No, it's just that the policies aren't changing fast enough to match the drop in culture pressure/attitudes that used to push people to have kids (especially religious ones).
Major things that have pushed people to have kids:
* De facto retirement plan / can actually make you richer (sorta)
* Cultural/religious pressure
* Emotional personal reasons: you want kids because you want kids
Of these three, the first one is obviously not just gone, but actually reversed -- people don't quickly put their grade school children to work on the farm anymore -- and the second one has rapidly declined in the last century. To the extent people in developed countries have kids, it's usually because they just wanna, that's it. Maybe a bit of an exception for immigrant groups when it comes to cultural attitudes, but those tend to regress to the mean for the the country over generations.
Things pushing people to not have kids:
* Kids are extremely expensive in terms of money
* Kids are extremely expensive in terms of energy/labor/time
* Kids are an 18+ year commitment you can't really back out of
* And of course some people just don't see benefit to themselves (this is more a lack of upside than a downside)
Due to the first two things here, having kids generally results in a large change in lifestyle and even standard of living, usually a downgrade on the latter, with things like 'going out' or vacations taking a steep tumble in frequency and/or quality. Lots of jokes about this in parent groups because it's very true for most: kids are intensive and expensive.
The reality is that expectations for parents have never been higher, and if you look at childcare time, the amount of time moms and dads spend with taking care of their kids has gone up, even as the number of kids people have has gone down. People really expect a lot out of parents, people expect a lot out of themselves as would-be parents, and then they look at their material circumstances and how much kids would cost, and think: nah, that wouldn't work.
And for what? The entity that benefits most tangibly from more kids is not the parents, but the state, who wants more workers to keep that worker:retiree ratio solid.
Of course, there is a solution: if the state is the one benefitting in the end, let the state pay: make parenting a net zero financial impact for most families via larger subsidies to cover child-rearing costs. This would remove one of the major issues stopping people from having kids, and partially mitigate another one (to the extent that things like occasional babysitting might be covered).
Making parenting net zero on your budget is a radical suggestion that politically would probably be unpopular, especially among people who absolutely don't want kids: because NOT having kids is currently viewed as the 'smart financial choice', being financially equal with parents would likely be viewed as oppression. They would view it as a subsidy from a childfree lifestyle to a child-supporting one...which is exactly correct, of course, because currently the child-supporting lifestyle ends up supporting the childfree one when it comes time to retire.
Absent a change like this, it's hard to not imagine seeing more and more people avoiding kids as a practical choice: will having kids make you happier than just spending more time with existing friends and family? Uncertain, but it'll definitely leave you with less money, meaning likely less financial security. And of course, it doesn't help that things like homes are increasingly expensive, which means it's harder to afford more space that people reasonably want for their kids. The different components of inflation hit people supporting kids extra hard.
Kids don't have to be super expensive!
This is true, but it's also true for most people they are. To make them not expensive, you have to avoid a lot of things that most people consider a normal, middle-class part of a regular lifestyle or a middle-class way of raising children. I won't dispute that there are probably smarter low-cost ways to raise kids, but we're talking about parents as they are and will continue to be, not parents as some idealistic frugality experts: people will want to pay for music lessons and for vacations to Disneyland. Especially if they were already taking equivalent vacations before they had kids.
Why should I have to pay for your kids?
Because collectively, people having children is what supports society, especially when it comes to people eventually retiring. If there are no more workers when it comes time for you to retire, society doesn't work. If there are not enough workers, society doesn't work well. The proportion of government budgets that different nations are paying out towards elder care via pensions and healthcare is huge and increasing because of changes in this ratio; the fewer workers you have, the more something's gotta give.
Can't we just use immigration?
This actually isn't a horrible idea, it's just that this is likely only a temporary solution, for one simple reason: birth rates are low or dropping nearly everywhere now. You can only take the excess youth from other countries for so long before that won't really work anymore. Eventually, it'll be shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, especially as more and more developing or previously-developing countries improve their own economic situations.
There are also possible issues with cultural integration of immigrants, but I don't disagree that using immigration as part of the solution is a good idea at least for a while (and certainly, some countries already do this; the US has been below replacement rate for a while but has still had an increasing population).
What about robots doing all our work so we don't need workers?
In the sufficiently long term, yes that might work, we might get fully automated luxury communism (I'm certainly not against the idea). It's just that
a) We don't know how long it'll take until we actually have robots capable of doing all the basic things you need in a society like growing food, constructing buildings, practicing medicine, teaching people things, etc. and also
b) So far, humanity has done an awesome job of basically making up new jobs that require humans every time we get rid of existing jobs that require humans. The number of people we need to grow food has collapsed, the number of people we need for industrial production per unit of <thing> has steadily been decreasing for a long time, and yet somehow we keep coming up with more jobs for people to do, new ideas of what counts as a necessity (your great great grandparents probably didn't consider individual therapy to be one).
Exactly. For years there's been all kinds of shaming of poor mothers. It's drilled into people that being a parent when you aren't financially independent is a bad choice. Not really surprising that people don't want to take that on if they don't have to. Parenting isn't all that popular in the broader political discourse sphere.
If this is a problem that we want to solve, then the solution IMO is to treat child rearing as the full-time job that it is. I don't mean subsidies or tax breaks, I'm talking a full $70k/year salary for the job of Being A Parent. As a childless person myself, I would support this.
Well, you can make the middle-class lifestyle affordable.
It's not Disney vacations that make people give-up on childbirth. It's housing and schooling.
What about evolutionary pressure - the biological impulse? Or, are we humans post-evolution and have overridden the innate impulse to reproduce?
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...
> Or, are we humans post-evolution and have overridden the innate impulse to reproduce?
Not entirely, but it it's absolutely common for many people to say they just don't want kids.
Also, the primary thing there is the inmate impulse to have sex, not reproduce. It's just that we've managed to disconnect sex from reproduction.
That's why huge subsidies to reach financial parity are probably necessary.
Hey, there could be a connection here! Do we know where children come from?