Ioper
1yr ago
I don't know about that, I liked showing off that I was engaged. You still don't need to get a second ring.
Ioper
1yr ago
If it isn't something serious I'd just apologise for the fight and if she has any shame she'll do the same. If she doesn't then you might have a problem but if you haven't fought before it's probably worth just taking the L and moving on, regardless of who's right.
Ioper
1yr ago
They circumcised you when you went in for appendicitis, without your consent?
Ioper
1yr ago
Any reason they have to be stretchy? Couldn't they just be loose fitting like a big t-shirt+ shorts or a robe/kaftan?
Ioper
1yr ago
Well, I can't say for sure but it followed, with some lag, a series of extensive reforms in regards to parental leave, equality in the work place, state funded day care and so on, that at least seemed to boost female labour force participation.
It didn't follow immediately after these reforms, to the extent I'm aware, but something did boost Swedish tfr compared to nearby comparable countries.
It should be said that it also somewhat coincided with an economic boom and it's end somewhat coincided with the severe recession that followed. The general boom in the 80s happened in other comparable places as well though and they didn't experience nearly as big a fertility premium, and after the recession ended Swedish fertility largely rebounded to a sustained higher level at ~1.9, which of course is below replacement but still decent and sustainable in the medium term.
All this happened well before any large scale migration of higher fertility groups (that actually aren't that fertile once they get here it turns out).
Lastly, I don't think further efforts to boost equality will have much impact on fertility, I think other issues are far more important.
Ioper
1yr ago
That assumes the repair is logged or discovered. Perhaps shoddy black market repairs is or has been an issue in Poland?
Obviously this doesn't apply when there the maintainance contract gets transferred like here.
IMO the massive decline in fertility is a direct result of the sexual revolution. There were other causes like urbanization but the sudden drop in the 1970s is staggering.
This is just incomprehensible to me. I'll admit that I grew up sheltered and nerdy, but still: none of my friends were having sex or really even close to having sex in middle school. Maybe the 90s were better after all?
Maybe this is difference between Sweden and the US but when I grew up in the 90s in a completely white, affluent suburb my estimation was that some 20-25% had sex before the end of middle school, with women having slightly more sex (due to being able to find marginally older partners). Another 30-40% had sex some time during high school (weighted towards the end) and the remaining 40-50% during university.
The survey reports that 60% of teenagers report using a condom during their last sexual encounter. Is that not kinda low given teenage pregnancy rates? I am a prude in real life who dislikes salacious talk, so I haven't talked about condom usage with my friends. So I don't really have a strong intuition here.
Who the hell uses condoms for anything but one night stands? You might as well not have sex at that point.
Maybe I'm just surrounded by giga-chads but that has not been the issue for any of the men around me IRL, whether they found their partner the old fashioned way or through online dating, but it's a complaint I hear repeatedly online. Then again, people in places like the ww threads here and elsewhere frequently have bizarre stories of their issues dating which suggest to me that they are not just slightly below the median in mate attractiveness but very much so.
I think the issue here is that the internet amplifes the voice of the bitter losers that always have had issues, but were just invisible before. People like to trot out the graph of recently increasing sexlessness among young men but that has since rebounded.
As for why people don't have kids, I always come back to historic fertility trends and note that urbanism killed fertility a hundred years before feminism or modern dating markets, and it's remained remarkably consistent throughout time and place and the primary thing that has changed is the rate of urbanisation.
It seems to me that some combination of children being a major economic drain rather than a boon, delayed pair bonding, higher cost of living (particularly sufficiently large housing in safe areas with jobs), access to entertainment and maybe female labour force participation (lots of evidence against this being a major factor though) are the real culprits.
Ioper
1yr ago
I could be because people are poorer in real terms than they used to be.
The inflation that already happened is still here and inflation remains elevated. More than that interest rates are way up which vastly increases people's housing cost (which usually amounts to their primary expense). People have gotten raises but they don't compensate for inflation or the consequences of interest rate hikes.
All taken together people are poorer, more uncertain about the future and a lot of things just feel scary.
Ioper
2yr ago
It detracts from what we should be learning about re: WWII, like the enormous sacrifices of white Christian American men
World War II casualties by nation, ranked from highest to lowest:
Soviet Union - 26,000,000
China - 15,000,000
Germany - 5,533,000
Poland - 5,820,000
Japan - 2,830,000
Yugoslavia - 1,700,000
Romania - 1,600,000
France - 600,000
Hungary - 580,000
United States - 405,000
Italy - 410,000
United Kingdom - 383,700
Canada - 42,000
Australia - 39,700
Netherlands - 301,000
Greece - 520,000
Czechoslovakia - 345,000
Belgium - 88,000
Norway - 12,000
New Zealand - 11,900
As a percent of the population, America is not even in the top 20.
Ioper
1yr ago
A way of thinking about this is that radical life extension already exists, it's called having children and being part of a tribe.
How do you see both happening? When you're in striking range with the knife you're inside the striking range of the bat.
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