The ones who shall inherit the earth.
They can, but then in some cultures, their religious leaders will tell them they need to go through all that, many times, or else their god will be angry with them.
Citation needed. There are many things influenced by genetic traits. So many that I think the burden of proof is that you'd have to show that there's no influence of genetic traits here. Add to this memetic influences, and it's clear evolutionary biology that those that want to produce children will have more offspring and thus at some point antinatalism should be reduced as a portion of society.
Human beings are the only animal (that I am aware of) that can short circuit the process of reproduction by completely de-linking sex and pregnancy.
It is possible that evolution resulted a trait (cognitive plus physical ability to manipulate nature) that ultimately is not conducive to procreation.
And it is possible that in a million years, perhaps humans continue to exist because a tribe removes women’s ability to not become pregnant, or humans don’t exist but some other species exists with a different mechanism of reproduction, or humans figure out how to make babies in artificial wombs, or humans start living a lot longer, etc etc.
> perhaps humans continue to exist because a tribe removes women’s ability to not become pregnant
I guess technically it should be “because a tribe removes women’s ability to not become pregnant, be financially independent, and physically independent/secure”
I guess there are two types of social evolution, or evolution in general... One is where one tribe changes its customs over time, so evolves through intra tribe competition. Another is where you have multiple tribes with different customs, so evolves through inter tribe competition. Reality would be a mix of these two models.
This is partly why poor people with little social safety net have most kids.
The more safeties exist in a country, the less kids are there.
Simple as that.
Poor women have children because they often don’t have the choice not to have children. That is why every single country when women gain rights and financial independence, the total fertility rate plummets.
Lower and middle class people in developed countries have fewer kids because they want to provide a home with their kids’ own room, be in good school districts because they are afraid of what happens if their kid doesn’t get into a good college, etc. The fear of not being able to provide a certain minimum quality of life prevents many from having kids.
It actually switches back to richer women having more kids because they have more security of owning their home, affording childcare while still being able to save for retirement, having health insurance, etc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-12/the-ri...
So he married a woman from India and now they've 4 kids.
It wasn't about money, no one was willing to make this sacrifice for him.
I had absolutely no trouble getting dates here when I moved here. There must have been something about your friend that just isn't attractive to Japanese women. Is he religious, overweight, or have a beard? You can't expect a person to be equally attractive to any arbitrary group; different cultures have different standards.
Even if you want many kids, your potential partner might want kids, too, but feel pressured to have them right away if you say 4.
No one wanted kids, he's slight above average looking japanese man with good personality but whenever he tried to get commitment, he got dumped even if relationship was several years long.
He told me it's because they don't want to take risk.
Interesting story, but talking about commitment and having kids is something you need to do before you're even seriously dating someone; it's not something you wait several years to bring up. What you're looking for in a relationship and what you want out of one in the future is one of the most basic compatibility factors in a relationship, so it should be discussed after a few dates or so.
I kinda feel like something's missing from this story.
Most people only ask "if you are open to having kids in future"
Followed by rough estimate of timeline which may or may not materialize with the same person.
A lot of people don't really know much about themselves, change their mind later, or give the compatible answers because they don't wanna lose the anticipated benefits of being with this person.
Why does he need to breed 4 children?
This reads so awful
Was it misogyny when official opinion shapers were demanding people have fewer kids, as some are still doing?
Feminists generally supported these efforts.
Or they are simply overworked and don't have time to raise kids.
So, many "pro-birth" policies are aimed at helping women at work so that they don't have to sacrifice their career. But the government isn't doing much (our current president said people should be "allowed" to work 120 hours per week if they wanted to - and somehow still got elected), and what little policy Korea has is constantly attacked by conservative young men for being "sexist" because it's "feminist propaganda" that victimizes those poor young men.
And every year Korea slides further into population collapse.
If the labor quota is high enough… then nothing else will happen. GDP will rise, but individuals will steadily be sacrificing family, entertainment, and joy.
People will say they want to.
But they'll not make necessary sacrifices because it's outside their comfort zone
There are poor countries than Korea where survival is way more difficult, yet they've kids.
It's not about money or affordability, it never was.
Poor people in any culture have more kids.
Your comment is not based in reality and comes across as if "if I was millionaire I'd have kids".
That was also reflected in past Korean society where people frequently said the cost of one more kid is just "a spoon and a pair of chopsticks."
Very different from modern, industrialized Korea, where the lifetime cost of raising one kid equals multiple years of your salary. Unless you don't care about your kids and think they'll just sustain themselves by working in the rice paddy from age six to seventy.
That perceived cost is above the cost of living of a baby.
That cannot be fixed by simply offering them more money.
Okay, now you're just making stuff up.
The doomsayers are probably right, we are in for hard economic times as birth rates decline. But maybe that is a good thing, and we can finally come up with a system that doesn't depend on exponential population growth.