Yet more "we need babies" talk

Japan should re-examine the idea of marriage to help spur a baby boom | The Japan Times

Yet more talk here about the Japanese population decline and the need to be "creative" in finding ways to encourage reproduction.

I did learn something new about France along the way (I thought it was perhaps a bit more "traditional" than this, given it managed some decent sized protests about gay marriage):

For instance, one of the biggest social obstacles is the institution of
marriage, which sounds counterintuitive, since everywhere marriage is
considered a prerequisite for having children. But it doesn’t need to
be. France has one of the highest birthrates in the developed world, and
in 2006 the majority of new mothers there were not married.
In Japan, the birthrate for unmarried women is almost zero, because the
taboo against having children out of wedlock is effective.