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Funny, I just wrapped a blog post about this: https://green.spacedino.net/i-dont-worry-about-population-decline-and-so-can-you/ https://green.spacedino.net/i-do

Funny, I just wrapped a blog post about this: https://green.spacedino.net/i-dont-worry-about-population-decline-and-so-can-you/ https://green.spacedino.net/i-dont-worry-about-population-de... Good presentation by the author that reaffirms my own opinions about the topic, specifically that while it sucks and cripples the social welfare programs our (deceased) elders built on the theory of continued population and productivity growth, it's also an issue we can fix with coordination between powers and workers. It's about building a new environment that puts families, rather than employers, first, and encouraging participation in the creation and maintenance of that environment by everyone regardless of age or demographic. The return of third places, social events, volunteerism, clubs, transit, public gatherings, stay-at-home parents, and more. And as I've seen others point out in regard to the biological procreation imperative, we as a species are wired to breed. For all the whining from puritans about pornography, I'm of the opinion that its proliferation and normalization in fact reflects a deeply-held urge of humanity to have more time to have sex and live authentically again, whatever that may look like to the individual or family unit. Humans clearly want sex, and families, and time off, but the current global civilizational model is work > all, and thus families have taken a backseat to GDP growth at all costs.

h2zizzle 1y ago
I'm a single, gay man. During two of my last major existential crises, for about two weeks following, I noticed a marked turn of my thoughts and feelings towards having (biological) children. Stuff like, "If I'd had a kid at such-and-such age, how old would they be now?", "How would I manage if a child was suddenly in my life?", and "Oh god, my line stops with me panic". For a number of reasons, I am extremely unlikely to ever have kids; it would take a change in my prospects so massive that I can't really conceive of it. For this reason, I have come to feel that there may be a common (often irrational) biological impulse to procreate. But now that I get to the bottom of my message, it occurs to me that it might be tangential, since you're talking about sex, which is related to but encompasses a far larger category of activity than just procreation. Speaking through my lgbt lens (and again, probably tangentially) this false conflation creates at least the dual issues of the incorrect ideas that sex should only be for procreation, as well as the the incorrect idea that queer people can't (or shouldn't) be parents. Here's hoping that both get nixed as we rethink the role of sex, and the importance of family, in society. Just some rambling, don't mind me.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  Not minded at all - I thought that was an introspective and interesting comment; especially as someone who doesn’t really want kids, but also isn’t sure, but is also aging out of that period of his life.
- stego-tech 1y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm also a single gay man and think similarly at times about the path not taken, and why I chose not to adopt as I had originally planned in my 20s. It sucks, but I'm content with being the cool Uncle to my niblings and providing external support to my siblings as needed. Society needs more than just parents in order for children to thrive, and I believe queer folk are ideally suited to fill in a lot of those roles. As for my comments on sex specifically, I'll admit I'm speaking through the perspective of someone who A) doesn't have it in order to procreate, and B) has a healthier relationship with it than many of my own peers might. It's not solely an act of procreation or hedonism, but it can fill both roles - though I will only ever know it from the perspective of pleasure alone. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts like that. Thank you.
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    Disclaimer: my thought process tends to be somewhat autistic, I don’t mean any offense. As a non gay man I am just curious to hear your perspective. From a strictly biological perspective, I think it could be argued that gay “sex” isn’t actually sex. Like, what makes it sex? Is it sex for pleasure? Or is it something adjacent to sex? That has some commonalities with sex, but isn’t actually sex. Like there is a part of sex missing from the equation. Why do we still call it sex? I kind of assume it’s the kind of thing hardly anyone thinks about and the notion of thinking about it will just make everyone angry. Sorry!
    - anonym29 1y ago
      Not the person you're asking, but I'm of the impression that colloquially, the verb "sex" includes more than strictly the traditional historical definition. I'll refrain from getting into specific details here, but I think the answer to this question is that many people use words in a manner that diverges from literal definitions. There's a concept in linguistics that language is constantly evolving. As someone on the spectrum myself, with a tendency towards systemizing the world around me, I understand how frustrating this can feel. A particularly excruciating example is the transition of the intended meaning of "literally" to increasingly mean "figuratively", particularly in social contexts. Makes me want to tear the skin off my face, lol. While this isn't strictly relegated to social concepts, I understand how frustrating it can be to struggle to navigate this phenomenon in social contexts and be misinterpreted as a bad faith actor. At the end of the day, I try to deal with it by accepting that not everyone else experiences the world the way I do, and that it's as unfair for me to expect everyone else to modify the way they perceive, process, and utilize information (including language) to accommodate my idiosyncrasies.
chrisco255 1y ago
The fertility rate is falling everywhere, even countries that have extensive childcare and maternity/paternity leave. Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families.
- xp84 1y ago
  > Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. I speculate that a different thing is happening in Europe. Every time I hear European takes on issues, it feels like Europe is post-religion, post-values, post-meaning. Everything is relative; pleasure is the only personal goal, and not harming others is the only external goal. Why even have kids? Why get married? It's a lot of work, plus there's a widely-held belief that Europeans/Westerners in general bear generational guilt because of what colonizers did in the 1500s anyway, so it feels virtuous to voluntarily decline as a civilization, freeing up more oil and resources for the developing world. The US and Canada seem more traditional in that a lot of people would really like to have kids and don't think it's pointless, but it's just impractical for economic reasons, and they're choosing to allocate what little resources they have towards a more comfortable life (relatively!) instead of having an economic struggle -- OR they do have kids but because they wait for economic certainty first, they start much later and as a result have way fewer per couple. Of course, North America has a very loud segment that agrees with the European degrowth narrative detailed above, and Europe has a loud segment which goes against it.
  - chrisco255 1y ago
    I mean, this is a quaint narrative, but it doesn't explain the fact that fertility is falling everywhere on earth, regardless of current economy, colonial past, continent, race, or religion.
    - xp84 1y ago
      Put another way: It's falling in Western countries because we're commiting cultural suicide for the reasons I cited for Europe (the US is behind Europe, but seems to be on the same road). It's falling in countries like China because they moved like 70% of their population from farms to huge cities in the last 40 years, which causes their society to work much more like... the West. Places like Africa, etc. are falling as they get more access to birth control, work for women, etc. I guess I should have said this: I theorize that the whole world is following a similar path, but different areas started sooner and are thus much farther along in their decadence. Africa is now where the US was in 1965. Europe today may be what the US looks like in 20 years. Obviously though Western cultural beliefs are much easier to spread now than they were decades ago, so it could be that the developing world "catches up" much faster now. Maybe in 10 years, Africa will be more like US 2010 than US 1975.
swat535 1y ago
Here is an uncomfortable truth: religious people produce more children, regardless of their income, social welfare status and living conditions. They are thought from birth that marriage, family and children are gifts from "God". In fact, Christians make it a _requirement_ to be "open to life" (i.e have children) before they agree to marry you in Church (in addition to banning contraceptives, abortions and porn). They also believe that pursuit of wealth, status and greed is a sin and one should focus his attention inward , towards "God", "Family", and "Charity".. disincentivizing people from dedicating their lives to their careers and missing their chances of having kids. is it no surprise then, that they ten to have larger families? What I'm trying to highlight here, isn't a celebration of religious practices but the fact that we need a massive cultural shift, first and foremost to resolve this issue and if I'm being honest, I don't see this happening anytime soon.. at least not in our hyper capitalist society. I'm not sure many people (especially women) are willing to sacrifice their lifestyles, career aspirations and goals to have children. Unless people are taught from birth that having kids is their sole purpose in life and that family, motherhood and communities are deeply celebrated by society, they will opt out of having kids.
- xp84 1y ago
  100%. The mindset is everything. 100 years ago, if you picked the happiest 18-year-old woman in town, someone from a great family who was cared for, and never victimized by anyone, and asked her “are you sure you would like to sacrifice your opportunity to spend 4 years in a very expensive school and go get a job and work 5 days a week for the next 40 years, in order to bear a few children?” She would look at you like you were from Mars. Today, both sexes are, for good reason, afraid of sacrificing any “work years” just to have kids, largely since costs have now become so high that doing so on one income is punishing. Even if you make $250k, which would be enough to live a great lifestyle as a single person, if you have a family and only one parent working, you have to live a lifestyle that much more resembles someone who makes $90k. (Divide those numbers in half for non-high-cost areas, result is the same) It’s probably worse if you are truly saving up the absurd amount of money that college is going to cost in the future (I’m not).
- mensetmanusman 1y ago
  It’s crazy this was downvoted. This is basically a summary of all pew research on this topic - lol.
agalunar 1y ago
I’ve noticed that, besides the magnetism and drive for sex (which would be sufficient for a species to propagate), many people also experience the biological imperative (wanting their genes replicated) as its own separate feeling. This makes no sense to me – it’s not a feeling I can personally relate to. I’d like to raise kids because I’d enjoy getting to teach them and share things with them, but I don’t care whether they are my biological children or not. So it’s something I’ve wondered about. The likely why makes sense, but I don’t really get the what.
- stego-tech 1y ago
  For whatever it’s worth, I also believe the two are separate feelings that aren’t always in alignment. I have no desire to procreate (gay man), but following the birth of my first nibling I felt this profound swell of emotion and drive commanding me to nurture and support its growth into an adult. It’s likely why, in my teens and 20s before I understood the full impact of the 2008 crisis, I wanted to eventually adopt children myself. Biology is weird.
cardamomo 1y ago
I think your thinking also aligns with the ideas outlined in The Future is Degrowth (https://www.versobooks.com/products/2620-the-future-is-degrowth https://www.versobooks.com/products/2620-the-future-is-degro...). I found it to be a very approachable book, if you haven't read it yet.
rayiner 1y ago
Humans all across the developed world work 40% fewer hours than in 1900: https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever. Yet, in the U.S., TFR has consistently been dropping since 1800: https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever.
- lucketone 1y ago
  > Working hours for the average worker have decreased dramatically over the last 150 years. note the “average worker”. If women were staying at home with children, they were not counted as workers.
  - mensetmanusman 1y ago
    If they were, the averages would just be higher, their jobs are nonstop at home.
mensetmanusman 1y ago
“the ruling classes chose to ignore its symptoms out of convenience until the problem became insurmountably difficult to solve” Not only the elite, but all the voters who don’t care because the elite told them large populations were dangerous. I still meet so-called smart college educated people that think a large population crisis is coming.
NoGravitas 1y ago
This friend speaks my mind. Population decline is, on the whole, Good for humanity, in many, many ways. It's just bad for an economic system predicated on permanent growth, forever. That system was always doomed - if it weren't for demographic decline, it would just hit hard resource limits sooner. On the whole, I would much rather human population gradually decline through falling births, than precipitously crash through rising deaths.
lotsofpulp 1y ago
> we as a species are wired to breed. Wired to orgasm, maybe. Wired to breed, no. According to all the data. Humans are very analytical and do tons of cost benefit analysis before breeding, and apparently, choose not to in many cases.
- kbelder 1y ago
  Seems like an inevitable consequence of easy-to-use birth control will lead to an increase of the direct desire to have children, as those that don't have that desire get bred out of the pool. Of course, that may take many generations.
aprilthird2021 1y ago
> it's also an issue we can fix with coordination between powers and workers Which is severely lacking in the most powerful nation on Earth > It's about building a new environment that puts families, rather than employers, first, and encouraging participation in the creation and maintenance of that environment by everyone regardless of age or demographic. Again, never going to happen in the USA at least. The current human model is work > all because we are a capitalist system, and we reward greed because it's the best economic system we put up so far. There will be powerful interests fighting this and pushing all the costs of this heavy system failure onto their workers and consumers etc. and that's the whole problem we are facing...

h2zizzle 1y ago

I'm a single, gay man. During two of my last major existential crises, for about two weeks following, I noticed a marked turn of my thoughts and feelings towards having (biological) children. Stuff like, "If I'd had a kid at such-and-such age, how old would they be now?", "How would I manage if a child was suddenly in my life?", and "Oh god, my line stops with me panic". For a number of reasons, I am extremely unlikely to ever have kids; it would take a change in my prospects so massive that I can't really conceive of it. For this reason, I have come to feel that there may be a common (often irrational) biological impulse to procreate. But now that I get to the bottom of my message, it occurs to me that it might be tangential, since you're talking about sex, which is related to but encompasses a far larger category of activity than just procreation. Speaking through my lgbt lens (and again, probably tangentially) this false conflation creates at least the dual issues of the incorrect ideas that sex should only be for procreation, as well as the the incorrect idea that queer people can't (or shouldn't) be parents. Here's hoping that both get nixed as we rethink the role of sex, and the importance of family, in society. Just some rambling, don't mind me.

Esophagus4 1y ago
Not minded at all - I thought that was an introspective and interesting comment; especially as someone who doesn’t really want kids, but also isn’t sure, but is also aging out of that period of his life.
stego-tech 1y ago
For what it's worth, I'm also a single gay man and think similarly at times about the path not taken, and why I chose not to adopt as I had originally planned in my 20s. It sucks, but I'm content with being the cool Uncle to my niblings and providing external support to my siblings as needed. Society needs more than just parents in order for children to thrive, and I believe queer folk are ideally suited to fill in a lot of those roles. As for my comments on sex specifically, I'll admit I'm speaking through the perspective of someone who A) doesn't have it in order to procreate, and B) has a healthier relationship with it than many of my own peers might. It's not solely an act of procreation or hedonism, but it can fill both roles - though I will only ever know it from the perspective of pleasure alone. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts like that. Thank you.
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  Disclaimer: my thought process tends to be somewhat autistic, I don’t mean any offense. As a non gay man I am just curious to hear your perspective. From a strictly biological perspective, I think it could be argued that gay “sex” isn’t actually sex. Like, what makes it sex? Is it sex for pleasure? Or is it something adjacent to sex? That has some commonalities with sex, but isn’t actually sex. Like there is a part of sex missing from the equation. Why do we still call it sex? I kind of assume it’s the kind of thing hardly anyone thinks about and the notion of thinking about it will just make everyone angry. Sorry!
  - anonym29 1y ago
    Not the person you're asking, but I'm of the impression that colloquially, the verb "sex" includes more than strictly the traditional historical definition. I'll refrain from getting into specific details here, but I think the answer to this question is that many people use words in a manner that diverges from literal definitions. There's a concept in linguistics that language is constantly evolving. As someone on the spectrum myself, with a tendency towards systemizing the world around me, I understand how frustrating this can feel. A particularly excruciating example is the transition of the intended meaning of "literally" to increasingly mean "figuratively", particularly in social contexts. Makes me want to tear the skin off my face, lol. While this isn't strictly relegated to social concepts, I understand how frustrating it can be to struggle to navigate this phenomenon in social contexts and be misinterpreted as a bad faith actor. At the end of the day, I try to deal with it by accepting that not everyone else experiences the world the way I do, and that it's as unfair for me to expect everyone else to modify the way they perceive, process, and utilize information (including language) to accommodate my idiosyncrasies.

chrisco255 1y ago

The fertility rate is falling everywhere, even countries that have extensive childcare and maternity/paternity leave. Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families.

xp84 1y ago
> Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. I speculate that a different thing is happening in Europe. Every time I hear European takes on issues, it feels like Europe is post-religion, post-values, post-meaning. Everything is relative; pleasure is the only personal goal, and not harming others is the only external goal. Why even have kids? Why get married? It's a lot of work, plus there's a widely-held belief that Europeans/Westerners in general bear generational guilt because of what colonizers did in the 1500s anyway, so it feels virtuous to voluntarily decline as a civilization, freeing up more oil and resources for the developing world. The US and Canada seem more traditional in that a lot of people would really like to have kids and don't think it's pointless, but it's just impractical for economic reasons, and they're choosing to allocate what little resources they have towards a more comfortable life (relatively!) instead of having an economic struggle -- OR they do have kids but because they wait for economic certainty first, they start much later and as a result have way fewer per couple. Of course, North America has a very loud segment that agrees with the European degrowth narrative detailed above, and Europe has a loud segment which goes against it.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  I mean, this is a quaint narrative, but it doesn't explain the fact that fertility is falling everywhere on earth, regardless of current economy, colonial past, continent, race, or religion.
  - xp84 1y ago
    Put another way: It's falling in Western countries because we're commiting cultural suicide for the reasons I cited for Europe (the US is behind Europe, but seems to be on the same road). It's falling in countries like China because they moved like 70% of their population from farms to huge cities in the last 40 years, which causes their society to work much more like... the West. Places like Africa, etc. are falling as they get more access to birth control, work for women, etc. I guess I should have said this: I theorize that the whole world is following a similar path, but different areas started sooner and are thus much farther along in their decadence. Africa is now where the US was in 1965. Europe today may be what the US looks like in 20 years. Obviously though Western cultural beliefs are much easier to spread now than they were decades ago, so it could be that the developing world "catches up" much faster now. Maybe in 10 years, Africa will be more like US 2010 than US 1975.

swat535 1y ago

Here is an uncomfortable truth: religious people produce more children, regardless of their income, social welfare status and living conditions. They are thought from birth that marriage, family and children are gifts from "God". In fact, Christians make it a _requirement_ to be "open to life" (i.e have children) before they agree to marry you in Church (in addition to banning contraceptives, abortions and porn). They also believe that pursuit of wealth, status and greed is a sin and one should focus his attention inward , towards "God", "Family", and "Charity".. disincentivizing people from dedicating their lives to their careers and missing their chances of having kids. is it no surprise then, that they ten to have larger families? What I'm trying to highlight here, isn't a celebration of religious practices but the fact that we need a massive cultural shift, first and foremost to resolve this issue and if I'm being honest, I don't see this happening anytime soon.. at least not in our hyper capitalist society. I'm not sure many people (especially women) are willing to sacrifice their lifestyles, career aspirations and goals to have children. Unless people are taught from birth that having kids is their sole purpose in life and that family, motherhood and communities are deeply celebrated by society, they will opt out of having kids.

xp84 1y ago
100%. The mindset is everything. 100 years ago, if you picked the happiest 18-year-old woman in town, someone from a great family who was cared for, and never victimized by anyone, and asked her “are you sure you would like to sacrifice your opportunity to spend 4 years in a very expensive school and go get a job and work 5 days a week for the next 40 years, in order to bear a few children?” She would look at you like you were from Mars. Today, both sexes are, for good reason, afraid of sacrificing any “work years” just to have kids, largely since costs have now become so high that doing so on one income is punishing. Even if you make $250k, which would be enough to live a great lifestyle as a single person, if you have a family and only one parent working, you have to live a lifestyle that much more resembles someone who makes $90k. (Divide those numbers in half for non-high-cost areas, result is the same) It’s probably worse if you are truly saving up the absurd amount of money that college is going to cost in the future (I’m not).
mensetmanusman 1y ago
It’s crazy this was downvoted. This is basically a summary of all pew research on this topic - lol.

agalunar 1y ago

I’ve noticed that, besides the magnetism and drive for sex (which would be sufficient for a species to propagate), many people also experience the biological imperative (wanting their genes replicated) as its own separate feeling. This makes no sense to me – it’s not a feeling I can personally relate to. I’d like to raise kids because I’d enjoy getting to teach them and share things with them, but I don’t care whether they are my biological children or not. So it’s something I’ve wondered about. The likely why makes sense, but I don’t really get the what.

stego-tech 1y ago
For whatever it’s worth, I also believe the two are separate feelings that aren’t always in alignment. I have no desire to procreate (gay man), but following the birth of my first nibling I felt this profound swell of emotion and drive commanding me to nurture and support its growth into an adult. It’s likely why, in my teens and 20s before I understood the full impact of the 2008 crisis, I wanted to eventually adopt children myself. Biology is weird.

cardamomo 1y ago

I think your thinking also aligns with the ideas outlined in The Future is Degrowth (https://www.versobooks.com/products/2620-the-future-is-degrowth https://www.versobooks.com/products/2620-the-future-is-degro...). I found it to be a very approachable book, if you haven't read it yet.

rayiner 1y ago

Humans all across the developed world work 40% fewer hours than in 1900: https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever. Yet, in the U.S., TFR has consistently been dropping since 1800: https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever.

lucketone 1y ago
> Working hours for the average worker have decreased dramatically over the last 150 years. note the “average worker”. If women were staying at home with children, they were not counted as workers.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago
  If they were, the averages would just be higher, their jobs are nonstop at home.

mensetmanusman 1y ago

“the ruling classes chose to ignore its symptoms out of convenience until the problem became insurmountably difficult to solve” Not only the elite, but all the voters who don’t care because the elite told them large populations were dangerous. I still meet so-called smart college educated people that think a large population crisis is coming.

NoGravitas 1y ago

This friend speaks my mind. Population decline is, on the whole, Good for humanity, in many, many ways. It's just bad for an economic system predicated on permanent growth, forever. That system was always doomed - if it weren't for demographic decline, it would just hit hard resource limits sooner. On the whole, I would much rather human population gradually decline through falling births, than precipitously crash through rising deaths.

lotsofpulp 1y ago

> we as a species are wired to breed. Wired to orgasm, maybe. Wired to breed, no. According to all the data. Humans are very analytical and do tons of cost benefit analysis before breeding, and apparently, choose not to in many cases.

kbelder 1y ago
Seems like an inevitable consequence of easy-to-use birth control will lead to an increase of the direct desire to have children, as those that don't have that desire get bred out of the pool. Of course, that may take many generations.

aprilthird2021 1y ago

> it's also an issue we can fix with coordination between powers and workers Which is severely lacking in the most powerful nation on Earth > It's about building a new environment that puts families, rather than employers, first, and encouraging participation in the creation and maintenance of that environment by everyone regardless of age or demographic. Again, never going to happen in the USA at least. The current human model is work > all because we are a capitalist system, and we reward greed because it's the best economic system we put up so far. There will be powerful interests fighting this and pushing all the costs of this heavy system failure onto their workers and consumers etc. and that's the whole problem we are facing...