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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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So in short: you find the premise of the question inherently flawed, and if given the option to implement a policy but with the requirement that it be even-handed, would have absolutely none to suggest?

Yes, the premise is flawed, since treating women and men as equivalent when it comes to reproduction is an aesthetic choice more than a necessary one. They are neither equivalent nor interchangeable when it comes to reproduction, so an even-handed requirement is applying restrictions to preclude the most effective actions. That leaves you with ineffective actions, of course, which seems to be by design. I could have complied with the letter, if not spirit, of your question by simply suggesting we ban contraceptives for women and men, but that would have been dishonest, and I'd rather get to the heart of the matter rather than play word games. "The law, in its majestic equality, equally forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread," as the quote goes.

When men can give birth and women can impregnate them, then equally applied laws will make sense and appropriate. Until then, we are left with the ugly truth that women control reproduction, and that when they control themselves they choose not to reproduce. When they are educated and have the tools available, fertility rates plummet. I don't see a way to untangle this knot, so I say cut it or leave it be and make peace with that decision.

But we see that, eg, religious women who are highly educated still have more kids. So there are clearly some things that can at least ameliorate the trend.

(I'm also not entirely convinced the problem is education qua education and not the incredibly delayed entry into adulthood. What I see a lot of is women feeling like they are finally "ready"/at a socially acceptable stage to have kids, and then starting to have kids - ie, wanting to reproduce - and continuing to want to have kids, but running out of time to have more of them. This is entirely anecdotal, of course, but I see this pattern incredibly frequently, where women describe badly wanting N+1 kids where N is the current number they have, and they'll iterate on this until eventually they have to give up on it because they're too old, their husband is opposed, etc. That's not "women don't want kids", its "women make decisions, especially when young, that aren't conducive to having more kids, and end up bearing the consequence via having fewer kids than they would have otherwise chosen to have")

Anyway. It's not as if we need to get back to fifties level reproduction, nudging things upwards a bit would already help.

(Actually, in that vein, what are the differences between low fertility and extremely low fertility countries? Are there any trends there?)