Happily, I now get to marry my husband because I want to be with him, instead of simply making a bid for economic survival and trading sex & childbirth for food & housing. As someone living in the US, I also get to continue my work which brings me great pleasure and independence. There are certainly difficulties and compromises, but I for one am delighted that I'm no longer required by law to resign my position upon marriage. My husband seems pretty happy that he's not the sole breadwinner, too, as he can contemplate things like quitting work and going back to school.

This messy compromise seems impossible for women in Japan.

It's more an imbalance between social expectations and modern living.

More conservative societies see a steeper decline in birthrate as women participation in the workforce increases.

That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.

I disagree, I think the opposite is the case. American Caucasians have a higher fertility rate than almost all Western Europeans; birth rates in France typically include recent immigrant fertility rates which are significantly higher. The arguments to avoid children are similar to the Japanese: independence, more money for consumption, etc

Disclaimer: I grew up in Germany/Austria and find the topic of Europeqn demographics quite intriguing

America does have a quite liberal attitude about gender roles.

As far as France and immigrants go, I'm not sure relevant studies are available (since France has very specific policies about not mentionning race/origin in its official data). But My intuition is that the role of the immigrant population is overrated. Mostly because the keyword here is "recent" and while France has a rather large population of second or third generation immigrants, the recent immigrant population is probably not much higher than anywhere in Europe.

American Caucasians' fertility rate is steadily declining. France has high birth rate for native French too. I'm not sure which one is bigger at the moment.

Yeah but it's because you get a lot of welfare when you have babies in France,especially when you have 3 or more.

Stop giving these freebies and fertility rates will drop in no time.

The question is , should we encourage it? in the long run ,it doesnt make sense. We often hear on the radio here how Germans dont make babies anymore and it will doom Germany. I dont think so, one country doesnt need perpetual population growth in order to survive, i believe Germans are smarter on these issues.

"doesnt need perpetual population growth" It's no longer about growth, it's about decline now.

Can a country with perpetually declining and aging population survive? In what form?

I don't think than "perpetual" is going to happen to any trend.

> That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.

France has very active policies in place to promote large families, which is why if you run into a French couple with children they'll often have three or more instead of just one or two.

Another potential downside: It doubles the size of the work force. Suddenly there's too many people for a limited pool of jobs, and everyone who works is miserable and makes far too little.

I wonder sometimes if maybe we've swung too far in the direction of gender equality, where now we shame people into believing their self worth can only be found through their professional success, rather than letting them live a life they more care to live. How many times have I seen an article grace the HN homepage defending the idea of being a stay-at-home-whatever?

Even worse the equality argument goes both directions not just women trying the former man lifestyle, but the other way around as the article barely touches on the two decades of economic stagnation issue.

Its not just salaryman and stay at home wife turning into salaryman and salarywoman, its unemployed dude and salarywoman at the same time.