Doing some reading in"post-liberal" conservatism and struck by the simultaneous demands to return fertility rates to traditional levels and to destroy the economic system that has made a couple of centuries of global population growth actually possible.
It's as if the goal "be virtuous salt of the earth types who have four or more kids, not like those bad liberal yuppies" is just a matter of personal character and is completely disconnected from the consequences of saying "we need to abandon economic growth as a goal."
We know what permanently high fertility in the absence of permanent economic growth looks like, because it was the Malthusian norm before the 18th century or so. And it involved a lot of premature death, primarily but not only infant/ child mortality.
It's internally consistent, if bad! Prosperity has raised the opportunity cost of having more kids so you do see fertility rates drop after a certain point on the income and education graph
In my Gen X cohort, I know A LOT of women who never had kids because they never had the economic security to. Particularly ones who are:
- college educated
- working corp jobs
- living distantly from family
Besides the fact that it could never happen anymore. Companies would never and probably could never pay enough for the middle class to survive on on salary.
There's a reason post-liberals have found allies in the crazy dark enlightenment folks - both groups want to return to pre-enlightenment values and forget everything we have learned since.
There’s also the other classic contradiction: abortion is a crime but egalitarian economic policies and a social safety net lead to actual reduced numbers of abortions. (And access to birth control. Can’t forget that)
