[ranndino]

America is really killing itself slowly (if people stop having kids we'll die out eventually but terrible economic consequences will hit much earlier) because of how bad the policies here are. Family values is just something conservatives like to blather about while doing everything to make people not wanna have full fledged families.

Having kids shouldn't be this difficult and it isn't in countries where the government has common sense policies to actually support family values but in US half the country has been brainwashed to think of them as evil socialism.

I know many Europeans with kids and they seem to be much less stressed out than Americans, still have time for hobbies and are genuinely enjoying having kids. It turns out that having kids doesn't have to be completely overwhelming when you have long maternity leave, government providing free day care and great public schools in your area (none of that lottery politically correct idiocy) plus parents who aren't living thousands of miles who prefer spending their retirement playing infinite rounds of golf and going on cruises over being involved grandparents.

The government system and the individualistic, selfish mindset of Americans (both things that we delusionally pride ourselves on) is the cause of many major problems here and many people are still unwilling to even admit them.

[oppositelock]

Europe's natural population growth is largely negative too, so it's no utopia over there either.

I grew up in eastern Europe, and work in the US, so I've got perspective on both cultures. The biggest difference that I can see is that families in Europe tend to stay closer together, and grandparents, aunts and uncles help with child rearing, which is a huge help! Here, in the SF Bay Area, we're a society of immigrants who have severed those links. I've been working in tech in and around SF for 20+ years, and it's rare to meet someone with family in the area. All the growth here has been from immigration, foreign and domestic. People in the US really do seem to move a lot for work.

[GoreonKnows]

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?

US - 1.9 births per woman EU - 1.5 births per woman

In many places in western Europe we look at US policies to try to increase births.

[astrange]

That looks like a mean, but what's the distribution? And since this is births per woman so far in their life (I guess), how old are the women?