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It’s not just Japan, but also a lot of the western world. People are getting married less often and having fewer children and my guess is that it’s largely driv
by ronnier 7y ago
It’s not just Japan, but also a lot of the western world. People are getting married less often and having fewer children and my guess is that it’s largely driven by women opting out as they are a lot more selective in who they date and marry compared to men. Historically women didn’t have much of a say in the matter since they needed to marry for a better life since they lacked the freedoms or resources to go it alone. Now that women have gained their freedom and the resources to to survive on their own (higher rates of education, economy that supports high paying jobs that employees lots of women, etc), they can totally stay unmarried and have fulfilling lives in their social circles and wait until they can select exactly what they want. Men largely take what they can get, they are the selected. Women select. And of course this is just a generalization.
- danharaj 7y agoOr maybe, it's too expensive to start a family these days. Or people grew up watching their parents regret starting one too soon and want to avoid that mistake. People who talk about women being more selective makes me wonder if there's an ulterior motive to choosing that hypothesis. Sour grapes?
- dfcmt 7y agohttps://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120 https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120
- danharaj 7y agoMost women I know 18-30 put hours of their week into their fitness and appearance. The most you get out of men is that some of them try to get nice clothes and go to the gym. Those men have no problem dating, it turns out. Most men? I have to chide some men to take a shower and do their laundry, even. If incels found out about exfoliating and not turning your depression and anxiety outward into misogyny, maybe they'd get laid.
- dfcmt 7y agoI don't know where you live but where I am both males and females have the same standards of fitness and hygiene but females can afford to be more picky about to whom they open their legs.
- danharaj 7y agoYour language betrays your resentment. The sourest of grapes.
- nyolfen 7y agoso you think this lack of hygiene or whatever has tripled in the last ten years or what? this betrays a total lack of consideration. sexual market dynamics are shifting rapidly.
- danharaj 7y agoI'll give you a hint: Using a market analogy for intimate relationships is not attractive, it's creepy.
- nyolfen 7y agoi don't call my girlfriend my customer, it's a completely appropriate metaphor when speaking about culture-level aggregate effects. you should reflect on why all of your responses in this thread boil down to attacks on a perceived outgroup instead of engagement with ideas.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThe implication of that chart is that women are increasingly having sex with the men who have sex with multiple women.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dgzl 7y agoI agree with the GP, women are more selective these days. I've been in the dating pool a while and things are changing in weird ways. Sexually speaking, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
- rectang 7y ago> Or maybe, it's too expensive to start a family these days. There's much more economic uncertainty for the average family as a result of two things. 1. Corporations innovating the labor market and successfully squeezing increasing amounts of wealth out of the workforce: successful union busting, ever more cleverly exploitative labor contracts, the gig economy, unpredictable scheduling, metrics and surveillance, etc. 2. Fewer funds proportionally available to labor thanks to increasing wealth capture by a tiny minority. It's not only expensive, but it's statistically difficult to overcome the uncertainty and establish a homestead you can believe will prove stable over a kid-raising time frame. It's easy to understand why people are hesitant to start families in such family-unfriendly economic conditions.
- mlguy456 7y agoSimple solution: 1%/year tax on wealth and give these money to families with kids. The tricky part is wealth is often stored as shares and if you tax Bezos, he'd have to sell 1% of his shares, thus driving the price of those shares down; then if some hedge fund keeps buying the shares he sells, eventually he may lose control over his company, which is unfair. We might want to define wealth as savings above 5M dollars. This would be easy to work around: register a few companies with highly complex structure of ownership and spread money across them.
- nugget 7y agoHow do you ensure our society survives in such an environment? There’s a potential future where the birth rate in open and tolerant communities falls to near zero while the birth rate in closed, ultra orthodox (across numerous faiths and denominations) religious communities within which women are commanded to procreate remains high. If you watch a show like Handmaid’s Tale through this lens you can start to connect the hypothetical dots from here to there.
- malandrew 7y agoLiberalism needs to evolve to incorporate the family and procreation into its philosophies and worldview if it wants to continue having an influence.
- hellisothers 7y agoSeems like you’re saying liberalism is anti-those-things but it’s not, it is anti-coercion though and if that has historically been the solution to what you describe then I could see one drawing that conclusion.
- hellisothers 7y agoHow about men could stop doing the things that make women not select them?
- freetime2 7y agoI think the solution is probably to make having children more attractive with government subsidies and labor laws. E.g. free daycare, affordable education (including college), health care, a minimum amount of paid time off per year, etc. Nobody should be forced to get married or have children if they don’t want to. But if we can alleviate some of the risks/down sides to having children, I think we will see more people choosing to start families and also having more children per family.
- klntsky 7y ago> to make having children more attractive with government subsidies and labor laws This is a bad idea. Russian government have already tried that, and the result was that less wealthy people (mostly alcoholic and drug addicts) started to literally make children to receive subsidies and spend them on themselves. It's fun to me how Google search results differ for "to make a child for subsidies" and for this same phrase translated to Russian, where it has already became a phenomenon.