Is Pronatalist Research More Interesting Than the Discourse?

What do trains and flexible schedules have in common? They both increase fertility

Pronatalism faces a peculiar contradiction with its image (doesn’t really help is that who or what is a pronatalist is very loosely defined). Its own researchers produce a LOT of evidence that structural economic barriers determine whether people have children. Yet some of the more visible debates (like those in all mostly online movements) seem esoteric or even crunchy. It reflects the movement’s fragmented nature. Mostly online except for pockets of certain cities and a handful of countries, pronatalism effectively is civil or semicivil flame wars to outsiders. There are groups like

Boom

who is trying to bring pronatalism IRL, but that’s more of an exception than the rule to most outsiders.

Pronatalistic research, especially in the 2024-2025 pipeline, is a completely different story. Just to give you a sample (God knows I can make this post so much MUCH longer) is Norwegian lockdown data revealed how workplace flexibility affects fertility decisions. German employment studies tracked how job security (not income) drives family formation. Japanese labor market analysis showed the fertility gap between precarious and stable employment. Taiwan’s train investments demonstrated how reducing geographic separation between couples increases births.

These studies (out of many I might add) consistently point to the same conclusion: workplace rigidity, housing costs, and economic concerns/troubles are what actually prevent people from having children. The evidence is there. It just needs to be the focus.

Norway’s Accidental Experiment

Norway’s March 2020 lockdown triggered a 10% birth rate increase nine months later. The cause wasn’t pandemic proximity or boredom. Unemployed women showed zero fertility increase. The paper (The impact of flexibility at work on fertility by Bernt Bratsberga and Selma Walther) entire effect came from employed women, particularly those in rigid occupations who gained schedule control for the first time.

Women in the most inflexible jobs showed fertility responses 152% stronger than those already working flexibly. The pattern repeated in Singapore (Flexible Working Arrangements and Fertility Intentions: A Survey Experiment in Singapore by Senhu Wang and Hao Dong), where hypothetical reduced working hours increased fertility intentions 79% among employed, partnered women. Professionals, theoretically best positioned to afford children, showed the strongest responses.

These weren’t marginal adjustments. Norwegian women maintained reduced working hours and avoided overtime through 2024, four years after initial lockdowns. The persistence suggests firms discovered that pre-pandemic rigid scheduling was unnecessary, not that workers accepted productivity losses for flexibility.

The implication is straightforward. The 40-hour workweek with fixed scheduling and mandatory physical presence prevents parenting. Not optimal parenting or natural parenting, but any engaged parenting whatsoever.

Job Loss as Birth Control

German researchers (Job creation, job destruction, and fertility in Germany by Chen Luo and Ewa Jarosz) tracked 400 regions across 13 years, finding job destruction reduced fertility 40% more than job creation increased it. Male manufacturing workers faced the strongest effects. When factories closed, birth rates plummeted. When new positions opened, fertility barely budged (releativly).

Japan (Career advancement and fertility intention among working women in Japan: a cross-sectional survey study by Honami Yoshida) demonstrates the same dynamic through employment type rather than job loss. Women in non-regular employment express half the fertility intentions of regular employees. The gap persists controlling for age, education, and income. Notably, women seeking career advancement show higher fertility intentions when they have employment security. Ambition and motherhood aren’t opposed; precarity makes both impossible.

Taiwan’s high-speed rail inadvertently created a natural experiment in 2007 (Mobility and Fertility: Evidence from High-Speed Rail in Taiwan by Yeow Hwee Chua, Pei-Syuan Lin, and Tien Foo Sing). High-Speed Rail connected Taipei’s expensive job market with affordable southern cities, cutting travel time from 4.5 hours to 90 minutes. Fertility increased 6.5% among couples who previously lived apart for economic reasons. First births increased 16.2%. The infrastructure investment didn’t change parenting philosophies. It made family life economically feasible.

Work Accommodating Children Matters

Modern societies physically exclude children from adult spaces, we all seen the viral stories and headlines. Restaurants discourage families. Offices prohibit children. Shops lack changing facilities. Public transport resists prams. This separation of productive and reproductive labor is historically anomalous. Pre-industrial societies integrated children into daily life because excluding them was economically impossible.

The Dutch fertility study (Understanding Narratives of Uncertainty in Fertility Intentions of Dutch Women: A Neural Topic Modeling Approach by Xiao Xu, Anne Gauthier, Gert Stulp, and Antal van den Bosch) revealed this clearly. Using neural topic modeling on open-ended responses from 423 women, researchers found structural concerns dominated fertility hesitation. Dutch women live in one of Europe’s most generous welfare states. They still cited the impossibility of managing pregnancy while maintaining careers. Women with identical demographics (age, income, education, partnership status) expressed completely different fertility intentions based on whether their specific work situation could accommodate children.

Traditional policy levers didn’t address their concerns. Childcare subsidies don’t help if pickup is at 5pm and meetings run until 6pm. Parental leave doesn’t help if using it destroys career advancement. Women needed to believe they could remain economically secure and professionally engaged while parenting. Most didn’t.

Reduced working hours meant different things to different workers

The Singapore flexible work paper revealed some uncomfortable class dynamics. Reduced working hours meant different things to different workers. For professionals, it meant eliminating slack time and focusing on core tasks. For service workers, it might mean lost wages. Flexible scheduling helps knowledge workers who can shift tasks. It doesn’t help retail workers whose presence defines their job.

This creates coalition problems for reform. Universal reduced hours might help professional families while harming working-class incomes. Flexible scheduling might advantage laptop workers while leaving service workers behind. Child-friendly public spaces might cluster in wealthy neighborhoods while poor areas remain hostile.

On that note, there is evidence suggests broad benefits from structural reform. Germany’s job creation in female-dominated sectors (healthcare, education, social services) increased fertility across income levels. These sectors offered security and predictability rather than high wages. Stability mattered more than income.

Some Common Points

Just by looking at, well, the tip of a (very large) research iceberg we can see a few interesting notes.

First, no parenting optimization overcomes the growing time poverty, especially with dual-career households. This requires wage growth, housing cost reduction, or any number of fixes. The Taiwan research showed couples literally living apart because neither could afford housing near their workplace. That’s not a problem natural parenting can solve.

Second, genuine workplace flexibility must replace fake flexibility. Real flexibility means controlling when and where work happens, not answering emails at midnight. The Norwegian evidence showed that forced flexibility during lockdowns persisted because it worked. Firms discovered that rigid scheduling was organizational habit, not operational necessity.

Third, children need reintegration into public life. This means designing spaces that accommodate families, not segregating them into child-specific zones working parents can’t access. It means normalizing children’s presence in restaurants, shops, and when possible, workplaces. The systematic exclusion of children from adult spaces makes parenting a logistical nightmare regardless of philosophy.

Beyond The Boring Discourse

The Dutch women’s narratives revealed something interesting. When asked about fertility hesitation, they didn’t discuss parenting philosophies. They discussed whether their lives permitted children at all. Health anxieties weren’t about pregnancy complications but managing pregnancy while working. Life stage concerns weren’t biological but economic, waiting for security that never arrived.

The pronatalist movement’s has a lot of interesting research that just doesn’t get talked enough about (unless it is part of some broader narrative, usually not about helping people who want kids, get kids). Fertility decline reflects the rational response to structural conditions.

The evidence points clearly. Flexibility increased Norwegian births 10%. Job security doubled Japanese fertility intentions. Connecting separate households increased Taiwanese fertility 16%. All interesting stuff (I think).