The lack of children being born is an emergency situation worldwide. Entire nations are dying out. Economies are stalling and descending into unsupportable debt to pay for social services.
At the same time, governments are still enacting policies to discourage people from having children, making the situation worse.
What measures could reverse this?
Some are obvious, but politically unpopular.
Ban abortion.
Ban birth control.
Ban pornography.
This presumably pushes people to get married, stay married, and anticipate children in order to have sex. Nature meant it to work this way. We messed with that at our peril.
Encourage women to choose childrearing instead of some career outside the home. For sixty years, of course, we have done the opposite. One way to do that is to ensure that men make more than women for doing the same job; ideally double, so they can support a wife at home.
End no-fault divorce. Put a cap on child support, alimony and property division, favouring the chief wage earner. It should never be in a woman’s financial interest to divorce. This would encourage childrearing by removing a major factor preventing men from marrying in the first place
End requirements for car seats for children. This sounds trivial, but it limits many families to two children. There is no room for a third car seat in a typical automobile.
Repeal laws against spanking and other traditional forms of child discipline. The danger of being hauled into court for assault, or, conversely, being unable to control your children, is a disincentive to having kids. Of course, real abuse should be illegal, but spanking is not abuse; our grandparents were not sadists.
Allow parents to choose their children’s school. This will prevent the schools from working against the parents’ interests, as the public schools do now. People are unlikely to have children if they are likely to function in the family as a fifth column imposing state control.
Promote and defer to religion and religious organizations. This can be done without favouring one denomination or another, and so is in perfect conformity with the right to freedom of conscience. Religions promote responsible parenthood and discourage seeking sexual pleasure in the moment.
This is no doubt all highly controversial, and I may be called names. But, put simply, we do this or we die.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
