And yet Europe near-universally has lower fertility than the US. Whilst I have the same experience, not just with America but with English countries in general,

And yet Europe near-universally has lower fertility than the US. Whilst I have the same experience, not just with America but with English countries in general, something does not add up. Even though childcare is free or very cheap in most of western Europe, fertility is 1.23 in some locations, now. That means only 1 in 5 couples have children at all on average. Replacement fertility levers are nowhere to be seen, inside or outside of the EU, and even amongst fresh immigrants fertility is very low. And when I am there, I have to say, I miss my country when it had lots of children, and I was one of them. There was much more activity everywhere. There were much better playgrounds and more of them. There was constant presence of children in every village, and as an American you probably can't imagine just how many villages there are everywhere in Europe. You could get into pretty much any house for dinner, and yes, it did mean that you had to go to church on sunday (that was actually possible, nobody, and I mean nobody, ever worked on sunday), and afterwards the adults would dine in groups with the children playing in the gardens, or going out into the village or to the YMCA. Sport events would mostly be between neighbouring villages, and they were as much about getting together for a beer and a show as about sport, and pretty much everyone participated at some point. Now many villages look deserted, but they aren't, not yet. There's old people locking themselves into their houses watching TV. The central cities are expanding, and the bigger they get, the more hostile they are. Realistically, it won't be long before we're artificially breeding humans. Japan has researched this option, generally called "ectogenesis" and they have controversially produced a 14 days old feutus before stopping the program (getting it to survive after 7 days is apparently difficult because it requires blood flow to the feutus to start). We could present this option as "we allow gay couples to have real children of their own" "treatment". The numbers seem to dictate that unless some massive change in fertility occurs, mass-production of humans should start in about 8 years to keep population numbers from declining rapidly. That's an outcome nobody wants, but the question is if people are sufficiently convinced that they really, really don't want this to start programs like this. Also it won't be like children with real parents at all. Still, it probably beats the crap out of no children at all. I shudder to think what effect government policies will have on people who have no parents to defend them though.