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Why have people stopped having children? Paul Harris/Getty Images
The question of whether or not to have children has never seemed so political. Sensing a fertility crisis on the horizon, the populist Right are embracing pro-natalism. Elon Musk, father of 11, warns of the mass extinction of entire nations, while over in Europe, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán calls for “procreation not immigration”, a sentiment echoed by Giorgia Meloni.
Beyond the fog of great replacement hysteria, however, there lies a potentially concerning reality. On every continent, birth rates are tumbling. There may well come a day when young people will be unable to maintain public services for an ageing population. In a worst case scenario, that could mean no healthcare, no pensions, and no social care.
Countless explanations have been floated to explain why we have stopped reproducing: raising children is too expensive; childcare is incompatible with women working; motherhood is no longer culturally valued; women have contraception; people no longer get married. There is truth in all of this, but there are several glaring omissions. For one, the birth rate began to fall long before the dawn of contraception, and indeed falls in countries where women do not work. Then there’s the paradox that, in many high-income countries, it is often the richest and best educated who have the fewest children, muddying the story of the rising cost of childcare. This also reverses one of the most robust trends in the animal kingdom: that those of higher status have more offspring.
Part of the problem is that too much emphasis is placed on the period of cultural upheaval that followed the Baby Boom. In the decades between 1950 and 2024, the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children a woman is expected to have — fell from 2.2 to 1.6 in the UK and from 3.0 to 1.6 in France. South Korea’s decline is particularly dramatic, falling from 6.1 to 0.7 in the same period. It now has the lowest TFR in the world.
But this is part of an almost 200-year-old trend. Many of the most dramatic drops in fertility took place long before the Sixties. In Britain, the TFR fell from 4.6 to just over two between 1850 and 1920. In France, it fell from 4.5 to 3.5 between 1760 and 1800. This can’t be explained by the Pill, female liberation, or the rising cost of living.
Perhaps it can be explained, instead, by evolutionary theory, which tends to think about reproductive decision-making as a trade-off between quantity and quality. The idea is that there is an inherent conflict between the number of children one can have and the investment that can go into each child. Parents invest in a child up until the point of diminishing returns, whereupon they switch to raising an additional one.
The article rightly identifies the evolutionary drive for status as a significant factor in falling birth rates, but it fails to expand upon the broader cultural narrative at play. The “girl boss” and “slayer queen” memes, far from being mere faux celebrations of female empowerment, may indeed serve a more cynical purpose: expanding the workforce to drive down the cost of labour. This is economics dressed up as liberation.
The push for women into careers often not naturally aligned with the requirements of childcare not only contributes to declining birth rates but also exacerbates individual misery. Women, told they can and must “have it all,” are increasingly burdened with roles that clash with their innate evolutionary desires. Men, meanwhile, are stripped of purpose as their traditional roles are deconstructed without meaningful alternatives.
The result? A society alienated from its foundations – family, balance, and fulfilment. What’s sold as progress often masks a more insidious agenda, and we are all, men and women alike, paying the price.
Just as a matter of interest then, do you think women should be systematically removed from the workplace?
If not, what’s your point? Also if not, then why bother to even educate women, since it would be leading them to expect lives other than just being mothers? And then, why not go the whole hog, and become the Taliban? I’m sure their female population are much less “miserable” – all the while risking their lives to conduct secret education sessions whilst you pontificate on the role of women.
Thank you for your considered response. It’s clear this is a topic that stirs strong feelings for you, however, it seems the intent / thinking within the original comment may have been misunderstood or misinterpreted.
To address your first question directly: No, I do not believe women should be systematically removed from the workplace, nor have I suggested, or would I ever suggest such a course of action. My intention was to explore the broader cultural and economic dynamics that influence societal trends, including declining birth rates and the increasing pressures placed on individuals – both men and women – by modern narratives about success and fulfilment.
These are complex and sensitive topics that require careful examination, not binary rhetoric, not least because they profoundly shape the lives of millions.
Your suggestion that my comment implies opposition to women’s education, or even parallels with the Taliban, is a striking escalation that risks overshadowing the substance of the debate. This kind of hyperbole does not advance understanding or foster constructive dialogue. Instead, it creates a caricature of the argument that bears little resemblance to the point being made.
My concern lies not with the notion of women pursuing education or careers – these are unquestionably vital elements of a free and prosperous society – but with the consequences of framing success in terms that alienate people from their own biological and psychological needs.
When society sets unrealistic or conflicting expectations, such as the idea that women must “have it all” without acknowledging the sacrifices and trade-offs this entails, we risk creating dissatisfaction and strain for both women and men.
To engage meaningfully with this issue, we must acknowledge that the pressures and choices facing individuals today are not entirely organic but are often shaped by “artificial” cultural and economic forces.
Examining these forces does not mean advocating for regressive policies but rather asking whether the narratives we celebrate truly serve the well-being of individuals and society as a whole.
Lets take the sacred NHS. Should a woman pursue a BS-job career and contribute negatively to society at large? Or raise a family and make a positive contribution to society at large? If 40 percent of the British workforce (both men and women) consider their jobs useless timewasting, at least the women have an escape into motherhood. The ancilliary measure should be wages high enough for the working parent (man or wife) to sustain the family. That sounds awfully old fashioned. Like the nineteenth century, I think. A low wages gig economy kills it own workforce and replaces it with outsiders who work for even lower wages.
Great response to criticism. That’s why I love this site. You would never see anything so thoughtful or level headed on 99% of the Internet or anywhere else. I think your initial comment was correct. I think that the desire to expand the labor force was always lurking in the shadows of the women’s liberation movement. Women were granted the right to vote in most western democracies by the end of WWI or long before. Yet, it wasn’t until after WWII, when the US had realized the material benefits of working women to increase national productivity, that the women’s liberation movement went beyond simply equal rights and voting privileges. For cultural reasons, German and Japanese societies did not embrace replacing male workers with women to same extent that America and the USSR did, and the winners always write the history.
On a more basic level, even when acting on their own, people can have a mixture of altruistic and self-serving motives, hence wealthy philanthropists deducting charitable donations from taxes. When people act collectively in concert with others, it’s basically guaranteed that not everyone will have the same motivations pure or otherwise. I suspect that almost all social narratives are motivated by a mixture of altruistic and self-serving motivations coexisting and cooperating to achieve shared goals. The bizarre alliance of multinational energy corporations to green politicians and environmental advocates is an excellent example of how competing motives can align to achieve political ends that neither would be able to accomplish alone. An intellectually honest approach demands considering all possible motives regardless of whether they might call even closely held views on human progress into question. Self-criticism is necessary for good philosophy, and taboos are rarely conducive to the open discussion and exploration of ideas and possibilities.
I think they might be systematically removed over the next few years regardless of what Steve thinks. AI will remove white-collar jobs rather then blue-collar ones. The majority of “career women” work in these areas – legal, accounting and lower level finance, PR & media, clerical and admin, HR. All ripe for replacement! So I think the AI revolution will disproportionately impact women. Men and women in traditional careers will not be replaced in the immediate future – men in skilled and semi-skilled manual, women in healthcare and teaching. I think it might lead to a return of the traditional family structure with women more reliant on their husband’s wages and more eager to have kids.
Few have contemplated the true long term implications of AI. It will have broad, sweeping applications to society, eliminating many jobs. It will go well beyond male/female dynamics. It will turn the neoliberal drive for education and white collar work completely on its head. It will disproportionately eliminate relatively high paying, high skill jobs, introducing an entirely new class of displaced workers to join the working class voters who saw their factories close. The opposition will grow and the ruling class will shrink even further. Populist movements and international conflicts may have started the process of undermining neoliberal globalist society, but I believe it is AI that will deliver the final coup de grace.
Further, AI will do so much and wield such power that it simply cannot be left to the whims of private enterprise. It comes at a time when international competition is at a level we haven’t seen in a very long time and nations will want to protect such a valuable tool and weapon from their enemies. Further, such power will have to be managed in a political way by national governments who will set limits and boundaries that profit driven corporations wouldn’t. It may allow such advancements in productivity that societies have the resources to subsidize reproduction, but again, these will have to be political decisions made through representative national governments in order for people to accept them. In a time when people are demanding national governments exercise sovereignty and rein in the power of international finance and the “global economy”, the need to regulate AI and keep advancement out of the hands of rivals for the sake of geopolitical power represents an easy excuse to sideline the international aristocrats. From my point of view, AI cannot come at a better time. It is needed now to help solve some of the problems discussed in this article and allow human society to adapt itself to new conditions in a positive nonviolent way. In the short to medium term, it offers a practical solution to a labor shortage. Whatever tasks can be automated will be automated, and whatever work remains will be filled by people. In the longer term, if the fertility levels are to stabilize, something will have to change the incentives. The author is right to link changes in human fertility to the discovery of farming on the one hand and the industrial revolution on the other. AI could change the incentives in equally profound ways.
The point is that everything comes with tradeoffs. One of those is the number of women in their 30s, professionally successful but personally empty, making videos about how happy they are through bitter tears. Another is that empowering women was combined with defenestrating men, so that the prospects of those 30ish ladies are even more limited.
Comments like Steve’s are perfectly legitimate, in fact they’re necessary. Any serious discussion of such a private topic is bound to step on some toes. We shouldn’t limit the debate for fear of offending someone’s sensibilities.
In any case, one logical extension of Steve’s argument is that men should be ‘removed from the workforce’, in favor of playing stay-at-home-dad.
Except for a few young, unmarried ones; just to make coffee and bow and scrape a bit, around the office.
Do you think the State HAS to do something?
It didn’t used to be even there to do anything, and people managed.
If the state model is to provide social services from cradle to grave, it must necessarily concern itself with how that model is paid for.
My comment disappeared!
I had said that the likelihood is that women’s jobs will be systematically removed from the workforce over the next few years because AI will disproportionately affect white-collar roles typically favoured by women HR, marketing and PR, clerical and admin, legal, accounting and finance, etc. I expect blue-collar jobs to be unaffected and I think skilled manual work will become higher paid and higher status. As these roles are almost exclusively done by men, I think it may lead to an increase in traditional family structures, more financial reliance of wives on their husbands and – hopefully – more children.
An educated mother raises educated children – most of children’s educational achievement has to do with their parents, especially mothers. Therefore, educating girls is as important as boys, even if the girl will be “just” a mother in the future.
Give women some credit. More often than not, they successfully deflect this societal pressure. My first wife (MD) and the second one (teacher) both have been happy to work in a quite relaxed mode 4-6 hours a day to keep enough time available for home, family, hobbies and simply far niente. Neither wanted to be a work horse. Each of the two loved money but was happy when it was hubby who brought it home rather than herself. Based on my observations (not generalizing), quite a few middle class women are able to maintain that healthy balance.
Is that you, Vice President Elect Vance?
Post industrial society took women from the home just as industrial society took men from the home. The only ‘solution’ that will work for 21st century people is one that brings both back into the home. I’m hopeful that remote working might allow us to get back to something more like the ‘cottage industries’ of pre-industrial times and let men and women play a full role in family life.
Misogynistic nonsense, send them back to the home barefoot and pregnant eh. Do you even realize that about 50% of working people are women, many in careers that require education and commitment, actually there are now more women in many countries than men in higher education. And when they have children most of the burden is on them. Do you actually believe that we will be going back to the 1950s? Your comments sound like something the Taliban would say, there is no going back to the old days. There are plenty of reasons why people want fewer children, most of them economic, inadequate income and housing costs are huge, the costs of having children, work and career pressures, just to name a few. And actually believing that children can have a decent future, which is far from evident in this messed up world
Personal freedom is #1 and “Arbeit macht frei” (work makes you free).This concentration camp slogan has been taught by gov and education institutions for generations and now is generally believed. Get a job and you will have money and freedom to do your own thing. And there is a lot of money to be made by turning care work into jobs via “professionalization of care” of all who need care (children, sick, disabled, elders, dying). Funding families to do or pay for care work themselves means the gov or corporate or ‘non-profit’ middlemen do not get a cut. But funding families directly is what is needed.
The problem is not really people having small families. The problem is that many women have no children at all. When you look at British families *with* children, the number of children has not fallen since the 1970s (2-and-a-bit).
However 2020 was the first year that the majority of women passed their 30th birthday without having had a child. Currently 20% reach their 40th birthday in the same position. It will soon be 30%!
The demographic or economic issues are the least of the problem. The main issue is the huge number of women who wanted and expected to have children but couldn’t find the right man or the right time to do so. Only 5% of childless women over 40 report that they are happy not having children. That is a lot of human suffering.
Nor she we neglect the effect on men. Marriage and fatherhood are the things that civilise men. A generation of childless, wifeless men is a scary thing indeed.
From anecdotal evidence, this seems to be the main factor for decline in the West in the last 50 years or so. Women and men seeking the right/perfect partner. I have heard many times from women – I don’t need kids per se and will only have kids if I found the right partner. This has to do with our the distorted vision of love brought about by popular culture (Hollywood/Disney). The question is how do we address this as a community… I do not have an answer. Anyone?
I am a childless, wifeless man, and I’m having a great time! In the interests of full disclosure, I have had two wives, but I didn’t have them for very long.
Spot on! Nowadays a high-powered career, excellence in a hobby, exotic holidays, personal health/fitness and material wealth convey status. We’ve got three kids under 8, and while I’ve just about managed to keep my career on track my wife’s has been on hold, and we’ve had to give up on the other stuff. The status thing also affects grandparents – who often prioritise their own leisure over time with the grandkids. This is particularly weird when those same grandparents have spent a huge amount of time and money preparing their kids for a career, but then the kids aren’t able to pursue their career effectively because combining career + caring for under 5s is incredibly tough. Bewildering indeed…
But most grandparents know their grandchildren are gifts.
Another gift for the generation for whom education was a gift, first home was a gift (compared to today’s prices), help raising their own kids was a gift, steady income growth throughout their career was a gift, generous pension provision is a gift…
Does religiosity have any play here? Here in the USA we find families that are more involved and engaged with organized religion tend to have large families. For example, “frum” or very religious Jewish families may have six to ten children. Modern (Jewish) orthodox may have three to five children. More secular Jewish or part Jewish part something else (or nothing else) have none to two.
So as organized or traditional religion disappears, so do births and babies. At some point we won’t have enough young people to take care of and pay for (through their taxes) the elderly, especially the elderly disabled.
It may be that as the non-religious people have fewer children while the religious ones have big families, the religious population will eventually replace the secular population as the majority. Louise Perry wrote an excellent piece on this in First Things – she predicts we will end up with a much smaller population overall (to the point where cities disappear in favour of smaller towns and villages) and the surviving population is much more religious.
When your children are your pension, your unemployment benefits, and your insurance, it makes sense to have as many as possible.
For better or worse, the State now does the above almost everywhere. If one is being cynical, heavily investing in your own one child, while other people’s pay the taxes, has a certain free-rider logic to it.
Plus, it’s seriously expensive these days in any modern society to raise and educate kids.
Absolutely, in many ways we have nationalised the purpose of a family.
How many of us expect our kids to give up work to become our carers when we get old? We expect the state to provide & we expect our kids to be entirely focused on progressing their careers.
The ‘social safety net’ is other people’s children. There is no ‘state’ that does the care work. Care work is done by people and all people are children conceived, gestated, born and raised by parents somewhere.
Having children is messy, gruelling, hard work for most women, especially those who have been brought up by their parents to believe that they are important members of society who must enjoy themselves to the full. Why would you choose to go through all of the hassle, if you could choose to avoid it? The choice is the thing.
When women were dependent on men for their survival, their only reason for existence was to have children, in the sense of collateral damage occurring after sex. There was no other reason for life. The children were to carry on the life, the boys making money and the girls having more children. That was how it was.
Since the 60s, women’s rights movements have moved them to equality (perhaps more than equality). Women can have a career, get drunk, party, enjoy themselves – why go back to the drudgery? This can be seen clearly today by how the few children are raised. Pregnancy and birth are seen as the big hurdles – but maternity pay helps. Then the nasty things like potty training, teeth brushing, getting up super-early to make breakfast can be handed over to the men, if they are still around, or – better still – to the state in the form of school teachers. Everything is about avoidance of the dirty, disgusting bits.
In societies where women are equal or more than equal, there will never be enough children. Immigration solves these problems because the immigrants tend to be from societies where men rule the roost – the result being children.
As the World becomes more prosperous, you won’t be able to import young adults from child rich areas. It will be like all the European countries importing Electricity from their neighbours when Europe becomes becalmed.
Many women (and men) with children restrict the number of children because of the costs. We could end up with fewer families with children, but more children in each family.
I’m told that after three it gets easier 🙂 , maybe because they start looking after each other, like they did in Victorian times.
But I expect there will be complaints about the inequality of some woman having children and some not.
You could be right about the costs. But what exactly does that mean?
Suppose both of us were working and we were talking about children. Would we want to maintain our lifestyle AND have children or is it either or? For me it is important to have children to keep the race going – would I expect financial incentives so that our lifestyle doesn’t change at all? No, I would expect to give up foreign holidays, have only one car, go out for fewer meals and put all of my resources into the children. This would not be popular for other people.
Fantasy. Islam and Christianity (Africa and South America) are in a numbers war. Western oriented countries will soon be overwhelmed.
In a worst case scenario, that could mean no healthcare, no pensions, and no social care.
The worst case is that your country and culture become whatever the immigrants who keep being imported turn it into.
Blah. Blah. Blah. My wife and I made ten children, with the help of the Lord, and plenty of red wine. They’re all making for great adults and have turned into people we love to hang out with. Children are a blessing from God. And the cultures that make the most people win. We didn’t make our children for that reason, but it’s true. I’m doing all I can to encourage folk to multiply themselves, through the Sacrament of Marriage of course. Let’s hope the younger generations get it on for God, for love, for joy, for happiness, for the Church, and for the country. Cheers!
You’re so close to the point when you identify the problem as beginning in France in the 1790s. What was emerging at that time, I wonder?
Ah, yes. The revolutionary spirit that’s engulfed the world ever since, and is now devouring itself to the point of population collapse.
No need for your evo-psych mumbo jumbo. This has everything to do with forsaking God and worshipping the self instead.
Interesting theory.
Well humans are a strange species. My guess is that at some point in the near future it will all change and having large families will become fashionable and affordable again. Most people enjoy kids and the career/travel etc. doesnt really compare in terms of life sarisfaction and enjoyment. Its a nihilistic moment as people are struggling financially in my opinion ( feminism/culture wars are just noise really ) but as we transition to hard currency and start to reap the benefits of technology at some point in the next twenty years the wheel will turn and we will have more kids when we feel richer and more secure.
It’s pretty simple. Having a child is one of the most difficult trying things an individual can do, it is also one of the most selfless and charitable things one can do, bringing a new life into this world, sacrificing of your time your energy your wealth and everything to help see them through to adulthood and equip them for the life ahead, at great cost to yourself.
It turns out that is incompatible in a society that places more and more emphasis on “self”, “finding your best self”, “living your best life”, “ensuring you’re mentally prepared for the challenges of child rearing”. This is because of a systemic attempt to destroy every connection people to have anything greater, nation, God, family, and everything else. We know have a society in which people are “free” from every demand on their time, loyalty and affections, and now every person sees the individual as the ultimate food and to hell with everyone else.
Seems to be working out great.
You may be right, but you’ll hardly convert people with that tone! Children are hard work, but they are also a joy. Parents giving the impression of actually enjoying their kids is the way to persuade people to take the plunge. Not making it out to be some gloomy calling.
Looking back in history is interesting, but I would venture to suggest that we don’t have a ‘fertility’ problem today – we have an abortion problem. 25% of all conceptions are aborted; 250,000 in England and Wales alone last year. But then nobody seems to mind too much, which is probably why the article didn’t feel it necessary or interesting enough to mention it.
In a nomadic society, the limit to the number of children a woman could nurture was determined by the fact that she could only carry one until the child was able to walk to keep up with the tribe on its necessary journey.
The number of children people in any society of the past were willing to have must be reckoned as including all those children who died of natural causes, mostly at an very young age, or at birth. Before the state kept records the number must have been colossal, especially given archaeological evidence from some sites.
Ancient Roman society practised infanticide on a huge scale. The Romans not considering a child fully human while it was a minor. Of all the peoples of the ancient world, one of the few exceptions not to practise infanticide were the Judeans.
Childhood as we conceive it has only developed in last four centuries. Previously, a person young in years joined the adult world as soon as they were physically able to. Out of necessity, the trajectory of any young life was to reach that point as soon as possible.
The industrial revolution threatened the modern concept of childhood. It being impossible to get upset about children working in the mines or the factories without such a concept. If a person young in years joins the adult world, they cease to be a child.
Additionally, the author would need to take into account the total carrying capacity of the planet in respect of human life. In the past, the rate of procreation would need to slow to a stable number if that capacity of, for example, the continent of Australia could only support a certain number of tens of thousands living a semi-nomadic life.
From her calculations the author omits abortion. If the total number of children a 21st century society had was reckoned to include those subject to abortions, her assessment would in one sense look more stark. Yet the motives more varied. Can a country that accepts with equanimity a quarter of a million abortions a year really have much ground for opposing the ability of a few hundred people to end their lives legally with judicial approval?
A lady priest of the Church of England with whom I was once acquainted used to say that, though she had no children of her own, she liked to think that someone else’s child would care for her in a old folks home, another would conduct her funeral, and a third would write her obituary in a local newspaper.
A young woman of my acquaintance said that she didn’t want children because she wanted to party, party, party; boogieing on down was her self-definition of worth. Yet, as any parent will know, their own selves are changed by having a child. Is that change what is feared by some?
At present we place the majority of costs of raising children on the parents but socialise the benefits through the welfare system. Outside of certain levels of discretionary spending I don’t think that we should make those who raise children worse off than those who don’t, given the non financial sacrifices they also have to make on top of being financially worse off. I’m not suggesting that we penalise the childless but we certainly should reward those who have children far more generously. However, I know this won’t happen, because as much as we protest about mass migration, which is fundamentally the outsourcing of having children to the developing world, the one thing we are unwilling to do is pay the costs for the society we claim to want and make having children a financially viable option for the majority without making them far worse off than their peers.
The reason why people are more “freaked out” about the fertility levels today than they were, say, 150 yers ago, when they were also declining, is that today they are either below or approaching being below the TFR replacement level, which means population shrinkage. Shrinkage was not a concern when fertility rates were declining in, say, 1850 or 1930, because the population was not, in fact, in danger of shrinking — even though there were decades where, of course, fertility was lower than average, the general trend, while down over time, was still very healthily above replacement rates. Not so today.
Immigration provides a temporary “solution” (it fails once immigrant levels, both in the origin and target countries, of fertility begin to match those in the target countries), it is an unpopular one to “native” populations almost everywhere.
It may be true that there is no “answer” to this problem that would be more palatable than living with the consequences of it are. Perhaps technology will “save” us in some unforeseen way (perhaps by reducing scarcity dramatically), but one should not be breezy about the impact of TFR levels being where they are over the medium and long term. Haranguing is not the answer, but breezy op-eds aren’t either.
God put man on earth, but man has turned selfish and will not listen to his maker who blessed him and said: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”
In his quest for realizing himself man has forgotten that children is a blessing from the Lord.
Evolutionary forces on fertility have been shaped in pre-history but not as explained here. Studies clearly show that at times of physical hardship a women has an evolutionary programmed drive to having more offspring. Many will die but it is more likely to produce the most living children to achieve puberty. In times of decreased hardship, there is evolutionary drive to invest in fewer children but with more nurture, which means the number born is less, due to for example, prolonged breastfeeding. But by this route even more offspring survive to puberty than if the mother has lots of offspring but as a result can’t give them all high quality nurture and resources.
So therefore, during times of abundance women are driven to have less children. And since everyone has increasingly become well off over the last few hundred years, the birth rate has inevitably declined.
It’s very difficult to discuss evolutionary theory without using teleological framing, i.e. speaking as if evolution has a purpose— “perhaps the most bewildering thing of all is that natural selection could not fashion a psychology that achieves the one thing it is meant to do: procreate.”
The idea of evolutionary mismatch makes heuristic sense in describing evolved attributes that that were adaptive in an earlier and different environment, but still, mismatch is a language metaphor that pictures evolution as moving along some trajectory.
This is not a criticism, but an agreement that the human situation is bewildering, so much so that we can form no coherent vision of its purpose. One appealing metaphor is that human evolution is simply expanding to edge of our petri dish— filling in the possibility space.
I take the Nietzschean view. We learned from Darwin that there is no intelligent designer. But that doesn’t stop the human mind from intuiting teleonomy in the organized structure in the world we inhabit; we can’t escape a sort of intelligent design inference. This is how Olympia Campbell can conclude that evolution is failing its primary purpose.
So, when Nietzsche said God is dead, he wasn’t celebrating a liberating insight, he was simply pointing out that humans are utterly alone.
Darwin may have identified a mechanism for gradual species adaptation but this doesn’t do away with the need for intelligent design. You are right to intuit purpose (teleonomy) from the world’s organised structure and in particular where life is concerned.
I’m not anti-evolution: clearly we see adaptation and change in biology. But evolution doesn’t explain everything. It’s a bit like trying to explain a book without a writer.
Missing from this analysis is pensions. For most of humanity, people have depended totally on their children for support in infirm old age. Losing all your children or, in the case of girls, having them married off meant starving to death. That was an important reason why people had more than 2 children. Nowadays we believe that we can live off the state.
Anecdotally, I have found that the people who have five or more children are either the very rich or the very poor. The very rich can afford them. The very poor know that they can depend on the state. It is the people in the middle who have cut their fertility, people who believe that people should support their own children but who struggle to do so. With high housing costs, that is only going to get worse. Successive Labour and Conservative governments have encouraged large scale immigration leading to higher housing costs and lower birth rates amongst those who have grown up or been born in the UK.
“ natural selection could not fashion a psychology that achieves the one thing it is meant to do: procreate.”
Natural selection works as expected, it’s not trying to achieve anything, it’s just a species who does not procreate dies out
This probably has more to do with genetics. We as an animal are only our genes moving through time within a body (Darwinism). Whenever food is scarce and there is overcrowding and wars and strife etc. genes turn off the reproductive “bits” to save the genes (and species). We may think we’re clever but we are only an animal and not above other animals.
edit: the title is as arrogant as the individual that thinks they present the truth. We will never know the whole truth.
Fertility rates are one thing. How many children people decide to have are another.
Fertility has declined as global population increases, potentially for a number of reasons including pollution, diet, stress etc.
Parenting decisions though are influenced by economics and social norms and the availability of contraception facilitates these decisions.
The decline of religion in western society and our consumer culture seem like two of the big social factors.
I wonder if this is just the natural order playing out?
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Or it could just be that when most people worked on the farm children were useful labour and when they moved to cramped quarters in the cities to take industrial jobs children became a burden.
The fun of evolutionary psych/anthro/soc is that there’s always a good fitness (reproductive capacity) story that’s pretty much unfalsifiable to go with any phenomenon.
If it were the case that lots of kids were being born in 21st century..
Story A: In times of rapid societal change, having many children means that some may have characteristics to survive and continue lineage in this environment.
Story B: Surplus calories, historically low levels of infant mortality and violence, means that nearly all will survive. Get it on while the gettings good.
Story C: With the apparent unsustainability of the welfare state, which replaced many of the functions that the extended family once provided, having more children may provide the future means of procuring these advantages.
Why have people stopped having children? The answer is not complicated. For all of human history having children was in your own self-interest–for labor in helping to support the family, to compensate for high infant and child mortality, and for support in old age. Remove those three and you remove the incentive to have children. And voila! People have stopped having children.
Why do my posts keep disappearing?
It’s happened to me before. Post something, it appears but with no upvote down vote option, will disappear shortly after and then may reappear a few hours later. Can’t have been flagged since it happens immediately. I stopped posting all together for a while because it was every post and it ruined the experience for me. It started working again recently but I experienced the same thing today. Reported it multiple times but never got any help from the support team.
Quite strange. Mine did too. It wasn’t in my account but when I pressed for newest comments, it then showed up. I’ll see if it is in my account now.
LBJ’s Great Society paid black women more money for every black child they could have if there was no man living with them in the “home.” I’d like to see a study of whether that policy increased or decreased the American black population.
Do you think your maximising wealth/status hypothesis accords with your own genetic experience?
Biological preservation, balance, reproduction and growth do seem to accord with the “maximum power principle”
https://www.issuesofsustainability.org/helpndoc-content/MaximumPowerPrinciple.html#:~:text=The%20Maximum%2DPower%20Principle%20first,Figure%204%20demonstrates%20these%20ideas.&text=The%20more%20energy%20that%20is,until%20natural%20limits%20are%20reached.
So it makes sense to maximise wealth/status within a family unit especially within an economic environment of wealth accumulation in which wealth can maximise survival opportunities for future generations.
Thus rather than the calculus being one of fertility maximisation and thereby maximising family derived labour opportunities within a more agrarian environment, within a more capitalist environment, the calculus becomes one of wealth maximisation and maximising family derived investment opportunities which gives regard to the dynamics of intergenerational inheritance.
Presumably, when the human population reaches hard limits to resource availability, the biological dynamics of the maximum power principle will change again which may well be based on the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance so that the calculus reorientates to character maximisation in order to survive a resource starved world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues
Historically, family size has decreased as infant mortality has decreased.
Those of our ancestors who had 6-12 children did so because only 2-3 might survive during bad times. Most Family trees that go back to the 19th Century are marked repeatedly by the phrase ‘died young’.
So perhaps we shouldn’t assume people instinctively want large families.
I didn’t notice anything in the article about vaccines, additives in food, GM modified food, hormones and drugs in the water supply (as for the most part only ‘dirt’ is removed). The Covid vaccines cause sterility, miscarriage and still births – all up four fold or more since they rolled out. See the national stats in all of the Western countries.
So the birthrate wasn’t falling before the COVID vaccines came out?
This analysis conveniently ignores ultra religious communities who all have high birth rates. Maybe the future’s religious?
I think the author underestimates the impact of modern healthcare on the numbers. In my grandparents generation (for many in their great grandparents generation), it was normal to have a large number of births in order to have a few survive into adulthood and to be able to support them in old age.
As basic medical knowledge and care evolved children stopped dying and survived, leading to a growth of larger families.
Subsequent generations realised that they didn’t need to do so much breading and family sizes shrank. Enabled in large part by the pill.
Coupled with the state nationalisation of the care of the elderly the need for a family further reduced to where we are today.
There are already 8 billion people on this planet, and projections are between 9 and 10 billion by 2050. Resources are stretched to the limit and depleting, agricultural land is eroding quickly, desertification is increasing, billions live in total poverty in this world and it’s getting worse as population increases. It’s a darn good thing China implemented a one child policy, otherwise they would have 2 billion people and counting. Countries that can’t control their population growth are condemned to mass poverty and social turmoil, such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria and much of Africa. Believe it or not, climate change is real, environmental degradation is real, resource depletion is happening everywhere. There will be major crisis in hot zones, depleting fresh water sources, and unlivable heat in many parts of the world leading to misery, disease, mass migration and chaos. Welcome to the future, it’s only starting. I won’t even get into the economic turmoil that all this will create and the nasty politics, even civil wars and unrest, and wars between countries over resources and fresh water supplies.
Families are expensive and most young people today would prefer to be single and have fun. Fortunately all human labour will be automated within 20 years and if there are breakthroughs in cheap energy, which is very likely given developments in solar and nuclear fusion, then they will be adopted at scale and there will be no evonom ill effects of declining fertility. In fact the contrary will be true because public places and tourist destinations will become less crowded.