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American policy is uniquely hostile to families. Other wealthy countries guarantee paid parental leave and sick days and heavily subsidize early childhood care \u2014 to the tune of about $14,000 per year per child, on average. (The United States, by contrast, spends around $500 per child per year.) So it\u2019s no wonder our birthrate has been in decline, with many people saying they\u2019re having fewer children than they would like.\n\nYet if you look closer at those other wealthy countries, that story doesn\u2019t entirely hold. Sweden, for example, has some of the most generous work-family policies in the world, and according to the most recent numbers from Our World in Data, from 2021, their fertility rate is 1.67 children per woman \u2014 virtually identical to ours.\n\nCaitlyn Collins is a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of \u201cMaking Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving.\u201d To understand how family policies affect the experience of child-rearing, she interviewed over a hundred middle-class mothers across four countries with different parenting cultures and levels of social support for families: the United States, Sweden, Italy and Germany. And what she finds is that policies can greatly relieve parents\u2019 stress, but cultural norms like \u201cintensive parenting\u201d remain consistent.\n\nIn this conversation, we discuss how work-family policies in Sweden frame spending time with children as a right rather than a privilege, how these policies have transformed the gender norms around parenting, why family-friendly policies across the globe don\u2019t increase birthrates, how cultural pressures in America to be both an ideal worker and an ideal parent often clash, why many American parents feel it\u2019s impossible to have more than one or two children, how cultural discourse has led younger women to \u201cdread\u201d motherhood and more.\n\nMentioned:\n\n\u201cParenthood and Happiness: Effects of Work-Family Reconciliation Policies in 22 OECD Countries\u201d by Jennifer Glass, Robin W. Simon and Matthew A. Andersson\n\n\u201cIs Maternal Guilt a Cross-National Experience?\u201d by Caitlyn Collins\n\nIf you're interested in this topic, we also recommend checking out this series from the New York Times Opinion:\n\n\u201cWould You Have Four Kids if It Meant Never Paying Taxes Again?\u201d by Jessica Grose\n\n\u201cAre Men the Overlooked Reason for the Fertility Decline?\u201d by Jessica Grose\n\n\u201cIf We Want More Babies, Our \u2018Profoundly Anti-Family\u2019 System Needs an Overhaul\u201d by Jessica Grose\n\nBook Recommendations:\n\nCompeting Devotions by Mary Blair-Loy\n\nMothering While Black by Dawn Marie Dow\n\nHope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\nThis episode of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show\u2019s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Jessica Grose and Sonia Herrero.