Don’t worry, Republicans will solve this by banning abortion and birth control nationwide!
They are always thinking of the children.
And legalizing marriage to minors. And outlawing comprehensive sexual education.
A few Republicans also rape and traffic minors just to show how dedicated they are to countering the declining birth rate!
Pizzagate was projection.
Also, we need to be clear, rape is such a harsh word, it’s not fair to ruin someone’s whole career over a little misunderstanding like consent…
Okay, so on an actual serious note – Historically, this has actually been the lever that’s been pulled by government in order to control population growth.
The problem is that we’ve grown so much as a society that we now realize that bodily-autonomy is a human right.
There are ways they can promote population growth, if that is something we really want. Better and free school lunches would be a start. Childcare. Pre-K education. Free college. Health-care. And generally a more wealthy middle class.
The biggest reason people are having fewer kids is money.
This 100%. We and many of our peers with a kid are one and done in the current system. But if we could afford college educations for multiple kids, get adequate parental leave, access to early childcare that doesn’t cost an entire paycheck? That would change the decision quite a bit.
But also I’m happy to have fewer kids and let more immigrant and/or refugee families with young kids move here too. Solves the labor shortage and provides a much needed influx of fresh ideas and culture, not to mention getting some folks out of dangerous situations. Somehow all of the people who want to “save the children” are extremely silent on that front when it’s children moving to another country for a better life.
There was a theory that roughly 15 years after Roe v Wade crime started decreasing because people who weren’t ready for or didn’t want children could now have an abortion. Many of those kids that were previously born “unwanted” were in poor households and so the kids getting to about 15 years old in those conditions would start getting into trouble and start committing crimes.
For any fuckwit that says “make better decisions then! Use protection!” I’m the result of a broken condom, that shit absolutely happens. I was a “pleasant surprise.” Honestly I wish they’d have just had the abortion.
My sister had her first child because her birth control failed due to another medication making it less effective.
No one warned her about that being a thing that can happen with that particular med. Not her doctor. Not the pharmacist. No one said a thing… which is super fucked up. She was married at the time, but still. They were not ready for a kid(their words)
This was almost 20 years ago so I don’t remember which med it was, and I’m hoping the medical community is better about this now.
It’s really honestly amazing that there are so many people in this world that don’t understand that, A, married couples use birth control and have regular sex and, B, that birth control can fail.
Are they all incels are something?
Unfortunately, a lot of people who are under the influence of religion believe that marriage is for creating children, and many of those people received very little to no sex ed.
The ideas that “every child is a blessing” and “God will provide” are used to handwave away the importance of people’s bodily autonomy and to deflect the reality that people can and should have access to the resources to chose if, when and how many children they have.
I’ve taken to calling them reproductive luddites. They’re afraid of contraceptive technology.
PSA: Antibiotics will make your birth control less effective.
Also no they do not warn most people about that.
I have been called a weirdo many times for always reading the information that comes with medications. I still do, even for stuff i have taken many times like Tylenol.
Of course doctors and pharmacists should inform their patients and have an eye on these things. But the full legally required known documentation is always with the medication. And humans are prone to error, especially in a field as complex as medicine/pharma.
Read the things before starting the medication. Always.
I read them too after what happened to my sister.
However, I think that certain types of side effects(life altering ones Tardive dyskinesia) and medications that are known to mess with hormonal birth control should have their own little text box right on the front where people can clearly see it.
Throwing a long ass pamphlet in there and calling it informed consent doesn’t really cut it for me. There’s a lot of room for improvement.
It doesn’t get brought up because it’s not useful to anyone politically. Already support abortion rights? Well then lower crime rates is just a positive unintended side effect of a policy that grants women their inherent right to bodily autonomy. Already oppose abortion rights? Then you probably don’t care about crime rates because you already think that abortion itself is a crime.
Honestly I wish they’d have just had the abortion.
Asafum, I don’t know you, but I am almost certain the world is a better place with you in it.
Hope you encounter a nice autumn breeze (assuming from the instance) or a nice whatever you like this week. Despite, I agree, the world being a bit of a hole in general.
Me, I’ve been enjoying the sun on the leaves this spring.
Kind regards, This Australian anon
I appreciate the kind words! I was pleasantly surprised to find my phone has an astrophotography mode so I’ve been trying to enjoy that on clear nights :)
Absolutely not, Slovakia saw the same thing. When abortion was strictly outlawed, crime skyrocketed in 18 years due to children being born in awful conditions.
The prolife movement is a probirth movement only. Because they don’t give a fuck about the kid after birth.
Edit: Romania not Slovakia
I think you may have the wrong country. I can’t find anything about a complete abortion ban in Slovakia (except for a rejected proposal in 2020), nor a sharp increase in crime, apart from that following promptly after the overthrow of the communists.
“Driven” suggest more than half of total pregnancies, which is not true looking at the graph given above. It was solidly thirdfourth* in terms of totals, which is still unsettling, but not as pronounced as your comment suggests.
*I overlooked 25-29
Who told you that drivers have to be 51%?
That’s not what a driver is. Driver is a general term, ten pregnancies are a driver of total birth rate, as they have impacted total fertility significantly.
Not to call out OP, but does anyone have this information in anything other than .png format? There’s no timestamps, hyperlinks, or citations anywhere here. I’d love to send this to other people, but I’m not about to copy-pasta something that could be old or inaccurate.
Not the exact image posted, but this appears to be the source
Here is the paywalled Economist article and an archive that does a poor job of capturing the image.
I think this is where a lot of modern civilization is falling apart at. If you want population replacement and growth, you actually have to make it advantageous to have children, and at appropriate age for your society and culture. The GOP thinks they can do it by destroying reproductive rights, civil rights, and marriage laws, if they harm women enough they’ll HAVE to be baby makers! Dehumanized baby factories! And even conservative voters are fighting against it, because it’s insane and it’s against our current culture. It has to work for everyone. It would be more intelligent to create free childcare, better pregnancy and birth leave for both parents, and child tax credits. They could use WIC to absorb the cost of having a child and public education sooner with preschool. If people are hopeful their children will have high education access and a stable life they will be a lot more likely to have kids. Being horrified that your children will live in a fascist theocracy and intentionally kept uneducated and poverty stricken, they might actually voluntarily avoid sex to not have kids.
What if we don’t want infinite growth? What about stability? Or (gasp) a population reduction so we don’t destroy the planet. Have less babies. Feed the ones we have. Educate them.
Sure, easing into a deflating population over several hundred years is fine but tanking it and ending up with a society having to support a vastly older population ain’t easy either. Better for governments to provide positive reasons to have children but there’s zero chance of that.
We won’t starve our old people, there’s plenty of wealth to go around, it’s just that a tiny portion of the population has stolen it all. Maybe even the average person will have to make some sacrifices if birth rates don’t stay at a certain level but our lifestyles are hugely inflated compared to even 50 years ago.
We can live sustainable lives with a reducing population, our productivity per capita is higher than it’s ever been, we’re all just seeing so little of it.
Instead of Musks and Bezos, instead of all of our creative minds working in advertising and finance, instead of 10 different streaming services, we can have a good quality of life for everyone.
Our economy being efficient is the biggest lie. The economy is only profitable, and it only has good outcomes when those outcomes are aligned with profit. It’s time for a new economy that serves the people
Our government has no issue going into debt for anything and everything they want, aside from social services. The whole concept of a younger generation having to take care of a growing older one means nothing to me. If they care, they can shift their priorities on reckless spending. If they don’t (they dont) then the population can take to the streets and demand they start caring.
We’re going to run into a crisis within our life time whether we like it or not. Within 10-20 years, possibly longer if legislation somehow hampers it, pretty much the entire working class will be unemployable because machine labor will be cheaper and more readily available than any human. Yes, some people will still have jobs, but not the working class.
Long before we have a crisis of too many elderly for the working to care and provide for, we are going to have a crisis of not enough jobs paying a liveable wage for one, let alone a family, because corporations are going to be able to replace large swathes of their workforces with machines that cost less to maintain per unit than minimum wage, so why would they ever hire a person?
Both arguments are valid. Less children, better education and growth perspectives = better humanity. And still there are some sick fucks down voting. Which shows how fucked we are.
I personally think reproductive rights are human rights, every adult should have total personal control over their reproductive choices, I don’t think people who chose to have kids should be punished for the choice, and I don’t think people who do not wish to have children should be likewise punished for not doing so, nor forced in any way or manipulated into having children. I agree that there has to be a lot of improvement for kids who are here right now. That’s an important problem you have to solve first if you want to encourage your population to grow, the outcome must be good now.
I mean yes, children should be an affordable option and please take my tax money to make it practically free. But also I think a lot more people don’t want children than is generally assumed it expected. Just lots of societal pressure pushing vulnerable people to make a decision that’s not necessarily in their best interest.
It’s a deeply felt personal choice, I don’t think people should be manipulated or pressured into it, only that the cost at the very least be at zero so that people can choose based on what matters, their own personal views, and not in their ability to pay for every aspect of a child’s life.
I think this is where a lot of modern civilization is falling apart at. If you want population replacement and growth, you actually have to make it advantageous to have children, and at appropriate age for your society and culture.
For most of history it wasn’t advantageous to have children. People just didn’t have many options, and we were used to babies dying all the time so if we wanted any help in our old age we had to have enough to survive into adulthood.
Where do you base this information from?
E.g. people who had a farm or crafts/trade business usually had children to help and later take over the business. Having children to help at old age is mentioned by yourself.
Sounds quite advantageous to me. Especially when labor is more physically demanding or you need enough people to maintain security like for traders etc.
It’s the reason my grandfather is one of five brothers and seven kids in total. It’s the reason my great-grandfather was the eldest of seven, and my ex-MIL was one of 11 children. They lived on farms and it was a lot cheaper to force your kids to do work than to hire farmhands.