6 Ways Western Countries Can Boost Low Fertility Rates Without Tackling The Actual Cost-Of-Living Issue

EFFIE BATEMAN | Lifestyle | CONTACT

1. Return Children To The Mines

Aside from climate change, the housing crisis, and the state of the world in general, one of the biggest reasons couples are choosing to have fewer children or no children at all, are the enormous costs involved in raising a child. As of 2025, the average cost to raise a child is $548,000 – and that’s not counting any financial help they’ll receive after turning 18.

But what if children were put to work and we returned to an agrarian society again? If children were forced to earn their keep and trade their Minecraft for the real thing? By repealing child labour laws, couples would actually have an incentive to have children again.

2. Make IUDs Even More Painful

The metal copper IUD has the highest success rate of all birth control methods, which is why something must be done about it if we want to fix the fertility crisis.

Abolishing any form of birth control will likely result in too much outcry, but changing the design so that it’s significantly more painful could act as a deterrent.

Instead of a small, streamlined device shaped like the world’s most joyless pogo stick, this new proposed design operates exactly like a wine bottle cork screw. Ouch!

3. Force Childfree Couples Into Captive Breeding Programs Like Pandas

Everyone knows pandas are stupid and useless, yet we keep trying to get them to root. But what if we put all that energy into encouraging humans to get a leg over instead?

As evident by the high amount of meth done in Canberra, humans turn to their most simple impulses when they have nothing to do – and what’s more simple than the act of making love?

4. Ban Cavoodles

Cavoodles, or any form of ‘oodle’, are the doggo of choice for child-free couples and therefore should be banned if we want to see fertility rates improve.

Instead of having ‘fur babies’, as these insufferable millennials call them, humans need to start having REAL babies again.

Pets are very clearly just fulfilling the nurturing urge all humans have. A pet will never say your name or learn to have a conversation. Well, maybe if you get a cockatoo. Nonetheless, they are a shallow imitation of a human baby.

5. Cover Women In Nicotine Patches When They Hold A Baby

Just like how Pavlov trained his dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, women can be trained to associate babies with a rush of endorphins by popping a nicotine pouch on their arm every time they hold one.

Love is nothing but a cocktail of hormones, so why not just fabricate it?

With one simple patch, women will stop with these ridiculous notions of ‘hopes and dreams’ and resort back to their factory settings – mindless baby vessels!

6. Encourage Men To Wear Grey Sweatpants More

Last but not least, the quickest way to get everyone breeding again is to encourage men to wear slutty things like backward caps, shirts with rolled up sleeves, and above all – grey sweatpants.

Why? Because seeing the faint outline of a gooch works wonders on an ovulating woman.

If more blokes went around sporting dick swinging trackies, the fertility crisis would be solved in two years.

Choo choo, here comes the baby gravy train!