Whiskey Comment #43 was absolutely correct. The best biological time for woman to have children is the teens and young 20’s. However society has done its best to discourage this among white yuppie families. Christianity did force women to get married and have children since it blocked off any other avenue. Women were consider the property of the father and then a part of the husband and could not own property in their own name unless they were a widow. Check the legal status of women in the colonies. It was worse that most European nation which had protected the upper class of women to some extant.
So unless we want to accept the evangelical idea that women should be subservient to men, women are going to refuse to have children unless compensated with societal value or money. After all they sacrifice 9 –12 month being pregnant and initial time with the child and then 20 years bringing up the child with all those costs. Men have not picked up the costs either monetary or labor since there are a large number of fatherless children. Many of that deliberately by the mother’s choice.
Most of the numbers of white children produced are done by teenage white girls of working class parents. Same culture as the Hispanics who work hard and have children young. Bristol Palin is an example of a working class family culture and she could not wait to have sex and get pregnant. She probably thought the pregnancy would guarantee the fidelity of her boyfriend, which is often the reason that girls choose to get pregnant. Funny thing is that the male rarely stay around anyway since they are way too immature to be steady fathers and their taste in girls change, as they grow older.
After the first teenage pregnancy and the rapid maturity of having to provide; those girls wait until they find a good father and husband before they get pregnant again. Marriage as an institution was supposed to solve that, but most teenagers will have children but refuse marriage.
So a less material world may increase the value of men as providers and strong enough to protect their women and children. Maybe this recession will push it that direction, but I doubt it.
As long as women do not have to depend on men there will be less children. If society had provided the mothers with the monetary value of the true cost of having and caring for a child then women may have more kids indiscriminately. But we have long argued against welfare for non-working moms and the requirement for work for moms reduce the childbearing capability.
If we want more children born increase the stigma for illegitimacy and more children will be born and make divorce harder. But also require better protection for wives and children in marriage laws.
The dissolution of marriage that gays are pushing by broadening the definition of marriage is not helpful. But many gays are anti children and disparage women as “breeders” So pro gay attitudes also reduce children born. Are the libertarians going to go for these ideas? I do not think so. All these proscriptions are anti freedom. That is why they work under Muslim and authoritarian ideologies.
