Posted on 12/19/2023 12:07:00 PM PST by River Hawk
“No amount of financial incentives is going to get the birth rate up significantly”
I do not agree. High enough incentives will work.
The Italian people are dying out. Reproductive rates are below replacement level. The replacement level there is a paltry 0.619 - at place 220, far behind Hungary and Poland.
Referencing Italy in this context is like talking about manned space exploration, and boasting about one's Nigerian background.
Regards,
How do we get young people interested and invested in marriage and family , as major life goals?
Many young people today, both men and women are focused on College and getting into careers . Both men and women seem to be interested in having a significant other but not necessarily getting married.
They may get more interested in marriage and family as they enter the decade of their 30s, but by then, fertility or ability to conceive, has started declining.
So even for those young people who do eventually end up marrying and having families, they will have fewer children then they would have otherwise.
We need to find ways to encourage people to marry young: 18-22
Reforming divorce laws would help. No-fault divorce is a disaster. The strong bias against men in family courts in most jurisdictions makes it worse. There is no incentive for men to marry when there is no penalty -- and in fact, there is often a hefty reward -- for a wife who cheats on them.
A few months ago during coffee hour (that is the time between the two services) one of my fellow teachers was talking about how he was worried about his son getting "too serious" with a young lady. They were both adults and both had steady jobs but they were just turned 20 so they were "too young".
I wish I had asked him how old did he think they had to be before they should get serious.
People think marriage is the end so they put it off but really it is the beginning of a life with a best friend who will always be in your corner.
The age at first marriage has gone up quite a bit.
In 1970, the median age at 1st marriage was 23 for men and 21 for women.
In 2017, those ages were 29 for men and 27 for women.
In terms of years of fertility or ability to conceive, many prime years are not available.
So when people do eventually get married , they will end up having fewer children than they would have otherwise.
So no, we don’t have less children now not because we’re poorer, we’re having less children now because we’re wealthier.
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Yes, but another important factor is the rampant narcissism in today’s world. When all you can think about is yourself, having children just doesn’t fit in the picture. The problem is serious worldwide and driven by many related factors, including the breakdown of the family unit and the abandonment of religious principles.
The main factor is the willingness of women to have and raise stable children with a husband.
Riding the carousel, career-seeking until one’s eggs have dried, coal-burning, multiple abortions, or saying no to all men while preening over the attention of simps online, while only banging chads who are not husband material and would not commit anyway, son’t do it.
And family and divorce courts are discouraging most of the men who would dare, as if the entirled you women of the West would give them the time of day.
We’ve, chucked Christianity, family values, the definition of men and women. DEI should be DIE. That’s what it has done and is doing to our society. We save baby animals, but champion killing human babies. Our “smart”/educated class bought into ZPG and carbon footprints. Nobody tells the poor,to stop breeding because they can’t support their own. They tell the affluent to stop breeding and then make them the enemy.
I see no way out. It is too entrenched.
My daughter is 32. She has never been married, nor had an abortion or any children at all (though she wants them). She has been waiting to have children (after marriage) and looking for a good man. She is a nurse and working. She has no debt. My son is 25 and leaving the Navy. He can’t find any marriagable women. My point? It isn’t men or women. There are just too few good ones out there anymore. My kids are sad. Me too. This is our world.
I lived in Italy. Our neighbors complained their daughters could not find men to marry. They young men wanted to stay with their Mamas who would do their laundry and feed them without taking any responsibility. That’s what my neighbor said anyway.
Right off the bat: How many of these women complaining about men living at home with their mothers are themselves living at home with their mothers?
Further: Statistics show that women consistently view 80% of all men as being "below-average in looks / appeal" (a mathematical impossibility!). Consequently, most men are simply invisible to women.
Women are notoriously hypergamous - i.e., they demand a man who with an income more than 50% higher than theirs. Further, he must have higher educational attainments (if she has a B.A., he has got to have at least an M.A., etc.), be at least 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall, drive a better car than hers, etc. In this way, women "price themselves out of the market." The result: 85% of all women are "competing for" (being passed around by) the top 15% of men.
The online dating apps most young folk rely on intensify the already warped dating scene, to the disadvantage of men. On these apps, men get less than 1% as many "swipes right" as do women. Maybe a thousand "approaches" by men will result in an actual, real face-to-face meeting, etc. A great many women delude themselves into believing that they are trying to use the apps to find a serious partner - but in actual fact, they use the apps merely to entertain themselves, obtain no-cost attention, preen and parade themselves around.
Few women are seriously interested in settling down, marrying, and having kids in their twenties, anyway. They want to enjoy their superior sexual agency while they are still at peak SMV - carousing with / getting "passed around" by that tiny percentage of top-tier men who are "out of their league" and have absolutely no intention of wifing them up.
Then, in their thirties, when their SMV begins to noticeably ebb, these women have their "Come to Jesus" moment. They then have the audacity to "suddenly realize" that they "actually" have conservative, family values and want a high-tier man to come "rescue" them (and the bastard spawn they have frequently been saddled with by the high-tier men)!
As women age (and "age out" of their prime reproductive years), they paradoxically become more demanding, develop stricter dating standards, make the male candidates wait longer for sexual attention. As they grow less fit, gain lbs and wrinkles, they require the men to meet a longer list of demands.
I have no idea what the dating market in Italy is like. But I bet that it resembles, in broad strokes, the American dating market.
Regards,
Imagine a person, at age 22, with all the makings of an Olympic athlete. A person with the physique and prowess to be a Gold-medalist.
Now, that person - rather than devoting all of her efforts and attention to competing in the Olympics - instead decides to "fart around" for ten years, doing things that are unrelated to athletics. Maybe she attends nursing school, or takes guitar lessons, or joins a square-dancing group. On weekends, she might still devote a paltry few hours to swimming, track, or horseback riding - but those athletic activities are not a priority for her, so her strength, stamina, and athletic skill gradually diminish.
She continues in this way for ten years.
Now, at age 32: Is she better equipped for the Olympics? Have her chances of winning improved? Maybe some sponsor has even offered her a plane ticket (Economy Class) to fly to the Olympics, but she has "wisely" declined, thinking that she should wait until someone offers her a First Class ticket and a million-dollar contract (to lend her name and face to the advertising of a commercial product).
I suppose that the best course of action would be for her to continue waiting for an even better offer to come up. When she reaches 37, or even 42, then the offers should be pouring in, right?
Regards,
With all of the Ukrainian girls now in Poland, it’s population should be increasing shortly.
She’s been looking for YEARS. Your assumption is fallacious, presumptive and rude. My son has as well. You are part of the problem. But hey, don’t let the FACTS get in the way.
“Materialism and the Perversion Revolution of the 1960s destroyed much of that.”
Those aren’t the only reasons people decided against having families.
“A man and a woman who are dedicated to each other can revive the big family culture in a single generation.”
You can’t make another person be, or stay, dedicated to another one. That uncertainty is huge when it comes to making family planning decisions. It was for me.
“my father’s income was sufficient to feed, clothe and house them with enough left over they gave us each one million dollars when they died. My mother stayed home and raised us.”
I’ve heard Rush discuss this, in the context of how the feminist movement put the kibosh to the one-earner family. In more ways than one. It’s very sad.
What does that mean? Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, bud. Dont see too many children running around Italy.
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