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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.
Numbers don't back that story though, Gen Z is the least sexually active generation ever.
Women surrendering to their base instincts when it comes to sex leading to less overall sex seems entirely plausible, though.
Isn't women's "base" instinct to not sleep around, and to want a relationship? That's what evolution tells us. Wanting to live like a man is the more difficult thing for a woman to do, as it goes against their nature (i.e. base instincts).
Does evolution actually teach that though? Or is it just a narrative that uses evolutionary terms to make itself sound more plausible?
It is not like you can actually empirically test evopsych theories on real people. All you can do is make theories about evolutionary pressures. Notably, evolution doesn't always lead to the most rational result. Eggs are more expensive than sperm, pregnancy is taxing, and child-rearing requires community support. This implies that women should be wired for stability, and since sleeping around is anything but, there is a rational argument to be made that women would not be wired for this.
But evolutionary theories need to be adjusted to fit reality. In reality young women have a constant sex drive. Not as high as men, but still significant enough to cause some amount of distress if they don't get laid. In reality, a good amount of women cheat on their partners with men they barely know. As barriers to casual relationships have been removed we see more women preferring them. As practical reasons to get into stable relationships with men have been reduced, we see a decrease in desire for stable relationships with men.
In general, if your theory not only fails to predict reality, but actually predicts the opposite, then clearly the theory is wrong.
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