We need to bring back marriage and having children in your 20s. Having a child or two in your 30s is fine if it’s number 3 or 4.
It’s also amazing to be a young grandparent. Lots of energy for the grandchildren and so much more time to make memories. Plus you have the chance of being a great grand parent. It’s such a wonderful thing to have generations. We do lionize multi generational families enough.
I'm not sure this is a remotely good option for most people. In particular, today's infantilized, screen-addled, over-medicated GenZ kids are preposterously unprepared to be parents in their 20s. They can barely hold down office jobs without being overcome by anxiety.
My advice to my daughter (when she gets old enough) will be to have kids as early as she can, *provided* that she's hooked up with an emotionally mature, high-quality male with a good personality, money, and prospects. Such people are rare and the personal & professional tradeoffs of having kids early are also very real. In wealthy coastal metros, a white woman in her mid-20s with kids is as rare as hen's teeth.
There are also wider societal forces & trends at play, including the very long on-ramp to decent jobs and the astronomical cost of housing and childcare in economically dynamic regions.
The number of illegitimate black babies born declined 14% so it black illegitimacy decreased in absolute terms. However, the number of legitimate black babies declined 15%, so the black illegitimacy rate increased marginally.
I guess the legit number is so relatively low, a small decrease has a bigger impact on the proportion than the eye can see. I hope a lot of the illegit moms are just living in long term sin as a reaction to bridezillas or the Patriarchy.
From my perspective in a low fertility blue state it seems that conservative religious women and the underclass are having most of the kids. Young liberal fertility seems to have fallen off a cliff.
I wonder who is going to look after all these women when they're old. Maybe it will be like Germany when I visited in the 80s with lots of old women doing menial labor because there weren't enough men to go around after the war.
Looks like a good time to tell the natalists to sit down and shut up, and let this great cull in favor of people who can raise viable families play out.
Or maybe they are getting too unhealthy to have a lot of sex or conceive when they do
I think such a global fertility drop is more likely to have a major underlying biological than social cause. If you look at “kids today” of all races it is clear that by and large they are physically not well. Overseas too, though not as badly as North America.
Africa did better on Covid, does better on births… they are younger of course but maybe also eating less crap food and sitting still less? Or less ambient atrazine etc?
Although fertility is plummeting among all races and ethnicities, white Europeans may be best positioned for a relative demographic resurgence sometime later in the 21st century.
This doesn't mean their birthrates will be very high. They may remain quite low in an absolute sense. But they will be higher than those of other races.
I believe the expense of housing, both purchases and rentals, has priced tens of millions of young Americans out of the housing market and the marriage market resulting in a drop of births. If you are a 26-year old man with a 23-year old girlfriend who's on birth control, why move out of your parents house into an $1800 apartment or purchase a $400,000+ house?
There’s also nothing wrong with living with your parents while married so you can super charge your savings to put yourself on firmer financial footing. This used to be an ethnic norm but is very looked down upon now.
I very much support living with your parents when you are single. All my children do. But I do believe in the idea of only one lady of the house. A young wife with an older mother-in-law is not a good recipe.
This was the norm for most of human existence. Heck, go back and watch a couple of episodes of The Waltons. Not having multi generations is the aberration. Perhaps there is a correlation with the level of depression and mental illness. What we think we (or are taught to) want is not always good for us.
This is exactly my scenario. Now at 41, and had to move from an expensive state (California), I now FINALLY feel ready to begin a family since we finally bought a house due to the first time our salaries and housing prices have converged in a way that is realistic for responsible people.
We didn't mean to wait out for the last few seconds of the biological shot clock, but it seems that this is when the opportunities lined up (Boomers not retiring soon enough to make way for the lucrative jobs that were promised in college has not helped).
Anecdotally, from work contacts, there's been an explosion since COVID of late 30s women all having babies, so I think the low fertility is more a matter of delayed fertility than desire to not want to have any babies.
The tax system is often used to encourage social change.
How about raising the child tax credit a significant amount to encourage more little ones.
If Western industrialized countries want more consumers, how about doubling or tripling the Child tax credit?
AI gives us the numbers:
Child tax credits and benefits vary significantly across industrialized economies, reflecting differences in policy priorities and social welfare systems. Below is a summary of child tax credit amounts in select countries:
United States
In 2025, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) provides up to $2,000 per child under age 17, with up to $1,600 refundable for low-income families
.
Canada
Canada offers generous child benefits, averaging between $3,000–5,000 per child annually, especially for families with lower incomes
.
European Countries
Child benefits in Europe are often structured as universal allowances or tax reliefs rather than refundable credits. Examples include:
Germany: Families receive a monthly allowance of approximately €250–300 per child, equating to about €3,000–3,600 annually
.
France: Offers family allowances that vary by the number of children and income level. For two children, families could receive approximately €130 per month, totaling around €1,560 annually
.
Ireland: Child benefits are highly generous, providing up to €140 per month per child, equivalent to about €1,680 annually
.
Poland: Provides a universal allowance of about 500 PLN per child monthly, translating to roughly $1,400 annually
None of those tax policies raise birth rates. If you want higher birth rates, you need cheap land, education and hiring preferences for men, and child labor.
We have plenty of cheap land. It's just that everyone wants to live in a nice neighborhood and the only way to do that under current law is to make nice neighbors expensive.
Your point is excellent. I would add that I'd like to see a radical jump in child benefits up to $25,000 or even $50,000. I would also like a credit for being married.
Some green shoots...but I think this is a bit of a false spring when it comes to black women with BAs. We are using it as a proxy for IQ and life outcomes, but a load of these are from very low quality schools and the recipients are still a) in jobs with mediocre pay that requires some state support, and b) having children with one or more men they are not married to.
If memory serves, black women at the highest end of the income distribution have much lower fertility than the other major racial groups. My guess is that blacks as a group continue to fall relative to the rest in average earnings and other measures of cultural and economic health. So we still have a very sticky problem, although my guess is the level of sympathy they will have from the population of the US a generation in the future will be very different than the present.
“If memory serves, black women at the highest end of the income distribution have much lower fertility than the other major racial groups. My guess is that blacks as a group continue to fall relative to the rest in average earnings and other measures of cultural and economic health.”
Yes, I believe that you are correct. If I am not mistaken, the appropriate term for this trend is endogamy. Blacks do not prosper over generations because their best, i.e., “black women at the highest end of the income distribution (which necessarily also means at the top end of education distribution)” do not have anymore than 1-2 children (see Michelle Obama), and too often none at all (e.g., Condi Rice). At the other end of the spectrum, uneducated black women will readily pop out 3-5 babies by several different baby daddies.
As a result, the black community is stuck in neutral, if not regressing, as the dysfunction of so many out-of-wedlock births weighs them down, while their best & brightest do not reproduce such that they can’t pass down their education and culture. Sad.
Tove K at Wood from Eden argues that status-seeking importantly limits fertility and that capitalism is especially limiting because it makes the job market, where the childless hold an advantage, the main arena for status-seeking. It’s reasonable to expect the broad salutary effects Cremieux argues will follow credentialism’s replacement by selection will include downgrading status-seeking.
We need to bring back marriage and having children in your 20s. Having a child or two in your 30s is fine if it’s number 3 or 4.
It’s also amazing to be a young grandparent. Lots of energy for the grandchildren and so much more time to make memories. Plus you have the chance of being a great grand parent. It’s such a wonderful thing to have generations. We do lionize multi generational families enough.
I'm not sure this is a remotely good option for most people. In particular, today's infantilized, screen-addled, over-medicated GenZ kids are preposterously unprepared to be parents in their 20s. They can barely hold down office jobs without being overcome by anxiety.
My advice to my daughter (when she gets old enough) will be to have kids as early as she can, *provided* that she's hooked up with an emotionally mature, high-quality male with a good personality, money, and prospects. Such people are rare and the personal & professional tradeoffs of having kids early are also very real. In wealthy coastal metros, a white woman in her mid-20s with kids is as rare as hen's teeth.
There are also wider societal forces & trends at play, including the very long on-ramp to decent jobs and the astronomical cost of housing and childcare in economically dynamic regions.
Why does it look like black illegitimacy decreased?
The number of illegitimate black babies born declined 14% so it black illegitimacy decreased in absolute terms. However, the number of legitimate black babies declined 15%, so the black illegitimacy rate increased marginally.
I guess the legit number is so relatively low, a small decrease has a bigger impact on the proportion than the eye can see. I hope a lot of the illegit moms are just living in long term sin as a reaction to bridezillas or the Patriarchy.
They are also visiting the abortion mills. I bet most abortion mills are in the seedier neighborhoods of suburbia.
From my perspective in a low fertility blue state it seems that conservative religious women and the underclass are having most of the kids. Young liberal fertility seems to have fallen off a cliff.
I wonder who is going to look after all these women when they're old. Maybe it will be like Germany when I visited in the 80s with lots of old women doing menial labor because there weren't enough men to go around after the war.
Good point. Post-war Germany must have had millions of women who couldn't find husbands.
Looks like a good time to tell the natalists to sit down and shut up, and let this great cull in favor of people who can raise viable families play out.
Or maybe they are getting too unhealthy to have a lot of sex or conceive when they do
I think such a global fertility drop is more likely to have a major underlying biological than social cause. If you look at “kids today” of all races it is clear that by and large they are physically not well. Overseas too, though not as badly as North America.
Africa did better on Covid, does better on births… they are younger of course but maybe also eating less crap food and sitting still less? Or less ambient atrazine etc?
IHTG's Theory of White Resurgence:
Although fertility is plummeting among all races and ethnicities, white Europeans may be best positioned for a relative demographic resurgence sometime later in the 21st century.
This doesn't mean their birthrates will be very high. They may remain quite low in an absolute sense. But they will be higher than those of other races.
I believe the expense of housing, both purchases and rentals, has priced tens of millions of young Americans out of the housing market and the marriage market resulting in a drop of births. If you are a 26-year old man with a 23-year old girlfriend who's on birth control, why move out of your parents house into an $1800 apartment or purchase a $400,000+ house?
There’s also nothing wrong with living with your parents while married so you can super charge your savings to put yourself on firmer financial footing. This used to be an ethnic norm but is very looked down upon now.
I very much support living with your parents when you are single. All my children do. But I do believe in the idea of only one lady of the house. A young wife with an older mother-in-law is not a good recipe.
Old world ethnics still do it. Really depends on the MIL. My neighbor is Armenian and she lives with her in-laws and it works out.
However, I meant living with parents the beginning years of marriage so limited time only.
This was the norm for most of human existence. Heck, go back and watch a couple of episodes of The Waltons. Not having multi generations is the aberration. Perhaps there is a correlation with the level of depression and mental illness. What we think we (or are taught to) want is not always good for us.
In lieu of building housing, this should be more normalized, but we could also fix this at scale more easily with more housing development.
Hard no to more density. I like my single family house in a town with single family owner occupiers.
This is exactly my scenario. Now at 41, and had to move from an expensive state (California), I now FINALLY feel ready to begin a family since we finally bought a house due to the first time our salaries and housing prices have converged in a way that is realistic for responsible people.
We didn't mean to wait out for the last few seconds of the biological shot clock, but it seems that this is when the opportunities lined up (Boomers not retiring soon enough to make way for the lucrative jobs that were promised in college has not helped).
Anecdotally, from work contacts, there's been an explosion since COVID of late 30s women all having babies, so I think the low fertility is more a matter of delayed fertility than desire to not want to have any babies.
The tax system is often used to encourage social change.
How about raising the child tax credit a significant amount to encourage more little ones.
If Western industrialized countries want more consumers, how about doubling or tripling the Child tax credit?
AI gives us the numbers:
Child tax credits and benefits vary significantly across industrialized economies, reflecting differences in policy priorities and social welfare systems. Below is a summary of child tax credit amounts in select countries:
United States
In 2025, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) provides up to $2,000 per child under age 17, with up to $1,600 refundable for low-income families
.
Canada
Canada offers generous child benefits, averaging between $3,000–5,000 per child annually, especially for families with lower incomes
.
European Countries
Child benefits in Europe are often structured as universal allowances or tax reliefs rather than refundable credits. Examples include:
Germany: Families receive a monthly allowance of approximately €250–300 per child, equating to about €3,000–3,600 annually
.
France: Offers family allowances that vary by the number of children and income level. For two children, families could receive approximately €130 per month, totaling around €1,560 annually
.
Ireland: Child benefits are highly generous, providing up to €140 per month per child, equivalent to about €1,680 annually
.
Poland: Provides a universal allowance of about 500 PLN per child monthly, translating to roughly $1,400 annually
None of those tax policies raise birth rates. If you want higher birth rates, you need cheap land, education and hiring preferences for men, and child labor.
We have plenty of cheap land. It's just that everyone wants to live in a nice neighborhood and the only way to do that under current law is to make nice neighbors expensive.
Well said
Your point is excellent. I would add that I'd like to see a radical jump in child benefits up to $25,000 or even $50,000. I would also like a credit for being married.
Some green shoots...but I think this is a bit of a false spring when it comes to black women with BAs. We are using it as a proxy for IQ and life outcomes, but a load of these are from very low quality schools and the recipients are still a) in jobs with mediocre pay that requires some state support, and b) having children with one or more men they are not married to.
If memory serves, black women at the highest end of the income distribution have much lower fertility than the other major racial groups. My guess is that blacks as a group continue to fall relative to the rest in average earnings and other measures of cultural and economic health. So we still have a very sticky problem, although my guess is the level of sympathy they will have from the population of the US a generation in the future will be very different than the present.
“If memory serves, black women at the highest end of the income distribution have much lower fertility than the other major racial groups. My guess is that blacks as a group continue to fall relative to the rest in average earnings and other measures of cultural and economic health.”
Yes, I believe that you are correct. If I am not mistaken, the appropriate term for this trend is endogamy. Blacks do not prosper over generations because their best, i.e., “black women at the highest end of the income distribution (which necessarily also means at the top end of education distribution)” do not have anymore than 1-2 children (see Michelle Obama), and too often none at all (e.g., Condi Rice). At the other end of the spectrum, uneducated black women will readily pop out 3-5 babies by several different baby daddies.
As a result, the black community is stuck in neutral, if not regressing, as the dysfunction of so many out-of-wedlock births weighs them down, while their best & brightest do not reproduce such that they can’t pass down their education and culture. Sad.
Looks like white married women had a little COVID bump. Another positive for remote work?
Tove K at Wood from Eden argues that status-seeking importantly limits fertility and that capitalism is especially limiting because it makes the job market, where the childless hold an advantage, the main arena for status-seeking. It’s reasonable to expect the broad salutary effects Cremieux argues will follow credentialism’s replacement by selection will include downgrading status-seeking.