A lot can be said about pop culture and how it has affected the generations immersed in it. Yet, one of the lesser understood traits is how it can push certain "agendas" from those who are powerful enough to influence cultural trends.
Pop culture, in many ways, can influence the way the entire society operates. For example, what are the "traits" of the ideal man or woman? Hollywood, TV, magazines, the web, even advertisements, will subconsciously imprint on us what is "desirable" and what isn't.
We will also get "samples" of what a man or a woman should be, or shouldn't be, in terms of what they look, what they do in their life, how rich they should be, how many children are "OK" to have in a family, etc etc.
Most people are affected by this in ways that they do not even understand. Think video clips of the 70's, 80's or 90's and how you get a reaction on what the hair looked like, or what the clothes looked like. Yet, that was normal for each time period. Why is it "funny" now and wasn't perceived "funny" back then, in real time, so as to get rejected?
Eugenics
This gets more serious than hairstyles when our perception is also affected in what we deem attractive since this will have far broader implications in terms of our marriages and families. For example what type of women are "favored"? Petite or large? Thin or fat? Light-colored or dark-colored? If my perception of the ideal woman is affected, then obviously I will choose someone in line with what I thought I wanted based on my cultural influences. And this, in turn, will impact my children. We are already seeing, unfolding in real time, a beautification of the younger generation due to beautiful parents marrying.
Eugenics, is all about promoting the proper cross-breeding of certain members of a species, that carry certain "desirable" genetic traits, while preventing the less desirable traits from propagating. But if we allow pop culture to dictate which traits are desirable, and we also take for granted that the masses *will* be affected by these "hints" due to proven herd-mentality, whether in terms of appearance, abilities, etc, then we (as pop-culture designers) can indirectly influence the propagation of certain traits.
This influence will be imperceptible and thus go unopposed compared to a program that visibly tries to pair certain people up, or bar other people from mating: Brainwashing people into the choices they will be making creates a pseudo-"voluntary" choice, which they have no-one to blame for.
Population Control
On top of the covert Eugenics, we may also be promoting a covert system of population control. For example, a system that promotes an "independent working woman" will lead to women who have far less time to raise children compared to full-time housewives of two generations ago. Additional measures can be taken through the promoted standards of living.
Through the combined influence of the above, one can make it (indirectly) evident that multiple children become an economic liability that threatens the ideal standard of living that one is striving to attain. So, if you are striving for a good life and you are perceiving that 5 children are a danger to this goal - or that these kids may well take you to the other direction (poverty), compared to raising just 1 or 2, then you'll go for a more "rational" 1 or 2.
The Economic incentives/disincentives pale in comparison to the Cultural ones
In theory, the economic disincentives would be the most important factor when deciding things like the size of one's family. There would be no need for any other type of disincentive. But, evidently, if we look around the planet, these disincentives are not sufficient.
What we see instead is that in underdeveloped or poor countries, in which people barely get by, they also have a lot of marriages and births. But these countries are, for the most part, culturally unaffected by the western pop culture and therefore the economic disincentives are proven inadequate by themselves.
However, slowly but surely, this is changing - as the western standards get propagated. That's why the cultural spread (a long-term agenda) is so important for the western Elite: It allows it to exercise indirect control over the global cultural norms, thus also indirectly controlling vital "policies" including Eugenics and Population Control.
Is Islam a problem? A theory and prediction about Islam
One of the greater forces of resistance to the western cultural standards is hard-core Islam. In a system where looks matter less and women stay at home raising children, there are quite strong defenses against pop-culture influenced Eugenics and Population Control. If we assume that the Elite can implement any policy they want (we've seen in the past how a lot of Muslim countries were secular under US influence), then why take these secular-Muslim countries and make them hardcore right now?
I think this real-time paradox will be solved over the longer run. Islamism seems to be "useful" right now as a perceived enemy in the West for geopolitical reasons. Thus the other agendas are placed on a secondary priority. Once these geopolitical reasons are no longer, the West will swiftly use its influence in those Islamic regimes and convert them back into secular - a process that will probably require 1-2 decades. This might require some good excuse like a new 9/11 (though bigger) - always tied to hard-core Islam.