When will population stabilise? Never? That is impossible. Next generation? Why should we leave it to our kids to sort out the new arrangements necessary with an ageing population. An ageing population hardly seems like a problem? It means we are all living longer. I am all for that.

Do we say to our children "Oh sure we knew that fossil fuels and farmland were being exhausted, but we thought you could fix it all up."

I'm all for family friendly work places, but not to increase the birth rate. The best society is one where everybody can have exactly the number of children they want. If they want ten, no environmentalist will say you are using too many resources and if they don't want any, Babette and the Treasurer won't say you have let the country down, we need more babies to boost the economy. Start producing those little taxpayers. Having children is too important to let anybody else tell you how many to have.

Babette highlights for us another example of another noisy minority (radical feminists) wailing for other people's money (from taxpayers) to implement their own flawed and foolish ideas (that men and women are functionally equal). Look at the reality: women are physically and psychologically designed for childbearing and child-nurturing. Men and women will never have equal roles because we will never have the same biological characteristics. I for one rejoice that God made us different and complementary. Trying to legislate against the order of nature is like King Canute trying to stop the tide coming in. Only those with a pathological dose of arrogance would try it.

Australia is a land of immigrants. From the first fleet to huge immigration of the 50s, 60s and 70s, it is the backbone of this country. l guess that the indigenous would agree that immigration is divisive. And so too would the folks how moved out of the newly garlic odour infested streets inhabited by Southern Europeans back in the day. l guess they just got sick of watching another day go by, without the social engineers addressing that scurge.

Declining birth rates arent the 'problem' in this world. Unsustainable population growth in a world of dwindling finite resources is the 'problem.'

l would prefer to shuffle deckchairs on the Titanic rather than add more to the already full decks. While lm at it l might go see the captain and let him know that there are safer waters to travel. One's that arent full of icebergs.

From the fatalistic and depressed attitudes expressed here it is obvoious the workplace has affected the mental health and made the homelife an unsuitable emotional environment to give children an emotionally secure and happy childhood.

Philo "From the fatalistic and depressed attitudes expressed here it is obvoious the workplace has affected the mental health and made the homelife an unsuitable emotional environment to give children an emotionally secure and happy childhood."

9 posters - ten posts - hardly a representative sample to presume "it is obvious the workplace has affected the mental health.... blah blah"

Hardly a basis to assert that the "roll on effects" of "the workplace" is to produce "an unsuitable emotional environment to give children an emotionally secure and happy childhood".

we are all individually responsible for developing our incomes from which we can finance the lifestyle we expect. If you aint working in the workplace which will give you the right mental attiude to enable you to bring up your children effectively - I suggest - Change your job - I did.

Of course the employer is not responsible for providing a balanced lifestyle for their employees - It has taken generations for individual to develop to the point where such paternalistic attitudes are archaic and redundant. The last thing we need is some woolly, nostalgic and sentimental thinking that "the Employer" will take care of all our bodily and family needs - any more than we should presume the state should "take care of all our bodily and family needs" -

Leave my decisions with me - I will make mistakes but the impact of those mistakes will be far less damaging to me than the mistakes that some paternal bureaucrat might make.

Col,
I have observed the life of many young highly successful women in my close friends and find the emotional stress of tired parents, after a days work, is sublimated as stress upon young children. These young women are very successful and driven in their employment and expect their young children to achieve the same performance. Their children express signs of depression or anxiety. Young children do not respond to performance goals but to reassurance and love of a happy Mum. A happy and observant mother makes for happy and secure children.