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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

The high fertility rate in Israel is almost entirely due to the country's Haredi ultra-Orthodox Jews. Among them women are tightly controlled, abortion is murder and birth control is taboo. Consequently, the average fertility rate per woman is 7.1. That's one way of solving the fertility crisis, but perhaps not a good one.

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Without sounding condescending or anything... Literate, successful people don't do many (if any) children because:

1) They reckon that things like "growing a family" are not the "meaning of life"

2) They value their time and respect the child, so they feel responsibilities on both sides

This is by all means a 1st world problem and immigration is a natural way to address the problem IMO.

In Sweden it’s not that uncommon to have three kids, even among the crowd you referred to. We also have good childcare that doesn’t cost a fortune for the family, and state-provided parental leave with very good terms. More countries could do like this if they wanted too.

I value my time but I can still choose to give some (a lot) of that time to my kids. That time doesn’t feel wasted to me. I have also not given up on all of my own interests.

As for the meaning of life – it is what you make of it, really. And that’s true regardless of whether one has kids or not.

> In Sweden it’s not that uncommon to have three kids, even among the crowd you referred to.

This graph tells a different story. What is your interpretation?

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/birth-rate#....

That many people do not reproduce at all.

My understanding from the previous comment, is that you were pushing a different narrative, specifically that ppl are having more children than in the past because welfare and child care, etc.

The graph says that’s not the case.

God we agree.

Ah. No in the past people had way more children. My grandpa for example had 10 siblings.

I see. Interesting.

>Among them women are tightly controlled,

What does this actually mean? You say this like women have no agency. They may not follow a typical set of rules, but to reduce their choices to 'the result of being tightly controlled' is very insulting. There are actual reasons many of these communities intentionally have many children

It's not either or. People who grow up in fundamentalist communities may have their own agency but still be tightly controlled.

There's also the matter of the government paying them welfare, permanently, to engage in religious studies.

Israel is barreling toward religious extremism.

Thats a feature, not a bug. Israel will probably become the first democratic country were “outbreed them” was a successful political strategy.

The ultra orthodox are a solid voting block That currenty controls 15 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset. they almost always align with the far-right religious zionists or the right-wing Likud. Right wing governments encourage their growth while working to decrease that of Muslims.

And it has worked very well. The Israeli left, which dominated politics until the 80s has been decimated since their voter base is not having children. The country is going right, fast. The ultra-orthodox also secure the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and Israel, an added bonus.

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