Several comments focused on one or another particular factor affecting fertility. The problem is much much bigger. We do not feel it because it is slow - the process of human reproduction is slow - about 30 years cycle now.
I will just bring out theses without elaboration:
- during the last 70 years the process of human reproduction got hit in ALL stages of this reproduction cycle: from mere attraction of people of opposite sex to each other to the age of being able to support your own kids - every single segment on this circle got dramatically hit. Fixing one part of the circle might not be enough
- the growth rate of human population we experienced after the WWII was unique in history: before that, despite large fertility, we were growing very slowly because of large infancy rate deaths.
- This incredible period brought forward giant acceleration of technology due to this population growth: we do not know how to reproduce only engineers and scientists, we produce all kind of people and only some percentage of them become the ones that advanced overall technological process due to inventions and discoveries. Among other humans we bred a lot of new engineers and scientists. But that time is over now and it will probably never come back
- 80% of women who never had children say that they wanted to, but various things delayed it to the point that the question became moot. 10% of childless women have fertility problems and 10% of childless women never wanted a child. 80% - this is a huge number of single women, or even just women. There is a potential there.
- fertility of mothers slightly INCREASED actually. Average number of children per mother (vs usually calculated per woman, any woman, mother or not) increased. It is if once a woman has a child, some strong biological program kicks in which makes the following childbirthing life of that woman statistically very stable, independent of time. Note: "as if" - I do not know the reason of stability of this parameter over time. And: this is actually great news!
- the decrease of fertility is because of the increase of childless women. That is the demographics that needs to be taken care of.
- Ideology. We do not understand how important women are. After century of feminist struggle, a lot of government effort, people still do not get how important women are. The helpful view is to not to treat women like men, but rather supermen, men with supernatural ability. Since the dawn of time, women could do everything that man does, they were worriers, they were doing hard physical labor, they were doing science, they were doing engineering. And on top of that, they have ability to grow babies inside of them for nine months.
- People need to understand that men should be declared more expendable than women. Women produce 5% more boys than girls for a reason: we can pay much less attention to the health of men than women. For example: breast cancer rates are very unacceptable and we need to focus on the whole smorgasbord of women-specific illnesses and issues in our medical resource. We do not need a lot of men. Let them compete naturally for their place in reproduction: genetically strong males should reproduce. Others - not so much.
- Comfort of women is neglected. Women are subjected to immense stress by necessity to work, necessity to match standards of behavior and beauty. They are still harassed on a regular basis by men, they are murdered, they are raped. We need to focus on women safety and comfort first and most of all, their psychological well being, their state of mind: women need to feel respected, valued just because they are women, regardless of their input to society. We need to persecute severely misogyny online, fuck the freedom of speech, women should be protected class. Period. I do not know how to achieve that comfort, but we need to focus on that. Only comfort and serenity can increase the desire of a woman to reproduce, no amount of career achievement can do that, no salary can do that. We need to focus on ultimate goal, not particular ways to achieve that goal. If it is salary, fine, whatever works. But we need to be open all the different possibilities to achieve the ultimate goal: comfort, serenity, self-confidence.
- Maybe we should stop taxing women? Just an idea that came to me just now. Anyway, tremendous amount of money needs to be thrown into demographic problem. It is very clear that it won't fix itself.
- We need to have utmost respect for mothers and motherhood. It is unacceptable that mothers can be harassed online as "breeders" and other derogatory terms. This needs to end.
- I am actually a religious fundamentalist: find above anything that comes from that. That's right there is none. Establishment of Islamic theocracy won't help: look at Iran: lowest fertility rates in the Middle East, much lower than 2.1.
- It is very likely that we won't resolve demographic problem and we will experience a death spiral of plummeting technological level and as consequence fertility rates. Demographic crisis is a global problem number one.
