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I am not opposed to a mixed carrot and stick approach but there are plenty of carrots that haven't been tried and things that aren't carrots but changing the current arrangement. I oppose maximizing the sticks as unnecessarily cruel and less likely to work than some more politically incorect changes that are also less about sticks. The compulsion policies should not just be directed at single people but also business, unviersities, and all sorts of powerful institutions.
Lets mention one issue that we could see positive change:
Our current model is that careerism and education is pushed as a model for the youth in their family formation years. Add to that female overepresentation in universities and desire to date up.
This is a result of plenty of subsidies and encouragement. Stopping this and strongly encouraging by various policies instead family formation as a priority, especially for women in that window would make much more sense. And we don't even have to exclude careerism and education as goals, just put them as less a priority. Especially for women.
But women always worked, and in the past it was a more village setting and also with less machines and globalized system of productions. So it doesn't make sense to go back to that, but our current model also doesn't make sense. We need greater prioritisation of family formation.
Beyond that, people can live long life. We should deal with overcredentialism and wasting time on those issues, but what is wrong with spending more time being educated in your thirties, delaying your career focus too in 20s and 30s, but having a family. From a perspective of the greater good, it is a better arrangement. Men becoming in such a situation higher economic status and more attractive for women will also increase the marriage rate.
And directly teach people in schools, and through television programs promoting large families, the value of larger families. Especially promote "propaganda" in the good sense especially towards women and girls which in fact is in line with their insticts, and also better inform them about the fertility window. For example bring along married mothers with their husband with multiple children in school for "family planning" school lessons and strongly encourage the model of a married family with multiple children through both the media and such experiences.
Also, it is obviously the case that pets have taken some of the role of the need for children for various people including some who do have children and might have had more without pets. I dunno what the correct policy response would be to that, but it is a factor.
Another thing that is politically incorrect is that to do this and other changes, you simply need to suppress the feminist and liberal establishment and anti natalist liberals in general which are not going to stand for this. They can go as far as support canceling pro natalist conferences. Many liberals do not want to solve this issue but want to downplay it and point to the inevitability of solving it. Because they oppose the more conservative, or anti-feminist changes, or also are hostile to stopping what facilitates the replacement of western populations, and are also hostile to those nativists who oppose the destruction of their nations through mass migration and low ferility rates. They are also motivated by the fact that liberalism will be blamed for the drop of fertility rates.
Imagine you are in a sinking ship which has a hole in it. And you got a part of the crew and passengers claiming that there is nothing to be done and they are discouraging those trying to cover it. You either sink, or you stop them and keep them out of influence and strip the demoralizing pro inaction crew from their position.
So if we want a stick, lets also talk about suppressing factions who oppose this, and promoting the pro-natalists. Because you are not going to get into the position of implementing serious carrots and serious sticks, without having natalists to capture power and suppress anti-natalists which are made especially by plenty of liberals. We could call this faction liberal fundamentalists/dogmatists, while maybe ideally we could get some people who sympathized or identified with liberalism, to break from it.
By directly promoting natalism and suppressing anti natalism you could get it through. It's how liberalism and its version called wokeness, and the Israel lobby and even Covid measures were promoted. Fundamentally, you can as a society through both authoritarian means and through education and having people capturing institutions that push certain agendas, get plenty but not all people to change their attitudes. Most importantly you can get policy changes in this way. So a change for natalism is possible. Although the point isn't just to change things from a bad direction, but to change things towards a wise direction. Which I believe would require a more multi-faceted approach than maximizing sticks in single areas. So you can't be maximally authoritarian without considering what you are promoting and being willing to adjust where you overreached. Although that is far from the current problem, and really being wise requires not being too impotent to act as well.
I think over-education is a problem for society in general and especially when it comes to family formation. When stable adulthood in both genders is pushed back farther (assuming 5 years post graduation to stable job and housing) to 26-27 years old, it’s simply too late for this couple to have more than 2 or 3 kids at reasonable spacing of 1-2 years. First kid at 27, second at 30, third at 33. And that’s pretty much the fertility window for most people. This assumes no difficulties in the schooling and job-seeking process, and marriage pretty much right after college. Go for a masters (additional two years) or have difficulty finding the first good job or housing and we’re talking 30 before we’re seeing the first baby.
The problem is the lengthening of childhood and preparation for adulthood phase of life into nearly middle age. Which shortens working and family life, and increases costs in ways that don’t necessarily produce better outcomes either economically or socially (in fact I think the opposite is true, extended childhood is creating a culture of narcissistic behavior).
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