However, now the men got to see firsthand what a pain in the ass kids are, instead of being able to relegate that work to their wives, so now they don't want so many.
The problem is that both men and women are deciding to having less kids. And that trend has continued with maternity leave, paternity leave and even paying people to have children.
In poor countries, they have more kids. Is that because of your caricature or lack of it?
Europe has provided great benefits to women and men to have more kids. Birth rates have declined.
https://www.thelocal.it/20180627/italy-declining-birthrate-p...
Governments are even paying women to have kids and that hasn't helped.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when...
The only thing that increases birth rates is an increase of poorer and less educated women. The wealthier and better educated women are, the less children they have. That is the only consistent correlation across ethnicities, cultures, religions, etc. Educate women and reach a certain level of wealth and birth rates drop.
It's true in japan
https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/japans-births-and-marriages-...
korea, china to iran and all the way to europe.
If we really wanted to increase birth rates, kicking females out of school and removing any and all benefits would be better than increasing benefits. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. Or maybe we could accept that population decline is going to happen and prepare for that? It's strange how we think we can bribe women to have more children. That's never going to happen, so we should learn to live with our current reality.
I recall at least a few articles suggesting that among ancient humans far fewer men than women engage in reproduction, suggesting that only a handful of men (proportionally speaking) were selected to breed by a larger population of women. I hate that it sounds like incel speak but we could probably see more babies if we 1) get rid of monogamous culture altogether and 2) limit birth control options. The alternative is to return to a stricter marriage and baby making enforcement culture.
I'm not advocating for anything here to be clear. I just dont think theres a "solution" that lands perfectly where everyone wants it to
Add into this that families have changed. It used to be that people lived with their extended families, so parents had help raising kids, from the grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, etc. Now no one lives with their extended families, and have gone to the "nuclear family" model, and raising a bunch of kids with only 2 parents is just too much work, so parents stop at 1 or 2, if they have any at all.
Paying women to have kids isn't going to work unless you're going to pay them enough to hire a full-time nanny.
"After paternity leave was instituted, surveys of Spanish men ages 21 to 40 showed they desired fewer children than before. Farré and González think that spending more time with their children—or the prospect of having to do so—may have made men more acutely aware of the effort and costs associated with childrearing, and, as the researchers put it, “shifted their preferences from child quantity to quality.”"
And also that that the data really cannot be used to demonstrate their point, so, whatever, another research that was able to generate a media article.
The second part isn't supported by their data, since it shows the downward trend in men's desire for kids started years before the policy came into place.