Artwork: Mother and Child (A Goodnight Hug) by Mary Cassatt
Why financial incentives aren’t enough for a generation with deeper concerns
Lately, news headlines, political debates, and public reports seem obsessed with one topic: declining birth rates. Governments express concern that shrinking younger populations can no longer support aging pensioners. In response, they’ve begun offering solutions—most of them financial.
Tax breaks. Cash handouts. Free childcare. Lifelong exemptions.
The message is clear: “Have more babies, and we’ll make it worth your while.”
I get it. Parenting is expensive. These offers might help some.
But as a young adult woman, I can’t help but ask:
Is that all it takes? Just money?
Because for me, finances aren’t even my first concern.
More Than an Economic Transaction
Having a child is not a transaction—it’s a lifelong responsibility.
And I believe that responsibility begins long before birth.
It means being willing to prioritize someone else’s life over your own. It means raising a human with love, presence, patience, and values.
I don’t want to be a parent who kicks their child out the moment they turn legal age. I don’t want to raise someone into a world where I can’t offer at least the basics of security, dignity, and belonging. I want to raise an individual with as few what-ifs as possible.
And no tax cut can guarantee that.
What Kind of World Are We Raising Children Into?
These days, I worry about more than just baby formula and school fees.
What if my child is harassed on the street, or silenced in a classroom?
Will they have access to clean food?
Will they be free to travel, to think, to become whoever they are meant to be?
What good is financial support if the world they’re born into feels hostile, polluted, or unsafe?
Also, Let’s Talk About Fairness
By giving benefits only to women who choose motherhood, what message are we sending to those who deliberately choose a child-free life?
Will this widen the gap between women in the workplace?
Will employers exploit these policies, benefiting from tax loopholes while pressuring women on both ends?
And what about men? Women don’t conceive by simply germinating on their own. Ignoring a future father’s role and struggle is just another form of injustice, and it reinforces the stigma that raising children is solely a woman’s duty.
It’s not that I’m against support. I’m against pretending that support should be conditional on reproduction.
If There’s a Way to Break It, Then There’s a Way to Fix It
If we’ve found ways to turn people into numbers, to measure women by wombs, and to frame parenting as a productivity issue, then surely, we can also find ways to restore balance.
Give us safety.
Give us access to health and education.
Give us clean food, fair politics, and breathable skies.
Let us build lives worth living—with or without children.
And only then—only then—ask us about birth rates.
Because some of us need more than money to bring a new life into this world.
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Between Everywhere and Nowhere 
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