Around the world, nations are creating incentives to get citizens to have more children, but their strategies don’t appear to be working. Vox claims, “You can’t even pay people to have more kids.” But are people choosing not to have children because they don’t want them, or do they not want what they’ve been conditioned to believe children are?
Vox reports that Taiwan has spent more than $3 billion trying to convince its citizens to have more children. That includes the addition of six months of paid parental leave reimbursed at 80% of the parent’s salary, as well as a cash benefit and a tax break for parents of young children.
In Hungary, if a woman has four or more children she is no longer required to pay income tax — for the rest of her life. The nation also gives a loan of about $30,000 to newlyweds. If they have three or more children, the loan is forgiven. Hungary’s 2023 birth rate increased by about 0.65% from 2022.
In Italy, parliament passed “The Family Act” in 2020 which is aimed at giving a universal monthly allowance to families from the seventh month of pregnancy until the child turns 18. Families will get up to €175/$189 per month for the first and second child, and €260/$280 a month for any further children depending on the family income. Regardless, in Italy, the birth rate is expected to hit a new record low in 2023.
An initiative was launched in Poland last year called the Family Welfare Capital program. It gives parents 12,000 zloty (€2,610/$2,947) for each child after their firstborn between the ages of 12 and 36 months. All families, regardless of income, will receive the money. Initially, Poland had offered would-be parents monthly payments beginning in 2015 if they had children. Following that decision, birth rates began to rise before falling back down within four years.
Likewise, Austria has extended its maternity leave to more than two years, Russia began offering families with two or more children a lump sum of $7,000, and Greece began handing out “baby bonuses.”
Yet, said Vox, “If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.”
Trent MacNamara, a history professor at Texas A&M, told Vox, “Even the richest, savviest, most committed governments have struggled to find policies that produce sustained bumps in fertility. If such policies were discoverable, I think someone would have discovered them.”
READ: ‘Always room for more’: Adopting 13 children has made life one giant adventure
The devaluing of children
It may not necessarily be that people don’t want children, but the false negative image that has been portrayed of children. One example: in 2017, Phil Daoust, a father and stepfather, penned an article for The Guardian entitled, “Why are children so annoying?”
Daoust listed 60 reasons ranging from “Because they cry when you brush their hair” and “Because they turn you into a horrible, bitter grump” to “Because you can’t have sex till they’re asleep” and “Because they won’t shut up.” He also argues that after all the time and money parents spend on children, children eventually grow up and hate their parents.
To some, it may seem like one big joke, but these negative views of children along with a heavy focus on “self” have had a lasting impact.
Beyond this faulty perception of children, adults consider children to be a drain on parents’ finances and freedoms. Rather than having children, young adults are getting dogs and spending their time and money on travel.
Climate change
Children are also considered a threat to the environment — as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. In addition to being tentative about having children due to the so-called “burdens of capitalism,” she and other adults her age are worried about climate change.
In 2021, The Independent featured an article by Kate Ng, who examined whether or not it’s environmentally responsible to have children. “The first academic study of the issue last year found that an overwhelming number of people who are concerned about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children over fears their next of kin would struggle in the future,” she said.
It’s two-fold reasoning when it comes to the climate. Adults don’t want to birth children into a world in which they foresee a “climate apocalypse,” but also perceive children to be a drain on resources and a hazard to the environment. Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle were named environmental “role models” by UK-based organization Population Matters because of their plan to have a “maximum” of two children to reduce the impact on the planet.
Having fewer children or no children at all is becoming the norm due to “role models” like this.
Even those who view children in a positive light do not plan on having children due to concerns for the planet. In a study published in the journal Climatic Change, a 31-year-old woman explained, “Climate change is the sole factor for me in deciding not to have biological children. I don’t want to birth children into a dying world [though] I dearly want to be a mother.”
However, it’s underpopulation that’s causing concern.
David Brooks explained for The New York Times, “For decades, people took dynamism and economic growth for granted and saw population growth as a problem. Now we’ve gone to the other extreme, and it’s clear that young people are the scarce resource.”
Children, he said, “are the most important resource any country can have. The world does not need fewer children.”
Unfortunately, once an idea takes hold, no matter how misguided it is, it can be difficult if not impossible to shake. China enacted its One-Child Policy in 1980. It replaced it with a two-child policy in 2016 due to economic concerns. Any coercive reproduction policy is still unethical, but the damage had been done. The government’s message that ‘one child is best’ stuck. And even though families are “allowed” to have more than one child, young adults in China are not — and the country’s birth rate continues to fall.
Xu Jianhua, a sociology professor, said in 2013, “To what extent [a two child policy] will affect the Chinese economy remains to be seen as people’s willingness to have a second child may not be as high as expected… Past research has shown that due to urbanization and modernization, urban citizen’s willingness to have more children is very low.”
While the U.S. and European nations never adopted the unethical approach of government-approved pregnancy (which included forced abortions), the mentality that ‘one child is best’ has taken hold of their societies as well. Vox reports that in 2010 in the US, there were more than seven family members available to care for each person over the age of 80. By 2030, there will only be four.
Many who see children as bothersome, whiny, financial drains and freedom stealers have never actually experienced being a parent. They have been trained to see only the negatives and to focus on the “self” and on doing what makes them “happy.”
If adults base their ideas of parenthood and children on what they see in the media or their local restaurant, they’re not seeing the full parenthood picture. What’s worse — they never will.
