Natalism is Weird

When muscle power was the primary driver of survival, more babies were born. Babies meant more muscle power.

Since the dawn of human kind, muscle power has been the primary driver of human survival. Yes, early on we had big brains and opposable thumbs but most work to be done was hunting, gathering, and later farming. To get safety and calories in, humans needed to work together in groups to simulate muscle power in tandem. Working as a group to hunt and farm was the only efficient way to survive.

When all we needed was muscle power, we had a lot of kids. Other factors required us to have many kids such as poor sanitation, disease, invasions which had infanticide which often killed off many newborns or young children. To get 3 surviving children might require or 6 or 7 children and possibly more pregnancies. Because hunting and gathering was such back-breaking work, most adults would have worn out their bodies through labor. In the ruins of Pompeii, many archaelogists have excavated skeletons of manual laborers who had fused vertebrae and other signs of overwork. So most adults knew that as they approached old age, they needed a successor for physical labor. The older the parent, the more children could take over the hunting, gathering or farming. So in many ways, more children were an insurance policy. Often when adults got older, they became managers of the family rather than individual laborers.

In this world, children are very valuable. At the age of 3, children could help sow fields, feed chicken, gather eggs and wood and more. Immediately they were able to contribute to the surivival of the family. Directions for farm work were simple and clearly didn't require a fully developed brain or a college degree.

Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution Dimished the Value of Muscle Power

In the 100,000 years of human history, almost instantly humans discovered efficient ways to farm and product far more calories than by simply hunting and gathering. Through discoveries and domestication of crops like wheat, rice and corn, fewer humans could create far more calories to the point of being able to trade. The agricultural revolution enabled more people to do other things than spend all day farming creating the specialization of labor. Now you had black smiths, weavers, monks, priests, and other professions not dedicated to creating nutrition. This trend would rapidly continue all over the world causing the vast majority of the population to move from rural areas to urban areas.

However, the specialization of labor created a new problem. Specialized labor such a black smith or an architect required knowledge and skill than the three year old who could help sow fields and tend to chickens. Instantly, brain power became more valuable than muscle power. Fast forward to today, your average worker requires almost 2 decades of education to become financially independent. Brain power and intelligence became so important that humans sought to augment their skills through the inventions of computers. There's no question as to why we're seeing such a massive demand to extrapolate our brain power through the latest AI revolution.

So this sets the stage. If parents want children, they know they must create an independent functional human; today that requires at least a high school degree; bringing the average age of a successful offspring from 3 years old in the gatherer days to at least 18 years old today (for some professions like specialized doctors to almost 34 years old). College is expensive, children bring in more cost than revenue, and infant mortality has almost been driven to the smallest number possible. Now it makes sense why people all around the world are having fewer children.

Why the solution is harder than a pro-natalism movement

We've seen many attempts by governments to encourage birth rates. Some of the most popular ones include:

1. Russia offering money to familiar with more than 2 kids.
2. Maternity benefits and welfare benefits for families under some income threshold.
3. Italy giving 800 euros to families with 3 kids.
4. Hungary introduced a forgivable $30,000 reward for newly weds who have 3 or more kids.
5. Japan giving a $940 grant for each child up to$9,400 for the 4th child
6. Crackdowns on abortion and contraception.

None of these solutions have worked as they've been running for over a decade or more. The reason isn't just money. It just takes too long for parents to see a fully functional child support themselves. So long as the world values brain power over muscle power, the birth rate will continue to decline. I suspect it will level off to some sustainable rate, but the age of more humans is over.

I'm not sure how you can solve this problem without something extremely radical:

1. Make muscle power more valuable for survival - that would be bringing us back to the days of infant mortality, disease, and invasions and a more manual labor intensive world. (This isn't a serious proposal)
2. Make brain power less valuable for survival. Perhaps AI could make this possible.
3. Make the human brain mature far faster. Right now it's about 18 years old, what if there were ways to mature the brain to 5 years old? Now you could have a child that becomes more societally valuable. This would now encourage more children.