Pay people a living wage and their gonna live.

Pay people more than a living wage and their gonna create more life.

let kids be kids. when you force kids to be parents, you are stealing their childhood. all you have to do is explain "sex" in bits and pieces, when it's appropriate, and eventually they're ready for the anatomy explanations and maybe you can help soften the trauma of puberty.

EVERYBODY is mad!!!!

Huh, weird, access to sexual education, contraception, and medical termination should the above fail, allows women to wait until they are more financially settled and independent. And as a result, a lot of whoopsie-babies are never born, lowering the overall birth rate.

That's what I get from this diagram, at least. Birthrate among women under college-age is down, birthrate above college-age is up.

This is a good thing. The older moms, not the declining rate. The declining rate is worrying because our society relies on younger generations to prop up and care for the older ones.

Now let's keep doing what we are doing, and then find ways to make people who want to have kids less nervous about the massive financial, career, and time commitments of them. The costs of food, childcare, education, housing. and healthcare (in the US) is absurd.

Each of my kids deliveries alone "cost" more than the used minivan we cart them around in. I put cost in quotes, because that's what the insurance "paid".

But of course, my insurance premiums each year also cost more than that minivan, too. At least they are pre-tax.

I got a kid in second grade and he will probably be in college by the time I'm done paying for my wife's state college loans.

I, fortunately, got into a very well paying career after dropping out a semester into college, and I happen to have a natural aptitude for it. I recognize I lucked my way into my station, I'd be foolish to forget it. But honestly I have no idea how we'd do it if I didn't. We make 4x the median household income for my area and every time we manage to save a little bit, something always comes around to clear out 90% of it. It's incredibly demoralizing.

I know the childfree folks (and most Republicans) hate the idea of their taxes paying for medicaid, or college, or even public school (or even free lunches there!). But the fact is that an educated and healthy generation below us is usually the most important things for society to invest in. Now we also have to worry about keeping the planet habitable for them.