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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 think it has more to do with society telling women to surrender to their base instincts when it comes to sex. It makes sense that straight up encouraging women to sleep around in their twenties would cause stable relationships to plummet which then reduces sex and fertility rates across the population.
I really don't think it is that complicated. Young women seem to deliberately shy away from romance and commitment, instead preferring more casual hook ups and friends with benefits. Society broadly encourages this. Even parents seem fine with it, not wanting to dictate how their daughters should use their bodies. This naturally results in family formation being delayed which then leads to fewer children overall.
Women do not have a base instinct towards promiscuity. They have a drive to be in a sexual relationship, which often sometimes gets exploited into promiscuity. But you are also, I suspect, just basing this off the most promiscuous 10% of the population.
I am basing this off personal experience. When speaking with the women I meet at my university as well as male friends with girlfriends, a few tings very quickly became clear to me.
I don't quite understand where the idea that women have a "drive to be in a relationship" comes from. From where I am standing it does not look like young men are manipulating innocent maidens with promises of commitment when they actually just want to fuck. If anything, young women seem somewhat afraid of commitment and tend to prefer the men that are less serious, finding solace in knowing that they won't have to worry about the responsibilities of a relationship.
As far as I can tell, the exceptions from the above consist mostly of women who were in relationships since high school, and women who are largely not interested in dating and romance in the first place (too anxious, focused on studies, etc.). There are also some who clearly prefer long term relationships, but even they tend to sleep around for a bit after a breakup.
How could women's nature have changed SO quickly? It was nearly a hundred percent the other way around just twenty years ago.
It is a cultural change not a biological one. Long term relationships are valued less, personal freedom is valued more. Everyone wants to extend their adolescence. Women are encouraged to find themselves through short term flings while anyone speaking out against the status quo is seen as controlling (which to be fair is often a reasonable complaint).
I am not familiar with the dating market of twenty years ago, but I would imagine that long term relationships were more highly valued, and regarded as something important you might miss out on if you are too slow. Combine that with fewer options to sleep around and more status loss for doing so.
In the past, women's behavior was policed more closely and they were more heavily encouraged to control themselves. I would argue this, along with them needing a man's income to help care for the kid, caused the perception that they had some internal biological drive to form lifelong monogamous relationships. Just like people in the west take our morals for granted as natural inborn human virtues only to be surprised when they are not shared by immigrants. It turns out that a lot of what we thought was natural actually had to be taught. It was just such an integral part of society that it was never questioned in the first place. Now we are radically changing the things that we teach, and finding out that the natural state of humans - women included - is more base and savage than we thought.
I suspect that finding the right balance between enforcing prosocial behaviors and allowing people maximum personal freedom, while also minimizing authoritarianism, is going to be a major challenge in the future.
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