Yeah, I’m pretty sure the material conditions aren’t great for starting a family right now. Just look at the 2008 housing crisis, when a large portion of the population can’t afford housing, there’s certainly no family development.

> There has been a continual anti-natalist push in the West for many years, from the propaganda side convincing people it's too much work to have kids, or that it will be way more fun to drink and party through your 30s than it will be to watch your family grow up and eventually have grandchildren. Combined with the easy access to abortion and birth control, and the removal of all fertility-retaining social and religious structures around reproduction, the result has been a precipitous drop in the birth rate.

This ain't it, chief. How many people in their 30s are still living with roommates because cities don't build enough housing close to jobs? What about lack of affordable childcare? Or the poor social safety net in general? I guarantee this kind of thing has a lot more bearing on people's decisions to have children or not than "anti-natalist propaganda".

> What about lack of affordable childcare?

Ridiculous argument, in 1900 most people had no money and had families up to 10 kids easily - being poor did not prevent them from having kids.

> Ridiculous argument, in 1900 most people had no money and had families up to 10 kids easily - being poor did not prevent them from having kids.

So your argument is that as a society we’ve made no progress in 120 years?

I won't pretend that it's especially easy to do this today, considering that most families have an implicit expectation of both parents working; and it's certainly something I am in favour of further subsidization, including subsidizing would-be stay-at-home-parents enough to make it make sense to have a large family (i.e. off the top of my head, it seems reasonable that a SAHP should be able to make nearly as much gov't subsidy if they have 5 kids of their own as they worked as a childcare provider for that many).

However, that doesn't seem like it would really work as a natalist policy, because it would further incentivize existing cultures that already have the structures for having large numbers of families intact, whereas the money on its own isn't really quite sufficient to compete against that.

> How many people in their 30s are still living with roommates because cities don't build enough housing close to jobs?

I live in an extremely high cost-of-living city. Still, the people who I know who have been diligent, chose workable careers early and stuck with them, worked hard, saved, and put off creature comforts and luxury in exchange for long term essentials, have done just fine and are even thriving. The people in turn who I know who have no hope of ever buying real estate or building a family are those who never buckled down, never found their calling or settled for something un-glamorous that worked.

I strongly believe that individual choices lead to individual responsibility for these situations. Abdicating your own personal responsibility to make good choices in order to propagate your own genes successfully will only result in you excluding yourself from the gene pool, which is certainly a shame for the many people of good character whom I know who fall into this category.

> What about lack of affordable childcare? Or the poor social safety net in general?

What about those things a hundred or 200 year ago? Were they that much better, or were people simply more willing to sacrifice, save, and accept a lower quality of life than the absolute maximum?

> I guarantee this kind of thing has a lot more bearing on people's decisions to have children or not than "anti-natalist propaganda".

No. Your argument is actually just a restating of the propaganda.

"It's too hard because we can't get jobs that allow us to earn enough to pay other people to raise our kids, fail and bounce back with no consequences, and still lease a new car every few years while living in a top-class world city".

That's your argument in a nutshell. Yes, maybe that pipe dream is not affordable, but a reasonable life in a cheaper city where you work a job that is less lofty but more secure is still achievable.