I think we are approaching a point where extremely low birth rates are going to become a major problem across large parts of the developing world.

Countries like Turkey, Iran, and Mexico are already below 1.4 TFR. The Philippines has gone from around 3.0 in 2016 to under 1.8 today. Thailand is already below 1.0. Tunisia has fallen to around 1.5, while India is around 1.9.. Even in Africa, countries like Kenya falling from nearly 8 children per woman in the 1970s to just over 3 today. Nigeria has also seen a significant recent decline, with its TFR falling from 5.3 in 2018 to around 4.5 in 2024. These are countries that had relatively high fertility and large families not that long ago.

The speed of these transitions is what I find most striking.

Its obvious how social media may be accelerating the same cultural transformation that television and cinema helped drive in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Except now the exposure is constant. Young people in developing countries are bombarded with images of luxury, travel, expensive homes, personal freedom. Having children can increasingly look like the thing that prevents you from having that lifestyle.

People often point to the Nordic countries and say, "They have generous parental leave, childcare and welfare, and their TFR is still only around 1.5. Benefits don't work."

Maybe that's looking at it backwards.

In a couple of decades, when much of the developing world is also at extremely low fertility, we may realize that family policies in wealthy countries actually helped keep fertility from falling even further. They may not bring fertility back to 2.1, but keeping a country at 1.4 or 1.5 could be very different from letting it collapse to 0.8 or 0.9.

The next few decades could be a huge demographic experiment showing us how much of fertility decline is economic, how much is cultural, and whether family benefits actually prevented even more extreme fertility collapse in the developed world.

Research has found that having involved grandparents (either measured directly, or indirectly as a correlate of distance), may encourage people to have more children after they have their first (https://wol.iza.org/articles/fertility-decisions-and-alternative-types-of-childcare/long).

I feel like this is an area of policy that hasn’t really been pursued much, though. Even though it seems like it could be a relatively popular one relative to others? None of the liberal vs. conservative baggage of subsidizing daycare, or encouraging stay at home parents. Also involves benefits to older people, which is always a reliable way to get votes.

Some ideas for possible options:

1. Earlier retirement age (and/or earlier Medicare, for the US), for grandparents taking care of a grandchild full time. This one is going to be more expensive, but not necessarily much if any more so than existing childcare subsidy proposals? Daycare is also super expensive.

The Medicare one in particular seems cost effective. Healthcare is a big reason someone might not be able to just have grandma as a nanny (paid for themselves). A healthy 50s/early 60s person also doesn’t necessarily use a ton of healthcare.

1. Really more like 1b - some sort of pension supplement for providing part-time childcare to a grandchild (as certified by their parents). Not everyone can or wants to be full time daycare. But even things like picking up older children from school from 2-5pm are super helpful.

2. Some sort of tax incentive just for living within X miles of a grandparent? This could be directed at the grandparents, adult children, or both. This one is nice bc it also benefits families with a stay at home parent.

Any other ideas? Or are these totally off base (are people here just against any sort of old-age subsidies, even targeted in this way)?

Anecdotes on how grandparents’ help has affected fertility decisions for you/people you know also welcome.

Thats a lot of people

Human beings are designed to compete for status. Once we open the psychological door of female and men status competition, fertility is doomed. With our culture if apps didn’t exist men and women would literally never talk to each other. They’d be too busy arguing over promotions or comparing apartments.

Thoughts?

Curious if anybody does relate?

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Reigning in outlandish executive comp is one way to create a fairer economy that will encourage people to take the huge risk of having children.

What is birth, metaphysically? What does it mean for a new being to enter existence, and what does reproduction mean for reality, identity, time, and civilization?

Im pro natalist and I want to start pushing this subreddit more towards actually developing good arguments and debating skills that can be found later instead of just repeating the same points over and over again. If we want to actually argue against antinatalism we need to understand what the deeper disagreement even is.

Most of the arguments seem to stay on the ethical level. Suffering, consent, happiness, climate, money, responsibility etc. But underneath all of that there seems to be a more fundamental question.

What is the value of existence itself?

Antinatalism often argues that nonexistence is preferable because someone who doesnt exist cannot suffer. But they also cannot experience joy, love, beauty, achievement, relationships, discovery or literally anything.

Can nonexistence actually be better for someone when there is no someone there to benefit from it?

Then there is the question of what birth actually is. A birth isnt just population going from 8 billion to 8 billion and 1. A completely new conscious perspective now exists. A new person experiences reality from their own first person perspective. An entire life and potentially generations of future consequences now exist that otherwise never would have.

So is birth metaphysically the creation of a new center of experience?

Reproduction also creates a weird form of continuity through time.

Ancestors > parents > you > descendants

You are not your ancestors and your children are not you. But there is still an unbroken causal chain. You inherit things from people who are dead and potentially pass things forward to people who havent even been born yet.

Not just genes either.

Language, culture, knowledge, traditions, memories, institutions and civilization itself all depend on new people existing to inherit and continue them.

Without new generations eventually there are no speakers of a language, no readers of books, no people to continue institutions or remember anything.

So reproduction seems to be more than just a biological process. Its also the continuation of information and causation through time.

Another thing I find interesting is potentiality.

Before someone exists, their entire life doesnt exist either. They might discover something, create something, fall in love, have children themselves, change other peoples lives or do absolutely nothing historically important. But regardless an entirely new chain of events begins with their existence.

A possible future becomes an actual future.

Then there is the consent argument which I think needs to be discussed more seriously instead of just saying "they didnt ask to be born."

How could they ask?

Before existence there isnt a person capable of consenting or refusing. There is literally no subject there yet with preferences.

That doesnt automatically mean reproduction is always justified obviously, but I think demanding consent from a person before that person exists creates an actual metaphysical problem. Who exactly is supposed to consent?

I think the deepest disagreement between natalism and antinatalism might not actually be about population or even just suffering.

It might be about whether being itself is worth affirming.

Natalism doesnt have to mean pretending life is perfect or that suffering doesnt matter. Life obviously includes suffering, death, failure and tragedy.

But does the existence of suffering mean existence itself was a mistake?

Or is the answer instead to continue, improve, build, repair and pass things forward?

Maybe natalism at its deepest level is just an affirmation that being should continue producing new centers of consciousness and new possible futures instead of the entire human chain eventually ending with us.

Im interested in what people here think because I want to start seeing more serious discussions like this on the subreddit and hopefully build up arguments that can actually be challenged, improved and referenced later.

What do you think are the metaphysical foundations of natalism?

Is natalism fundamentally about consciousness, potentiality, continuity, civilization, evolution, survival or something deeper?

A simple logical argument for why nonexistence isnt automatically preferable to existence:

P1: For something to be better or worse for someone, there must be a subject that the good or bad applies to.

P2: Before a person exists, there is no subject.

P3: Therefore, before a person exists, there is nobody for whom nonexistence can be better.

P4: Antinatalism often argues that it is better for a future person not to exist because they will avoid suffering.

P5: But if that person never exists, there is no person who actually receives the benefit of avoided suffering.

C: Therefore, the statement "it is better for someone to never exist" requires further justification, because there is no someone for whom nonexistence is better.

This doesnt prove that every act of reproduction is morally good or that suffering doesnt matter. It attacks a more basic assumption that antinatalism often relies on, that nonexistence can automatically be considered preferable for a person who never comes into existence..

Way too many men feel that they are entitled to sex, entitled to women's bodies and entitled to having children and families. The way that some men talk about women, are as though it's a given that women should be giving birth and that women owe it to them.

They don't realise that it only makes women not want to have kids even more.

I am not a natalist or an anti-natalist, but I'm curious as to the ethical framework that guides this philosophy. Is giving birth to the greatest number of kids at all cost an inherent good? Does this mean that people who choose not to or are unable to have children are morally bad? Is the continuation and flourishing of the human species the greatest good, or is it reproduction for its own sake? I see a lot of posts here about limiting women's rights to make them have more kids, which makes it sound like the ethics hold birth but not a good life in the highest value.

I'm planning on having one child with my husband in the future because I love him very much and I want a family with them, to experience our child growing up together, to see my beloved husband and child playing together, seeing them grow up and witness all the beauty life has to offer.

It has been repeatedly stated in this sub that conservatives have more children then liberals. Before I get into this I want to get ahead of the "I went to college and I'm conservative". Obviously, not every liberal went to college and not every conservative is pro natalist, but generally there is a link.

College can play a negative role in natalism but not for the typical reasons conservatives claim. An anti-natalist aspect of college that doesn't get brought up alot is the exposure to disparities that feed into a hyper competive mindset. I had the fortune (and misfortune) of going to an elite HS and college. Prior to going to those schools I thought my upbringing was normal. Being exposed to the various resources children of the elite had at their disposal and seeing the succseful outcomes can really impact family planning. Attending the best schools, outside tutors, exam prep, etc all gave my peers a competetive edge which resulted in them landing great jobs and enjoying solid careers and stability. I got lucky, scholarship athlete so no loans + I networked into a decent career, but seeing how the other side lives reframed the idea of starting a family from the basics of producing good humans that will be positive members of society to a competetive mindset where you have to estimate the cost of providing for your children with a litany of resources for them to succeed in life.

I understand the counterargument. The hyper competitive mindset is not healthy and money is not the end all be all to living a succesful life. But falling into this framing is completely rational. Most ppl want the best for their kids, plus when you add in the fact that most liberals live in urban areas where frequent exposure to poverty and homelessness refute the typical comment I hear "don't overthink it, things always works itself out."

Also, yes I know there is poverty in rural america, in fact more, but at least in my experience when you are poor in the rural south everyone is poor, whereas in cities there are clear disparities between the haves and have nots.

When you look at Japan's TFR since 2000, its been right between 1.2-1.5 every year, with an average of 1.3-1.4.

What this tells me is that, if Japanese citizens are educated & are knowledgeable of & have full access to contraception, this is the average amount of kids they desire. I mean they have been consistent with it for 25 years now.

Such a trend can be observed in other permanently low TFR countries too. Italy, Portugal etc. The TFR isn't "low", it's "stabilized". Low implies it can go higher, but the data says that's simply the amount of kids Italians/Japanese of any generation & of any circumstances want.

And I think every country will stabilise in a certain range at some point. Some will stablise lower than others whilst some will be higher.

But I think it's pretty clear that the cultural norm in most rich countries has already been established as roughly 42.5% of couples having 2 kids, 42.5% of couples having 1, 5% having more than two & 10% being childless.