As someone who's highly interested in the topic, and think the people aren't aware the biggest change in the world we know will not be caused by nuclear wars, pandemics or climate change but by global drop in population. I got to form an understanding why fertility rates are dropping everywhere in the world and I'd like to share my findings.

I won't link sources now, simply because I don't have them on my hand ATM, but I encourage you to fact check my every statement.

Pardon for my english, I'm not a native speaker.

Fertility has nothing to do with how wealthy a nation is

People compare Europe and Africa and come to a conclusion it's about the wealth, but no, even among Western European countries, richer countries like Scandinavia had at different points had higher fertility than poorer countries like South Europe and Eastern Europe (although they worked hard to increase their fertility, but more on that later).

Also a worthy example is US which has among the highest fertility rates in developed world, with white population (which is wealthier) leading over other ethnicities.

People are lazy, they will do what is easy - having children is hard in the modern society

Since forever, humans used to live in large extended families. It was normal to have 3 brothers with their families and even their parents (3 generations), with 20+ people in total in a single household. My grandparents grew in households like that. Many families in undeveloped and rural areas live like that today.

They don't need kindergarten, the home is the kindergarten. It's not only free, there's no need to leave work early, spend hours to get the kid to and from the kindergarten.

There are no sport expenses - children play together in the backyard.

There are no toys/ PCs/ phones etc. expenses - give children a ball and that's enough for 20 of them to play - and some of them become the best football players in the world!

Children are safe - there's always an adult/ older siblings watching them.

Think about it - there are fewer children today than ever, is there a shortage of kindergartens in your city? I'm almost certain yes. Ever thought about why? Who did take care of all the children back then?

In majority of families with more children, there are at least grandparents (or other family members) to take care of the kids when parents work.

Cities are devouring population and producing economic growth

By modern society, I mean living an urban life, in a nuclear family, working in a company 9-17h, being separated by family (even friends) by several kilometers. In this environment, most people will not choose to have children, the entire population growth will come from rural immigration. Until almost the entire population that can have children (I'm excluding elderly of course, many of them typically keep living in places where they were born until the end of their days) concentrates in big cities - that is where you see fertility rates bellow 1 on a country level. But if one could find the statistics on a city level - you'd see it's big cities bringing fertility rates down.

It's easy to say "women don't want to have children" (like one post today, blindly quoting the statistics) but men have to change - and nobody is talking about it!

Quite the contrary - all male role models are like: be alpha male, make money f... b... and... find traditional wife to cook for you and take care of the children!?

This never existed, as I described above, women never took care of the children alone, but the entire household. Except for the first generation urban immigrants living in nuclear families, that have been thought traditional values so they wrongly think it's only mother's duty to do everything in the household. It never was, traditionally, all sisters + wives +older children + grandparents took care about the household and younger children while men worked.

When female emancipation appears in traditional societies and women get education, fertility rates drop sharply (this can be observed everywhere in developing world).

Women decide to get educated, to build career, and have freedom to do whatever they want with their lives - not depending on the family and husband.

I might be generalizing here, so women, feel free to prove me wrong in the comments: women don't want to bear children and household alone - men need to step up and share all household duties. This is evident in societies like Scandinavian ones, where female emancipation arrived to first, having more stable fertility rate, unlike other societies where female emancipation just appeared.

Conclusion/ TLDR

This is several major things out the top of my head. I'd like to steer the discussion on this sub to something more constructive.

• People in extended households (nuclear family + grandparents/ aunts/ uncles) or family nearby, who can take care of the children, tend to have more children.
• Rural households tend to have more children.
• Households where husbands share household duties, tend to have more children.
• Haven't spoken about the culture, but societies that hold family values over work/ travel/ money/ themselves, tend to have more children.