What causes low birthrates?

[LurkTrawl]

I think it's complex enough a topic that it's not feasible for one person to collate analyze and review all possible reasons and how they intersect.

I hate to say it but you might need a committee.

There was an animal experiment done in the 1960s where a bunch of rats were given access to infinite amounts of food water, and entertainment inside of a confined space.

I heard somewhere that experiment was super bullshit like the stupid Stanford Prison experiment.

 

[Am I Very Wrong]

Is anyone really gonna argue that women having to work is not gonna affect birthrates or that they used to have it better back in the days? i mean, they did, just not in the way they think

 

[Mao Hao Hao]

I always feel like it's just a natural thing when a species becomes long-lived. Other species that have low birth rates are the ones that live to 60+ in the wild. With the increase in medicines, tech etc to improve lifespans (even in third world countries), stuff naturally slows down.
But, as others have said, there's so many factors at play, it's impossible to pin any one thing down. Also, women worked long hours in factories and such back in the Victorian etc times and still had kids, same for the high levels of pollution at that time too, so there's more issues at play there than just both parents working (probably the fact that leaving your kids alone wasn't frowned upon back then, or the kids would also be in work, and the general higher costs of living now).

 

[Squishie PP]

I heard somewhere that experiment was super bullshit like the stupid Stanford Prison experiment.

Maybe, but the story it tells is definitely a microcosm of various human civilizations where this happened: Think the Aztecs, the Babylonians, the Carthaginians, etc. Sexual depravity, human sacrifice, and all sorts of other crazy shit were rampant at the height of these empires.

 

[Space Police]

Simple, we're overpopulated. The population needs to be lowered to 2 billion at the absolute most if we want our ecosystem to remain intact, so we, like any animal would, have decided to stop reproducing so that we can preserve and improve living conditions for ourselves right now and the future of the species.

 

[Lain Poster]

Education. Every country that provides good education to it's citizens suffers declining birthrates. A smart populace is one with options and many choose to not have children whereas their less educated peers don't have as much of a choice.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

I always feel like it's just a natural thing when a species becomes long-lived. Other species that have low birth rates are the ones that live to 60+ in the wild. With the increase in medicines, tech etc to improve lifespans (even in third world countries), stuff naturally slows down.

The idea that we somehow instinctively modulate our fertility based on average life expectancy is the stupidest assertion I've ever heard.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It's all about modern people being self obsessed, all the things listed are just cope arguments for why people can't find a fuck, or wouldn't advance to the point of the fuck. No one wants to stop his hedonism and spend the next 20 years being in charge of a potential tard baby.

 

[Tablet County]

Lead poisoning.

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

The fundamental reason is that we are in a period of resource abundance, and human beings and most other complex organisms are not well-adapted for resource abundance. There was an animal experiment done in the 1960s where a bunch of rats were given access to infinite amounts of food water, and entertainment inside of a confined space. The TL;DR is that the rats became overpopulated, and this caused the rats to exhibit sexually abnormal and violent behaviors, and for the social order to be disrupted as a result. The rats also stopped having children as frequently, and also stopped caring for the few children that they did have. By the end of the experiment, infant mortality had gone up to 80-96%.

The paper that describes the experiment is "Population Density and Social Pathology." I attached the paper itself, it is definitely worth a read. There are quite a lot of parallels between this "rat utopia" and our own society.
Ninja-edit: Of course the major difference between the rats and us is that in human civilization, (((malicious actors))) can take advantage of our resulting social pathologies for geopolitical gain, but the experiment kind of sort-of paralleled this too, if you read it.

Space exploration and colonisation would solve some of these issues, but I can understand (((why))) that will not be done. Not anytime soon anyway. In the end the rat utopia boils down to a lack of choice in regards to where to live, how to live and what set of rules to follow. That set of choices broadens drastically if one simply had the ability to go someplace else. In this case, space.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

The idea that we somehow instinctively modulate our fertility based on average life expectancy is the stupidest assertion I've ever heard.

In a vacuum it's not at all such a strange theory.

But in practice having antinatalist media and academia, as well as having more and more legislation that promotes anti-fertility, from shaming women that want children young for not being "ambitious", to removing children from the home and being part of the income.

Basicly every part of education, he way it is given to younguns to how it is given to young women ensures low fertility. Both men amd women are incentivised towards paths that make them unattractive as parent for the other sex.

Add to that an ever increasing economic squeeze, completely dysfunctional social media dating, and generations that aren't even learning basic social skills, and people don't have the time, energy, motivation, hope and strength to build a family. Let alone a large family.

It's completely sensible that an intelligent k selected species reduces population growth when it's so overwhelmingly large. But it's also being blind to all the social engineering that not quite controls us, but directs and manipulates us.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

In a vacuum it's not at all such a strange theory.

No, it REALLY IS such a strange theory. There's a reason you have to do detailed statistical gathering and analyses to determine the life expectancy of a population. It's not some intuitive sense that people have and to think otherwise is fucking retarded.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

No, it REALLY IS such a strange theory. There's a reason you have to do detailed statistical gathering and analyses to determine the life expectancy of a population. It's not some intuitive sense that people have and to think otherwise is fucking retarded.

Right and the people that do the detailed statistical gathering and analyses then inform both people and ruling class into what the current expected results are, and in one country caused a specific law forbidding children past 1 (thought not the whole country and npt for everyone), and in other countries had subtler controls toward that, like the plans outlined in the jaffe memo among other things.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Right and the people that do the detailed statistical gathering and analyses then inform both people and ruling class into what the current expected results are, and in one country caused a specific law forbidding children past 1 (thought not the whole country and npt for everyone), and in other countries had subtler controls toward that, like the plans outlined in the jaffe memo among other things.

The idea that we somehow instinctively modulate our fertility based on average life expectancy is the stupidest assertion I've ever heard.

If state propaganda is making people reproduce less (which is in itself retarded because states around the world are freaking out at the terminal decline in fertility), then that's the cause.

 

[Mao Hao Hao]

The idea that we somehow instinctively modulate our fertility based on average life expectancy is the stupidest assertion I've ever heard.

There have been quite a few studies on the topic, and there is a drop in fertility among species that live longer, along with the females gaining such things like menopause, stopping fertility altogether. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4588167/
The only species that have said menopause are humans and toothed whales (orca, pilot whales, and narwhals), no other primate has it, they do not live as long at all, unless in the safety of captivity. Unlike other mammals, who generally are at the end of their lives and die soon after they reach the end of their fertile period, us (and the whales) continue for decades after, which is suggested to be a way to keep knowledge alive for younger generations, since orca matriarchs will pass on hunting techniques, locations and so on, and provide care for offspring despite not being able to have any themselves anymore. We are lucky in that aspect, as its what has helped humans to have such long lives compared to other mammals (whales also live until into their hundreds sometimes).

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

There have been quite a few studies on the topic, and there is a drop in fertility among species that live longer, along with the females gaining such things like menopause, stopping fertility altogether. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4588167/

That's a biological mechanism, not a behavioral one caused by a sudden increase in life expectancy that can only be determined by statistical analysis of an entire population anyway.

Are you seriously suggesting older women would stop going through menopause if infant mortality spiked sufficiently? I mean, holy fucking shit that's stupid.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

If state propaganda is making people reproduce less (which is in itself retarded because states around the world are freaking out at the terminal decline in fertility), then that's the cause.

I've given a number of examples of a state directly doing it, and over a dozen ways how powerful actors are influencing it more indirectly (jaffe memo). So to call that retarded is you ignoring evidence that has just been provided.

That there may also be an instinctive part to it is honestly not a crazy idea and you're rigidly closedminded for rejecting it before even thinking about it. Cities have almost always historically had net negative population if you remove immigration into cities from rural areas. And as a higher percentage of people live in cities, a higher percentage of people will think "huh things are really crowded here, let's not add to that". This may be conscious or subconscious. I'm not even saying I believe it to be a true significant mechanism, one that's proven beyond any doubt, (if you read me carefully you saw I rejected it, just found it plausible), it's definitely a possibility and really not that outlandish.

 

[Mao Hao Hao]

That's a biological mechanism, not a behavioral one caused by a sudden increase in life expectancy that can only be determined by statistical analysis of an entire population anyway.

Are you seriously suggesting older women would stop going through menopause if infant mortality spiked sufficiently? I mean, holy fucking shit that's stupid.

No. I am stating that, as my initial thing about long-lived species having less children, humans naturally would have less kids over time. There has been no sudden increase, humans have always had the long lifespan, it's more humans used to die before reaching the ages of menopause, so it wasn't really an issue back then. Whereas now that more and more people are living longer, there is an overall decrease in children, and having a higher mortality rate of babies would not stop menopause at all.
I'm just sharing my thoughts, take of them what you will, but clearly, you prefer arguments.

 

[Tad Loaf]

I think because like sex itself, you need that primal instinctive drive from your hormones in order to want to do it, because if you really think about it from a purely mental standpoint, it's an insane amount of work, it's an insanely big risk, you are basically giving up your life for at least 18 years if not longer, it's not the most appealing thing on paper but from a emotional standpoint it can be incredibly fulfilling unlike any other act in life. So I think the further people stray away from instincts, living more artifically comfortable and self centered lives or lives focused on hobbies/work for fulfillment, you end up seeing less kids being made. In some third world country all you can do is work, drink and have kids, as opposed to first world countries where you have countless opportunities and pursuits available to the average person.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

There has been no sudden increase, humans have always had the long lifespan, it's more humans used to die before reaching the ages of menopause, so it wasn't really an issue back then

Didn't we have a low life expectancy mostly because of child and birth mortality? As in, women once they reached 12 had an almost similar life expectancy as today if they had the equivalent number of children women have today? Genuinely asking.

(I understand birthing has become a lot safer, but if women had only 1.5 children wouldn't they be expected to reach 60-65 pretty commonly even in roman times?)