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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33106 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Demolish genericland's infrastructure so that the survivors of the resultant famines and civil wars are forced to return to subsistence farming. TFR ought to skyrocket within the next couple of years.

I think the main reason fertility is crashing, and has been crashing for the past two centuries at least, is just because people don't actually wanna have kids that much. Having kids is hard and unpleasant and a lot of people just don't want to. The industrial revolution, and especially birth control and abortion have made it so you don't have to have kids if you don't want to. Intuitively this makes sense to me, as I don't see why humans would be selected for wanting to have kids rather than wanting to have sex in an environment where the two are inseparable. I don't think government interventions short of enslaving people in dystopian sci-fi breeding farms or the aforementioned undoing of the industrial revolution will really make much of a dent in things.

people don't actually wanna have kids that much.

The drop in fertility seems largely related to marriage rates: https://ifstudies.org/blog/no-ring-no-baby

People also have fewer kids than they want.

I assume people who are more likely to want kids are also more likely to want to get married.

People also have fewer kids than they want.

People do say "oh I want X many kids" but to me this just feels like throwing out a number for pollsters. I don't really take it that seriously.

I have three kids. We are on the fence about a fourth. I couldn’t imagine having just one kid. Kids are hard but most worthwhile things are hard.

Realistically even in low fertility European countries(with the exception of eastern ukraine) single children are rare and the fertility decline is driven by childlessness.

I think the main reason fertility is crashing, and has been crashing for the past two centuries at least, is just because people don't actually wanna have kids that much. Having kids is hard and unpleasant and a lot of people just don't want to.

yeah this. the widespread use of birth control tells us what people's actual/revealed preferences are.

The problem with relying on solely revealed preferences here is that people are also sold a bill of falsities on fertility. Particularly women aged 12-25 are consistently misinformed by the education system, media, and related sources. No one respectable is out there correctly informing them that they are on a very strict clock, and are actually already halfway to prune status by 25.

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