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> facing unwelcome social pressure to have children. Any guess as to why the human species is predisposed to pressure each other into having kids?

tomjen3 5y ago
We are predisposed to many other things as well, such as violence. Society frowns on that.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Right, because society itself evolved where societies that promote too much violence don't survive and those which do not do, thus the societies that are extant and have survived for a period of time have accumulated wisdom stored in their transmitted values, beliefs, moral codes, and customs. Including the basic wisdom of understanding that having at least a replacement level of kids is a requirement for the society to survive. Societies that lacked this wisdom aren't around anymore. So both genetic and social pressures point the same direction, which is why there is both biological pressure as well as social pressure to have kids. I have yet to see any traditional society that discourages children. Deviate from this learned wisdom at your peril.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    Traditional societies had all sorts of taboos around sex, such as extreme social punishment for sex outside marriage (so society wasn't straddled with too many bastards). Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children? Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      > Traditional societies had all sorts of taboos around sex, Yes, but all of those taboos are there for a reason. You may not know the reason for Chesterton's fence, but there is surely a reason. It is so costly to transmit a taboo across time that you don't get random taboos that survive and don't perform a socially necessary function. > Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children? I think there is already social disapproval for having more children than you can take care of in most places. Traditional societies even had mechanisms for infanticide -- child abandonment -- that were replaced in the middle ages with state sponsored orphanages. > Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman? Well, if that were the case, then it would be the norm already. Of course we know it is not the case because that geometric series goes to one. And we know it is greater than 2 because there are plagues, wars, etc, and populations need to be able to recover from these quickly. And we also know that a larger group is generally stronger than a smaller group. These groups compete with each other to see which will win out. This even transmits to democratic societies, obviously, so if people unconcerned about CO2 have more kids then the society will be dominated by those unconcerned with CO2. Thus any belief system which results in having fewer kids is put at a disadvantage both in terms of biological evolution as well as social evolution. Now fortunately no nation is an actual democracy, it is always controlled by elites to some degree, so you can hang on for a while with a shrinking population that follows your beliefs, but at some point things reach a tipping point and you lose power if your beliefs result in having fewer children than the competing social system.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      > Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman? Then the next generation has 1/20th the population of the current generation. The one after that, 1/400th. The one after that, 1/8000th. Imagine the US with a population of 40,000 people (after three generations of this). Imagine Mexico with its current population (if they don't do this for three generations). Do you think the US society survives in that situation? I don't.
Zak 5y ago
Many things that were adaptive in humanity's evolutionary environment, such as eating all the calories available are not healthy decisions for specific individual humans today.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  And I don't think human beings pressure each other into over-eating on regular basis.
  - Zak 5y ago
    Humans absolutely pressure each other into overeating. A great many social occasions in most cultures center around food and result in difficulty for people who struggle to maintain a healthy diet. They don't even need to be special occasions. "Let's go out for [500 calorie coffee drinks]" or "you deserve this [800 calorie slice of cake]" are routine for a lot of people in the US and EU. It's a different kind of pressure from the pressure to have kids, but it's definitely pressure.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Any guess as to why the human species is predisposed to pressure each other into having kids? Are they predisposed or is it learned behavior that more people in your tribe means more resources for your tribe? I assume pretty much all animals have children because their instincts tell them to have sex. Children are a side effect. Although, humans have the capacity to evaluate the costs and benefits of having a child, so humans may choose to have sex in order to have a child.

tomjen3 5y ago

We are predisposed to many other things as well, such as violence. Society frowns on that.

rsj_hn 5y ago
Right, because society itself evolved where societies that promote too much violence don't survive and those which do not do, thus the societies that are extant and have survived for a period of time have accumulated wisdom stored in their transmitted values, beliefs, moral codes, and customs. Including the basic wisdom of understanding that having at least a replacement level of kids is a requirement for the society to survive. Societies that lacked this wisdom aren't around anymore. So both genetic and social pressures point the same direction, which is why there is both biological pressure as well as social pressure to have kids. I have yet to see any traditional society that discourages children. Deviate from this learned wisdom at your peril.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  Traditional societies had all sorts of taboos around sex, such as extreme social punishment for sex outside marriage (so society wasn't straddled with too many bastards). Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children? Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman?
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > Traditional societies had all sorts of taboos around sex, Yes, but all of those taboos are there for a reason. You may not know the reason for Chesterton's fence, but there is surely a reason. It is so costly to transmit a taboo across time that you don't get random taboos that survive and don't perform a socially necessary function. > Why can't we develop similar taboos around having too many children? I think there is already social disapproval for having more children than you can take care of in most places. Traditional societies even had mechanisms for infanticide -- child abandonment -- that were replaced in the middle ages with state sponsored orphanages. > Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman? Well, if that were the case, then it would be the norm already. Of course we know it is not the case because that geometric series goes to one. And we know it is greater than 2 because there are plagues, wars, etc, and populations need to be able to recover from these quickly. And we also know that a larger group is generally stronger than a smaller group. These groups compete with each other to see which will win out. This even transmits to democratic societies, obviously, so if people unconcerned about CO2 have more kids then the society will be dominated by those unconcerned with CO2. Thus any belief system which results in having fewer kids is put at a disadvantage both in terms of biological evolution as well as social evolution. Now fortunately no nation is an actual democracy, it is always controlled by elites to some degree, so you can hang on for a while with a shrinking population that follows your beliefs, but at some point things reach a tipping point and you lose power if your beliefs result in having fewer children than the competing social system.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > Sure we need some children to continue, but what if the optimal number of children is 0.1 per woman? Then the next generation has 1/20th the population of the current generation. The one after that, 1/400th. The one after that, 1/8000th. Imagine the US with a population of 40,000 people (after three generations of this). Imagine Mexico with its current population (if they don't do this for three generations). Do you think the US society survives in that situation? I don't.

Zak 5y ago

Many things that were adaptive in humanity's evolutionary environment, such as eating all the calories available are not healthy decisions for specific individual humans today.

xyzelement 5y ago
And I don't think human beings pressure each other into over-eating on regular basis.
- Zak 5y ago
  Humans absolutely pressure each other into overeating. A great many social occasions in most cultures center around food and result in difficulty for people who struggle to maintain a healthy diet. They don't even need to be special occasions. "Let's go out for [500 calorie coffee drinks]" or "you deserve this [800 calorie slice of cake]" are routine for a lot of people in the US and EU. It's a different kind of pressure from the pressure to have kids, but it's definitely pressure.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> Any guess as to why the human species is predisposed to pressure each other into having kids? Are they predisposed or is it learned behavior that more people in your tribe means more resources for your tribe? I assume pretty much all animals have children because their instincts tell them to have sex. Children are a side effect. Although, humans have the capacity to evaluate the costs and benefits of having a child, so humans may choose to have sex in order to have a child.