When Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong gave his annual address in late August, he said his government would invest vast new resources to tackle a national crisis: the dangerous decline in the island country’s birthrate.
“We want to make a fundamental shift in how we support families,” Wong said. “We will walk alongside parents throughout the journey of raising their children.”
The package Wong unveiled offers the equivalent of roughly $55,000 per baby. The plan starts with a $7,000 cash payment at birth and is followed by annual payments and credits that continue until the child is 16 years old. According to Wong, the steps are needed to counter a looming demographic crisis that he said threatens “our ability to keep Singapore going.”
Singapore is different in many ways from the U.S., a much smaller nation with a population of just over six million. Birthrates have fallen much more rapidly. But Karen Guzzo, an expert on family development and demographic trends at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said many American couples who are weighing parenthood need this kind of help.
Society has made it no longer safe, desirable, or even useful to have children anymore.
Focus on reducing deaths during pregnancy and during childbirth. The fact that any woman could die during childbirth in the 21st century is an absolute travesty. The fact that women are more likely to be killed by their partners during a pregnancy than during any other point is a shame that all societies should feel.
Focus on ensuring that a woman can afford to feed, clothe, house, and educate her children, especially in the event that something happens to the father (death, war, being a jackass). Motherhood is a full-time job that has no pay and no PTO, and somehow we are expected to do manage a household and a full-time job on top of all that? If governments want more babies born, they need to make it feasible to do. If men want more babies to be born, they also must take up the responsibilities of managing a household so that the onus is not 100% on just the mother.
Focus on affordable childcare so women don’t have to choose between having a child and having a career, because if we have to make a choice…well, the birth rates speak for themselves.
Or! How about we prepare for a society with fewer people overall?!
The fact is for the first time in human history women have the ability to choose men, marriage, and children rather than having these things forced upon them, and we are opting out entirely. All the incentives in the world will not make me see purpose in bringing a child into this hellscape. A pregnancy puts me at risk of death. Childbirth puts me at risk of death. Men somehow get to just leave their families and start over, but if things get hard women have to figure it out with the burden of a child/ren on top of it. Miss me with all that!
I will carry on in my career, sit in my house that I bought on my own, and live my life full of experiences and hobbies and extended family and friends that I would not be able to have if I were saddled with a child.
Also keep/make abortion legal. There’s an increased chance of dying from an irregular pregnancy when abortion is not an option so prospective parents are wary of the consequences of getting pregnant.
dying or losing the ability to have children for that matter.
We have tons of people who want to live in the US. Birth rates are not an issue unless you only want white children.
8+ billion people in the world, we’re stripping earth’s resources to support all of them, and governments are paying cash for you have more babies.
Anything but actually create a world worth living in.
“Experts…”
Im not sure im wild about cash payments. 3 meals a day at public school. would love something like universal snap and add in baby essentials as eligible items. basically I prefer no means testing on safety net things for all of society and then the parents know their kids won’t be out in the cold the moment they can’t cover them regardless of their ability to work and such. Like I don’t want incentive for people to have kids and then mistreat them. I know many will say the amount is not worth it but I have known people who are just that stupid. Woohoo. drinkin money and the baby will be alright by itself for a few hours.
Surely “Lessons for the US” is some kind of oxymoron.
