this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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We got here pre-modern medicine has a high demand for babies (most of whom will die before reproducing). And agrarianism has a high demand for children (who become productive workers on the farm young).
Developed countries almost universally have birth rates below replacement levels. Their populations have internalized the facts that babies will almost always survive into adulthood. And children are a massive economic cost for decades. And that cost is often never paid back to the parents who incurred most of it. As long as contraceptives continue to make children typically a choice, and you get sub replacement levels of reproduction.
Sure, the capitalists would like for there to be more children to grow into workers and keep the machine humming along. However, they would also like to not pay for that; and by and large haven't been.