It is multiple things, but I think there are two main currents which are colliding:
1. Women’s education
2. Environmental factors
If they had the upper hand (as a lot of tards think) then they'd treat pregnant women much better than we currently do, and families would actually be encouraged.
This is something I agree with. A society that really valued women would have children and the family at the heart of everything. Where you do see more of this is scandi societies - yet even they aren’t breeding even though they are objectively good places to raise kids and kids are welcomed there
having kids in Africa was very easy compared to the west, you just pump them out and the whole neighborhood / family took care of them.
This is a big one. I’ve had kids when I’ve been close to family support and when I’ve been thousands of miles away and the difference is night and day. At no other period in history have couples been expected to have a kid, BOTH keep working
out of the house almost immediately and have no family around. It does make a big difference
The #1 predictor of a country's birth rate is how educated its women are. The longer women spend in school, the longer they delay marriage and becoming mothers, and the fewer children they have. Not only that, but educated women can have independent income, so their income-preference for potential husbands rises as well. Since educating women and introducing them to the workforce doesn't make men richer, this simply reduces the number of men a woman is willing to consider.
This is also true and for individual women it may be a big benefit even though for birth rates it’s a net negative. The problem here is that there are conflicting forces driving the choice at societal and individual levels and the individual benefit wins out
. If I was uneducated and had five kids and my husband abandoned me I’d be absolutely screwed, child support enforcement is laughable here. I’d have no way of getting a decent job and I’d have to really struggle. If I’m educated and my husband leaves me I can at least keep a roof over our heads. So in an individual level, it’s a benefit. Then more women do it, because it’s an advantage and then once enough do you HAVE to do it becasue if you don’t you’re stuck in a system where marriage and looking after the family isn’t the main goal any more. Leaving isn’t penalised any more. so to resource max for your offspring there are two winning moves: one is young marriage to a rich dedicated man who will commit to stay with the family for life and the other is educate yourself to find a decent man who will treat you well and look after family. Option one is rare now. But you cannot blame women for getting educated - there are not enough men who are willing to marry young and commit for not being educated to be a good strategy.
People start later due to college and buying a house taking forever. There are many consequences to starting late: less time equals fewer kids. Nursery costs being so high means women space them out more than they’d like and have fewer. Most (over half) women I know would have had one more if it was economically viable.
Then there’s the lowered sperm counts, microplastics, and the depressed breeding drive from poor environment and crowding. It’s a perfect storm of mental, physical and environmental issues.
