> As a gay man who grew up religious (in public schools), “what god expects of me” was not only oppressing but also the source of a lot of self-doubt, self-hate, depression, and anxiety. (Thankfully I quickly ditched the religion and paved my own path - very content with life now!)

Okay, for you, but what about the 90% of the population that shouldn’t forge their own path? Society actually needs them to do what’s expected of them.

That's what capitalism's for.

>90% population that shouldn’t forge their own path?

Who decides who these 90% are?

>Society actually needs them to do what’s expected of them.

You would be surprised how many people do what society needs without forcing them.

> Who decides who these 90% are?

Elders.

> You would be surprised how many people do what society needs without forcing them.

It’s surprising how many don’t. TFR for white people in LA (to use an example of a place where social norms have been upended quite thoroughly) is just over 1, and more than half the adults are unmarried. Without immigration from more religious and rigid Latin American countries, LA would be shrinking in half each generation.

>Without immigration from more religious and rigid Latin American countries, LA would be shrinking in half each generation.

i'm sure that religion is the only reason why immigrants into the United States would want to have kids.

/s There's definitely no US-centric financial/legal/immigration-related reasons, right? /s

Comparing different immigrant groups suggests it’s religious. Muslim Americans have similar fertility rates to Latinos, but East Asians have similar fertility rates to secular whites. But Muslims and East Asians have similarly high levels of education and income to each other, in contrast to Latinos.

This is a phenomenon across the developed world. Permissive western societies are outsourcing the job of perpetuating the population to Catholics and Muslims, just like they outsource industrial production to China. Permissive societies don’t appear to be sustainable without that arbitrage.

> Permissive western societies are outsourcing the job of perpetuating the population

Why does the job of perpetuating the population need to be done at all? At what levels? Why those levels? Does it matter where that population lives or their quality of life? Why or why not?

The best bet for fragments of culture, beliefs, way of life, world view, sense of morality, genetic variations, etc to exist as an average person is to have kids and instill the best parts of those values into them as a child.

If you're fine with your people's history just disappearing from the world, feel free to never reproduce.

Sure, but like, that's not what we're talking about. OP says western society is "outsourcing the job of perpetuating the population," as if there is some shirking of responsibility going on, or we all need to care about this for some reason. That's macro-level, not the personal choice to have children or not. No one is asking them to do that, so it's unreasonable to foist responsibility back on western society and then shame them for not fulfilling that responsibility.

Why is maintaining the human population at or above present levels something that so obviously needs to be done?

Probably to fund Social Security as life expectancy increases.

Maintaining a stable population in the steady state is something that needs to be done for society to continue existing. You can decide that, okay, maybe the target should be half the current population, but that just means that within a generation, those people in LA need to be having twice as many kids as their parents, which doesn’t seem plausible to me. Whatever the target is, the lifestyle of American secular whites (where the TFR is around half the sustainable rate) can either only be temporary, or must be propped up by immigration that only exists due to accidents of history and colonialism.

I’m only here with my three kids because the British colonized the country I’m from. The Latinos in LA—who are doing the grunt work of society as well the work of raising the next generation, while white people have dogs instead of kids—are only there because the Spanish were worse colonizers than the British. Secular white people tell me how wonderful their permissive, individualistic values are. But it’s like saying how great a job a government is doing when they’re running massive, unsustainable budget deficits. A value system can’t be “good,” in my view, if it can only exist because of an immigrant servant class.

>Comparing different immigrant groups suggests it’s religious. Muslim Americans have similar fertility rates to Latinos, but East Asians have similar fertility rates to secular whites

Are those Muslims from the same countries/cultures as the East Asians or is religiosity only one of a host of differences between the cohorts?

By "shouldn't forge their own path", I assume you mean something other than "should continue to ostracize and oppress 10% here, 50% there", so what do you mean?