little rights or autonomy confined to the dual social role of baby factory / domestic laborer. You can not force them to have children they don't want to have anymore, and you certainly can't bribe them into doing it either. Having a child and raising it for the better part of three decades consumes thousands of hours of your limited time and is so expensive it almost guarantees you will be living a worse life because of it. There are no incentives that a government could realistically offer to make such commitments appealing; not on a national scale anyways. Lowering the barrier to entry could possibly convince some sitting on the fence and therefore 'improve' things around the margins, sure. But that doesn't change the fact that now that they were no longer socially obligated to be mothers, women simply won't choose to have children at the rates they had before.

The genie is out of the bottle and it's never going back in. And, like, good. For the first real time in the record history of agricultural states, the traditionally marginalized half of the population finally has achieved some semblance of equality with the traditionally privileged half. Lowered birthrates are more than an acceptable trade off for this. I hope that's something that no one disagrees with.

The fact of the matter here is that most of the 'solutions' offered in this thread are completely unworkable and would do nothing more than produce social dysfunction as millions of unwanted babies are born and subsequently abandoned, abused, neglected, or otherwise mistreated by parents who either did not have the resources to take care of them or simply did not want to in the first place. Far from being the thing that saves capitalist nations from themselves, these proposals would only worsen the economies of developed nations as half the workforce (Disproportionally in various key industries like nursing, education, and childcare ironically enough) would disappear overnight, the crime rate explodes as entire new markets open up for illicit birth control items and abortion medications, millions of more families go on welfare as they become 'child poor', and who knows how many women become radicalized into being anti-government activists thanks to state-enforced sexism.

I never thought I would have to say this, but you guys know The Handmaid's Tale and The Stepford Wives were cautionary tales and not the blueprints for a utopian society?

I skipped the middle pages of the thread, so perhaps I missed it, but you appear to be fighting imaginary enemies.

That said, I do disagree with the idea that women's rights are the causative factor.

Because that's the crux of this entire thread and all of the ones like it; that women are no longer legally second class citizens with little rights or autonomy confined to the dual social role of baby factory / domestic laborer. You can not force them to have children they don't want to have anymore, and you certainly can't bribe them into doing it either. Having a child and raising it for the better part of three decades consumes thousands of hours of your limited time and is so expensive it almost guarantees you will be living a worse life because of it. There are no incentives that a government could realistically offer to make such commitments appealing; not on a national scale anyways. Lowering the barrier to entry could possibly convince some sitting on the fence and therefore 'improve' things around the margins, sure. But that doesn't change the fact that now that they were no longer socially obligated to be mothers, women simply won't choose to have children at the rates they had before.

I would argue women's lack of rights slows down a trend that has its roots in economics and class. Once you get people off traditional farms, halt infant and childbirth mortality, and the costs of education go up, the shift is in motion. This then creates a space for the expansion of women's rights, which is in relative terms now pushing on an open door. Social momentum and limiting freedom can only stem the tide for an eyeblink in historical terms - people will eventually pursue their interests.

That said, on the scale of world history, immigration is no solution at all. The demographic transition is already present everywhere, just further along in some places. (As a lasting solution it would be completely immoral anyway, demanding a huge population of women somewhere be trapped in "the bad old days," producing young workers for export to the imperial core. We accept the current dynamic because it is inherently transitional and improves lives.)

Societies/economies will sooner or later have to learn to overcome the demographic transition to the point of reaching stable populations. Or have economies that adapt to do without humans, I suppose.

 

[Putnam]

To have a boom you must have a bust and we've yet to have a true bust cycle in order to get a subsequent boom cycle.

Government economic policy has prevented a true bust cycle from happening.

 

[marcinL]

Nobody watches tv anymore anyway

You would he surprised.

Cut off power supply after 8pm then, and all comms but emergency

 

[marcinL]

Personally, I sometimes wonder whether the phenomenon of advanced societies failing to reproduce might actually be a universal constant, kind of like a form of social entropy. There’s John B. Calhoun’s famous ‘mouse utopia’ experiment that he did in the 60s, where he created enclosed spaces where mice and rats were given unlimited access to food and water, enabling unfettered population growth, essentially simulating advanced, first-world standards of population density, standards of living, and comfort, except for mice. Here’s what happened afterward:



There’s more on the experiment on Wikipedia. Apparently homosexual behavior started to become common among male mice lol, along with other deviant and anti-social behaviors like cannibalism, and social withdrawal of some mice. It seems the total lack of external stress factors (no predators, unlimited food and drink, comfortable shelter), combined with high population density, leads to the rise of certain social pathologies, followed by social collapse and even extinction – at least for mice. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the relative comfort, security and safety found in advanced societies has similar effects on humans. It seems a certain level of stress and discomfort might actually be beneficial for society.

IIRC, the solution to overpopulation stress was giving the mouse separate cages

 

[Zireael]

I stated in a reply to your post about childless couples that if a young couple wanted a child and couldn't due to medical reasons

Yes, AND the entire thread is about a "baby boom", that's why I noted that it doesn't contribute to a baby boom.

 

[Parmenion]

You would he surprised.

Cut off power supply after 8pm then, and all comms but emergency

Rip all the stuff in my fridge

 

[TheMaskedDiscombobulator]

I still think it's worth taking into consideration. Urban, industrial society is less than two hundred years old, which is a blip in the grand span of human history, so we could very well adapt to the new conditions over the next few centuries, but I think a mouse utopia situation is, to quote Joe Rogan, entirely possible.

I don't think Joe Rogan makes a good source on this one because he tends to have a subtle or not-so-subtle agenda in interpreting his facts.

More broadly, it's absolutely possible for society to configure itself in such a way that it puts stresses on people that make them less likely to reproduce. The question is, which stresses? The 'mouse utopia' wasn't actually a utopia for mice. It was an overcrowded environment that presented different stresses on mice than living in the wild would, sure! But that's not the same thing.

To have a boom you must have a bust and we've yet to have a true bust cycle in order to get a subsequent boom cycle.

Government economic policy has prevented a true bust cycle from happening.

If you want to see what a country entering a "baby bust" looks like, look at South Korea or Japan.

I'm not the biggest expert on East Asian societies, but my impression is...

You see corporations being very free to set the terms on which people work for them, frequently resulting in cases where even if you can hold a relationship together, you're hardly seeing your significant other at all, and you may well be under too much stress to hold it together in the first place. You see high economic precarity among people in their twenties who would normally be at or near the peak of fertility. You see ongoing sexism, often more pronounced than in the West, that give women a very strong reason to just stay single if they value their happiness at all. You see a gerontocracy, in which the people who hold economic and political clout are typically very far removed from the childrearing years. You see high property values and high rent which facilitate the rapid transfer of wealth from people of childbearing age who typically rent property, to people above childbearing age who typically own it.

These sound to me like some of the trends you need to fight if you're trying to prevent demographic collapse.

Demographic collapse is caused, essentially, by the market economy telling humanity to stop doing something as inefficient and unprofitable as "reproduction" and no powerful force in society having the gonads to say "no" on the grounds that they value human things such as love, family, and the opportunity to cultivate one's own garden above things such as worker evaluation reports, profitability metrics, and national GDP.

 

[Zireael]

The explosion in western birthrates between ~1945 and ~1970 was not ever a stable trend that could realistically be expected to go on forever.

On this we agree

Lowered birthrates are more than an acceptable trade off for this.

Somewhat lowered yes. Lowered below replacement levels no, as that means our societies will simply die out (and mass immigration isn't a solution because they'll soon enter the same process)

 

[TheMaskedDiscombobulator]

As a child free person, I can't help but feel this might engender some negative reactions from folks without kids.

There is a legitimate point of dispute here, but the problem is that society at large (and the prospect of it enduring beyond the current generation) kind of is endangered if the rate of reproduction drops off.

It would be uncharitable in the extreme for one to assume that "child-free" means "do not care what happens to civilization after I die," so I do not make that assumption. But if one does care about what happens to the future, then there can definitely be situations where society really, really needs to tax everyone (including those with no children) to allow the collective community to propagate into the future.

Somewhat lowered yes. Lowered below replacement levels no, as that means our societies will simply die out (and mass immigration isn't a solution because they'll soon enter the same process)

Mass immigration addresses the immediate crisis, which is caused, not by the population shrinking, but by the older generations being dramatically larger than the younger ones. A society that's producing 1.7 children per woman may eventually see its population shrink, but it won't have a "gray _____" crisis that collapses its economy and society entirely the way a society that's producing 1.1 children per woman will.

The problem isn't "if populations shrink, clearly they will continue to shrink forever until humanity goes extinct." The problem is "we don't want the population shrinking too fast in ways that leave us without a functioning labor force."

This isn't a strategy game where your high score goes down if there aren't as many people in your empire.

 

[Zireael]

Even if shrinkage doesn't make us go extinct, shrinkage beyond a certain level will be a HUGE problem (less people means less scientists, less engineers, means scientific progress slow down - imagine if Einstein or Tesla were never born). That's why I reject temporary solutions as they only solve the immediate problem (and only partially, only the elders > younger problem you mentioned)

 

[anotherlurker]

Anybody blamed loneliness and the internet yet? Despite it being easier than ever to contact other people many are paradoxically more lonely than ever before. In earlier times you could not avoid interacting with your neighborhood and immediate community and would do so no matter their political leanings, but today thanks to the internet we find ourselves in ideological bubbles where each person is sperated by a vast space, never to see the others in real life, and where the bubbles are less and less willing to interact with one another. The opportunities where 2 people would get to know and hook up with one another are getting fewer and fewer, leaving just the online dating meat market that works out for the fewest people and is choke full with fake profiles just there to financially exploit the desperates. If the loneliness pandemic isn't adressed all your plans for increasing birth rates will be futile as the young adults retreat into fandoms, nieche interests, gaming or full blown hikkikomori status.

 

[da Racontor]

I skipped the middle pages of the thread, so perhaps I missed it, but you appear to be fighting imaginary enemies.

That said, I do disagree with the idea that women's rights are the causative factor.



I would argue women's lack of rights slows down a trend that has its roots in economics and class. Once you get people off traditional farms, halt infant and childbirth mortality, and the costs of education go up, the shift is in motion. This then creates a space for the expansion of women's rights, which is in relative terms now pushing on an open door. Social momentum and limiting freedom can only stem the tide for an eyeblink in historical terms - people will eventually pursue their interests.

That said, on the scale of world history, immigration is no solution at all. The demographic transition is already present everywhere, just further along in some places. (As a lasting solution it would be completely immoral anyway, demanding a huge population of women somewhere be trapped in "the bad old days," producing young workers for export to the imperial core. We accept the current dynamic because it is inherently transitional and improves lives.)

Societies/economies will sooner or later have to learn to overcome the demographic transition to the point of reaching stable populations. Or have economies that adapt to do without humans, I suppose.

Ya, woman's rights itself isn't an issue.

I could see an argument that not being "familiar with what to do with the rights had an effect," for lack of better wording. As in you must be different than what came be for sort of way.

An example, my wife & a few other women I know were heckled in college by a very vocal minority for actual being happy with the idea of putting any children they may have before their future career. Because that meant they must still be "brainwashed", regardless if it made them happy.

While it was still very much a minority, it wasn't just students. And that was the early 2010s.

Of my mom, who only had 4, being insulted for being "backwards" or "unable to control herself".

There is a legitimate point of dispute here, but the problem is that society at large (and the prospect of it enduring beyond the current generation) kind of is endangered if the rate of reproduction drops off.

It would be uncharitable in the extreme for one to assume that "child-free" means "do not care what happens to civilization after I die," so I do not make that assumption. But if one does care about what happens to the future, then there can definitely be situations where society really, really needs to tax everyone (including those with no children) to allow the collective community to propagate into the future.

Mass immigration addresses the immediate crisis, which is caused, not by the population shrinking, but by the older generations being dramatically larger than the younger ones. A society that's producing 1.7 children per woman may eventually see its population shrink, but it won't have a "gray _____" crisis that collapses its economy and society entirely the way a society that's producing 1.1 children per woman will.

Agreed, there is a difference between "mandatory children" & "child conducive".

I think most of us, including myself, have point out when some of our ideas have been just to forfill the OP rather than something we want.

The problem isn't "if populations shrink, clearly they will continue to shrink forever until humanity goes extinct." The problem is "we don't want the population shrinking too fast in ways that leave us without a functioning labor force."

This isn't a strategy game where your high score goes down if there aren't as many people in your empire.

Ya, it's more of a "the society changes that are coming are going to really really really really suck". Type of thing. (Kinda like the shortages from lockdown, but for a generation or 2)

Especially for people my age, who remember the societal expectations of the 80s & early 90s.

Demographic collapse is caused, essentially, by the market economy telling humanity to stop doing something as inefficient and unprofitable as "reproduction" and no powerful force in society having the gonads to say "no" on the grounds that they value human things such as love, family, and the opportunity to cultivate one's own garden above things such as worker evaluation reports, profitability metrics, and national GDP.

Exactly!


To be honest we need to drop the whole "profit=highest good" thing acrossed the board.
But that'd a discussion for elsewhere.

 

[tinyDelta]

There have been many individual observations made in this thread (lower income households and workers of a trade statistically have a higher fertility rate, said fertility rate has been dropping since women have entered the workforce and higher degrees of education in masses, the first world countries having a lower fertility rate than the less developed areas on Earth, more opportunities for entertainment and living a fulfilling life than previously, factories outsourced and workplace options becoming more scarce, etc.) and I'd like to point out something that connects all these points:

The time allocated for childrearing has decreased drastically. It is not the money we lack for raising children, but rather the time to do so.

Think about how much time one spends day by day, with either working or spending time in college, not to mention the time spent on commuting, especially in the States. The situation is even worse in East Asian countries where working overtime and spending time in school from morning to evening is the norm. I've read a statistic about South Korea having a fertility rate below 1 in the current days on this website recently. And the worst part is is that a large precentage of this time is practically wasted away from our lives. I think many people here can relate to sitting at endless meeting sessions or elective seminars, bored out of their minds and not doing anything productive. That is a lot of time spent away not on satisfying our desires for entertainment, culture, our ambitions, and ultimately not on raising a family.

I think a way to increase fertility rates in the first world countries would be to improve the efficiency of how we spend our daily lives, giving back time and energy to the populace, which could be invested into having children and raising them, spending time with them and making sure their diet, health and education is in order. There have been experiments in some companies regarding reducing the average employee's working hours by 20-25% and the results have been mostly positive without a significant decrease of production. Working
from home is also a good way to give back time to the white collar workers.

To go back to the original post, that would be my suggestion: have a society which reformed their workdays and their education in a way that grants them more time.