(Edit: not really directed at parent poster. Just something you made me think of...)
How about:
- 12 month parental leave for fathers and mothers
- 20 days minimum payed holiday
- paid sick leave
- Free childcare
- Insurance covered 15 days assistance at home post partum with a post-natal caregiver
- Child stipends up to the age of 18 years old
None of this is ground breaking in many developed countries.
So much work yet to do in implementing pro-child policies and yet your first step is entrapping teenagers into a pregnancy and a lifelong commitment?
Guess I’m going to vote for going with the dystopian choices or the more palatable one of sticking our heads in the sand and not deal with the problem until it’s a catastrophe
[0] While childcare is technically free, my understanding is that, in practice, places are limited, especially in big cities.
[1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/512101/nombre-enfants-p...
The result is that most mothers pause their careers while the kids are small. The consequence is that most couples only have one or two kids.
The simple fact is, parenting these days is effin' hard. Even if you have place to put your kids in 5 days a week. I mean hellishly hard for few years, people go very close to mental breakdown regularly, or sometimes quite deep into it - seeing it a bit around us.
The bar to call yourself a good parent ain't about kids simply surviving. We know that ignoring child's cries whole night, every night messes them up badly for later life. Day naps effectively ruin your weekends. Diapers, fights for toys, lack of sleep which alone will fuck up most people badly but here we talk about all of this and much more, for years, while work doesn't wait. No help there.
The fact is, most folks simply have enough after 2 kids, we sure as hell do. There is very little additional 'parenting satisfaction' after 2 kids, yet costs and stress mounts. Also seeing quite a bit of fertility issues after first child around us, but that's not what people like to talk about.