Thinking about it myself I think there is an aspect that could be a "secret" driving force.
I think women choose to have less children/none when they are further away from their family network and/or town they grew up.
I lived in Brighton for many years and it is an example of a city where no one is from there!
Having a child is scary and knowing as much as possible before birth is helpful. So if you know the school/the area/the postman you have less variables to worry about. Less externalities to worry about. Not knowing them increases the burden of having children.
The example of poorer people having children, well people in lower socioeconomic groups tend to not move as much or as far. If you are in social housing you are not going to move unless the council asks you - you have far less movement than those in the private market (I am not including those >50 years of age as they no longer can bear children on average).
The question then becomes: do I want to raise a child in an area I don't know, in a school I don't know, away from family, with limited security in housing and relationships (what I mean is dating people that are completely unrelated to your "group" i.e. you're from Northern Ireland and the other half is London - no overlap on groups and prescreening as well as the undeniable increase in divorce rates).
This does not sound like a good decision.
This generation of women have moved more and with the increase in educational opportunities has led to many women moving to cities for high powered jobs. Women are less likely now to live in the small town then men are, less likely to have family around when raising children and I think that could influence us without thinking about it. Hence, why no policy I can see addresses it.
If we had a policy saying "you're a young woman wanting to have children, you are from this area - we will help you move back to this locality for you to have children" maybe that could help but how to enforce it?
Wonder if anyone else thinks this could be a significant driver?
Absolutely. I've made similar comments on the written one and before, as I think this always gets really overlooked when people talk about poorer countries and families having more kids. They always miss this element, that poorer families are much more likely to live closer together and rely on each other more for everything, plus do get access to some more benefits which makes the childcare calculation totally different. A two income wealthier couple who lives in a city away from their respective wider families has so much more pressure points when it comes to childcare if there is no supoort system nearby.
Here is my thesis on this: Birth rates are collapsing globally because children no longer are net beneficial from a resource standpoint to men. The basic bargain that males and females struck was along these lines. Both males and females prioritize survival over reproduction. Human survival is tied to resource production. Females traded children to men for indirect access to male resources. We do not have an independent desire to procreate. Procreation needs to align for both the male and the female with survival, which means resource production. When children became net negative a male's resources, the female's value in the trade dropped. So females shifted to direct resource production. And now, mating and survival are no longer aligned. Women still have all of the evolutionary vestiges of the cooperative survival model which push women to become dependent on men - propensity for love, strong care for children (i.e. their valuable resource), bonding on intercourse, etc. So they are striving for direct resource production in a body designed for dependence. And men are switching to the Genghis Kahn model of procreation - i.e. sex without commitment. The partnership model of marriage offers men no benefits as its net negative to their own resource production, and as culture erodes, the push to marriage falls apart. It evolutionary biology in a modern economy - that is why its happening everywhere, regardless of culture.
Do a thought experiment. What if instead of giving women tax subsidies for children as in Hungary, ALL of the benefits were granted to the male on his income alone. The moment you get married, taxes go down. Have kids, his income becomes tax free. Re-create the value of children to the male, and watch marriage skyrocket. We focus on the mother. That is exactly backwards from an evolutionary perspective. Its the value of the trade to the male that makes marriage work.
I can't think of an example of any other animal whose offspring is a net benefit for its survival; in fact, reproduction is the biggest resource drain for pretty much any creature. It seems unlikely that humans would be so unique in not developing an instinct to procreate; more plausible that we are uniquely able to fool our instincts, i.e. contraception.
If it is a matter of kids as resources, your thought experiment would work only if the benefits were larger than the cost of raising the child - a back of the envelope calculation tells me it would take more than 20 tax-free years for a US median income to break even on one child.
Status-anxiety doubtless plays a role, but I suspect there's more to it than that. Various organizations over the years -Ford Foundation, World Bank, etc. have vigorously promoted low birthrates and distributed the means whenever possible. I can't help but feel there are more sinister forces at work when such a profound phenomenon transcends cultures.
I see your point. status-anxiety is also arguably the essence of the woke mind-virus. Still, I wouldn't put it past the Davocrat types to release a biochemical agent to reduce the population overall. Honestly, I think they're that evil.
To be fair those organisations have, as far as I'm aware, been promoting low birth rates in Africa where the birth rate has historically been very high and where fertility is running out-of-control, with weak governments without much cash unable to provide basic service because there are too many hungry mouths. On top of this, since the nineties family planning in sub-Saharan Africa has been intertwined with the totally uncontroversial goal of AIDS prevention.
I’ve long thought that “status” is a/the key issue.
In addition to LP’s points on this, consider this:
Children have ALWAYS been about status.
In previous times, couples needed children to SUSTAIN / IMPROVE status.
In Hollywood today, the wokeiest celebs have children so they can have them be trans… for status.
Children and status have always been linked.
To think it used to be about a beautiful natural flowering of eternal love between 2 people, before nasty modernism took over, is a little too Hallmark … even for the Xmas season.
I enjoyed reading it, and even more listening to it. Insightful as ever.
Interesting article.
Thinking about it myself I think there is an aspect that could be a "secret" driving force.
I think women choose to have less children/none when they are further away from their family network and/or town they grew up.
I lived in Brighton for many years and it is an example of a city where no one is from there!
Having a child is scary and knowing as much as possible before birth is helpful. So if you know the school/the area/the postman you have less variables to worry about. Less externalities to worry about. Not knowing them increases the burden of having children.
The example of poorer people having children, well people in lower socioeconomic groups tend to not move as much or as far. If you are in social housing you are not going to move unless the council asks you - you have far less movement than those in the private market (I am not including those >50 years of age as they no longer can bear children on average).
The question then becomes: do I want to raise a child in an area I don't know, in a school I don't know, away from family, with limited security in housing and relationships (what I mean is dating people that are completely unrelated to your "group" i.e. you're from Northern Ireland and the other half is London - no overlap on groups and prescreening as well as the undeniable increase in divorce rates).
This does not sound like a good decision.
This generation of women have moved more and with the increase in educational opportunities has led to many women moving to cities for high powered jobs. Women are less likely now to live in the small town then men are, less likely to have family around when raising children and I think that could influence us without thinking about it. Hence, why no policy I can see addresses it.
If we had a policy saying "you're a young woman wanting to have children, you are from this area - we will help you move back to this locality for you to have children" maybe that could help but how to enforce it?
Wonder if anyone else thinks this could be a significant driver?
Absolutely. I've made similar comments on the written one and before, as I think this always gets really overlooked when people talk about poorer countries and families having more kids. They always miss this element, that poorer families are much more likely to live closer together and rely on each other more for everything, plus do get access to some more benefits which makes the childcare calculation totally different. A two income wealthier couple who lives in a city away from their respective wider families has so much more pressure points when it comes to childcare if there is no supoort system nearby.
Here is my thesis on this: Birth rates are collapsing globally because children no longer are net beneficial from a resource standpoint to men. The basic bargain that males and females struck was along these lines. Both males and females prioritize survival over reproduction. Human survival is tied to resource production. Females traded children to men for indirect access to male resources. We do not have an independent desire to procreate. Procreation needs to align for both the male and the female with survival, which means resource production. When children became net negative a male's resources, the female's value in the trade dropped. So females shifted to direct resource production. And now, mating and survival are no longer aligned. Women still have all of the evolutionary vestiges of the cooperative survival model which push women to become dependent on men - propensity for love, strong care for children (i.e. their valuable resource), bonding on intercourse, etc. So they are striving for direct resource production in a body designed for dependence. And men are switching to the Genghis Kahn model of procreation - i.e. sex without commitment. The partnership model of marriage offers men no benefits as its net negative to their own resource production, and as culture erodes, the push to marriage falls apart. It evolutionary biology in a modern economy - that is why its happening everywhere, regardless of culture.
Do a thought experiment. What if instead of giving women tax subsidies for children as in Hungary, ALL of the benefits were granted to the male on his income alone. The moment you get married, taxes go down. Have kids, his income becomes tax free. Re-create the value of children to the male, and watch marriage skyrocket. We focus on the mother. That is exactly backwards from an evolutionary perspective. Its the value of the trade to the male that makes marriage work.
I can't think of an example of any other animal whose offspring is a net benefit for its survival; in fact, reproduction is the biggest resource drain for pretty much any creature. It seems unlikely that humans would be so unique in not developing an instinct to procreate; more plausible that we are uniquely able to fool our instincts, i.e. contraception.
If it is a matter of kids as resources, your thought experiment would work only if the benefits were larger than the cost of raising the child - a back of the envelope calculation tells me it would take more than 20 tax-free years for a US median income to break even on one child.
Status-anxiety doubtless plays a role, but I suspect there's more to it than that. Various organizations over the years -Ford Foundation, World Bank, etc. have vigorously promoted low birthrates and distributed the means whenever possible. I can't help but feel there are more sinister forces at work when such a profound phenomenon transcends cultures.
But everywhere across the world? The explanation needs to work across a huge range of places
I see your point. status-anxiety is also arguably the essence of the woke mind-virus. Still, I wouldn't put it past the Davocrat types to release a biochemical agent to reduce the population overall. Honestly, I think they're that evil.
To be fair those organisations have, as far as I'm aware, been promoting low birth rates in Africa where the birth rate has historically been very high and where fertility is running out-of-control, with weak governments without much cash unable to provide basic service because there are too many hungry mouths. On top of this, since the nineties family planning in sub-Saharan Africa has been intertwined with the totally uncontroversial goal of AIDS prevention.
I’ve long thought that “status” is a/the key issue.
In addition to LP’s points on this, consider this:
Children have ALWAYS been about status.
In previous times, couples needed children to SUSTAIN / IMPROVE status.
In Hollywood today, the wokeiest celebs have children so they can have them be trans… for status.
Children and status have always been linked.
To think it used to be about a beautiful natural flowering of eternal love between 2 people, before nasty modernism took over, is a little too Hallmark … even for the Xmas season.