Why did people want to have them in the past, and what shifts do you think could undo industrialization enough to return to that?

The economic value of kids and the relative surety that kids will provide for you in your old age are I think very hard to reclaim now, and that was a pretty strong motivator for most of history. You could end all retirement funds and pension systems and so on, maybe?

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autoexec an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Why did people want to have them in the past

Most people are biologically wired to want children. "Survive and reproduce" is pretty much the driving motivation of all living things. Most children weren't conceived as a carefully planned retirement strategy. No cost/benefit calculation is required to convince most people to have children, but you can certainly force them into a position where they have to start thinking in those terms. We've just hit a point where societal and environmental factors are discouraging people from doing what they'd normally do.

	▲	voiceofchoice 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Hard wired to want children and hard wired to want sex are two very different things. When given the choice there are plenty of people putting the latter over the former, and the number of women stuck at home while their husband went out to have affairs suggests the reality of kids doesn't actually interest most people. Plenty of folks just want a status symbol, not the responsibility of raising a child.
	▲	nemomarx 39 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't mean it as a cost benefit thing, but people thinking that family is important, that they want and need family there for them in their old age, and so on. The need for all of that is considerably different in modernity and more people choose to live without their family close by, and certainly don't depend on them for housing and care as often?

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em-bee an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

how about making your pension depend on the number of kids? take an average pension now: X=100%, take half of it as a base, and then add a quarter or one fifth per child. so a childless person gets half the current pension, 1 child gives you 75% or 70%, 2 children 100% or 90%, 3 children 125% or 110%, etc...