Why is it everyone wants government to be the solution?  Of course that tag line applies to pretty much anything these says, as government is involved in absolutely everything we do, whether we want them to be or not.  But this time I'm specifically talking about the growing "crisis" (don't you love how everything is a crisis) with birth rates.

Last week, Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit fame) wrote an interesting piece on OpinionJournal on the subject.  He talked about how parents are revered in today's society as they once were, and the increasing monetary cost of raising a child compared to the decreasing economic benefit, but he also talks about the increasing dangers to parents who "mistreat" their children:

Nowadays, of course, children don't get the same treatment. I have heard repeatedly that my state's Department of Children's Services considers it neglect to leave a 9-year-old alone in the house for any time at all. Today's middle-class kids are always under the adult eye. It's not clear that the kids are better off for all this supervision--and they're certainly fatter, perhaps because they get around less outside--but the burden on parents is much, much higher. And it's exacted in a million tiny yet irritating other ways. Some are worthwhile--car seats, for example, are probably a net gain in safety--but even there the cost is high. I heard a radio host in Knoxville, Tenn., making fun of SUVs and minivans: When he was a kid, he boasted, his parents took their five children cross-country in an Impala sedan. Nowadays, you'd never make it without being cited for neglect. And you can't get five kids in a sedan if they all have to have car seats, which these days they seem to require until they're 18.

So it should be no surprise that this latest report is making news:

One-third of the nation’s youngest children - babies through age 6 - live in homes where the television is on almost all the time, says a study that highlights the immense disconnect between what pediatricians advise and what parents allow.

And the fact that we have a growing "obesity" epidemic among children is no surprise either.  After all, you can barely send your children out to play any more, unless you are personally supervising them.  So for a parent that needs to do chores inside, their children are forced to stay with them.  Remember when your mom told you to go outside and play in the street?  I do... and she wasn't kidding.

Not that parental supervision always works.  Last night I was out on Menomonee River Parkway, where a father was walking with his 7-8 year old son, who was riding a skateboard and trying to do jump tricks with it.  Of course, he wasn't wearing a helmet, and every time he slipped during a trick and almost fell and cracked his head open, all the father would say is "careful".  Yeah, that'll protect your kid's head.

So what is the solution to all this?  Do we have to start paying people to make babies?

Communism is officially dead in the Soviet Union, but the Marxist belief that men and women are essentially economic creatures is alive and well at the Kremlin. Earlier this month, Vladimir Putin, alarmed at Russia's declining population, which is falling thanks to short life expectancy and a plummeting birthrate (1.17 children per woman, down from about 2 in 1990), offered a bonus of 250,000 rubles (about $9,200) to women who would have a second child.
...
Does this work? Can citizens of democracies (or, in Russia's case, a pseudo-democracy) be bribed into having more children? At first blush, the evidence would suggest that they can't. Virtually every industrialized country has financial incentives to encourage procreation—tax deductions, family support programs, bonuses for children, etc. And yet fertility rates have been declining in virtually every industrialized country.

Maybe if parents were actually allowed to raise their children how they see fit, and didn't think they'd get arrested for the slightest infraction, or have their children yanked from their home, we wouldn't have this problem.  When you think about, parents have much less control in their child's education, and parenting decisions than they did even a decade ago.  However, in that same time frame, parents face much stiffer penalties for not raising their child according to the decisions that other people made for them.

Perhaps less government is the solution, instead of more.  Just a thought.