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..Any country can solve it, just incentivise families. Simple things like ensuring young people have access to affordable housing and daycare. If I was at the start of my career ladder in a major urban area now, having a family would be close to the bottom of my priority list. Its not rocket science.



This isn't true and has been tried in the Nordic countries.

This is an outstanding article on the subject: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population...


> .Any country can solve it, just incentivise families.

In the US, parenting time is up 20-fold, from a few hours per week to 24/7 adulting.

Companion to that is that free-range land has shrunk from many sq/mi to a few sq/yds. Car culture and trespassing culture has eliminated the irreplaceable environments where adult-free, peer time nurtured mental health and abilities.

As near as I can tell, parenting and childhood is irreparably broken in the US.

We certainly seem incapable of recalling what sustainable parenting once looked like.

On rare occasion someone will recall that kids once roamed all over. Maybe that gets connected to less mental health issues. Either way it's all forgotten moments later.


I agree it's broken, just in the other direction. Just stick an ipad in front of the kid and ignore it for hours


From before written history until a few generations ago, kids spent hours/day in adult-free, peer time making mistakes in everything from social interaction to physically risky play - and learning from those mistakes.

Today kids live entirely in adult curated, adult populated boxes. I'm not inclined to blame ipads for that.


> Any country can solve it, just incentivise families

The point of OP and what people don't get is that it's far easier to shift policies to brace for tough situations when you have a uniparty system and you're willing to make sacrifices. No 4 year administration is in any way incentivised to enact policies that only become effective after the next election. Note that I'm not saying that undemocratic systems are the solution.


Daycare is some weird shit with such abundance of [lonely] old people.


Unless they are friends or family regulations will never allow. But you are right there is an abundance of old lonely people who would do this for nothing and it would benefit everyone.


> Any country can solve it

Most wealthy countries have already solved it: immigration.




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