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I’ve heard it said we shouldn’t worry about fertility because eventually those with pro-fertile genes will even things out. But this isn’t true, isn’t it? Pro-fertile genes are just “sexual desire”. The modern world takes the people with the most fertile genes and makes them infertile through artificial sexual outlets (casual sex, porn) and artificial intimacy outlets (parasocial relationships, pity politics). So there’s no optimistic evolutionary solution to infertility, there’s only a cultural solution. Or am I missing something? There’s genes for wanting to ejaculate when seeing a woman, but no gene for “wanting to ejaculate inside a woman and wait nine months to create a child”.
Sure but there are genes for personality traits that, in the current social and cultural environment, make you more inclined to make babies. And who knows, maybe they are the basis for future adaptations that will eventually evolve into direct utilitarian urge to maximize one's inclusive genetic fitness.
The personality traits that used to lead to fertility in the past, like a love for cute /neotonous things, a desire to be a “parent”, all now have cheaper and most accessible satisfactions, like watching anime and owning a stuffed animal or pet. I don’t know of a personality trait that leads to fertility as its most expedient satisfaction
I do. And I'll demonstrate with a personal example.
My sister has wanted a baby very, very badly for as long as anyone can remember(I would expect her to have about 4 children and have well founded reasons that I don't think need to be explained in any significant detail to be considered reasonable). My parents thought getting her a cute dog would be a good way to scratch that urge at the beginning of adolescence but no, she regularly got mistaken for being the mom of, say, little cousins or occasionally kids she was babysitting... even in the presence of that cute dog.
Having 3+ children is not the done thing in her social circle and she went against her in-laws pressure, and to a lesser extent, our mom's, to take actions which militate in the direction of having 3+ children, largely because that is what she wants to do. If this personality trait is genetic(and, anecdata, but one cousin decided to practice his French by moving to Louisiana and getting a job at a Cajun-French revival preschool, turning down an internship in his chosen field to do so, and I occupy a volunteer position coaching fundamentalist boys, and mom's an elementary school teacher, and one aunt will nearly get into knife fights to hold the baby at social gatherings).
Yes, it's an anecdatum. But I don't know that anyone has actually done any high quality studies, so YMMV.
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I don't think having stuffed animals and pets comes close to satisfying the maternal instinct.
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