This reminds me! There's an incredibly stupid letter to the editor in my paper (which is renowned for its stupid opinion section) that needs to be dog-piled on.

Our education sucks- and it's the women's fault!

http://manager.cnhi.zope.net/cnhi/joplinglobe/editorial/local_story_064001207.html

I left a comment, but sometimes they won't post mine.

So now we are supposed to promote larger families? Lower birth rates should be celebrated and encouraged all over the world. There are too many of us already.

oh man. genetic mishap, i read that letter and felt the need to comment, myself:

I have a dream where misogyny is not publicly accepted and published in our newspapers, where people who espouse hateful, condescending views of women are not rewarded with publication. I hope that our society is at a point where i don't have to explain what is so offensive about this letter and present a counter argument. But whomever saw fit to print this piece of bigotry should be ashamed. Would this paper print a similar letter, about a dream where all blacks pick cotton and work in the service industry, catering to all white clientele? I think not.

I agree with Genetic_Mishap...while I'm all for supporting women's choices, I question the need to increase our population rates.

Yes, why is this a good thing? I am all for working moms, really I am, but "larger families" make me nervous.

Canada is solving its low birthrates problem by welcoming immigrents.

Why is making babies North America the center of focus. There are plenty of people who wanna get out of their country and move to the West!

i'm pretty sure that this whole thing is about nationalism and ethnocentricity. people are freaking out that the mexican immigrant and other hispanic population is growing at such a large rate . . . somehow it seems a lot less racist to promote white people having babies than it is to tell hispanic people to stop. same with europe-- they're not worried about not having enough babies on the continent . . . the french are worried about having enough french babies, the british are worried about having enough britsh babies, etc.

The free market works. If you want women to do something, remove incentives for them not to do it or make the choice more appealling.

I see it as extremely anti-woman-as-people when it's assumed that our hormones or good nature will have us do something that is contrary to our best interests.

DoubleFantasy: two things.
1) all of these countries have large social entitlement programmes that require a large workforce, especially one in coming years to support an elderly population that is outliving all projections.
2) When Muslims run around Germany with shirts that say, "Wir zuechten mehr Kinder
als die Kuffar bis 2030, dann erobern wir das Land - We outbreed the
kuffar (infidel) until 2030, then we take over!" I think there's some cause for concern.

There are some justifications for "nationalism and ethnocentricity" that actually make some sense. Some cultures have aspects that I find profoundly disturbing, such as the "honor killings" that are accepted in some Arab cultures. To be fair, there are probably some things in our culture that we ought to find disturbing but don't, but I'm not objective enough to figure out what they are and I don't want to provoke arguments by trying to list some.

yes, but if it was just an issue of having a large enough workforce, allowing more immigrants and refugees into the country. but people don't want to do that, because they want to maintain a national identity. we can make arguments about the merits of such a desire. i, personally, have never understood patriotism and see little value in it. if you do see value in patriotism/national identity, okay, but let's not pretend that's not what various campagains to increase the birth rate are about.

oops . . . i meant "allowing more immigrants and refugees into the country would solve the problem."

To be fair, there are probably some things in our culture that we ought to find disturbing but don't, but I'm not objective enough to figure out what they are and I don't want to provoke arguments by trying to list some.

Doug - that's only really relevant if we're migrating, en masse, to other countries, bringing our culture with us, and actually changing the landscape of that nation.

Allowing in immigrants does not solve the problem. Mexicans in America can certainly do manual labour, but most of them aren't capable of doing high-skilled jobs. You need doctors, lawyers, teachers, authors, engineers, accountants, and the like to keep the country running. I don't know stats on immigration, but I imagine that the relative proportions of immigrants are not identical to that which a country wants in its workforce.

and why can't you train the baby of an immigrant to be a doctor/lawyer/teacher, etc just as well as you can train the baby of a native citizen? immigrants don't usually come by themselves without families-- or they wouldn't, given the resources to do so.

Muslims run around Germanny with T-shirts that say “We outbreed the
kuffar (infidel) until 2030, then we take over!�? Wow that’s news to me? How many Muslims have been seen around Germany wearing those T-shirts? And anyways, WHY is that a problem? Doesn’t seem like a particularly violent message to me.

Women respond to economic incentives and behave like rational actors? Shocking!

News to me as well, but I do find it disturbing... Anyway, where did you hear this about these t-shirts in Germany!? I'd like something to source that too..

sojourner, it actually seems kinda funny to me. What kind of idiot would walk around wearing such a ridiculous shirt? Who would breed with such a moron? And how do you take that seriously? "We will outbreed you! Haha! I can impregnate my wife a dozen more times than you!"

Plus, these supposed "backwards immigrants" are going to see the women in their families start to espouse more liberal beliefs. Even if they're politically conservative and don't consider themselves feminists, they'll want to go to college and work, and when that happens, they'll want partners that they can actually communicate with, so they'll want to marry their peers. The only reason it wouldn't work that way is if people were TRYING to make immigrants feel unwelcome.

Besides, Canada is just as interested in maintaining its national identity as any other country. I'd say Canadians are even more obsessed with it, because of our proximity to the cultural behemoth known as the United States. It's just that having a diverse population has become PART of the national identity in a lot of places. (Plus, the new immigrants are being encouraged to go to the less populated parts of Canada.)

I think the two policies need to work in tandem. The new immigrants can all arrive, and then decide that they don't want to take the financial hit of having very many, or any, children. Then you have them joining the retirees in twenty years, but they didn't produce any children to replace them, either. Same problem, pushed a little further back.

I guess you could have a continuous stream of immigrants for the workforce, but I think that as conditions begin to improve in third-world countries, there will be less and less people willing to pick up and move away from their families and friends.

Lastly, I doubt we're going to see huge families no matter what incentives governments offer. There's a lot of work involved in raising four or five children, regardless of benefits. I don't think most parents these days are up for that.

How many Muslims have been seen around Germany wearing those T-shirts? And anyways, WHY is that a problem? Doesn’t seem like a particularly violent message to me.

I can't speak for the Germans but I would see it as a message that they would take over and rule Germany under their religious laws, much like they do in their own countries, which I can understand would be problematic for a lot of people not used to living under another person's religious rules.

UltraMagus, yes, I wouldn’t want to see more countries under Sharia Law. It’s just that I don’t think that it is a particularly threatening message that “We’ll outbreed you�. And I mean, I can’t imagine a lot of people who’d want to walk a round in such t-shirts, unless they really like getting beaten up. Saying that Muslims run around Germany wearing such t-shirts sounds kind of ridiculous. What percentage of German Muslims wear those T-shirts? And concluding from that that Germany is in trouble is even more preposterous.

"Allowing in immigrants does not solve the problem. Mexicans in America can certainly do manual labour, but most of them aren't capable of doing high-skilled jobs. You need doctors, lawyers, teachers, authors, engineers, accountants, and the like to keep the country running."

I can't speak for the US but in NZ we have a lot of immigrants working in supermarkets, fast food chains, and taxis - immigrants with doctorates, MDs, dentists, lawyers. Because while we allow them in on our points sytem and we desperately need professionals, we make it ridiculously expensive be allowed to practice over here

Your statements kind of imply that there are no educated Mexican people, which is hardly true. And I'm sure plenty of people being ripped off working on construction sites actually have a decent level of education - and would have higher, if they could afford it

Fenris, I understand this outlook. In Canada we have skilled immigrants yet many end up as cab drivers. Doctors, teachers, engineers, have a hard time actually get work. I've heard many different arguements, such as "the education in other countries does not meet the standards of Canada's" but I find this hard to beleive.

Anyone have an answer?

frog queen,

In some countries, like Pakistan and India, people go to college after Gr 10. So when they have four years of college, it's like having two years here. When my father came to Canada about 30 years ago, he had a Master's, but it was considered about equivalent to a Bachelor's, so he did a second Master's degree.

In fields like Medicine, you have to pass the exams, but you also have to get a residency somewhere, and for immigrants, this is often extremely difficult. We know a woman who moved to the US about 10 years ago, and just recently, FINALLY got a residency. (Obviously, you need to eat in the meantime, hence the cabs.) A friend of mine went to nursing school with a couple who had degrees in medicine, but couldn't practice in Canada, so they were putting themselves through school again.

Engineering companies are apparently notorious for refusing to hire people who don't have "Canadian experience."

Most people get points for immigration based on qualifications that include degrees, and it's a complete waste for them not to be working in their fields. In my opinion, the government is going to need to step in and make SURE that these people are placed in jobs that match their qualifications.

Fenriswolf, I agree. It's unfair to throw language around like "Mexicans in America are..." as if all immigrants are Mexicans or all Mexicans are illegal immigrants, for a start. And I think it would be more accurate to say we don't know what many immigrants, Mexican or otherwise, are "capable" of, professionally, because they are not afforded the legitimacy or opportunities necessary for entry into higher-status jobs, or are otherwise denied access to high-paying, high-skilled jobs either directly or indirectly, oftentimes because people with more power exploit their willingness to do low-skilled, low-paying jobs. Similar to what you are describing in NZ (which - tangentially - is the most amazing place to which I've been fortunate to travel, I am jealous that you live there!) I know of many West African immigrants with medical degrees in their countries of origin who are relegated to nursing or "lower-status" health care positions here despite their equivalent knowledge base, based on different licensure requirements and economic barriers to fulfilling US requirements.

"that's only really relevant if we're migrating, en masse, to other countries, bringing our culture with us, and actually changing the landscape of that nation."

We're not migrating en masse, but I think it's pretty inarguable that American culture has pervaded the rest of the world and changed the landscape of many nations, via the power of Hollywood, television, and global capitalism.

Actually, France's high birthrate suggests that it is possible to get fairly close to replacement without having American levels of teen birth (when you only consider births to women over 19, the US has a lower fertility rate than France). It just costs an obscene amount of money in welfare payments.

Like many on this board, I know immigrants to the US whose college educations and professional degrees aren't accepted here. Further more, one of those immigrants speaks Arabic, French, English, and several tribal Afircan languages fluently. She's applied to the CIA since they "need translators". Apparently, they only need AMERICAN translators, because she's never even gotten a call back.

I understand a country wanting to maintain it's identity. I was in Sweden last summer and they were struggling with a minority Muslim population who were agitating to be governed under Sharia law rather than under Swedish law. Why they moved to Sweden if that was the case, I don't know, but it meant that the Swedish government was very much encouraging Swedish people to have children. The benefits were amazing, made me wish I was European.

Genny, it should be straightforward to see why an intelligence agency is only interested in citizens. The CIA's official policy on citizenship is that naturalized citizens can apply, but the CIA won't actively help anyone become naturalized to work for it.

“Why they moved to Sweden if that was the case, I don't know�
For economic reasons.

Mexicans in America can certainly do manual labour, but most of them aren't capable of doing high-skilled jobs.

Whoa, did you seriously say this? Because that's not just nationalist -- that's RACIST.

Mexicans are capable of doing any job Americans are -- and naturalized Hispanic persons are just as American as I am.

To condemn an entire race/nation of people to manual labor like that is immoral. Frankly, I'm completely disgusted by thi comment. I really really hope that the problem is simply that you spoke very imprecisely, and that you're simply suggesting that immigrants to the US tend to come with less education, and not that immigrants to the US are somehow inherently less CAPABLE of becoming skilled workers.

noname, I'm with you. We have an overpopulation problem and encouraging people to breed is not responsible. If we're concerned about culture and ideals, we should encourage people to adopt. The fact that we encourage people to BREED rather than adopt proves that this is RACISM, pure and simple. It's not even nationalism, which is nonetheless a dubious goal in all but the most extreme cases.

Ah! Here is a new troll!

We really have been blessed with abundance lately.

Ohh, nice! Now we've got the "ladies, doing what we tell you is GOOD for you" brigade.

Tee hee. "trying to keep your genitals intact." And where do you think babies come from, sweetie? The stork? Or maybe they're small enough that we just poop them out. Because birthin' babies NEVER hurt women's genitals, nope, never!

And boy, I sure am asking for it, fighting for the right to kill my, um, babies. By, um. Not ovulating?

Somebody help! My inferior woman-brain can't make sense of this!!

I know, TLF, it's always an absurd argument: "Give up your rights or we'll take them away from you!" Gee. Hmm. So my choice is between bullshit and horseshit?

There's also almost always a barely-suppressed bit of sadistic glee there, a not-so-subtle threat in that line of "argument": "Don't make us menfolk hurt you, little lady! It's your own fault for not knowing your place."

EG and TLF,
What our friend Hank is saying is that if you guys don’t have babies (white babies) Muslims will take over US of A and will stone you to death or chop off your clits. Now isn’t he cute?

Women working like men means less people. Ladies, if you notice the cultures where women are really being treated badly are out-producing us by a 5 to 1 margin.

Except that Sweden and Norway have birth rates approaching replacement, despite high rates of female workforce participation.

Alon, the family I know is naturalized. They came here from Muritania for business and ending up staying and gaining citizenship through amnesty when there was a political coup. So if they CIA accepts naturalized citizens, then there shouldn't be a problem.

I missed the bit where someone said that non-Americans are inferior and can't perform high-skill jobs. That's... well, others have said it first and better, but bullshit.

Funny that a troll putting forth that line of reasoning picked "Hank Dagny" as his handle. Because there's so much in Atlas Shrugged that depicts motherhood and marriage in a sensitive and positive light.

Really. What is it with the Ayn Rand posters these days?

"I see it as extremely anti-woman-as-people when it's assumed that our hormones or good nature will have us do something that is contrary to our best interests."

It's also anti-biology - we're organisms with survival instincts too! :)

"yes, but if it was just an issue of having a large enough workforce, allowing more immigrants and refugees into the country."

Besides, isn't relying on each generation being larger than the next basically relying on a Ponzi scheme?

"What kind of idiot would walk around wearing such a ridiculous shirt? Who would breed with such a moron?"

Someone his matchmaker found for him, that's who.

"And I think it would be more accurate to say we don't know what many immigrants, Mexican or otherwise, are 'capable' of, professionally, because they are not afforded the legitimacy or opportunities necessary for entry into higher-status jobs..."

...and aren't the Mexicans who did get those opportunities more likely to stay in Mexico in the first place?

Maybe it is actually just ONE Ayn Rand poster?

Law Fairy: I'm not racist - I just refuse to pretend that opportunities are equal in every part of the world.

Because your much-touted UChicago education failed to teach you basic reading comprehension, here is is again, nice and slow:

I don't know stats on immigration, but I imagine that the relative proportions of immigrants are not identical to that which a country wants in its workforce.

If you would provide statistics that Mexican immigrants are licensed US physicians, nurses, and teachers in the proportions that we need, my statement is inapplicable. Otherwise, take your PC hysteria and shove it.

My statement is very plain: those who immigrate to America are not necessarily those who are the most educated. This actually does vary by country. Sad, scary world out there, my little babycakes Law Fairy.

We have a shortage of nurses. Is anyone seriously suggesting that the crisis facing that profession can be solved by getting immigrants from Mexico who are already highly educated in that profession there?

Did your uber-PC googgles blind anyone to the fact that the opportunities in Mexico, in a word, suck? That intellect is equal, but that does not equate to education? That people born in the US have the opportunities to educate themselves if they so desire, but that opportunity isn't available to smart people in a corruption-ridden country?

Sure, any adult could be trained in American schools and do high-skilled jobs. Realistically, though, that's not going to happen - adult immigrants have families and need to work.

If you're talking about their kids, well, did you miss the memo where a 12-year-old won't start practicing medicine for another 20 years?

But noooo, the 25-year-old snooty babycakes lawyer (who, I'm guessing, never worked a real job before law school) has to pretend that everyone is like her - with a doctor daddy who will foot the bill for the top 10 law school if she can get in. Suggesting otherwise is (gasp!) racist.

If the educational opportunities in Mexico are identical to those in America, why didn't you go to school there, babycakes? You're 25 and went straight from high school to college to law school. You don't have a family. Yet, you pretend that any immigrant should have a piece-of-cake time getting the education you've gotten.

Kindly take your upper-middle class, limosuine liberal 'tude elsewhere.

...and aren't the Mexicans who did get those opportunities more likely to stay in Mexico in the first place?

Well, as I was typing my response to Law Fairy, I was thinking, "Well, if we took a lot of nurses from Mexico, a LOT of people would be upset that we're draining their countries of their best people."

Just shows ya, there's no winning around some people.

Actually, in a way, being abusive helps your cause. See, if you didn't start belittling TLF, I'd consider you someone who's civil and respectful who I happen to disagree with, in which case I'd either start a long debate in good faith or invite you to share your thoughts on my blog. Any such debate would end up in me and by extension my views looking more reasonable, because I'm a) right, and b) better at this than you are.

However, to do such a thing, I need to ensure that a) it's a real debate, which requires an opponent without a track record consisting of statements like "my little babycakes," and b) I won't get shouted down for taking you seriously. For this exercise's purposes, if you get banned then it counts as shouting down anyone who takes you seriously.

So in fact, by being an abusive troll who can't make an argument without resorting to insults that take me back to the one time I listened to Michael Savage, you're actually ensuring I won't get an opportunity to prove you wrong, keeping the numbers of people who support you higher than they should be.

Alon, that was awesome.

I, too, thought up until now that oenophile was simply someone who had some strange and wrong-headed views, but was at least sincere and willing to think things through.

He/she/it sure kept up the non-troll facade for a while.

Why are people constantly trying to find ways to encourage women to have children? There are 6 billion + people in the world. Having less children is a great thing, for our world but also for women. Child birth is risky, even in the best of circumstances and can have life long consequences. Also, as more people identify as gay at younger and younger ages, as birth control gets better and sterilization gets cheaper, their will be less children, regardless of work benefits and policies. When having unprotected sex, missing a birth control pill or having a condom break or slip, I doubt most women are thinking about the family friendly benefits their work provides. In fact, I don't think most women planning to have children think about those kinds of situations...and for all of us who got pregnant in our teens and 20's that's a non-issue to be begin with.

dhsredhead,

What is wrong with policies that allow women to have children when they want to, without having to sacrifice their careers?

“In fact, I don't think most women planning to have children think about those kinds of situations� Wait, are saying that you think most women don’t plan their life? Or that family friendly policies don’t have an effect on people’s decision to make children? But it has been shown in other countries that it does. It’s true half of the pregnancies in this country are unplanned (and that’s a bad thing). But I do believe many if not most professionals do plan their family life. For instance almost all women I know in academia (in science and engineering) postpones having children until after their tenure and by then they are usually in their mid to late thirties.

DHSRedhead, there are some very good reasons to encourage women to have children.

The reason the Earth is overpopulated is *not* because Western women are having too many babies. It is, in fact, a problem we solved in the West. The reason the Earth is overpopulated comes down to patriarchy. When societies treat women as birthing machines, treat women as dirt unless they have had children, give them no opportunities for power or self-fulfillment except through having children, and give them no birth control or right to say "no" to the man that chooses them, they will keep having kids until they can't. Women who are educated and empowered to have a life outside of babymaking, on average, reproduce at replacement rate or below.

The "or below" is a concern because, if tomorrow we waved the magic wand of feminism and all countries gave women legal equal rights to men and access to birth control, like we have in the West (mostly), the human race would decline in population slowly -- a good idea as we inch back down from six billion, but once we get to one billion or so it's a problem, and if we continue to decline from there, someone will have the brilliant idea of re-enslaving all the women. "If women who are free and equal to men won't have enough babies to keep the human population going, why don't we just cut off their birth control and their right to work?"

If you give women legal equal rights to men and birth control, but you still treat *mothers* as non-humans, ciphery vessels for creating new humans, and leave all the enormous burden of creating and raising new humans to them, a significant number will choose not to do it. Or to do it only once. Which, in an overpopulated world, is fine. But if *everyone* did it that way, the world would not only not remain overpopulated, but sooner or later humanity would be threatened with extinction.

It is not necessary to make the choices into "face genetic extinction or enslave women". So far those are the two dominant paradigms, and the very fact that we have troll posters like Hank Dagny here declaring that if we don't do our jobs and churn out more babykins, the world will be taken over by abused slaves of the patriarchy churning out sprogs for their masters, means that in some significant number of (non-feminist) people's minds, women's rights *are* in opposition to humanity's survival. You leave them with that impression, you say "But declining birth rate is a *good* thing! Look how moral I am for being childfree!", and we can all count how long we will have our freedom in a generation or less. Because they *don't* see a solution outside of "human race dies out or women are baby-slaves."

Help women who *do* choose to be mothers, empower them, and the birth rate will come back up to replacement levels. *Then* work on world overpopulation by promoting feminism worldwide. (Or do both at the same time, preferably.) I think the vast majority of posters to a feminist blog would like to see a world where no woman is destined to suffer her life as a machine squirting out progeny for The Patriarchy, but if everywhere that isn't true, women choose not to have enough kids to hit replacement rate, what kind of an ad for feminism is that? Yeah, in the short run Europe doesn't need more mothers because it can import the people. But if it's importing the people from places where women are slaves, and they bring their attitudes with them, this helps us how? And why do we think it's a good idea to rely on the enslavement of Third World women to supply the First World with population? Isn't that exploitation? Don't we rely on the subjugated status of Third Worlders to maintain our lifestyles enough? Isn't it more important to help them achieve the good parts of what we have (like medicine, basic living wages, social safety nets, AND THE RIGHT NOT TO BE ENSLAVED TO OUR UTERUSES)?

We have already solved the world population crisis. It's called "give women rights, education and birth control." The implementation world-wide is still an issue, but this is not a crisis that can or should be solved by *more* moralizing against First World women for having babies.

It is important to support women who want to have children. If the best a government can come up with is a payout, well, they're trying. Benefits that allow mothers to work are *much* better (as is encouraging men to do active fathering work.) This does not mean women should be forced to have children -- it is exactly the opposite. It's giving people who have undertaken a difficult and demanding job that society needs extra support in doing that job. And yes, society needs it. Not because we can't import immigrants *now*, but because if the world became the way we feminists want it to be and all women were empowered to choose not to be mothers, there would *be* no overpopulation and there would be no waves of immigrants seeking a better life elsewhere. And if we don't solve the problem that our vision of the world causes, we will never be able to implement our vision world-wide, and the majority of the world's women will remain second-class citizens with little to no control over their own wombs.

Alara, thank you for your post. I had never thought about things in quite that way before. However, I take issue with the phrase "encourage women to have children", because that sounds to me like it holds a bias of "women should be having children". It brings to mind the government putting out posters such as "top 10 reasons why YOU should consider motherhood", which would be a terrible thing. I believe strongly that governments should have policies and programs in place that COMPLETELY support all women and men who choose to take on the challenging task of raising children, but we should make sure that it does not come with a bias of "women with children are better than women without children".

However, I take issue with the phrase "encourage women to have children", because that sounds to me like it holds a bias of "women should be having children".

Hmm. I see your point. I was thinking of it like "encourage women to be engineers." There's nothing wrong with women who choose to be teachers, lawyers, doctors and salespeople, but engineering is a valid choice *too* and artificial barriers that stop women from choosing it should be removed.

I agree that "10 reasons YOU should consider motherhood" is a terrible, terrible idea... among other things I see the urge to reproduce as more akin to a sexual orientation than a career choice. If you want babies, no one needs to explain why they are a good idea; all they need to do is assure you that you will get support and respect if you have them. If you don't want babies, you should not have them. Period. And no one should pressure you or question your choice. (In fact I want to live in the world where *the* primary qualification for becoming a parent is "do you really, really want children?" I think people who don't want kids being forced or pressured into having them is the primary cause of child abuse, and that itself is the primary cause of everything else fucked up in the world... we'd all get along better and be more rational people if we were all treated well by loving parents when we were growing up.)

Women should be having children if they really want to have them, and not having them if they don't really want to have them (and *especially* not having them if they really *don't* want to have them.) And the same is true of men, with the caveat that until male birth control is as good as female birth control, men have to get less of a say in reproduction than women do, being less personally affected (basically, I support either sex's right to control their own bodies, not their right necessarily to control their DNA after it leaves their bodies.)

I was thinking of it like "encourage women to be engineers."

Hmm, yes, when you say it that way it doesn't sound so bad. (I happen to be a woman engineer and am all for encouraging women to be engineers... I wonder why "encourage" sounds less like "should" in the case of engineers as opposed to mothers?)

In fact I want to live in the world where *the* primary qualification for becoming a parent is "do you really, really want children?"

I WHOLE-HEARTEDLY AGREE! It seems to me that our society pretty much expects women (and men, to some extent) to have children. You grow up, get married, and have kids. That's just what you do. And I think most people do that without ever thinking about whether they *really* want to have kids. Having babies and parenthood is highly glorified in our culture, and I don't think that is healthy. Perhaps this is why I having trouble with the idea of "encouraging" women to have children -- because our culture already strongly encourages it, even though our governmental policies do not fully support it.

As a women in her 20s who is not currently planning on having children, it is sometimes difficult to visualize what my 30s and 40s will look like without children, because just about every image in the media and popular culture shows women at those ages having children.

Also, as more people identify as gay at younger and younger ages, as birth control gets better and sterilization gets cheaper, their will be less children, regardless of work benefits and policies. When having unprotected sex, missing a birth control pill or having a condom break or slip, I doubt most women are thinking about the family friendly benefits their work provides. In fact, I don't think most women planning to have children think about those kinds of situations...and for all of us who got pregnant in our teens and 20's that's a non-issue to be begin with.

I'm not sure why you assume that the same social problems that dictate American birth rates apply throughout the first world. The fact is that France's fertility rate is trending up very quickly, despite a fairly low teen birth rate and high contraceptive prevalence. France's fertility rate is actually higher than the USA's after subtracting teen births.