Maybe think for a second from the perspective of a couple or woman who WANT to have children. The problems they face in today's economy where both people need to work full-time just to survive are huge, and it seems even crazier to add the time and money costs of a child, let alone several.

The way to change all of that has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with economic and labor policy

Society decided it was OK to have the top 1% control 27% or all wealth and the top 10% control 60%, and allow companies to pay wages so low that a person working full-time cannot even get out of poverty, so 25%+ of the workers at the largest employer qualify for food benefits (and the employer even gives employees seminars how to get benefits), while the leaders/owners of those companies rake in more billions every year.

Society decided it was OK to make sure health care is expensive, incomplete, and bankrupting for any unexpected event.

Society decided it was the mothers who are responsible for all childcare and provide only minimum assistance for critical needs like prenatal care, and day-care.

You want more babies? Make just a few changes

Change requirements so corporations are required to compensate their employees merely the way the original US minimum wage was specified (including in the 1956 Republican Party Platform): So a single person working full-time will earn enough to support a household of four including housing (mortgage/rent), food, healthcare, and education. Recognize that the companies trying to exploit their workers by paying less so their full-time employees need govt benefits to feed themselves are the ones exploiting welfare, and do not have a viable business model, they have an exploitation model.

Add making healthcare sufficient and affordable for all, including children and support for daycare and the time and effort to raise children.

Change those things, and instead of a couple looking at making an already hugely insecure future even more insecure by having children, they would see an opportunity to confidently embark on building a family without feeling like one misfortune or layoff could put them all in the street.

Do you have a citation that the US federal minimium wage ever had the objective that "a single person working full-time will earn enough to support a household of four" because I can't find it in the Wikipedia entry[1] or other top level search results. I also don't see this idea in the 1956 Republican Party platform[2]. At best from reading a few other sources it looks like at its peak in the late 1960s it would have been enough to keep a family of three above the poverty line (though that hardly implies they could afford a mortgage and higher education).

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
  [2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956

> a single person working full-time will earn enough to support a household of four including housing (mortgage/rent), food, healthcare, and education.

Here’s the problem - some people will still make the choice to have ‘get ahead’ by having both partners work. They will then use their relatively greater economic power to get better housing and more stuff. So others will join them, and they will bid up housing (because it’s the most important thing) until we’re back to where we started and even those who don’t want to do that now have to.

It’s a sorta tragedy of the commons situation.

The only real solution there is for governments to look at social housing, and also to try to produce A glut of house building.

Because until we have one or the other (or both) people will just keep bidding up accomodation to the edge of what’s affordable on two incomes.