I find it interesting whenever modern, secular, feminist women protest supposed mistreatment they're receiving at the hands of "the patriarchy" by refusing to have kids. Do they realize that there's already a strong inverse correlation between gender equality and fertility across cultures?
Modern feminism is already failing the Darwin test in a big way. The future is set to be a lot more misogynistic. If you think mainstream US culture is more gender-egalitarian than the burqa-clad Islam of Afghanistan, that is a reason to have *more* children, not fewer, if you want gender-equal attitudes to persist into the future.
Nobody has said anything about refusing to have children. It's just that there's a shortage of decent men with whom we want to have children that we can depend on to hold up their responsibilities to provide for those children and mother. Maybe if the fucking patriarchy wasn't so invested in keeping us at a disadvantage in every way possible, we'd be more inclined to have children.
But, making up rules about the way we are allowed to dress to indulge fragile male egos and paying us less for doing more while doing it better just pisses us off. Men need to stop feeling so threatened by us women. As you like to tell us "Relax". You'll be fine if you just let us take the reins.
I am specifically personally aware of people living in the Ultra Orthodox community who believe that a woman must get permission from the Rabbi to refuse sex.
That’s certainly one way to increase the birth rate.
Do we feel increasing the birth rate is so important that it’s worth, eg, putting your daughter in a position where she has to try desperately to figure out how to possibly convince the Rabbi that she should be allowed to refuse sex tonight?
The absolute rose-coloured exoticised ignorance of this article is really shocking.
I think it’s pretty clear from the article that Sonja is not advocating for everyone to become Orthodox Jews, but that there might be nuggets of wisdom in traditional ways of life, and this is one of those.
I don’t think it’s important to specifically replicate that way of life, but I am worried about my daughter being forced to live in a world where society declines for many generations and the implications that has on her life prospects. We need to do something and I am happy to take inspiration where there is good inspiration to take, and normalizing children in daily life is not a bridge too far.
The point is that given that what I say is true and comes from deep personal knowledge of the community, I doubt her analysis of the reasons that community has such a high birth rate!
In the USA, none of the adult members of the ultra-orthodox have to stick with them and their (strict) rules. In my deep personal experience with the mothers of my kids: they liked to have sex together no less than me.
One can have deep personal experiences in life without being ultra-orthodox or even Jewish. You seem to be a former member. So: living proof it's possible to leave. Actions speak louder than words. You didn't like it. Those who stay seem to prefer it. Sure after 'indoctrination'. We all grow up in a culture. Most cultures have things most of their members like. Regular sex - sounds not like the worst. Even for many women. Surprise.
listen your biog says you’re a time-waster (thank you for your honesty!) so I’m going to do one reply and leave it there.
I was unusually fortunate in having enough ‘tail winds’ to get out. I know many many (many) people who are not so lucky. I was never as deep in as some and crucially I wasn’t denied an education. I have sat with Chareidi adults as they sobbed bitter tears at their knowledge that the so-called education they’d been given had deliberately prevented them from learning the basic maths and literacy (and even spoken English) skills which would enable them to get a job outside this community.
Women do enjoy sex but do not enjoy having to ask a Rabbi for permission to say “no thanks love, I don’t feel like it tonight”. This is completely obvious so I am not treating your thoughts here as in any way in good faith.
The fact that the comments to this article are so hysterical is exactly why the article is needed.
Most of us secular moderns are incapable of accepting that religious people could live happily married with 6+ kids and not be in some kind of Handmaid's Tale situation.
I'm not religious, but spending Shabbat once with a Chabad family in Queens was an eye opener. These people have more joy, presence, and meaning than the rest of us "free thinkers."
Suggesting that children bring joy and meaning is enough to bring the shrews out.
I didn’t even think the article was particularly evangelical. I just tried to be respectful and neutral, but people seem to be mad that I wasn’t actively critical.
yeah I'm pretty angry that you didn't even talk to anyone who is critical of these communities and understands what other factors might be going on. We're not hard to find.
(And for what it's worth, if you do want to talk about it I'd be delighted and it would be a very friendly conversation. In general the things you're up to seem great, and the Chareidi world goes to a lot of trouble to be quite impenetrable from the outside.)
I didn't grow up a secular modern, my friend, I grew up an Orthodox Jew. Are there great things to that lifestyle? Sure. Are the laws there misogynist? Also yes. Don't paint me as a 'shrew' who hates children (I love children) just because I want some realism about a community which you spent *one Shabbat* with.
The shrews are the anti-child misanthropes ("the world is already overpopulated...")
Omar Diab already provided a better response to you than I could write.
Your claims seem to be that (1) Haredi high fertility is due to misogyny, and (2) the original post is not sufficiently anti-Haredi. I disagree with both claims: (1) the article seems to lay out cultural practices other than misogyny that contribute to large families, and (2) critiquing haredim isn't the point of the article. If you want to write that article I'll read it.
Do you think there is nothing we can learn from Amish, religious Muslims, or indigenous groups because they're misogynynous?
If you're angry maybe that's because of your *personal experience* and I don't see why others should restrict what we read or who we engage with because of your opinions.
The Chareidi world is - as this article lays out - a world of extremely high *social control*. The article details “mechanisms of silencing” within that world. High social control certainly can lead to eg high birth rates. If you are in various ways trapped within a system that expects every family to have at least six children then indeed that is what will happen.
My assertion is that the features that can be observed from the outside - children welcome in synagogue eg - are for sure nice but they’re mostly an effect of there being a lot more children not a cause. The cause is the belief in the Chareidi world of the urgent need to rebuild the Jewish population after the Holocaust (again I have some sympathy) and Rabbinical authorities’ willingness to do whatever is needed to make sure young people step in line with that aim (I have much less sympathy).
My assertion that some women are told they need a Rabbi’s permission to refuse sex is I’m afraid true. So those who argue against me must be saying one of two things: 1) I’m lying (I’m not but I understand why it’s hard to believe), 2) that seems fine (I find this difficult to understand, I wonder whether anyone would want their daughter living like that).
I don’t call for anyone to be censored. I think if you’re going to write a piece about how we should learn from some community a responsible writer should also understand what the problems are in that community.
Very interesting. But I don't understand the over-correction that all this pro-natalism could inspire. Demographers say we'll top out at 11 billion. Given the demands of that number of energy consuming people, we'll mitigate many problems with a relatively modest population. 6 kids per couple would exacerbate all our present energy problems, and all the consquences of energy production and usage.
We don’t need to accept worse and worse living standards because of insufficient energy, we have all the tools we need today for near unlimited energy without spoiling the environment. There are major countries _today_ that routinely get 100% of their power from renewables, putting aside other complementary sources of power. This suggests that energy sufficiency is not your real concern.
Are you on crack? No major country is getting 100% of its power from renewables. Renewables are great, but inadequate. Batteries are only part of an answer. We need nuclear. Don't be so disingenuous as to pretend you know some ulterior motive for my critique. Unending population growth challenges every problem. I'm not arguing for population control. I think humans, like other animals, will find a resource-defined natural limit without unnecessary coercion- we already are. My point is that there is an irrational concern over our lower birth rates. You can argue the point, but why must you impute some kind of dissembling on my part? How do you expect to have a conversation, when you pretend to know what I think? You may as well talk to yourself. There are trade-offs to every alternative, and the pro-natalists are getting hysterical over this issue, and slowing growth has definite benefits.
Nuclear is the complement I’m thinking of, and I agree we should have more of it. Your thinking sounds out of date if you think that there aren’t countries that already are or are close to renewables powering their grid’s mostly or fully throughout the year. You should also consider just how cheap solar panels have got, it is not a question of “can we do it” but rather “will we.” Sorry for insinuating but I honestly think degrowth is an awful idea and a world in which we actually commit to that is world of interminable suffering for countless generations.
"...climate change will probably be very bad for the world, but not in a way that will have catastrophic effects on your child in particular. Cancelling plans to have kids because of climate change will decrease emissions a very limited amount, while having a disproportionately large effect on the government’s ability to pass climate change related legislation. A less destructive way of assuaging your guilt over having children would be to donate some money to climate charities or carbon offsets in your kid’s name. Nobody who really wants a kid should avoid having one because of climate-related concerns."
So, just another male-dominated culture where females are expected to be broodmares. WiP's obsession with women not having enough babies sniffs of both male self-entitlement and casual misogyny, and is frankly creepy. Equating "male teachers" with 9 months of gestation, painful child-bearing, and actual rearing is laughable. And this article conveniently left out any reference to widely acknowledged child sexual abuse in highly orthodox communities. Oops! The simple solution to encourging more young adults to have more babies is to make living affordable and enjoyable - decent homes with family rooms and yards, and disposable income for family outings and vacations, all of which are in short supply the past 2+ decades and which oblivious wealthier people take for granted. Ask any single mother if the state provides remotely near enough community/financial supports to thrive and you will get a Hard No in every case, but all states seem more than willing to throw more money at conservative-leaning families who don't even need the support and then brag about ending child poverty. Pro-Tip: child poverty exists because of parental poverty. The people making most of the rules benefitted greatly from the social welfare system, used it to enrich themselves, then kicked away the ladder. If you want people having more babies you need to fight wealth-inequality with teeth, impose corporate maximum wages and rent controls across the board, limit how much "investors" can get their grubby hands on, ban speculation, prohibit compounding interest on debt, and tax wealth, not income.
Do you think life was actually easier in the USA 50 years ago? As a parent I am all for receiving benefits but I find it hard to imagine that even if we did everything you imagine, it would make the birth rate budge by much. I have plenty of rich friends in their 30s, all of whom have not had children at all despite having no practical economic burden. I think the problems are as much cultural as they are practical (though I wouldn’t want to live in the way this article suggests).
The housing crisis is driving fertility declines, and I believe I've read research articles that have established this connection, but can't remember them off the top of my head.
Right now it's very easy to buy a large TV compared to the past, but a single family home is very much out of reach for most people in the core childbearing years, and as long as that instability exists people will feel like they're not ready to have kids. It was much easier to buy a SFH during the 20th century than now in most high-HDI countries, and that's a crucial dimension that encourages fertility among couples.
There are cultural factors as well, but economic factors have very likely driven fertility decline.
That’s something I could get behind, much more than vague “blame the billionaires, offer no solutions” stuff like the commenter I replied to. That said, I don’t think we really see huge fertility increases in cheap COL places in the USA and globally? There’s probably a significant effect but I’m still inclined to think there needs to be more.
Lyman Stone is on Substack and writes a lot about this. The variation in fertility is massive and strongly linked to housing prices, likely explaining 25-30% of subnational variance in birth rates (which is huge for a single factor!).
As an example: In Nebraska where housing is affordable, birth rates are 1.9 children/woman, vs 1.4 children/woman in Vermont where housing is highly unaffordable.
This lifestyle has consequences. Many couples literally do not know what do to on their wedding night:
"'We wanted to give people a sense of not only where to put their sexual organs, but where to put their arms and legs,' Ribner says. 'If you have never seen a movie, never read a book, how are you supposed to know what you do?'"
Noteworthy that not one commentator has responded to the core question of what high fertility cultures can teach low fertility cultures. It's probably not nothing.
What is the goal of having more children when the blue planet is already overpopulated ? Not only because of the climate crisis we are experiencing that comes with a large proportion from the number of human beings on earth. Also from the fact that countries with high birth rates are also countries with high emigration ... to countries with low birth rates.
Their high-fertility subculture is owed to the word subculture. The reason fertility drops in developed countries ia due to social super-specificity.
There are no rockers or anime lovers in that jewish subculture, therefore no reasons to have compatibility issues.
This is the same reason why government keep throwing money at this issue, and it only marginally helps the women/families that already have a child, but no extra money to sustain another child.
No I don’t think that’s right. It’s not at all that people aren’t “compatible”, instead there’s a very different idea of how compatible people need to be to have a successful marriage partnership and what to do with incompatibility.
It’s a secular, modern idea that partners would need to even agree on something like music or anime.
Sure, I can only imagine the amount of marriage options that a garbage man that plays wow in his spare time has.
I just wanted to point out that I wasn’t talking about music preferences in vitro, but rather what defines your image, personality, political views, occupation and wealth.
I would check if the drop in birth rates correlates with the diversification of subcultures related to music/movies, career choices, religion and contraception availability.
Yeah I do, actually, because I was there (albeit as a kid). A single-income parent could afford to buy a house and raise a family (new homes being no more than 3-4x an average annual salary), take fun vacations, occasional dinners out, and still save for retirement; university tuition for an entire year cost less than single courses (or books for one semester) do now. 40 years ago life was more affordable for me as a minimum-wage teenager living on my own, simply because rents were reasonably affordable. Just 15 years ago we could still buy expensive software and own it 'forever', now everything is driving us into forced-upgrades no one needs or asked for, debt-burdened via planned obsolescence, and/or held hostage under subscription-serfdom (refer to "enshittification"). Your rich friends are probably too self-centered to think about having kids (although I'm willing to bet if one or two in a larger peer group started having kids the rest would eventually follow suit or fall out). Most people still want a reliable genuine partner before even considering having kids but most 30-somethings have a social deficit (not their fault) from being raised on the internet/social media, on top of juggling jobs/keeping up with the Joneses and just being too exhausted to put much effort into finding a life-partner (same for a lot of GenX, incidentally). There's a reason some people are turning to AI chatbots (and worse) for 'companionship'. But I digress. The point is not that some rich 30-somethings aren't having kids, it's that the many not-rich people who really do want to have kids can't possibly afford it. No one wants the added stress of raising kids on top of the chronic stress just figuring out if you'll be able to pay the rent next year, or in 2 years, or 5 years, let alone saving anything for a downpayment (homes now being anywhere from 10-20x an average annual salary). "Luxury" expenses used to be giant TVs, other electronics/games, etc., but they've turned basic human survival needs into luxury-expenses now (shelter, utilities, food, all monopolized). The vulgar-wealthy are so blinded by their own sociopathic wealth-hoarding that they forget they need us plebs to 'consume things' to keep the economy from collapsing (and we do, until we can't). They also forget that they will eventually need caregivers, but the way things are going, there won't be sufficient people left who have any interest in caring for them any more than "shareholders" care about the people they extract wealth from. Greedy people aren't actually very bright and I think quite a few are in for a rude awakening.
“In studies seeking to understand cultural and institutional influences on the division of domestic labor, religion has often been left out of the picture in favor of economic, gender and welfare state context. By examining men from 34 countries using 2012 International Social Survey (ISSP) data this study explores the ways in which religion is associated with men’s household labor participation. We utilize individual measures of religiosity as well as cultural zones based on religious and cultural similarity to analyze the effect of predominant religion and religious participation on men’s housework. Differences emerge between men by religious tradition, level of religious attendance, and across cultural zones. Contrary to expectations, we find increased religious participation at the individual and cultural zone levels associated with greater participation in some housework tasks and time spent on housework, though the findings show great variation by task and religious tradition. Our findings indicate two potential paths leading to men’s increased housework participation: a nonreligious, egalitarian one, and a religious, family-centered one.”
Egalitarian men do more housework in general than non-egalitarian men.
This article is so stupid — I am now going to have to abstain from reading for seven days, and wash myself in a pool of rain water in order to be clean of its ideas.
Never mind the onerous rules and abuses Chabad females must abide by all their lives. How is this Progress? What are you smoking?
I find it interesting whenever modern, secular, feminist women protest supposed mistreatment they're receiving at the hands of "the patriarchy" by refusing to have kids. Do they realize that there's already a strong inverse correlation between gender equality and fertility across cultures?
See https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4_qM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb3da100c-51c8-4f1c-91c5-2caa4d0a1662_521x369.png
Modern feminism is already failing the Darwin test in a big way. The future is set to be a lot more misogynistic. If you think mainstream US culture is more gender-egalitarian than the burqa-clad Islam of Afghanistan, that is a reason to have *more* children, not fewer, if you want gender-equal attitudes to persist into the future.
That is not what she’s saying
To be fair, OP is also not accurately representing what the author is saying either.
We need less people. So we should encouraging afghans to have less children.
Is this a global warming thing? See https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on-having-kids
No, we just don’t need >9 billion people.
Sure. Good luck with the afghanistan thing.
Yeah, Afghanistan is a lost cause for now although its TFR is declining slightly. We should focus on Sub-Sahara Africa.
Nobody has said anything about refusing to have children. It's just that there's a shortage of decent men with whom we want to have children that we can depend on to hold up their responsibilities to provide for those children and mother. Maybe if the fucking patriarchy wasn't so invested in keeping us at a disadvantage in every way possible, we'd be more inclined to have children.
But, making up rules about the way we are allowed to dress to indulge fragile male egos and paying us less for doing more while doing it better just pisses us off. Men need to stop feeling so threatened by us women. As you like to tell us "Relax". You'll be fine if you just let us take the reins.
I am specifically personally aware of people living in the Ultra Orthodox community who believe that a woman must get permission from the Rabbi to refuse sex.
That’s certainly one way to increase the birth rate.
Do we feel increasing the birth rate is so important that it’s worth, eg, putting your daughter in a position where she has to try desperately to figure out how to possibly convince the Rabbi that she should be allowed to refuse sex tonight?
The absolute rose-coloured exoticised ignorance of this article is really shocking.
I think it’s pretty clear from the article that Sonja is not advocating for everyone to become Orthodox Jews, but that there might be nuggets of wisdom in traditional ways of life, and this is one of those.
I don’t think it’s important to specifically replicate that way of life, but I am worried about my daughter being forced to live in a world where society declines for many generations and the implications that has on her life prospects. We need to do something and I am happy to take inspiration where there is good inspiration to take, and normalizing children in daily life is not a bridge too far.
The point is that given that what I say is true and comes from deep personal knowledge of the community, I doubt her analysis of the reasons that community has such a high birth rate!
In the USA, none of the adult members of the ultra-orthodox have to stick with them and their (strict) rules. In my deep personal experience with the mothers of my kids: they liked to have sex together no less than me.
Which bit of the Chareidi world did you belong to?
One can have deep personal experiences in life without being ultra-orthodox or even Jewish. You seem to be a former member. So: living proof it's possible to leave. Actions speak louder than words. You didn't like it. Those who stay seem to prefer it. Sure after 'indoctrination'. We all grow up in a culture. Most cultures have things most of their members like. Regular sex - sounds not like the worst. Even for many women. Surprise.
listen your biog says you’re a time-waster (thank you for your honesty!) so I’m going to do one reply and leave it there.
I was unusually fortunate in having enough ‘tail winds’ to get out. I know many many (many) people who are not so lucky. I was never as deep in as some and crucially I wasn’t denied an education. I have sat with Chareidi adults as they sobbed bitter tears at their knowledge that the so-called education they’d been given had deliberately prevented them from learning the basic maths and literacy (and even spoken English) skills which would enable them to get a job outside this community.
Women do enjoy sex but do not enjoy having to ask a Rabbi for permission to say “no thanks love, I don’t feel like it tonight”. This is completely obvious so I am not treating your thoughts here as in any way in good faith.
The fact that the comments to this article are so hysterical is exactly why the article is needed.
Most of us secular moderns are incapable of accepting that religious people could live happily married with 6+ kids and not be in some kind of Handmaid's Tale situation.
I'm not religious, but spending Shabbat once with a Chabad family in Queens was an eye opener. These people have more joy, presence, and meaning than the rest of us "free thinkers."
Suggesting that children bring joy and meaning is enough to bring the shrews out.
I didn’t even think the article was particularly evangelical. I just tried to be respectful and neutral, but people seem to be mad that I wasn’t actively critical.
yeah I'm pretty angry that you didn't even talk to anyone who is critical of these communities and understands what other factors might be going on. We're not hard to find.
(And for what it's worth, if you do want to talk about it I'd be delighted and it would be a very friendly conversation. In general the things you're up to seem great, and the Chareidi world goes to a lot of trouble to be quite impenetrable from the outside.)
I didn't grow up a secular modern, my friend, I grew up an Orthodox Jew. Are there great things to that lifestyle? Sure. Are the laws there misogynist? Also yes. Don't paint me as a 'shrew' who hates children (I love children) just because I want some realism about a community which you spent *one Shabbat* with.
The shrews are the anti-child misanthropes ("the world is already overpopulated...")
Omar Diab already provided a better response to you than I could write.
Your claims seem to be that (1) Haredi high fertility is due to misogyny, and (2) the original post is not sufficiently anti-Haredi. I disagree with both claims: (1) the article seems to lay out cultural practices other than misogyny that contribute to large families, and (2) critiquing haredim isn't the point of the article. If you want to write that article I'll read it.
Do you think there is nothing we can learn from Amish, religious Muslims, or indigenous groups because they're misogynynous?
If you're angry maybe that's because of your *personal experience* and I don't see why others should restrict what we read or who we engage with because of your opinions.
I’m going to take you at your word. I didn’t write this article but I urge you to read the first few paragraphs at least: https://www.shomrim.news/eng/how-sexual-abuse-is-covered-up-in-ultra-orthodox-communities
The Chareidi world is - as this article lays out - a world of extremely high *social control*. The article details “mechanisms of silencing” within that world. High social control certainly can lead to eg high birth rates. If you are in various ways trapped within a system that expects every family to have at least six children then indeed that is what will happen.
My assertion is that the features that can be observed from the outside - children welcome in synagogue eg - are for sure nice but they’re mostly an effect of there being a lot more children not a cause. The cause is the belief in the Chareidi world of the urgent need to rebuild the Jewish population after the Holocaust (again I have some sympathy) and Rabbinical authorities’ willingness to do whatever is needed to make sure young people step in line with that aim (I have much less sympathy).
My assertion that some women are told they need a Rabbi’s permission to refuse sex is I’m afraid true. So those who argue against me must be saying one of two things: 1) I’m lying (I’m not but I understand why it’s hard to believe), 2) that seems fine (I find this difficult to understand, I wonder whether anyone would want their daughter living like that).
I don’t call for anyone to be censored. I think if you’re going to write a piece about how we should learn from some community a responsible writer should also understand what the problems are in that community.
Very interesting. But I don't understand the over-correction that all this pro-natalism could inspire. Demographers say we'll top out at 11 billion. Given the demands of that number of energy consuming people, we'll mitigate many problems with a relatively modest population. 6 kids per couple would exacerbate all our present energy problems, and all the consquences of energy production and usage.
We don’t need to accept worse and worse living standards because of insufficient energy, we have all the tools we need today for near unlimited energy without spoiling the environment. There are major countries _today_ that routinely get 100% of their power from renewables, putting aside other complementary sources of power. This suggests that energy sufficiency is not your real concern.
Are you on crack? No major country is getting 100% of its power from renewables. Renewables are great, but inadequate. Batteries are only part of an answer. We need nuclear. Don't be so disingenuous as to pretend you know some ulterior motive for my critique. Unending population growth challenges every problem. I'm not arguing for population control. I think humans, like other animals, will find a resource-defined natural limit without unnecessary coercion- we already are. My point is that there is an irrational concern over our lower birth rates. You can argue the point, but why must you impute some kind of dissembling on my part? How do you expect to have a conversation, when you pretend to know what I think? You may as well talk to yourself. There are trade-offs to every alternative, and the pro-natalists are getting hysterical over this issue, and slowing growth has definite benefits.
Nuclear is the complement I’m thinking of, and I agree we should have more of it. Your thinking sounds out of date if you think that there aren’t countries that already are or are close to renewables powering their grid’s mostly or fully throughout the year. You should also consider just how cheap solar panels have got, it is not a question of “can we do it” but rather “will we.” Sorry for insinuating but I honestly think degrowth is an awful idea and a world in which we actually commit to that is world of interminable suffering for countless generations.
Now that's a thoughtful, uninsulting reply. Thanks.
"...climate change will probably be very bad for the world, but not in a way that will have catastrophic effects on your child in particular. Cancelling plans to have kids because of climate change will decrease emissions a very limited amount, while having a disproportionately large effect on the government’s ability to pass climate change related legislation. A less destructive way of assuaging your guilt over having children would be to donate some money to climate charities or carbon offsets in your kid’s name. Nobody who really wants a kid should avoid having one because of climate-related concerns."
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on-having-kids
So, just another male-dominated culture where females are expected to be broodmares. WiP's obsession with women not having enough babies sniffs of both male self-entitlement and casual misogyny, and is frankly creepy. Equating "male teachers" with 9 months of gestation, painful child-bearing, and actual rearing is laughable. And this article conveniently left out any reference to widely acknowledged child sexual abuse in highly orthodox communities. Oops! The simple solution to encourging more young adults to have more babies is to make living affordable and enjoyable - decent homes with family rooms and yards, and disposable income for family outings and vacations, all of which are in short supply the past 2+ decades and which oblivious wealthier people take for granted. Ask any single mother if the state provides remotely near enough community/financial supports to thrive and you will get a Hard No in every case, but all states seem more than willing to throw more money at conservative-leaning families who don't even need the support and then brag about ending child poverty. Pro-Tip: child poverty exists because of parental poverty. The people making most of the rules benefitted greatly from the social welfare system, used it to enrich themselves, then kicked away the ladder. If you want people having more babies you need to fight wealth-inequality with teeth, impose corporate maximum wages and rent controls across the board, limit how much "investors" can get their grubby hands on, ban speculation, prohibit compounding interest on debt, and tax wealth, not income.
Do you think life was actually easier in the USA 50 years ago? As a parent I am all for receiving benefits but I find it hard to imagine that even if we did everything you imagine, it would make the birth rate budge by much. I have plenty of rich friends in their 30s, all of whom have not had children at all despite having no practical economic burden. I think the problems are as much cultural as they are practical (though I wouldn’t want to live in the way this article suggests).
The housing crisis is driving fertility declines, and I believe I've read research articles that have established this connection, but can't remember them off the top of my head.
Right now it's very easy to buy a large TV compared to the past, but a single family home is very much out of reach for most people in the core childbearing years, and as long as that instability exists people will feel like they're not ready to have kids. It was much easier to buy a SFH during the 20th century than now in most high-HDI countries, and that's a crucial dimension that encourages fertility among couples.
There are cultural factors as well, but economic factors have very likely driven fertility decline.
That’s something I could get behind, much more than vague “blame the billionaires, offer no solutions” stuff like the commenter I replied to. That said, I don’t think we really see huge fertility increases in cheap COL places in the USA and globally? There’s probably a significant effect but I’m still inclined to think there needs to be more.
Lyman Stone is on Substack and writes a lot about this. The variation in fertility is massive and strongly linked to housing prices, likely explaining 25-30% of subnational variance in birth rates (which is huge for a single factor!).
As an example: In Nebraska where housing is affordable, birth rates are 1.9 children/woman, vs 1.4 children/woman in Vermont where housing is highly unaffordable.
https://www.baconsrebellion.com/housing-costs-and-fertility-rates/
This lifestyle has consequences. Many couples literally do not know what do to on their wedding night:
"'We wanted to give people a sense of not only where to put their sexual organs, but where to put their arms and legs,' Ribner says. 'If you have never seen a movie, never read a book, how are you supposed to know what you do?'"
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22152700
I love the car comparison.
Noteworthy that not one commentator has responded to the core question of what high fertility cultures can teach low fertility cultures. It's probably not nothing.
Weird how this doesn't discuss how all of these children are paid for and educated, and the large reliance on government subsidies for both.
Also, providing parking for everyone and incentivizing driving is bad?
The big gap in this piece is opportunity cost. The opportunity cost for having children for religious parents leading traditional lifestyles is low.
I like the argument that children are a greater positive externality than cars, but did the lede have to be buried quite this deep?
What is the goal of having more children when the blue planet is already overpopulated ? Not only because of the climate crisis we are experiencing that comes with a large proportion from the number of human beings on earth. Also from the fact that countries with high birth rates are also countries with high emigration ... to countries with low birth rates.
What problem does high birth rate solves?
"Modernity has meant fewer children in virtually every culture around the world. Do holdouts like Orthodox Jews have lessons for the rest of us?"
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No, they are living in the past. Like the Amish. The future is less children since AI+Robots will be doing all the work.
Their high-fertility subculture is owed to the word subculture. The reason fertility drops in developed countries ia due to social super-specificity.
There are no rockers or anime lovers in that jewish subculture, therefore no reasons to have compatibility issues.
This is the same reason why government keep throwing money at this issue, and it only marginally helps the women/families that already have a child, but no extra money to sustain another child.
No I don’t think that’s right. It’s not at all that people aren’t “compatible”, instead there’s a very different idea of how compatible people need to be to have a successful marriage partnership and what to do with incompatibility.
It’s a secular, modern idea that partners would need to even agree on something like music or anime.
Sure, I can only imagine the amount of marriage options that a garbage man that plays wow in his spare time has.
I just wanted to point out that I wasn’t talking about music preferences in vitro, but rather what defines your image, personality, political views, occupation and wealth.
I would check if the drop in birth rates correlates with the diversification of subcultures related to music/movies, career choices, religion and contraception availability.
Yeah I do, actually, because I was there (albeit as a kid). A single-income parent could afford to buy a house and raise a family (new homes being no more than 3-4x an average annual salary), take fun vacations, occasional dinners out, and still save for retirement; university tuition for an entire year cost less than single courses (or books for one semester) do now. 40 years ago life was more affordable for me as a minimum-wage teenager living on my own, simply because rents were reasonably affordable. Just 15 years ago we could still buy expensive software and own it 'forever', now everything is driving us into forced-upgrades no one needs or asked for, debt-burdened via planned obsolescence, and/or held hostage under subscription-serfdom (refer to "enshittification"). Your rich friends are probably too self-centered to think about having kids (although I'm willing to bet if one or two in a larger peer group started having kids the rest would eventually follow suit or fall out). Most people still want a reliable genuine partner before even considering having kids but most 30-somethings have a social deficit (not their fault) from being raised on the internet/social media, on top of juggling jobs/keeping up with the Joneses and just being too exhausted to put much effort into finding a life-partner (same for a lot of GenX, incidentally). There's a reason some people are turning to AI chatbots (and worse) for 'companionship'. But I digress. The point is not that some rich 30-somethings aren't having kids, it's that the many not-rich people who really do want to have kids can't possibly afford it. No one wants the added stress of raising kids on top of the chronic stress just figuring out if you'll be able to pay the rent next year, or in 2 years, or 5 years, let alone saving anything for a downpayment (homes now being anywhere from 10-20x an average annual salary). "Luxury" expenses used to be giant TVs, other electronics/games, etc., but they've turned basic human survival needs into luxury-expenses now (shelter, utilities, food, all monopolized). The vulgar-wealthy are so blinded by their own sociopathic wealth-hoarding that they forget they need us plebs to 'consume things' to keep the economy from collapsing (and we do, until we can't). They also forget that they will eventually need caregivers, but the way things are going, there won't be sufficient people left who have any interest in caring for them any more than "shareholders" care about the people they extract wealth from. Greedy people aren't actually very bright and I think quite a few are in for a rude awakening.
Brilliant. Thank you so much!
“In studies seeking to understand cultural and institutional influences on the division of domestic labor, religion has often been left out of the picture in favor of economic, gender and welfare state context. By examining men from 34 countries using 2012 International Social Survey (ISSP) data this study explores the ways in which religion is associated with men’s household labor participation. We utilize individual measures of religiosity as well as cultural zones based on religious and cultural similarity to analyze the effect of predominant religion and religious participation on men’s housework. Differences emerge between men by religious tradition, level of religious attendance, and across cultural zones. Contrary to expectations, we find increased religious participation at the individual and cultural zone levels associated with greater participation in some housework tasks and time spent on housework, though the findings show great variation by task and religious tradition. Our findings indicate two potential paths leading to men’s increased housework participation: a nonreligious, egalitarian one, and a religious, family-centered one.”
Egalitarian men do more housework in general than non-egalitarian men.
This article is so stupid — I am now going to have to abstain from reading for seven days, and wash myself in a pool of rain water in order to be clean of its ideas.