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Is it the damn phones?. A new article from one of my favorite energy bloggers suggests that the cratering of fertility rates (which were stable for much of the late 20th century and early aughts) could be driven by the adoption of smartphones. I'm personally rather convinced by this hypothesis, as many of the other explanations given by both people on this forum (status) and in-real life (economics, fear about the future) fall apart with counter examples. You're really telling me that motherhood is now equally low status in the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Africa to depress fertility below 2, or that middle-class young white people are so economically oppressed that they can't have kids? I don't buy it. The smartphone, and its related access to a 24/7, truly global media environment seems to the only material change that could cross so many geographic and cultural lines. There's also a ton of causal mechanisms: hypergamy for instagram baddies, less time interacting with people in person so fewer marriages and thus fewer babies, and atrophied social skills for when interactions do happen in the wild.
Of course a lot of the effects of the smartphone can't be decoupled from high-modernity in general and its culture of extreme convenience and isolation, nor from related technologies like social media and short-form video content. And the groups that seem to avoid this depression in fertility seem to avoid all of these technologies.
I haven't killed my smartphone just yet, but I did delete all my dating apps about a month ago and have stayed off of them for the longest time since I last had a girlfriend. More in person relationships for me in the future I hope.
I continue to maintain that the "modern" (IE post-modern) liberal-striver ethos is simply not conducive to forming healthy and stable relationships much less families.
I see the all the stuff that @Nerd brings up below about the pursuit of jobs over relationships, and the collapse of socialization, as the downstream effects of people choosing to prioritize "emancipation" and the maximization of one's own material comfort/status over other considerations.
Being in a relationship means being bound to someone else. Having kids means incurring significant costs both material and emotional. It also means accepting that you are no longer the protagonist of your own story. A lot of people are simply not prepared to make that trade.
Phones/Screentime are merely a contributing factor.
This is correct.
Even well intentioned and thoughtful liberal leaning folks confused "individual sovereignty" with the -ism that is "individualism." Individual sovereignty is at the core of American politics (the rest of the west ... maybe). The basic idea being that the government can't tell you what to do outside of the basics; taxes, laws*.
"Individualism" is a self-maximizing ideology that blends together individual freedom, lack of responsibility, hedonic indulgence, and social-proof ego maximization. It cannot lead anywhere but to a neurotic state of simultaneous self-reverence and self-loathing. What better example than the Instagram account with over a million followers who suffers from depression and addiction.
The whole point of family formation is that an individual makes the conscious and affirmative decision to demote themselves in importance in order to gain a level of happiness that is not possible on one's own, even with unlimited financial resources. Every (good) family I've seen start in my friend group has resulted in both the husband and wife taking a step back or slowing down in their careers, social life, hobbies, and even physical fitness (dad guts and mom butts!) .... and then, within a few years, being obviously more happy and fulfilled than all of the single strivers or, god forbid, DINKs.
Modern individualism is the ultimate bill of goods. It is the secular "Non serviam" and it's led, as its biblical predecessor did, to hell.
LOL.
Look, I agree with the sentiment. But, come on, you literally clipped the quote right before I wrote "in theory."
You're implicitly using the theory (that you seem to agree isn't true) to back up your argument.
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