If each country had a two child policy

[Blackcat21]

Just an idea and my opinion, and fully aware I will probably get flamed for this.

The population is rising, not shrinking, and with that is coming ridiculous house prices, global warming, running low on natural resources and foods.

Health services are stretched and school classes are increasingly full.

Wouldn’t an solution to this be only letting per couple or mother/father have two biological children each.

I must admit, it does annoy me when some women go on to have 3rd, 4th child etc just because “they want to” or want a large family, love being with children or love being a mother.

Motherhood is a beautiful thing but it could be restricted to two biological children only.

Overpopulation is impacting the earth too much.

If this couple wanted more children they can adopt.
There are thousands of children in the U.K. and other countries each year wanting to be adopted.

Doing this could possibly tackle overpopulation but increase the adoption of children.

Obviously I’m aware there is problems of how to monitor this, what if a woman gets pregnant against her will, accidental pregnancies etc but not that is the not the point or idea I’m trying to get across right now.

AIBU to think this could be a good approach?

What would you do to people who have more than two?

This is probably the worst AIBU I have come across.

Logically I can see the point you’re trying to make but I think your OP is worded in a way that most people will just pick it apart. It’s not hard to do, there are so many flaws and implications you’ve not even considered.

• We have an ageing population. Cutting births now would lead to a severe imbalance of elderly/financially dependent vs workers paying into the system over the next 50 years. You’d see the NHS collapse and elderly severely neglected. A reduction in working age people would also cause a huge reduction in undesirable jobs...like carers. It would be a mess.
• The only way to ‘police’ it would be mandatory contraception for women who had 2 children. Things like sterilisation, implant or coil with no user failure rates. It would breach human rights and be a total shit show but otherwise you’d get a million ‘it was an accidents’ from women who wanted more kids and how can you prove it’s not accidental?

-What would happen to pregnancies that were illegal? Dark questions to ask.

• So each woman in the U.K. is entitled to carry and birth 2 live children. Do they have to be biologically hers though? Meanwhile couples who want more than 2 are allowed to adopt. So what’s to stop people paying poor women to be surrogates? Suddenly you’ve turned their right to 2 children into a massively valuable asset.

What I will say in support of this post is;

• I’m sick to the back teeth of posters who say things like ‘state of this country is disgusting how are normal families supposed to manage?’ always having 3+ kids take some responsibility; kids are expensive and lots of people would like more than they have.
• Environmentally babies are horrific and it’s all for the sake of ease. Banning non biodegradable wipes/nappies would make a huge huge difference to the world. However, it would also hike prices making kids even more expensive and ‘state of this country...’ posters would still have 5 of them and complain about not being able to afford food.

Ideally we would live in a society where people saved, budgeted, had the number of kids they could afford, had idiot proof contraception in place (so accidents were legitimate) and were environmentally conscious. We do not live in that society though.

The thing is if we have a conversation about overpopulation why is it just focused on children? Should we be keeping people alive & on medication in their 90s. It's nefarious to think like that but we need workers who can pay tax.

I must admit, it does annoy me when some women go on to have 3rd, 4th child etc just because “they want to” or want a large family, love being with children or love being a mother.
Bit of a strange thing to get annoyed by, isn't it?!

@thebillyotea

A welfare system that punishes people for the crime of being poor

it's not punishing anyone not to give anyone a lifestyle they can't afford because they can't or can't be bothered to work to afford it by themselves!

Welfare system is a safety net. Not more.

It's baffling isn't it? How a system encouraging you to not have more kids so you can take better care of the ones you have is "punishing" you. Yet when you do what you want, you demand that system takes care of them. Baffling!

The birth rate is about 1.6 so people are already having less dc.

No.

I have four kids because I wanted to.

I wouldn't have ever have adopted a child anyway; if I couldn't have children naturally I wouldn't have had them.

One reason covid hit us so bad is because we have an ageing population, average age of 40.

Who is going to fund the older populations?

The UK's fertility rate is only 1.74. This policy would be superfluous here (and in the rest of the developed world) as the number of larger families is heavily outnumbered by households with one or no children.

The solution is female emancipation in developing countries, particularly Equatorial Africa. Provide access to female education and contraception and the problem resolves itself. No need for coercion.

ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?country=~OWID_WRL

The only advantage I can see is that it would unite the pro-choice and pro-life lobbies.
You would find the execution tricky. There is a massive move currently towards equality for all people. This would be a retrograde step if you tried to enforce it.
I have 2 kids. If I get pregnant again, would your new world order pay for an abortion? I wouldn't take it. So, do I have to give birth privately? Presumably no child benefit. I'll have to either fund private school or not educate my child. But by law I have to. So, bodge job home ed it is then. I do a bad job, my child can't access hospital, youth clubs etc. She becomes a second class citizen, hates the system, becomes an extremist, and you have riots on your hands from her and the other outcasts from society.

So I had my daughter 20 months ago, she is lovely and we thought we would try this year/fell pregnant in January and have recently found out it's twins.... so I now am having a 3 child family..... what would I do in your hypothetical situation?

Choose my two favourites?

The birth rate has fallen to below replacement rate in most countries with free access to birth control and an even tolerable record on women's rights.

Turns out that if you don't force women to have children, a large proportion will choose not to or will voluntarily limit their family size.

So I'm not sure your rule is needed.

Why does it have to be a women's issue (alone)? Are people saying that in this utopian/dystopian (depending on which side you're on) world OP's talking about, men can't have the snip? That way, women don't have to do anything. I think they've done enough tbh, so men could bear that burden if this ever happened. Which it won't.

We need people to have more children in the U.K. not less. We have an ageing population. The planet is not overcrowded it’s very much area specific.

The population is rising

The population is not rising because of birth rate, which is falling and is only slightly above replacement rate now. It is rising because life expectancy is increasing. Once life expectancy in the poorest countries matches that in Europe and North America population will start declining.

I think population is expected to peak later this century at 11 billion (up from 7 today?) and then start falling.

But the population isn't increasing, in the developed world. It's shrinking, and so much so that we are facing economic disaster.
Why are you trying to destroy your own society? And how do you propose to control people's reproduction, would you have forcibly terminated my third child, for example? Do tell us all the details.

@VladmirsPoutine

Over population is a myth - a nefarious one at that. Unequal distribution of resources among a host of other factors should be redressed first before we start regulating wombs.

Overpopulation isn't remotely a myth - there are far too many humans for this planet to sustain unless we all go back to being hunters and gatherers and then the majority of us will die anyway.

I don't know why people get to het up about the idea that two children is enough. It is enough. We have contraception - lots of options in fact - it's not about regulating wombs and trying to stop the planet imploding.

I am a bit surprised anyone is still having children at the moment with climate change and covid going on (and yes I know people had kids in WW2 but they didn't have contraception).

@poppycat10 the uk doesn't have too many children though...

But the population isn't increasing, in the developed world. It's shrinking, and so much so that we are facing economic disaster

How? We've far too many people, we are concreting over our countryside, we don't have enough facilities, healthcare, education and you think we need more people?

Didn’t work well in China.

We’re not overpopulated, we are crammed into small spaces and need to spread out more and make work and pay more even across those spaces.

But that means taking over more land, I do think we are an invasive species though.

[quote terribleg]@poppycat10 the uk doesn't have too many children though...[/quote]
It totally does.

Do you know what the birth rate is & the average age of the population? 🤦🏻‍♀️

We have too many old people in the UK

We have an aging population. We have more old people than we have ever had before because of improvements to medicine and relative peace so people are living longer. On one hand you can say that's what over stretching health services but the main reason is under funding for years.
I do get your point and I see what you're trying to say but I don't think your solution would work. I do think we need more personal responsibility taken in so far as don't have four or five kids if you cant afford them or manage them. But policing reproductive rights is no good. I think more and more of us are having less kids anyway because one or two kids allow you to have a certain lifestyle that you couldn't really have with more.