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[–] Smellerbee 26 points

And here I thought that women drinking too much would increase the birth rate...
[–] VestalVirgin 2 points

Especially in a country where you can't get an abortion, yeah.

Drinking too much only lowers the rate at which planned and wanted babies are born (since, yes, it might lower fertility), and well, I thought the male leaders of Poland already decided they don't want women to be able to decide whether to have babies or not, so ... why is alcohol suddenly a problem?
[–] Amareldys 31 points Edited

Women will have children when they feel their economic future is certain and that their partner is stable. Turn the men into good husbands and make sure there are jobs that can handle Women with small children and you will get your Polish babies.

Women are unlikely to want to have babies with men who drink a lot or spend lots of time video gaming

Women are unlikely to want babies if they can’t be economically secure so either the guy has to be well off enough to support the family on a single salary (these jobs are rarer and rarer) OR the workplaces need to be such that having multiple kids will not kill her career. Or both… the best outcome would be that two part time jobs would do the trick, so both parents could keep working and spend time with kids. Two part times rarely add up to a single salary or provide the same advancement, though.
[–] littleowl12 10 points

Agreed. Here's my personal anecdata- a lot of women I know actually WOULD like to have more children than they do. So why don't they? Usually it boils down to:

  1. Financial resources.
  2. Problems with their male partners that make them think having another baby is risky.

Sometimes it's not the dude's fault, like he got laid off or was in a car accident and now disabled. More often, though, it's along the lines of "I'm overwhelmed and he won't help" and "he plays video games all day like a 13 year old."

Actually, I would like a more serious study on the effects of video games and lower quality of life for/with men.
[–] Fluffy_gender 7 points

Yes, if we are talking about increasing the birth rates we need to target women that have children but have 1 child instead of 2 or 2 instead of 3. Much better than trying to convince women without children to start having them

[–] [Deleted] 27 points

No babies? Must be women's fault! It couldn't be that men are awful and the world is falling apart around us or anything. It couldn't be that women are realizing that we are more than just baby factories. Nah, it's just women being women as usual. /s
[–] OrneryStruggle 6 points

I mean, a 1.3 fertility rate isn't unusual/unprecedented for a Euro country, it doesn't seem like a sign of much of anything really. Numbers like that have been pretty standard for years now in a lot of places.

[–] FuckingReallllly 5 points

It’s actually the trend in Europe that countries with more government assistance have less babies. So literally you get paid to vacay for 8 weeks, why have kids? You’d think it would go the other way, but weirdly not.

[–] Fluffy_gender 4 points

I think government assistance and support for mothers does increase birth rates somehow, just not to the level desired, it's a pretty small change. Still, Europe is much better than East Asia - the birth rate in Korea is something like 0.8 kids per woman. Women in misogynistic societies that have some rights and education just don't want to deal with all the nonsense in their conservative culture.

[–] Novemberinthechair 26 points

No, modern men suck too much to breed with.
[–] littleowl12 15 points

They always sucked. Women just didn't have any options in the past.

I will admit that men had a better work ethic in the past, though.

[–] CharieC 7 points Edited

Are we somehow under the threat of extinction as a species? How are low birth rates anywhere near a problem. In fact, maybe it's a good thing.
[–] bluestocking [OP] 4 points

Often this concern is based on racism/white supremacy. So it's not about low birth rates, it's about low WHITE birth rates.
[–] PriestessoftheWinds 2 points

They make it harder for men to control us, so they're getting testerical about it.

[–] VestalVirgin 5 points

It is strange how no one ever seems to consider that perhaps women aren't having babies because they can't find a man with whom to have babies.

I mean, I am a weirdo, and cannot be sure I would have found a boyfriend if men weren't as porn-addicted, but I know plenty of perfectly nice and normal women who want children and either didn't find a boyfriend, didn't find a good boyfriend at a time in their life when getting pregnant would still have been easier, or have a boyfriend but HE doesn't want children.

Governments are whining about low birthrates, but I see zero efforts to improve the quality of potential boyfriends and husbands.
[–] Iceni 13 points

I had one child, but seeing the planet we're giving to our children makes me glad I didn't have more. It's far more overpopulated and polluted than when I was born. Polish women also have a war raging in the nation next door to contend with. That would weigh heavily into a decision on whether to have a child.

Birth rates are lower in nations where women are educated. Women realize they have more choices, and starting a family is also a choice.
[–] proudcatlady 3 points

If there were any effort put into developing effective maternal healthcare, and I had some kind of psychic guarantee that Nigel would be an equal parent, and a guarantee I would not be negatively professionally impacted, all of which are comically impossible, then I might start to want to have kids.

But I wouldn’t because men are destroying civilization and the planet and it would be cruel to bring a girl into that world and downright traitorous to bring a boy in to help destroy things.

[–] littleowl12 9 points

This obsession with birth rates. You'd think a country that close to Romania would know the consequences of a huge, sudden population boom. The Ayatollah could fill in any gaps in your information, too.

The pyramids were built- with paid workers by the way- with much fewer people than there are today.

[–] Fluffy_gender 8 points

Birth rates matter for the economy. A population full of elderly people is a big problem. But blaming women can't solve this problem

[–] littleowl12 2 points

Overwhelming population boom results in political instability, as well. It cost Nicolae Ceaucescu his life. The Ayatollah might die, too.

[–] Fluffy_gender 1 points

Overwhelming population boom

Not really a concern in most countries and in a few decades won't be a good concern anywhere. Also, the biggest problem in Romania was the disfunction socialist system, so...

[–] bluestocking [OP] 0 points

These birth rate concerns are usually based in racism or white supremacy, out of fears that there will be more "non-white" babies born than white babies.
[–] littleowl12 1 points

It's creeping into other populations, though. Especially black conservatives or religious fundies. Black women have been doing phenomenally well in boosting their higher education and economic stability rates. All thanks to themselves and no one else. Controlling when you have children and how many you have is very helpful to financial independence.

And that upsets men. So now abortion is "black genocide," implying that black women are evil and murdering their own.

[–] VestalVirgin 4 points Edited

These birth rate concerns are usually based in racism or white supremacy, out of fears that there will be more "non-white" babies born than white babies.

The weird thing is that they never make the appropriate decisions to avoid the "more non-white babies" situation.

Let's be realistic: If you outlaw abortion, it will mostly affect non-white women. Some poor white women, too, but wealthy women (most of whom are white) will just go abroad. So, more non-white babies are the likely result.

High quality free childcare, on the other hand, would encourage wealthy white women with good jobs to have all the children they want. Which probably won't be ten, but might be four, which is likely two more than they could have afforded otherwise.

Free and easy access to contraception for poor women, on the other hand, would enable poor women (many of them non-white) to reduce their birthrates to those they want, which would likely be less than they have with no contraception. Good access to education, especially for immigrant women who don't speak the official language of the country they live in, would further lower birthrates.

But I never heard of any right-wing party ever advocating for either free childcare or free healthcare or just free contraception healthcare! And forget about education!

I guess, in the end, racism isn't as important to them as harming women. Achieving racist goals by giving women what they want just doesn't seem to appeal to them.
[–] Hermione 15 points

Seriously, having Trump in power, and once Judge Kavanaugh was confirmed, I was put off having more children. Sometimes I mourn that, but… I still think it was the right decision. The way the country was going we were getting beaten up financially with health insurance, etc.

Had Obama been able to have another term I’d have had another child I’m sure. Because of the stability and not some old white guy trampling my rights and cutting the social safety net.

If I were a young woman in Poland under this leader I would have zero interest in getting pregnant as well.

Feeling stressed out about the laws and political climate is actually pretty good at lowering the birth rate.

You old men worrying about women not birthing enough babies? You are the cause. It’s you. Not other reasons, like women being free, or having financial independence, or ambition, it’s you.

[–] OrneryStruggle 14 points

Polish young women are almost all Catholic. Most of them do want to have children I'm pretty sure, but it's not easy for young people anywhere to start families right now.

[–] 324B21 14 points

Do most of them genuinely want children, or do they just want to appear as if they want to be mothers because it's what is expected of them?

[–] OrneryStruggle 4 points Edited

Honestly I believe most women genuinely want children. But in Polish wedding ceremonies procreating (or trying to procreate) is part of the wedding vows. I have attended multiple Polish weddings and women seem totally happy with this. I don't think Polish young women are any more 'docile' or 'doing what is expected of them' than women anywhere else, but I DO think that in less-traditional countries there is a large proportion of the young female population who is scared out of admitting they want families, or who are indoctrinated with the idea that it is evil to have children, or that they need to 'work on themselves and their careers first' until they are too old to have children safely. So there's probably some amount of 'playing along with the culture' in both cases, and even so Polish women aren't having dramatically more children than American or Canadian or Swedish women.

ETA: lol I assume I'm getting downvoted b/c I said most women want children, when statistics easily confirm this and it is a basic biological urge. Sweden, which has some of the most gender-egalitarian laws and culture in the world, has a fertility rate of about 1.8, so a lot higher than Poland's. I think this suggests that when given the freedom to do what they want, good childcare, etc., most women DO in fact want children. Most women I speak to on a daily basis DO want children very badly, some of them want kids so badly they've told me they'd consider sperm donation etc. because they're not sure about finding a man to have children with. This really shouldn't need explanation - we are human beings with natural biological urges which are common across our species.

Unless the downvotes are suggesting Polish women are more 'docile' than women in other countries which would just be wow misogynistic.

[–] Hermione 3 points

Well, yes. The economic instability impacts us a lot. If you’re constantly working it’s kind of hard to build a life where you can have kids.
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