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Sex is the base biological desire. Children are just the outcome of that. But one can now happen consistently without the other. Animals stopping breeding mean

Sex is the base biological desire. Children are just the outcome of that. But one can now happen consistently without the other. Animals stopping breeding means they stop having sex. That is not necessarily the case with humans.

spacephysics 2y ago
This comes off as quite a reductionist response. Beyond the biological, there’s the question of why people don’t want to start families
- marssaxman 2y ago
  Perhaps they never really did, and much of the claimed past desire to start families can be seen as an example of choice-supportive bias in an environment where birth control was harder to come by, with social norms discouraging use.
Amezarak 2y ago
I'd disagree with this, but it's easier to just point out that the trendline is for higher and higher proportions of the population to become sexually inactive. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-having-less-sex-whether-theyre-teenagers-or-40-somethings/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-... > The decreases “aren’t trivial,” as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. The underlying paper has more demographic breakdowns: > Wellings et al. (2019)—using three waves of data from the UK’s National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) completed in 1991, 2001, and 2012—found that frequency of sex among 16–44 year olds had declined, more so among married participants and those in the 35–44 age group. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02125-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02125-2 Similar article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/202106/why-people-are-having-so-much-less-sex-today https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/2021...

spacephysics 2y ago

This comes off as quite a reductionist response. Beyond the biological, there’s the question of why people don’t want to start families

marssaxman 2y ago
Perhaps they never really did, and much of the claimed past desire to start families can be seen as an example of choice-supportive bias in an environment where birth control was harder to come by, with social norms discouraging use.

Amezarak 2y ago

I'd disagree with this, but it's easier to just point out that the trendline is for higher and higher proportions of the population to become sexually inactive. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-having-less-sex-whether-theyre-teenagers-or-40-somethings/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-... > The decreases “aren’t trivial,” as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. The underlying paper has more demographic breakdowns: > Wellings et al. (2019)—using three waves of data from the UK’s National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) completed in 1991, 2001, and 2012—found that frequency of sex among 16–44 year olds had declined, more so among married participants and those in the 35–44 age group. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02125-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02125-2 Similar article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/202106/why-people-are-having-so-much-less-sex-today https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/2021...