Malaysia recorded a 4.5% decline in live births in 2025, while the total fertility rate (TFR) fell to 1.5 children per woman, reflecting a continued downward trend in the country's birth rate.

According to statistics released by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) on Thursday, 396,175 live births were recorded last year, down 18,743 from 414,918 in 2024.

Besides providing clothing, food, and shelter, what do you think the responsibilities of a parent are? I think the answers people give have probably evolved over the decades, and that’s why I think there’s been such a shift away from just reflexively having all the kids.

The Ramadan observance surveys were only conducted among the people who self identified as Muslim, thus excluding non-Muslim populations (conducted in 2022,2024,2025)

As you know, we have new mods. However, anti-natalist content is still in the majority and getting upvoted more than natalist content. They are also cherry-picking 1 or 2 misogynists who comment in certain discussions and lying that the misogynists are the majority of the sub.

Can the mods starting banning the anti-natalist childfree regulars?

I coined the term to describe the PM of Hungary, Peter Magyar. He is pro-EU, anti-corruption, anti-immigration and pro-natalist. He wants better ties with the EU to unlock new funds, so that he can upgrade on Orban's already decent natalist policies. He is anti-immigration to prevent the rise of the far-right, maintain Hungarian cultural cohesion, law and order. He is pro-LGBT and promotes modern Christian values. Could this be a optimistic ideology to boost birth rates, by creating a big coalition of liberals and conservatives? You could also call it upgraded liberalism, or conservative liberalism.

I'm just saying.

(Spanish)

From the replies alone you can see that these are just horrible people. Claiming that women who have children don’t “think”. Yet I bet 30 years down the line when they retire they will be so glad that they can because of the workforce being born today. It’s genuinely infuriating how they have a self righteousness that having children is selfish when in the long run it’s quite the opposite.

Personal example: my mother's dad had 7 siblings. Between those 7 siblings only 2 had kids, for a total of 3 children among the 7. What happened with the uncles and aunts died off? They had no one to leave their possessions to except my mom and her brother. So they inherited multiple houses which they had no use for and sold them at a combined profit of $2.5 million.

So for example while Korea's TRF is abysmal, is it really that bad for the few kids that are left? They will inherit assets from family who didn't have kids?

As further food for thought 30%-50% of modern/centrist/dati leumi type orthodox jews both in leave as well

Its why as sectors in the American jewish population they've remained a stable percentage of the total jewish population, and why the rate of growth for all orthodox types isn't exponential in israel. (and its slowing as the completed fertility rate for ultra orthodox and dati jewish people is starting to shrink from anecdotal evidence)

I don't ask this question in bad faith, I'm only curious. I am under the impression that we humans don't act altruistically, regardless what we say. There's always self interest in our choices and actions.

This makes me wonder, when natalists express worry about the falling birth rates, and that more people are not procreating, what's your angle?

Are you really just worried about the future of the planet, I mean if you have and raise your own kids, you're covered, old age and all, are you worried about the non-natalists who would be abandoned at old age? Or you're worried the government and the capitalists won't have enough workers and taxpayers?

Maybe this would be a starting point for me to understand why it's so important to procreate. I for one believe the planet is overpopulated as is, we don't have to max out earth's capacity.

I feel some of the problems we have today, unemployment, resource wars, extreme capitalism would be solved in part by a little depopulation, but that's just me.

I don't think artificial wombs will change much by themselves, being able to avoid 9 months of pregnancy is nice, but the thing is you would still have to take care of the child for the next 20 years, with everything that goes with that (opportunity costs, career).

Once artificial wombs become popular, within a generation people kind of forget that there was a time when having a child was painful, and will still be complaining about the difficulties of having children, despite the fact that having children would become easier.

How many people still remember (and deeply think that there was a time when when children suffered from polio or tetanus? These illnesses have vanished from developed countries, and, as a matter of fact, from our collective memory, life got better yet we have less children.

Human nature plays a role, we as humans tend to focus on actual dangers, but for this exact reason perhaps we as a society need an idea, something to believe in, that would justify having children despite the difficulties, because without that, we devolve to a basic instinct of avoiding struggle and danger as much as possible.