Maybe France? Generous childcare and parental leave should encourage birthrates.

Also improving the whole idea of what a family is: Want to be unmarried and have a child? Go for it. But have the supports available to make it work.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/21/france-populat...

I think elective C-section would help. Force natural births makes a lot of woman scared in an age of internet.

Someone is scared of natural child birth and prefers invasive surgery instead? How does that make any sense?

The recovery for c-section is way longer than natural child birth. They are literally cutting open your abdominal muscles to access the baby.

One is painful. One isn’t.

C section recovery is not painless. Epidurals are a better option if goal is just reducing pain.

People I know personally who have done both said they would never choose natural if they had known what it would be like.

We did elective C-section for both our kids. Recovery was fine. Wife up and walking at the end of the first day.

"Recovery was fine. Wife up and walking at the end of the first day."

So, exactly like a vaginal birth (speaking from my own experience) ;-) I don't understand the big fuss - sure it hurts, but it's endurable. And for the child there are benefits to being born vaginally.

Of course, everyone is free to do as they see fit, but I am very happy and proud of my Klingon birth experience :D

How long were you in labour? My niece was in labour for about 35 hours. Coworkers wife was in labour for over 40 hours before resorting to C-section. Most people I know who went natural had a horrible horrible experience. When you hear stories like that, and the complications, etc. natural sounds crazy scary.

For my wife she was scared of natural birth so we elected for C-section and that was far less scary for her and she smashed through it without complaint. But her friend living in France was forced to do natural. If they have a second she’s flying back to Taiwan for the 2nd because the whole experience of natural and the horrible experience of staff at the hospital put her off wanting to do it there again.

In asia, woman are doled on from the moment they enter the hospital. Natural or surgery they stay for 3-5 days in the hospital. Unlike a lot of the west where people are sent home the next day.

There is no evidence such things work and in fact evidence of the opposite

Your source?

The article states the opposite of your claims:

> The fertility rate is high in European countries where family norms are flexible, women feel free to work, pro-child policies are generous and childcare is well organised – in short, in countries that have come to terms with gender equality.

That's a conclusion the article came to, but cannot substantiate. for example, Turkey's FR is higher than france despite having stricter family norms, and female workforce participation below average. 'Pro-child' policies are quite a bit up for debate. For example, many religious people would say policies banning public drag performances are pro-child; while perhaps certain secular people would disagree. Without something more to substantiate that condition, it's difficult to understand what's being measured.

European countries all have lower birth rates than the US, and poorer people tend to have higher birth rates than richer ones. So it’s not like people are making rational calculations about how much raising kids costs.

It seems like being more religious is more effective at changing minds than any of those policies.

> The fertility rate is high in European countries

"High" is very relative, France is still well below replacement fertility despite all their efforts.

Meanwhile very religious groups like the Amish have much higher fertility rates without any of those interventions.

Maybe a deep belief that god wants you to have kids is just much more effective than any policy?

> France is still well below replacement fertility despite all their efforts.

From the article I quoted:

> Since the early 2000s France has consistently topped European rankings. After two decades of decline, in the 1970s-80s, the fertility rate started picking up again in the late 1990s. Since then the country has registered scores just short of the mythical threshold of 2.1 children per woman, which would secure a steady population. Its fertility rate in 2014 was 2.01.

Isn't that rate disproportionately owed to religious immigrants? Seems to me even France mostly relies on a religious drive to have kids, just an imported one. Among the non religious population, the rate is well below replacement and all the extra welfare barely moves the needle.

This simply isn't true: see Denmark where I live. Nothing appears to work to incentivize families to have kids.

Denmark seems to be doing pretty well compared to its southern neighbours?

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Right, but the point is comparing yourself to a sea of bad is not good. It's still very bad. None of us are actually reproducing above replacement and it's already having massive deleterious effects on our pension plans and when we're allowed to retire with full pension.

If you restrict yourself to Europe sure.

The United States has had a higher fertility rate than France and Europe for many years despite having a notoriously porous social safety net.

The stats may change but whereas Europe has been below 2 for a long time, that's a more recent development in the United States.