Everyone is wrong about the reason for declining fertility rates.

growframe · 2025-01-11T02:13:07+00:00

Contraception and culture leading to declining birth rates go hand in hand. If people wanted babies they'd simply stop using contraception. There's anither layer that involves people simply not wanting children, and it has a lot to do with culture and modern society

I agree with your point about most people being wrong. People just like using birth rates as a vehicle for their political agendas, and the reasons they give are post-hoc ones to justify said agenda.

toasterchild · 2025-01-11T02:38:53+00:00

Also teens are having a lots less sex than they used to.

Pure_Slice_6119 · 2025-01-11T02:47:29+00:00

In Afghanistan, wars happen more often than in Russia and Ukraine, but this does not reduce the birth rate. The reason for the decline in the birth rate in Eastern Europe is the same as in the West. The higher the price of human life, the fewer children. Before contraception and advanced medicine, the death rate was as high as the birth rate. No one cared for children as they do now, children worked in dangerous industries with their parents. Now people have few children and invest a lot of resources in them. And I do not agree that the economy does not matter. My friend conducts sociological research in Russia, they studied large families. She did not see the overall result, but when she did her part of the work, she noticed that almost all large families are divided into two types. 1) parents have their own business. 2) marginal parents. She did not see a single average family in her city that would have many children. Not a single family where both parents work under an employment contract and they have many children. The average family consists of working parents and 1-2 children. A large family is either unemployed marginals or entrepreneurs who do not work under an employment contract, but are business owners.

Outside_Memory5703 · 2025-01-11T03:03:12+00:00

Are you saying that most kids used to be unwanted?

Wow, it’s so terrible that we’re moving away from that, and the crippling poverty that also used to result, isn’t it ?

alotofironsinthefire · 2025-01-11T03:45:17+00:00

When childhood mortality slows down people slow down having kids.

When a country starts developing into a " modern" economy it then becomes a negative children.

CatchPhraze · 2025-01-11T13:59:00+00:00

A huge portion of declining birth rates is less accidental teen pregnancy. Like a huge portion. So yeah. Your not wrong.

thedarkracer · 2025-01-11T02:21:16+00:00

In earlier days we still had access to abortions atleast in the past century.

SandBrilliant2675 · 2025-01-11T05:04:33+00:00

That’s a little reductive, but yes it’s due to the availability of contraceptives (which also include condoms, vasectomies, spermicides, as well as female contraceptives) AND later marriages, better health, better educational opportunities, changing values , urbanization, and the increasing inability to survive on a one income household with/or without children have all lead to the ultimate decrease in birth rate in stage 4 countries.

More than ever, people are now having children because they want to, not because they have to. Personally, I think that’s a good thing.

uglysaladisugly · 2025-01-11T09:27:54+00:00

I'll copy paste my comment to the other "fertility rate" post.

It's a biological fact.

Relying solely on our drive toward sex for reproduction was a maladaptive evolutionary strategy in our case. Like with all maladapted traits, it will drive us to extinction or there will be adaptation.

What we see today is the simple fact that we never developed any strong drive for having children per se. Our reproduction relied solely on our willingness to have sex.
Wit contraception, we decoupled the variation of this traits from the fitness differential it was correlated to.

The next question will be, what traits will correlate with reproductive success from now on?

the_1st_inductionist · 2025-01-11T02:18:19+00:00

Ok. But then, why aren’t people willing to have more sex without contraception where they accidentally have a child?

wtknight · 2025-01-11T02:50:12+00:00

So are you trying to say that the reason why the birth rate in South Korea is lower than in the United States is because birth control is somehow more available there? Are you also saying that all South Korea has to do to increase its birth rate is to take contraception away from people and suddenly people will start to have a lot of children?

I'm not sure that I believe these arguments, and you'll have to provide some kind of proof to me that it's only better access to contraception that is fueling the low birth rate in countries that have a much lower birth rate than even the United States.

SwimmingTheme3736 · 2025-01-11T07:12:08+00:00

Contraception has helped people choose to have less children.

The reason people choose not to have children are a lot more complicated

NockerJoe · 2025-01-11T02:39:01+00:00

The way I see it its all one thing. A big part of culture problems is people make wide ranging cultural changes and just kind of presume the population will act in according to the changers morals. In this case you have contraception and sex ed and you basically wipe out teen pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy. But the expectation was very obviously that those people would just have kids as married adults in non shotgun weddings.

Instead what happened is a lot of those people had time to decide and make the choice and chose not to have kids. Maybe they have personal problems, maybe they just don't think they'd be a good parent, maybe that marriage to a compatible willing partner never materialized. Either way, they just don't have kids.

Which is fair. Its a free country and you have the right to choose. But now a lot of people are mad they chose wrong because life isn't conforming to their moral fantasies.

My_House_on_Mars · 2025-01-11T02:20:41+00:00

I agree, that and the concept of planning. I saw in some documentary that it wasn't so long ago that humans made the connection between having sex and pregnancy. This happens because they are 9 months apart and not every sex results in pregnancy, so you can see how that connection isn't that obvious for primitive humans.

"Planning" wasn't even in the realm of possibilities for most of human existence.

Another reason is that in the past families had plenty of kids who then used as labor in their farms from early age, so they were not a burden. Now you have to pay for them until (best case scenario) they are 18

Budget-Cat-1398 · 2025-01-11T05:14:26+00:00

Countries with the highest rate of births are poor African countries. The higher the standard of living the lower the birth rate. It is about woman having choices about life. The Australian government offered a baby bonus payment for woman who had a baby and it caused a boost on the birth rate. The Baby Bonus was scrapped and now replaced with subsided child care.

Practical-Delay-344 · 2025-01-11T11:08:06+00:00

Contraception (pull-out, non penetrative sex) has been around for hundreds of years. So has been abortion and even infanticide. So, people weren't necessarily stuck with each pregnancy, at least not in every culture at every time.

There were times in ancient Rome, when the fertility rate of the nobles dropped so far that it worried government.

While contraception certainly plays an important role (but especially concerning premarital sex), I don't think it's the deciding factor.

I think what's most important is is how much our way of living has changed. Most societies have become much richer which means better social systems and far (!) less people working as farmers who can need every pair of hands. Having kids changed from an economic necessity to a goal of personal fulfilment and even a liability.

What also changed: - Medical improvement: you can now expect your few children to all reach adulthood (compared to about 50% dying during their childhood years), so you don't need some "extra" - The number of big families vastly decreased. Childlessness wasn't even that uncommon in the past (due to marriage laws) but there were many families with lots of children to compensate - Longer generations and increasing life expectancy: People are now having kids later in life. If you have kids at 33 instead of 20, you end up with just three generations of people in 100 years instead of four or five. People are also living longer, leading to more older people in society. - Economic changes leading to social changes and changes regarding gender roles. Most women don't want to be only mothers to many children. They rather want one or two kids and also work/have their own income.

Motor_Succotash_4276 · 2025-01-11T15:55:29+00:00

Many, many people have said this before.

Just one example, from over 20 years ago - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1462719/

Pristine_Paper_9095 · 2025-01-11T21:50:12+00:00

I don’t understand why this is so complicated for people.

Young people, across the board, are having less sex.

That’s literally it

Now if you want to talk about the rate of child births adjusted for the delta in sex itself, that’s a different discussion. But I don’t think a single study has ever examined it this way.

catdog8020 · 2025-01-11T02:38:29+00:00

No one is having sex bro including woman. Lmao 🤣

Sharp_Engineering379 · 2025-01-11T04:12:19+00:00

Quite surprised absolutely no one has said anything about this. Most of the declining fertility debate is people complaining about how it's because of the economy, and then others complaining that it's actually because of a shift in traditional values. No one, absolutely no one, the political commentators, pundits, news commentators, redditors, people on youtube, etc, as far as I've seen has pointed this out at all. It's like it went completely over everyone's heads, and it's not discussed by any significant margin, if at all. Of course, this is just my personal perception so it could be otherwise, but so far I've got no reason to doubt.

Women decide when to conceive and don’t want to get trapped with weird fucking conspiracy theorists or lazy fathers, men with control issues or OCD.

AntonioSLodico · 2025-01-11T04:55:21+00:00

Contraception unlocks the door, but it's socioeconomic factors that open it and walk through.

PIF_Daddy · 2025-01-11T14:50:57+00:00

Economics.

Rich ppl can afford to have as many babies they want and outsource the raising of them.

bluehorserunning · 2025-01-11T20:01:54+00:00

Nah, you’re right to a large extent. Kids just aren’t that fulfilling for most people, especially with the helicopter parenting and investment required nowadays, and people just don’t want to do it.

There are people who find taking care of kids the most fulfilling and wonderful thing in their lives, and if there’s any genetic component to that at all, those genes are going to swiftly out-populate other alleles in the population. In a few generations, we’ll be back to worrying about over-population again.

mdoddr · 2025-01-12T09:27:09+00:00

Wait....... did you think nobody knew this?

That people aren't choosing to have babies?

No.... people know this is just so obvious nobody bothers to mention it

Dertross · 2025-01-12T18:46:03+00:00

Nope. It's because women don't want to have kids.
Authority = responsibility.

If no one can force women to have children, and women dictate whether they have children on their terms it's 100% their responsibility for not having children.

Equal_Connect · 2025-01-11T03:29:29+00:00

I cant speak or anyone other than americans but here in the USA i think diet has a lot to do with it. Americans eat a lot of chemical shit factory made ultra processed junk. Im talking enriched wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, seed oils, yellow number 5, blue 2, added sugars, soy, fast food. If you eat that shit long enough i assume that you eat a lot of that shit you will lose testosterone, get estrogen, and your sperm count/ egg quality would decrease drastically. Also factor in smoking, drinking yeah you will probably be infertile. Also porn addiction can literally give you ED.

optimistic_entropi · 2025-01-11T02:22:37+00:00

You just thought this. No research. No checking against others. Just straight to the internet.

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Mr_Vaynewoode · 2025-01-11T07:27:08+00:00

Environmental estrogen is also a thing. Look at the amount of microplastics they are finding in the testicles of cadavers these days. It is genuinely horrific.

Plus there are issues with contraceptives entering the water supply and not getting filtered out in water treatment plants.

Vegetables are covered in hormone altering pesticides.

And Cows are full of pharmaceuticals as well.

beautyinthesky · 2025-01-11T11:38:36+00:00

Contraception and abortion have always existed. Maybe not as effective or safe but contraception has a very long history. Think of the concubines of kings, or sex workers of the past. They all used contraceptives. Contraception has a long history.

flipsidetroll · 2025-01-11T11:59:15+00:00

Personally, I think a big part is the fact that they have been drilling into us, that there are too many people on the planet for at least the last 40 years. And you can’t keep telling people this without expecting it to impact people or their want to have children. Now suddenly they bleat about declining rates and think everyone is going to hop on the baby making? Nope.

relish5k · 2025-01-11T15:25:07+00:00

i think it’s that plus there’s just a lot of fun things to do other than having children, and this accelerates as we continue to see innovations in travel, entertainment, and online connectivity. when you live in a small town, can’t really see yourself moving, and all there really is to do is go to church and have kids, you’re probably going to have kids. now there’s a lot more options and especially if you have some money a lot more options that are much more fun and pleasurable than the slog of parenthood.

Aggressive_Sweet1417 · 2025-01-11T21:15:33+00:00

This is correct.

Even in Africa birth rates are declining, though still relatively high. Also, it's happening in both western and eastern countries, in capitalist and communist countries, religious and secular, etc. Access to contraceptives is the only reasonable explanation.

I wonder how will it stabilize. One way would be through evolution: maybe people with a tendency to actually want babies will reproduce more and those genes will be dominant in the next generations. Another possibility is that other external factors such as AI, or a decline in the cost of housing due to less population, will make it so easy to have children than it will counterbalance. Of course, a third possibility is that it doesn't actually stabilize and we go extinct, but I highly doubt so.

Any-Remove-4032 · 2025-01-13T19:40:28+00:00

I use contraceptives....because of money, economics, inflation 😐

random_user00098 · 2025-01-11T20:18:19+00:00

I breed a lot of women these days

Dangerous-Specific26 · 2025-01-15T12:22:13+00:00

You’re wrong too (respectfully 🫶) it’s that people don’t get bored being alone at home anymore

I was in a small isolated town once and wondered why people there didn’t shoot themselves out of boredom until I saw everybody there had like 5 kids

If you ask old people how they met their husband/wife it’s usually something completely random like they met on a bus or at a party or whatever

People my age (M25) have a tendency to be online too much so our social skills suck so we meet less people

No-Rough-7390 · 2025-01-11T02:29:03+00:00

Women are also convinced to put themselves into a double bind.

Education (which mind you, for several degrees you can get the equivalent knowledge per certification courses, libraries, free courses online) is an investment women have from the age of 5 until 25 or longer with higher degrees (think beyond BA). This is based on the promise of freedom and independence. However, this often puts women h to almost insurmountable debt based upon the chosen career path of their degree, something they didn’t necessarily account for. If this isn’t the case, then they still have a massive ego investment to prove that the education meant something and wasn’t all for not.

As a result, you have many women who are indentured servants who opted in to actually not be financially free until later in life, thus postponing childbirth and number of kids they could have. Moreover, many anticipate the men they end up with to subsidize their own debt to some degree (again, not very independent).

Most women would be better off waiting until kids are of school age to get an education and job seek. I’d older women are truly wiser, smarter, true adults, then that should reflect in the job market as well if it’s true. But you get a lot of fear mongering that prevents people from doing this.

LostWanderer88 · 2025-01-11T03:11:12+00:00

Contraception + Hedonism + Feminism convincing women that creating a family is the worst fucking choice they could ever make

I only wish this was happening to other regions of the world, not the west

Title	Everyone is wrong about the reason for declining fertility rates.
Author	AIter_Real1ty
Upvotes	21
Comments	238
Date	January 11, 2025 2:08 AM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1hylgy3/everyone_is_wrong_about_the_reason_for_declining/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/everyone-is-wrong-about-the-reason-for-declining.1540884 https://theredarchive.com/post/1540884

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