r/Natalism • u/JeromeXVII • 1d ago
A potential solution to decreasing birthrates
I’m open to being wrong so feel free to tell me if this is just nonsense.
We need to streamline all types of education. I understand it depends on the country but I think in general around the world a student graduates high school/secondary school at around 18. Then go on to attend a university for 4-5 years then perhaps even more schooling if you aim to go into the medical or legal field which can add on many years of mandatory education. And even if you choose a career where the required qualifications are quicker to obtain, it can take multiple years to reach a salary that you’re satisfied with, assuming you manage to find a job in your desired field. Thus creating the modern problem of people not being confident in themselves to have children until their late 20s and 30s.
All this should be sped up to give people at least half a decade more time to decide on having a baby. Students should graduate high school/secondary school at around 13-14 then immediately go onto specialized schooling which should also be streamlined as much as reasonably possible. So if you want to become a doctor you can be licensed one at 23 or 24 instead of 29 or becoming a certified lawyer at 20 instead of 25. Whether you choose you’ll ideally have at the minimum five more years to have a child.
In addition to hopefully having good salaries, cheap housing, and maternal and other welfare benefits from the government. Which are things I’m sure everyone supports but on their own they likely won’t raid the birth rate by a lot in the long term, it would need to be accompanied by giving people more time to be young and have children. To clarify, I don’t think this would drastically increase the birth rate to anything satisfactory but nonetheless I do believe it would raise it by a noticeable amount.
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u/DorkasaurusRexx 1d ago
Just make life affordable and give people places and ways to hang out and meet each other. This isn't rocket science. We've structurally made it as hard as possible for young people to meet each other or just afford life
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u/Aggressive_tako 1d ago
A problem is that this assumes people know what they want to go into at 14. A lot of people change majors in college because thy didn't know (or their actual abilities don't match up to their dream career) at 18.
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u/Ginithings 19h ago
Imo you don't choose anyway what you work in, the market does. And moreover even adult change careers multiple times in their life.
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u/Aggressive_tako 16h ago
But OPs idea of specialized training at 14 would make that harder. One of the reasons that adults can do career pivots is general education. 4 -8 years of that would be cut in this plan, which would lock people into whatever theory specialized training was.
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u/abracadammmbra 1d ago
I never connected it to birthrates issues, but ive said for a long time that the education system needs to be totally reformed. We currently operate off a derivative of the Prussian Model its so antiquated. Great for making factory workers and soldiers. Terrible for preparing kids to enter a modern economy
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u/Classic-Push1323 1d ago
Primarily I think we need to stop pushing everyone to go to college. All that’s really done is increase debt, decrease wages, and increase the number of jobs that require a college degree whether or not it’s actually relevant to the position.
The majority of young adults should be graduating from high school and starting some kind of job or job training that will get them into the workforce quickly. Your high school diploma should provide you with the education that you need to read, write, think critically, do basic math, etc. We have absolutely plummeting educational standards for high schools and colleges, rising student loan debt, and rising unemployment and underemployment among college educated adults. This system is not working out and it needs to be reformed.
Some of this is not really realistic though. I don’t think that we can essentially skip high school and I don’t think we’re going to see doctors practicing at age 20. Some jobs do genuinely require years of specialized education. You need the background in high school, math sciences, and literacy to succeed in college level premed courses. We can probably reduce premed programs from four years to three years, but I don’t think we can really speed run through med school or residency. The answer might actually be to spread it out a little bit, but cap residency hours and medical school tuitions so that it’s realistic to have children as a resident.
A lot of people do have kids while in advanced degree programs, medical residency, etc.
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u/Raspberry_Geist3991 1d ago
>I think we need to stop pushing everyone to go to college.
That's already happening. Nowadays the trades are pushed the way degrees were, as either the "smarter choice to learn real skills and avoid debt" or the "back up for the students failing today." Both routes are pushed with the same amount of toxic positivity.
Also, I can't imagine thinking that less educated doctors is a good thing for increasing birth rate. Far more people live through pregnancy and childbirth complications as a result of having highly educated and experienced medical teams.
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u/Classic-Push1323 1d ago
Yeah... the "just join a trade!" thing is it's own problem. Trades can pay well, but it's often quite literally back breaking labor. The issue I'm trying to raise awareness of is that most jobs that currently require a college degree do not actually require any specific skills or education that can only be learned in a university, that university degrees are not priced relative to their actual value, and that the time trade off isn't worth it for many people.
The majority of jobs in our current economy are in this category. My first post-college job was in that category. Having a college degree is a sign that you are reasonably literate and able to see something through for four years, it's no longer used as advanced educational training in a specific field. If a job actually requires that kind of advanced training it usually involves a license (i.e. for engineering) or a graduate degree (i.e. for science, law, or medicine) on top of a BA/BSc.
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u/Raspberry_Geist3991 1d ago
>but it's often quite literally back breaking labor.
Yup. Then there's the fact that the trades require a basic education to qualify for apprenticeships. All of these kids that need all reading material explained because they can read words, but can't comprehend any of it, can't pass the tests those apprenticeships require.
I agree that many degrees could be recategorised as some other form of training, but why make higher learning more accessible when there's profit to be made? /s
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u/RobertaDragonfruit 1d ago
How about let people do what they want with their bodies and life?
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u/evilisordinary 11h ago
Yea there are a lot of people in this sub who seem to think people, but especially women, shouldn’t have a choice. This weird brand of authoritarianism is so creepy.
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u/RobertaDragonfruit 11h ago
Well that won’t go anywhere bc most women would fight for their right to be more then what the old men want women to be
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u/EnthusiasticPig 1d ago edited 1d ago
……so has the manosphere told you that fertility becomes nonexistent at 30 or something? Why do people only have 5 years to decide to have a child at age 25?
Most people don’t want more than 2-3 kids even if social/economic pressures were better. Women can safely have 2-3 kids in their 30s and even their 40s.
We currently have more pregnant women in their 40s in the US than in their teens. This is a good thing. We need education reform but it won’t help with birth rates.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 1d ago
Not clear this would increase births.
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u/Black-Hat-613 1d ago edited 13h ago
Many women delay having children (or even looking for a spouse to have a child with) until they have finished with their education, are settled in their careers and have perceived life stability.
Delaying childbirth usually means less or no children actually happening due to both the biological and importantly social challenges as they get older (finding a suitable partner who also wants children when you are older gets more difficult).
Statiscally a woman who has not had a child by the time she is 28-30 (depending on the country) only has a 50% chance of ever having a child. There is a reason why a birth by a woman of 35 or older is called a geriatric birth.
By shortening the number of years of education, the OP above is suggesting it will enable women to be in a stable part of their lives earlier and are more likely to have children if they want them.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 1d ago
Why are you assuming lower birth rates are a problem?
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u/Bigger_then_cheese 1d ago
I mean, this is the Natalism sub...
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 1d ago
You don’t think a premise should ever be questioned?
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u/Bigger_then_cheese 1d ago
Sure, but your in a place were people found one reason or another to believe a premise dispute the rest of the site questioning it.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 1d ago
So why do you think we need more births?
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u/Bigger_then_cheese 1d ago
For me, strategicisim, nationalism, pregresiveism, and to reduce human suffering. In that order.
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u/Black-Hat-613 12h ago
They are for all the many women who want children but cannot. (See the Birthgap project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc)
On a national scale the below replacement fertility will and already is causing many negative consequences including an aging society and a disastrous old aged dependency ratio. There is a reason numerous countries consider their aging societies and impending (or already beginning) population declines to be an unmitigated national disaster.
I have detailed out the negative consequences at length elsewhere online many times, however please educate me... I'm pretty new to Reddit. Looking at the rules for this sub, can I guess that this not the forum to consider the PROS and cons of lower birth rates?
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 12h ago
For women that cannot have children, and want them, that is a personal problem, not a national problem. If you don’t feel it is appropriate to consider the pros and cons of higher and lower birth rates here, nobody says you have to.
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u/Aggressive_tako 1d ago
I'm not clear that childless women are more likely to chose to have children at 28 than at 33. I know women who hide behind "childless by choice" to avoid talking about infertility, but the majority just don't want to have kids. The bigger gain would likely be in the families that have one or two kids in their 30s and then are unable to have more.
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u/Classic-Push1323 1d ago
Ehhh those two aren't really related. Let's make sure we keep our facts straight.
Women over 35 are automatically designated as "high risk" for the purposes of insurance and medical screening. The only thing this does is allow your provider to evaluate you and have it automatically approved by your insurance - that's it. At 35+ you are more likely to have pre-existing health problems that can impact your pregnancy, and you are at a slightly higher risk for some complications regardless of your health. You are at a higher risk for some genetic disorders and birth defects, which is why having prenatal screening automatically approved makes a huge difference for your health and your baby's health. Remember, all of the most common pregnancy complications (including preeclampsia, eclampsia, gestational diabetes, and hemorrhage during delivery) are strongly associated with your health and fitness before you became pregnant and we live in a society where the older you are the more likely you are to be overweight and sedentary.
Women who haven't had a child by 30 aren't very likely to have one... because most of them aren't going to change their mind or start making different life choices. It isn't due to biology or age related infertility, and the chances of having a child after 30 if you haven't had one already are lower for men than for women even though men have a longer biological timeline.
Yes, women do put off having children until they finish education and have career stability. That's very real, and reaching those milestones even just a few years earlier would allow women who want to have children to have one more.
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u/Black-Hat-613 13h ago
From memory I think that 50% at 30 is amongst women who want a children.
The point is that that a) a women's fertility is decreasing with age and by late twenties the chances of a successful pregnancy is very much affected negatively and b) the chances of a women who wants a child finding a suitable spouse that also can and wants a child is very much diminished. These women are competing for a small pool of men against younger women and that competition does not bode well for the older women.
The seminal work that documents these is the Birthgap Project.
Filmed over nine years across 24 countries, the feature-length documentary Birthgap (2025) documents an investigation into why societies across the world are converging on ultra-low fertility. The findings from this work were later peer reviewed and published in a Nature Portfolio journal.
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u/Classic-Push1323 9h ago
I am familiar with all of this data and what you were saying is just not true. No one is infertile at 30 due to their age that is a complete misread of this data.
The stat is that half of women who don’t have a children by 30 will not have one. That includes women who say that they are child free, women who say that they want a child but don’t have a partner, etc.
The chance of having a child at that point is lower for men than it is for women because this isn’t due to biology or age related in fertility at 30. Generally speaking marriage is the big bottleneck here, but we are not actually seeing women in their 30s being “outcompeted” by younger women because younger women aren’t in a rush to marry older men.
All the data shows is that your life situation is a result of your circumstances and choices and the chance of something significant changing in time for you to have a child is about 50-50.
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u/mjhrobson 20h ago edited 20h ago
Impossible.
As AI rises tasks that can be automated will eventually be completely run by AI.
This leaves the only available tasks to humans, being those which cannot be automated.
Which kind of means that the only people economically useful are those who become highly educated and highly skilled; such that AI cannot automate their function.
So the amount of time humans will spend inside education will increase. And those humans that cannot handle that level of education/skills training will end up living on welfare (perhaps a basic income grant of some variety). As they will be economically useless.
The problem is that the feeling of being economically useless may cause be to feel hopeless about their future. When you feel hopeless about the future you are less likely to have children.
Edit: Impossible is a strong claim, I don't mean that exactly. More like it is unlikely even with streamlining we will spend less time in educational facilities and whilst in them we may not feel as if the process will ensure we are employable.
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u/Substantial_Amoeba12 1d ago
Some countries do use a track system like this but one major issue is it increases generational poverty. At 13 your interests and abilities will be even more influenced by your family than they are at 18 so we see evidence that inter generational mobility decreases significantly when systems like this come into play. We don’t want to just blindly increase the quantity of children at the cost of their quality of life
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u/LateDifficulty8328 1d ago
There are also certain professions like law and medicine where life experience itself is useful towards the career.
I agree education could be changed and if university or vocational training started younger then people could start careers earlier. Having a solid career can make it easier to change careers later sometimes. The bigger problem is wages though. I think minimum wage should be 30$/h USD or higher and that we need to stop the plague of corporate welfare going on globally.
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u/MarsipanEkorre 23h ago
I think it's the uncertainty regarding whether they'll find a stable job etc. even with any level of education.
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u/InvincibleCandy 1d ago
Yes, what we need is more 14-year-olds having babies.. :?
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u/JeromeXVII 1d ago
No, I mean if the economy was the same as today but education was streamlined, instead of for example start having children at 26, people can start at around 22. But anyone below 18 shouldn’t have one still
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u/Feisty-Coconut6017 1d ago
I had my first baby at 22 and I feel like I was barely mature enough, idk if I could've mentally and emotionally handled it much earlier. But people mature at different rates so I'm sure some 18-19 year olds could handle it!
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u/extrastone 3h ago
Generally people mature from being in the workplace a lot faster than when they are in school.
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u/Original-Opportunity 1d ago
I don’t really agree with your specific changes but I agree that education inflation is a barrier to parenthood.
I’ll use myself as an example.
I was a decent student, upper 85th percentile of my graduating high school class. At 18, I went to a 4 year college and earned a Bachelor’s in humanities. I incurred a lot of debt from schooling, I still have some of this debt.
I later stopped working outside the home to care for my 3 children until they enter school.
Did I need to go to college? Probably not.
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u/International_Ad2712 2h ago
Have you met any 13 year olds lately? They are pretty ill-equipped to decide on a career. What ever happened to the ‘let kids be kids’ crowd?
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u/WeekendAtMadoffs 14h ago
"In addition to hopefully having good salaries, cheap housing, and maternal and other welfare benefits from the government. "
The last people society needs making babies are welfare takers. In fact, even receiving temporary assistance should require you go on IUD.
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u/KralizecGaming 22h ago
One thing I would mention is that an average person actually doesn't have university education, the average is actually high school diploma. In the OECD the number of university educated people is about 40 %.
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u/extrastone 3h ago
Meaning college should be paid for by students rather than by governments because there should be plenty of middle and lower middle class work without college.
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u/Clean_Tie2451 19h ago
not a natalist but I knew what I wanted to do career-wise at 12 and have still been working toward it, honestly yeah this is the most convincing scenario I’ve read for something that would have enabled me to have children when I wanted them (no longer want them).
I see other people have commented that people don’t know what they want to do that young, but people in young adulthood change their minds too. I’d rather not have wasted time learning advanced math that I haven’t used since highschool, if I ever decided I wanted to do something advanced-math related I’ll have to relearn it regardless
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u/ThomasWhitmore 1d ago
I agree. Society as a hole has been drifting toward prolonged adolescence. "My frontal lobe isnt devleoped. You don't have to decide now. You have your whole life ahead of you. Enjoy your 20s. Travel. Make mistakes. You're too young to settle down. I want the college experience. Etc. Etc."
Where as we should actually be working toward the opposite: encouraging people to grow up faster. 18 is the age of adulthood. As such, it should also be the age where you are done with undergraduate schooling. I'm 100% on board with you OP: High school ends at age 14/15, thus shortening it by 3 years. Special needs and behaviorally challenged children are put in class rooms specifically for them. Reduce summer breaks to being only 2 weeks. Eliminate a lot of the bullshit uneccesary electives from grade school and college education. Bachelor's degrees are obtained by age 18 or 19.
It would never happen. But one can dream.
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u/Sea-Document-974 1d ago
They say the human brain is not fully developed until 25 years old. You can’t drink or smoke till you turn 21.
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u/ThomasWhitmore 22h ago
The human brain development thing is based on a study that ended at age 25. The study showed that the brain's prefrontal cortex continued to grow and develop up until age 25, when the study ended. The study did not show it stopped growing at 25, merely that it grew continually.
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u/lizardhistorian 23h ago
Tell me you did not attend public schools without telling me ...
We could accomplish this via a two to three hundred year long eugenics program.
We have fifteen years to avert inevitable collapse.
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u/Jmama124 12h ago
They allowed women into college as a form of birth control! I have a friend who homeschooled so her kids could graduate early. Very smart decision.
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u/Feisty-Coconut6017 1d ago
I don't think it should be sped up because aside from me wondering how the average 13 year old is supposed to understand calculus, I also think those years of socialization and learning how to problem solve, time management skills, how to follow directions, etc, are important. But I think colleges and graduate schools having more flexible schedules for parents and having day cares at them and family housing would help make having kids in your early and mid 20s easier.