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Its the women. Any bottleneck on reproduction is almost entirely going to be defined by the population of reproductive-age women and their behavior. Phones, opportunity costs, education levels, loss of religion, literally ALL of those have demonstrably higher impact on female behavior than male. Given that we can't raise TFR without female participation (barring a future technological fix) seems silly to look elsewhere for solutions.
The other thing about the Fertility crisis is that it reads as an individual problem if you're unaware of the larger context.
Its difficult to think your individual failures are responsible for summer days getting warmer, or for icebergs disappearing. Although the political class really wants you to feel personally responsible, so some people do feel have such feeling.
But if you're having difficulty finding a partner to reproduce with, after giving it the ol' college try for a while, you will assume it has more to do with your local area, errors in your approach, or maybe you're not spending enough money or need to practice charisma, game, rizz, get in better shape, whatever to advance.
But digging into the stats and seeing its a struggle for the majority of the population, from a broad range of backgrounds, are experiencing the same issue and it does read as a larger, structural issue over which you have little control. And indeed, your ATTEMPTS to fix it will fail insofar as it increases competition in your local area.
I say again: Individual attempts to 'adapt' will make things worse.
Thats an unfortunate irony with the current dating 'meta.' The more men throw time, money, and effort into trying to reproduce (in direct competition with each other) the worse the overall equilibrium occurs because of how women adapt to this competitive environment. Having lots of people adopting individual strategies to try and get ahead makes the larger situation worse. Its a death spiral, in that regard.
Coordination around climate fixes is VERY VERY HARD, but if someone takes certain rational individual efforts to address it, that generally does not make the situation as a whole worse for everyone. Using fewer fossil fuels, reducing personal consumption has few externalities. Hell, if you think the crisis is inevitable, moving to a hardened bunker in an area safer from the damage doesn't hurt anybody else. Still, defection is very easy.
And on the flip side, of course, if you're convinced you don't want kids anyway, fertility rates won't register as an ongoing concern unless you're reading certain books and realize what a sub-replacement TFR means for globalized trade.
I do not think that it is that simple. A man who wants kids and does not find a partner locally certainly has options. He can import a mail-order bride. He can just pay a third-worlder for a surrogate pregnancy and raise his kid as a single dad. Even if China managed to get artificial wombs to work tomorrow, I don't think that half of the single men would embrace fatherhood overnight.
We used to live in a society where women were willing to take on a lot of hardships and give up a lot of opportunities to have kids, and men were mostly bankrolling the family. However, I do not believe that this is The Rightful Order Of Things.
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Sure. That's basically tautological, in that only women can have babies.
Much less clear. To pick one example, men secularised first and fastest over the 20th century.
The birth rate collapse isn't being caused by women being too picky. It's caused by less coupling, which is in turn caused by people socialising much less due to screens.
And yet, the discussion centers on men's failures, when by the precise definition you're pointing out, cratering tfr is a 'failure' on womens' part. That's my whole point, it makes no sense to add pressure to men as a 'solution.'
Society refuses to even consider any solution that might upset women in the slightest.
Men were always less religious on average, that was just standard understanding.
Until recently. Somehow this also coincides with various denominations allowing female pastors.
Once again, "loss of religion" very obviously impacts one gender more than the other.
Its the women.
Errm, no it doesn't? The three theses OP mentioned are neither about men nor women. Academic discussion doesn't focus on men (for the reason that the TFR data is mostly about women) and if you go somewhere like /r/natalism there's much more discussion about women than men, because women are the ones who have the babies.
Honestly, I have no idea where you got the idea that birth rate discussions focus on men. They really, really don't.
Throw a couple more 'reallys' in there and I still won't find that believeable.
"The Missing Men of the American Marriage Market."
and
Emphasis mine.
Two months ago.
"No one hates marriage. Women are just demanding better men."
Last month.
The "weaponized incompetence" meme has gotten some play too:
‘Weaponized incompetence’ can harm relationships. Here’s how to counter it.
Last December.
I have literally, in my entire life, never seen an article published claiming that female incompetence was ever to blame for relationship failure. Indeed, the mainstream narrative is that women are incorrectly viewed as incompetent as a barrier to their advancement.
These are extraordinarily easy to find. THAT'S where I 'got the idea.'
That's where all the other men are getting said idea too, just for the record. Its widely noticed, I just like to call it out.
Can you name a single policy proposal in any Western Country (hell, try non-Western) that tries to improve TFR by increasing restrictions on female behavior?
I can point out several that are paying women directly or otherwise offering bribes/incentives to women to get married and have kids.
China HAS recently tried some restrictions on women, funny enough.
How about if we look at objective source rather than you just pulling up some articles that annoyed you?
Google Trends data. Birth rates men vs birth rates women for the past five years. Searches for birth rates women are about four times as common. 'The discussion' about birth rates is predominantly about women, obviously. Always has been.
The fact that you can find lots of articles about women complaining about their relationships (also something they've been doing since time immemorial) isn't evidence to the contrary.
I can't name a single policy from any country, western or eastern, that tries to improve TFR by increasing restrictions on male or female behaviour (except in the roundabout sense that baby bonuses are going to be a net loss tax-wise for childless people). The only thing that comes to mind is abortion restriction in Poland or various US red states, which is a big restriction on female behaviour, although advocates don't tend to justify the policies by talking about birth rates.
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Has the west tried restrictions on men, either? This could easily be the west’s preference for the carrot over the stick.
Literally the entire alimony regime limits the ability of men to reproduce (unless they go deadbeat, which perversely encourages the stupidest and poorest to breed over the intelligent and conscientious.) Talk about 'splinter in thine eye, sequoia redwood in mine'! The health insurance market is a transfer of wealth from men to women. The entire DEI structure is a transfer of wealth from men to women. Social security - from demographics and life expectancy - is a transfer from young men to old women. The west has not tried a bachelor tax, or literally enslaving men. But they very may well do so, in the near future!
But the most timid of social considerations (well, maybe women should consider family to be important) immediately gets shouted down. Not even the most reactionary of radicals has something like a 'female tax' on their agenda. Or even lifting the extraordinary privileges the feminists have given themselves. And you say that we should try more restrictions on men?
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I think the argument here would be that religious men are mostly pretty similar to secular men, while religious women behave very differently from secular women. It's higher impact on women than it is on men.
Yes, one must certainly ask what have women adopted in the place of standard religiosity.
I think its pretty obvious.
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