Can Anything Boost Birthrates? - Ed West | Maiden Mother Matriarch
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- Опубликовано: 26 май 2024
- 📰 Subscribe to Maiden Mother Matriarch here to listen to full extended episodes: louiseperry.substack.com
In this episode of Maiden Mother Matriarch, Louise Perry and Ed West discuss whether society will become less child-unfriendly, whether economic incentives can ever boost birthrates, Israel’s high-fertility culture, and more.
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📰 Subscribe to Maiden Mother Matriarch here to listen to full extended episodes: louiseperry.substack.com
I think that the thing with demonizing children in public is so weird. Maybe I'm just not "Classy" enough. I'm a single male with no children. I've never been at a restaurant or resort, seen or heard a child whine or cry, and began to whine and cry myself.
Man, you are missing out!
I'm a father of 4. Kids crying in distress put me 'on edge', especially my own. Admittedly, I can be pretty hard hearted about kids crying for other reasons, but I still find it distracting.
@@bazstraight8797 Wanna know what distracts me? People with the clinical delusion of thinking they're good people, thinking they're nice people. People who believe in the myth of empathy. Who pull the victim card of introvertism. People who think truth is relative but are emotionally shattered by every perceived critique or disagreement. That's very few small children but most adults.
One way to curtail this precipitous decline in birthrates is for businesses to stop necessitating that applicants has college degrees for most positions. The reality is that, outside of being a lawyer, doctor, and certain types of engineers, most occupations just require on the job training and some vocational school. Its this degree inflation, where jobs that did not require high levels of education are UNNECCESSARILY requiring higher and higher levels of education, which is delaying people from having children until an age where fertility is suboptimal.
How much of this is business off loading training costs to the individual and the State?
@@bazstraight8797 Exactly.
To be fair, government over regulation drives this degree madness.
"Delaying people". Just say "delaying women...." Stop being mealy mouthed.
In the US, the drop off in birth rate is due to not only the significant decline in teen (15-19) births, but also the halving of the births to women 20-24 and the lesser decline in women 25-29. The increase in births to women over 30 has been modest and non-compensating.
We have entire colleges devoted to inculcating women to not bear children at least until the end of their 20s. If you look at the history of dating, the social dating among college women in the 20s and 30s migrated to high school dating. When college women started finding husbands and marrying shortly out of college, going steady and post-high school marriage increase in high schools. You want more children, then women will have to, as a group, come to see early marriage and children as the social norm, rather than the odd girl out.
A recent previous guest said the main problem was involuntarily childless women, women who find themselves in their later 30s without a suitable partner or hitting their 40s and discovering that IVF cannot help them. This happened to Tulsi Gabbard. Can you imagine her crying? Well, revealing this fact last week did make her cry on camera. The recent MMM guest said that women who do manage to have children have them at replacement rate, it's just the ivolunatraily childless who drive down the birth rates.
Fascinating. I wasn’t aware of that with respect to tulsi gabbard
@@anomietoponymie2140 Except that late marriage and selective marriage was used for centuries in England
"It is now quite clear from the work of Tony Wrigley and other that in England a combination of late age at first marriage (often over twenty-five for women), plus selective marriage (with up to a quarter of women never marrying) was enough to keep population more or less static for some centuries."
--The Invention of the Modern World by Alan Macfarlane.
@@jkbrown5496 This is not wrong but read more widely. The reality is more subtle.
What happens when a woman has a child in her late teens or early twenties and her husband invests in his career, so that he becomes attractive to other women.
It is highly dangerous for women to have children before they have developed their own earning capacity.
Someone mentioned bringing back good jobs that can be obtained with a high school diploma. I think that's likely true. My son and his wife got married at 22 and 20. They'll probably have kids in the next 3-4 years, which seems early these days but he's a fire-fighter and she's an EMT, and they can support themselves (we also live in a low cost-of-living state).
Yes, this is like my brother and his wife. ie access to shift work.
Birth rates require not demonizing and demoralizing heterosexual relationships and a change in the financial policies mainly
Gendered spaces and immediate financial rewards for men having to put up with the evil that is women. Sadly most men will even turn there noses up to this, i am far happier without a miserable, insatiable succubus dragging me down...
Hi Louise, I would love to see you interview Malcolm Collins! from based camp.
The answer of low birth rate is pretty clear. 1) Social system in most of modern world benefit childlessness. I.e. you pay a lot of taxes including social security tax, that provide you with pension when you're old. Therefore children are no more needed to care for you when you're old. And this system puts childless people in more advantageous situation, because childless people do not have to spend the time, money and effort on children, they can focus on their career, they will have bigger salaries, therefore pay more taxes and therefore receive bigger pensions when old. 2) Consumer society promotes childlessness. In a consumer society people are more focused on nonstop buying things fore themsleves and children, and therefore they create a lot of avoidable expenses. For example, in stead of repairing your shoes and old electronics you buy new ones and create non stop expenses. My grand parents for example had 6-8 children, the children grow bigger and their clothes was given to the smaller children. They saved money and reduced expenses in order to raise the children. Nowadays the modern standards in western world would get kids ridiculed for wearing their older brothers clothes and old electronic devices for example, as every kid needs new and most expensive things to blend in. 3) Egoism and social norms that are tended towards pursuing your comfort not sacrifice. At old times people worked hard and sacrificed their lives for the lives of the children. Now everyone needs to travel, do yoga, visit gym, visit spiritual classes and have non stop conversations with psychologist and use SPA and endless opportunities of recreation, and such egoism cannot be united with taking care of family and children.
Agree 100000% The longer you work with no kids the better off you are and more protected for your old age you are.
Even if social security did not exist, you will probably fibd certain people who?get a better ROI putting their wealth in stocks instead of kids.
Men need to be able to maintain a family and home on a single income, so that women feel safe to relax and care for their children and future.
Women in the workplace is a disaster for the family. However, women should be highly educated, so that she may teach her children (ideally homeschooled), and her husband provides the foundation on which his offspring and wife can flourish.
Interview Louann Brizendine, author of the female brain and the male brain
It's a historical fact that civilizations come and go, it's probably impossible to stop our decline
I realized recently, especially after the last Tom Holland episode, that ppl are starting to take the slang idea of "vibes" WAYYY more seriously than I pretty much ever intended to use the term myself.
If it's gonna start getting taken seriously, then we should more clearly define what we're talking abt, and probably also use less hilarious terminology.
I mentioned the field of empirical aesthetics on the recent Stephen Blackwood episode. Also, there's been some recent YT discussion by myself and others, of the high-level physicalism vs. materialism debate. Let's throw a few other things into this cocktail, like social signaling, group trait similarity, and phenotype.
Phenotype can overlap for individuals with less genetic similarity. Indicators of shared phenotype can be communicated, and phenotype also largely shaped, by quantifiable aesthetic constructs.
Do these processes involve, what might previously have been considered "metaphysical," non-material, albeit physical phenomena?
One of my favorite researchers Michael Levin, who I believe specialized in genetics and developmental biology before becoming the leading expert in bioelectricity, would probably essentially say yes.
For 'Christ's sake,' if serious ppl are unironically saying that any of the pillars of Western civilization are now built on "vibes," would someone pls write an updated doctorate thesis on what I'm trying to stitch together here? Real talk, I am ACTUALLY just a friendly trwl.
Mr. West is right: financial incentives will not boost birthrates. All the more so since the wealth of the childfree (or more generally the childless) is both considerable and impossible to tax. To visualise how considerable it is, one has to understand that our wealth is best measured in _time,_ not _money._ Governments _can_ transfer money from our pockets to the pockets of parents. The government of my country (France) has certainly done this shamelessly, and at scale, for years. But it is just impossible to transfer _time_ from our pockets to the parents'.
I still want the Hungarian-style financial incentives in place for those who will use them.
@@jenniferlawrence2701 This reads very much like wishful thinking. Words, words, words. Empty words. Or do you by any chance really think that a political majority can be found in the parliament of your country for this to become law?
So if financial incentives don't change the birth rate then it would seem to me that the excuse that the economy is bad or financial shocks have anything major to do with the falling birthrate.
Priorities. Currently the order of priorities for most young people is something like this:
- Finish High-School
- Go to university or some other higher education facility for a minimum of three years, often more.
- Travel, have some fun, play the field, seek multiple romantic partners
- Get established in a career
- Try to get on the housing ladder, or stay at home with parents if that is unobtainable
- Try to find the forever-partner to settle down with and have children
^By the time we get to the last one we're talking late 20s, in many cases. The rapidly rising rates of unintended childlessness and lonely singles in their 30s and 40s is the result. It's a disaster. Somehow we've got to reorder those priorities so finding a permanent partner is at the top. That doesn't necessarily mean teen marriage - a person who starts making a serious effort in their late teens to find a spouse could succeed in doing that by their mid-20s - but it does mean it shouldn't be put-off, or placed behind those other priorities. It has to be number one.
For the best and brightest, it's not "go to university". It's "get an education". See the difference?
I argue a few things.
1. Find out what creates genuine desire to have children. Duplicate it.
2. Get advertising wizards to advertise children as the greatest thing ever. People will want children over owning a fast car or traveling the world.
3. Look at what genetics are involved in wanting actually wanting children. I often enjoy the Jolly Heretic Dutton "All that she wants" video.
4. Bring back good jobs for people with only an HS diploma and have upward mobility.
I also think about genetics and religiosity. Some people just can't get religion.
The mortality thing may work for Israel. However, the threat of North Korea hasn't done anything for South Korea.
When some people say "Have children for the future" there are many people who will just say "Have children so the rich can get richer."
One problem with political solutions is the time it takes. The amount of time it takes from a pronatalist law and the time it pays off is far longer than any elected politician's term. Politicians have to think about what gets themselves or their fellow party members reelected. Such long term thinking will not be possible.
I also joke about what would happen if can't feed 'em don't breed 'em was the law, and the middle class was no longer burdened with the welfare rats.
Like you, I've always had the sneaking suspicion that religious and mystical experience is something you either have the capacity for or don't, so, genetic? Hardwired somehow?
@@anomietoponymie2140 I often argued that if people want more spiritual experiences, maybe they should not ban shrooms, LSD, DMT, and other mind altering drugs.
To boost birthrates it is necessary to persuade people to marry younger. How about providing free university (tuition, texts, travel and accom, and a per diem) for women with two or more children.
If women believe they will, or could, meet very high income men they will delay partnering. So equalising male rates of pay across occupations would help too.
In the end though the fundamental requirement is for ideological change, change in value systems and epistemology (how people understand the world).
Offering free university to women with small children? I did a degree while raising school age children. Regret it bitterly. After the degree, I took a year off to be full time Mum. Observed that my two kids were visibly happier.
@@chriswatson1698 Good point! Perhaps I should have said school-age children. Hmm, no, it's a silly idea overall, you're right.
Ironically, if men and women married younger, they would have a better chance at building wealth together than individually.
Yeah TEAM work makes the DREAM work, @@cordfortina9073.
Louise Perry should interview Elon Musk, about this.
In my family historical there are significant numbers of childless women but the women that did have children had close on 10. As the generations moved on that number of children dropped. My mother had four 4 , I only had 2. I’m hoping my kids have more.
They may have had 10 kids but, especially due to high infant mortality, most did not survive to have kids themselves. The first demographic transition in European nations mostly started once infant mortality rates started falling.
My family is similar. Large sets of siblings and most of them (male and female) would be childless spinsters/bachelors, living quiet lives, often pairing off with siblings to share expenses and often coming together as extended family for weekly visits. Only a couple would marry and have many children who all or nearly all lived to adulthood and repeated the pattern. Problem is that the boomer generation did not follow the pattern and it seems with the small number of children they had, they statistically got the spinsters/bachelors and so the family is dying out.
Thee has to be a legally binding marriage contract that protects women from violence, coercive control and the poverty and hard work of single parenthood. No-fault divorce makes baby-making untenable for women.
The needs of children are unpredictable and often inconvenient. You can't do a paid job and take care of a child's needs simultaneously.
The only fair division of parental responsibility is for both parents to absorb the inconvenience of child care and for both to have the same time and energy in which to acquire experience, knowledge, skills and contacts that have monetary value in the workplace.
No fault divorce works well for those who repartner easily: young childless women and affluent men of any age.
If a woman gives a man her loyalty while she is young and at her most attractive to men, then she is owed his loyalty when she is no longer young and her career options are gone.
male feminist detected
That is why the Christian concept of marriage was historically speaking the least worse system
We don't owe the world a kid!
How do you convince both women and men to understand who they can realistically attract and to be satisfied with that type of person? Not every woman can be with a top high earning man in the top 1%.
I often wonder how to social engineer attraction. I mean every time someone blames social engineering for beauty standards, I ask how many chubby chasers were created by body positivity.
Belief in this meme is strongly correlated with time spent on-line.😄
Why not? Don't you think that women only deserve the best? Why should they settle for some 5'10" broke guy on only £70,000 a year?
👏 ...THANK YOU!
I think financial incentives are not the solution. The upfront cost of rearing a child will never be covered by any tax incentive or rewards program, having children will always be financially unprofitable in the short term, at least in the short term.
The number one predictor of family size is the religion binary. Not which religion, but religious yes or no. And I'll note, despite the CCP's best efforts, this religion can't be substituted for a religion where the government is the supreme power. So in terms of what can governments do to encourage birth rates, I think the bare minimum is to not be hostile towards creeds where there is a commandment to be fruitful and multiply.
There's nothing wrong with the the current birthrates. People who are choosing to have children are still having two or three at least. It's the amount of people who are remaining single that is causing the birth rate collapse.
Finances. Everyone but the very highest paid among us have to work full time to have any kind of good life, and that only gets worse every year. Now both parents work to barely make ends meet. Mother's can't afford to spend time with their children, why have them?
Childcare at university would help
Edcuated smart People will only have kids if they can provide for them it's not to have 7 so 2 can survive into adulthood. It's to have 2 so 2 can thrive and have all the opportunity others kids have. To play the sports they wand too and become professional. To get better education to get into any school they want to and have a better future. Not to stand at the fence to see other kids play.
Yes, and these people who are future oriented need to have more kids. Currently government support effectively subsidises irresponsible parents who are relatively less future oriented. Paying parents to have kids is just more of the same. This is the wrong incentive structure.
We educate smart people so as to contribute to our economy. The best way to get more babies from educated smart women would be to incentivise employers (give them state resources) to employ such women when they have babies and to keep employing them after they have babies. Note, this is the reverse of the current situation. Currently the government pays women and puts the costs (maternity leave, employing a temp to cover, maternity payments, higher uptake of sick leave when caring for young kids, etc) on to the business employing them.
@@bazstraight8797 free TV with each vasectomy.
That will reduce the non future oriented.
The goths just like their own suffering for its own sake, because the blackness matches our aura, and existence is misery, glorious misery (often with a more cathartic chorus, which is cool and adds another dimension and dynamic shift to the song, but if it goes on too long it turns into new wave, which needs to stop).
Of course goths want children, more offspring means a greater number of too-cool-for-school purveyors of awesome irony in the world.
Riddle me this Batman: how can Bela Lugosi be dead, if he wasn't alive to begin with?
More ppl being born means a greater total amount of humans struggling with mortality, which means more In the Flat Field and stuff. (And black coffee, and maybe clove cigarettes nowadays instead of the cancer sticks, all that good stuff).
🎶Burn down...I burn down...burn down the Hot Topic...the Hot Topic... ~South Park
Goth is dandy for teens but much beyond one's 20s is rather cringe if not simply boring.
@@anomietoponymie2140 How old are you?
When the underclass has died out, birthrates will stabilise.
Make education free for any woman who has 2+ children.
You mean college education? Why?
@@marlonmoncrieffe0728 Because going to college takes 3+ years out of clever young women's reproductive life. It would be wise to offer incentives for women to go to college later in life after having children
The only way to improve brith rate is have a verry good wealth redistribution system. Please comment.
Read my other comments here. I don't think redistribution of wealth between people will make for a world with more contented children.
It's not wealth that produces family it's moral and social factors that do. Community doesn't exist and the basis of community is family. So if there is no spaces for communities there's no space for families
Birthrates plummeted in the USSR and other socialist countries.
commie
@@jenniferlawrence2701 They didn't redistribute wealth. They simply destroyed it all.
Stop lying.
One simple act would obviously help: a guaranteed human right to life (abolish abortion).
It lead to bad outcomes in Romania.
Have fun with the crappy kids made by the Idiocracy. They forgot the pill or some shit.
@@bazstraight8797you mean communist romania?
No, it would not.
More kids does not mean more parents to raise those previously unwanted kids.
Having less children than replacement is a perfectly rational and sensible choice in the modern world. Trying to stop it is a bit like trying to hold back the sea with a dam. It may not be theoretically impossible, but in practice it's not really worth the effort.
We'd do a lot better adjusting our economic models to work with a fertility rate around 1.3 than in trying to fight to get it back to 2.1.
People will say "but women say they want to have more than 2 kids," to which I respond: yes, and people say they want a lot of other things, too. And they probably do want them, *in the abstract*. But that doesn't mean they actually want them in concrete terms. What people actually do is a much better gauge of their wants than what they say. And most women today are not behaving the way they would if they really, truly wanted more than 2 kids. Which is totally fine.
I have some sympathy for your view. I believe people respond to incentives and their current response is perfectly 'rational'. It may be sustainable for a few generations provided, as you suggest, we adjust our economy to accommodate low and then declining population growth. However, longer term we will have strongly selected for high fertility which seems unwise to me.
You're presumably aware of the famous saying about where we all are in the longer term.
Tidal power plants literally hold the ocean with a dam.