It’s easy to blame feminism for a lot of things, but data from Asia show pretty clearly that cratering fertility is more a product of urbanism and modernity than feminism per se. It looks like feminism is actually a symptom rather than a cause of many of these social trends.
Some years ago, I studied Chinese demographics concerning the one-child policy. A lot of bright people have put much effort into understanding the effect of this wide-ranging policy of forcing people to have fewer children. Unsurprisingly, many American professors are quite supportive of it. However, the honest ones admit that it has had limited utility, and has taken second place to trends that began years before Deng Xiaoping ordered it into Chinese law. The policy has produced brutality on a scale that is difficult for most of us to comprehend. Millions of abortions been coerced or forced, and from the looks of the streets of Shenzhen in the late 90s, where gangs of child beggars ran rampant, a lot of parents were giving “extra” kids away (or selling them) to avoid the fines. It may be that the explosion in Chinese prostitution in the 90s was partly a result of this. However, it’s plausible (although by no means certain) that even more misery has been averted — this is the view that most environmentalist American professors take. Although I don’t share their faith in such measures, I’ll at least concede that it’s an arguable point.
What many do not realize is that fertility was already declining when the policy was put into place, particularly in cities. Shanghai was the first administrative district in China where fertility dropped below replacement level, and this happened as early as the late 1950s. As China modernized, other cities soon followed suit. By the 90s, the only parts of China with above replacement fertility were remote rural regions where modern culture had made few if any inroads.
Today, fertility in China’s big, advanced cities is among the lowest in the world. In Shanghai and Beijing, it is only 0.7 — under half the replacement level. Other Asian cities outside the PRC policy have experienced similar declines. Singapore is barely above that with a fertility rate of 0.78. Hong Kong has 1.09, and Macau 0.92. Tokyo is at 1.02; Seoul 0.92. All terribly low.
Political feminism has barely made inroads into Asia, but the women there are behaving in much the same manner as their Western counterparts. This suggests that it isn’t feminism that effected the cultural and lifestyle changes in large metropolitan areas, but rather that feminism is merely a political expression of post-industrial urban culture — a symptom, not a cause.
If you think about the implications, they are quite sobering. We often hear about environmental sustainability, but rarely, if ever, about cultural and demographic sustainability. There is obviously something unique about the economic powerhouses of Asia, Europe and the Americas that has allowed the development of extraordinarily advanced societies. However, from the looks of it, they contain the seeds of their own destruction. Demographically speaking, they are withering on the vine, and where the people go the culture will follow.
It is this trend above all that points to a world in decline, and it doesn’t look as though it will be possible to prevent it. If China’s brutal, ham-fisted population control efforts only had a marginal effect on population growth, there is no eugenics program or natalist policy that will have any significant effect on advanced urban populations. As the numbers get worse by the year, it leads me to speculate about the late Roman empire, and wonder whether there wasn’t a similar process at work there. Perhaps, as someone once said, it is the meek who shall inherit the earth.
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“Perhaps, as someone once said, it is the meek who shall inherit the earth.”
Let’s hope they inherit it soon, and that “the meek” are males.
As an aside, maybe someday in China, aunts, uncles, non-multiple- birth siblings and first cousins will become very rare. Northeast Asian mothers and fathers already have the lowest prevalence of naturally- conceived, all-fraternal multiple births, with Japanese mothers and fathers having the lowest.
(Nigerian mothers and fathers have the highest frequency of all-fraternal multiple births, and all-identical multiple births occur with near-identical frequency among ethnicities. I would imagine that multiple births where some fetuses are identical to others, but not all other fetuses, would also be more common among Nigerians.)
Too bad middle children will also become very uncommon in China as well (I’m a middle child and proud of it; I’ve always hated the one-child policy, enacted in 1979, as it is a birth-order genocide against people not born first).
There are many parallels with the Roman Empire. As early as Augustus, legislation had been introduced to try to increase the birth rate (to little avail).
The key factor in the dramatic reduction in the birth rate seems to be the education of women. This is hardly an argument for keeping girls in ignorance, but the end point does seem to be the rise of entitled feminism. First comes the demand for suffrage and the education of girls, next for equality of opportunity and wages in the workplace and finally for equality of outcomes or outright female supremacy.
It’s hard to argue against equality of opportunity, which was why so many men could happily agree with it and be co-opted to the cause. It’s the final stage that’s the killer. Although addressed in the same terms of victimhood and suppression of “natural” rights, the desired result is very different and very destructive for all.
I wish people could be more honest when we talk about “replacement level” fertility. There’s nothing magic about 2.1 children per woman, unless you think there’s also something magic about the exactly 7.05 billion people on earth or the 315 million people in the USA, and that some tragedy will automatically befall a country (or “the world”) if population falls below its current level.
What people are really worried about – and what most smart people understand, but are hesitant to admit – is fertility declining among their particular group (racial, religious, or philosophical) while increasing or remaining constant in other groups. In other words, Chinese officials probably wouldn’t really care about the absolute number of Chinese, or of Mandarin speakers, in the world. But if the evidence indicates that Middle Eastern muslims, Indians, or some other group is going to ascend, then they hit the panic button.
What clearly does not and will never work, and yet what so many borderline-white-supremacist SoCons still attempt, is to beg women to have more children. It does not work. Any attempt to appeal to women’s religious or ethnic pride, or to tell women that “they hold the future in their hands,” etc, just further puts women in a position of power that they will routinely abuse. It allows women to make selfish demands and to force these (clueless) old people begging them to have kids to re-orient society around women’s whims and complaints.
For those interested in increasing a given group’s birth-rates, the only way forward is to hold up the miserable lives of women who have made stupid decisions as an example to others. To say “look at this woman – she thought she was Ally Fucking McBeal, and that she could have ‘adventures’ as a fun-loving girl in the city until she was 34, then wake up and find a nice, reliable man waiting for her. Turns out, she didn’t have a clue. Don’t let this happen to you.” This is, of course, the exact opposite approach from that taken by the fat-headed church leaders and SoCon media jackals, who are all trying to convince young men to overlook the herpes and the wrinkles and marry these women. They should be doing the exact opposite: pointing out the failures, loneliness, and misery of these women, and focusing on the group of girls who are currently 14-25 years old.
This, of course, is only a concern if you care about your group’s birth-rates. Personally, I couldn’t give a shit, and I generally get along well with Mexicans and Salvadorans. But sometimes I like to give free advice.
Sorry for the long comment. Price, happy new year.
We often hear about environmental sustainability, but rarely, if ever, about cultural and demographic sustainability.
You really need to read “Suicide of a Superpower”. He get’s into all this in thoroughly researched detail.
http://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Superpower-Will-America-Survive/dp/B007SRWKXS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357236983&sr=1-1&keywords=suicide+of+a+superpower
It’s not just America centric but takes on a historic and prophetic broad worldview. “The Death of Christian America” and “The Crisis of Catholicism” chapters in the beginning are a bit tedious, but the rest of it is some compelling stuff, including “Demographic Winter”.
“By the year 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in China…Nothing like this has ever happened to any civilization before…Speculation is seething about what might happen: a war to cull the surplus of males, a rise in crime, a huge expansion of prostitution that is already a major industry in every city, a rise in homosexuality.” – Peter Hitchens as quoted by Pat B.
China doesn’t need a “one child policy” and especially if baby girls are being slaughtered in favor of boys. He who controls his gestational carriers to reproduce through religious doctrine or any other coercive means, controls the world. Making babies matters…but women don’t want to do it anymore – – because it “inconveniences” them to be married and raise children.
She who controls reproduction, controls the viability of the species. When birth control and abortion is supported and practiced with more enthusiasm than pregnancy and birth, you know you’re in trouble.
I wouldn’t consider Desmond Hatchett and his “playa” spawn to be meek.
Of course the Idiocracy effect is unsustainable itself.
The legions of morons and degenerates eventually destroys the surrounding culture that provides its sustenance and stability.
My prediction is not that the meek will inherit the earth, but rather we will experience a decline to be followed by a crash and a brutal struggle for survival.
In the long term, perhaps centuries from now, I’m betting that the future leads to a more Nazi-like world.
A world run by the intelligent people who emerged victorious after the crash, but without the moral hang-ups about eliminating the weak and undesirables who compete for resources.
In short it will be populated by the children of the subset of Alphas who take what they want, and have the raw intelligence to do so.
Unfortunately, the Judeo-Christian ethic of helping one’s brother seems incapable of dealing with those who deliberately live parasitically off the system.
There are no doubt a lot of reasons certain groups of people are not having children. Some of both sexes because they don’t want to give up enjoying the pleasures of sexual variety. Others of both sexes because they cannot find what they believe to be a suitable mate. Others of both sexes because they do not want to gamble on love abd the aftermath. Others of both sexes because they don’t want to give up certain economic and financial freedoms and opportunities. There are many that are so pessimistic about the future, (for a long list of reasons) they simply do not want to bring children into this world for the child’s sake. Further, advanced forms of birth control keep birth rates down. Pornography keeps birth rates down by providing primarily men with an alternative to a wife that many are choosing to rely upon. Their is probably going to be a huge global upheaval of the likes the earth has never seen. How soon, nobody knows, but it seems like it could be pretty soon. And a lot of very rational people believe this. The potential outcomes?
Women are going to be in for a rude awaking when they are older.
No man, no children, and no real community to assist them.
Oh yeah and all the social safety nets will have long since snapped from a lack of a tax base to fund it.
The population decline is a product of social carrying capacity as it always has been in cities.
In the past, people died in droves and were replaced from the countryside where they though they could get a better living.
Its much the same now, the difference being modern death rates are lower but people and control fertility easier and most importantly, there is much less countryside.
Though it effects my people (Whites) to a good degree as well, I am generally glad of the population decline.
This will reduce ecological burdens and more importantly, force a degree of fairness into the system. I am not a Liberal obsessed with fairness and privilege or any of that , not all people are equal and I fully admit as much as any American I take advantage of low food prices and cheap AG labor
That being said expecting people to live cheek to jowl and pop out baby after baby with little resources and packed into a pest hole just you can be rich and than somehow expecting these will be well behaved , high investment citizens is insane.
TANSTAAFL , there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch and if the elite want cush lives and who doesn’t they’ll have to help build a society with a sound floor and if needed a good roof.
pay or no play.
The problem is really about overpopulation of the planet relative to the nature’s resources available ( google peak oil, peak fertile land, peak fresh water, peak fertilizer or phosphorus, rare metal scarcity and so on).
We human are too successful at modifying our environment and make it work for us. We can not stop. The financial crises is directly related to the available energy that we have to create growth and get our civilization working. Money is energy, not the other way around.
Women in my opinion are stupid and useless. What I mean by that is that they cannot survive on their own. Women don’t have the logical skill to anticipate the future and prepare for it. They also have not imagination.
The survival behavior of women is to acquire other people resource to survive, such as money and an obedient male that the can manipulate. Why do you think a women kill a husband so easily just before divorce. They fell threaten to be cut off from resource.
Women have to be oppressed otherwise this survival behavior can become destructive. Women are insecure because they know they cannot survive on their own. All women know that and they operate on a herd behavior to hide this secret.
For the time being money represent a way to access recourse to survive. Eventually inflation and resource scarcity will kick in and money won’t be of any use. How will women survive without out the support of men.
By way it won’t be easier for men either, but a men can built a shelter in the wood and hunt and fish.
Strange…never noticed declining fertility in Manila.
I’ve been reading lately some stuff that would suggest feminism and low-birth rates are “first-world” problems. The wealthier and more protected the citizenry, the less necessity there is to rely on a certain order, giving way to the trends of female rebellion, male disconnection and less focus on producing and educating the next generation.
Essentially, idle hands…
I think the push by (traditional) conservatives to be more reproductive and attempt to keep men in the loop (regardless of how questionable their methods are) is largely because they feel their existence threatened.
So, I guess this is good news for the biosphere of Earth?
These are not new insights.
I will permit myself a long quote from Mark Steyn’s 2006 seminal article _It’s the demograpy, stupid_;
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1550710/posts
Recommended reading, all of it.
There is no “population bomb.” There never was. Birth rates are declining all over the world—eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of thirty-nine. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called “population explosion” was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9 percent of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26 percent of the increase. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the world’s population to just over 20 percent, the Muslim nations increased from about 15 percent to 20 percent.
[...]
Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30 percent to 15 percent. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20 percent.
And by 2020?
So the world’s people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less “western.” Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)—or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the west: in the UK, more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.
Can these trends continue for another thirty years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: the grand buildings will still be standing but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.
I don’t think you can totally excuse feminism and many governmental policies that mess with family formation (either by making it more legally perilous or more financially expensive) from the equation. Clearly, I do think the economics of large cities tends to work naturally against family formation, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. And I think you underestimate the importance of feminism in China, simply because its not as openly practiced. I rather think that lots of the Chinese communist partys political philosophy has feminist influence.
Anyway, coincidentally Angry Harry was writing on the same subject recently:
http://www.angryharry.com/Feminism-And-Falling-Birth-Rates.htm
I rather think that lots of the Chinese communist partys political philosophy has feminist influence.
Precisely.
From Marx to Lenin to Mao to Obama, Egalitarian Utopia is instrumental in bringing the plan to fruition. Ask Erin Pizzey who lived in China as a girl during the revolution. Just because women weren’t marching in the streets and burning their bras in Tiananmen Square doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Difference is Feminism in America was self-imposed, fomented by “anti-establishment/sexual revolution propaganda” dispersed from academy and media.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/from-avfm-editor-at-large-erin-pizzey/
A lot of valuable knowledge about China… and, of course, the point about feminism not causing decline in fertility is absolutely correct..
However:
“There is obviously something unique about the economic powerhouses of Asia, Europe and the Americas that has allowed the development of extraordinarily advanced societies. However, from the looks of it, they contain the seeds of their own destruction. Demographically speaking, they are withering on the vine, and where the people go the culture will follow.”
The demographic decline, of course, exists. But to say that these cultures are moving towards “their own destruction” is far fetched – in fact, these populations have increased in size drastically over just 100 years. China’s population was 546 815 000 in 1950, today it is 1 344 130 000. There is no way to put it in PC terms, but let’s just say it is way too many people.
Here’s the historic population from Wikipedia:
2100 BC: 4,000,000
2 AD: 86,000,000
1000: 87,000,000
1500: 110,000,000
1650: 123,000,000
1800: 260,000,000
1900: 400,000,000
1910: 439,214,000
There have never been this many Chinese around IN THE WHOLE HISTORY of their race.
Same can be said about Europeans, in many of European nations, there are more people now than there were in the beginning of 1900s. Now, the problem for Europeans is the age structure and the fact that globally the European percentages have decreased in comparison to other races (it is something like 25% to 11% of the world population in a hundred years or so). Sure, there is population decline, but in terms of numbers there are still more Europeans around than there ever was.
So even if post-industrial and urban cultures do sort of “contain the seeds of their own destruction”, there are already so many people in the world, that physical extinction or a drastic reduction in size is not a threat (with the exception of a few European cultures). Asians and Europeans will survive in relatively large numbers, the only issue is how they will take care of the old in the next 50 years and beyond.
Not to even mention Africans and Middle-Eastern people.. there is so many of them that they won’t even be able to feed themselves or provide themselves with drinking water.
I get so tired of this argument. Yes European birthrates is below replacement, so what? Since 2005 European birthrates have in ceased by a half a child each in most European countries and “indigenous” birthrate is how higher than immigrant birthrate. This, combined with The end of the immigrant era means there will be fewer new immigrants across continental Europe from this point forward.
The us and the uk however have notnfollowed this trend.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9566.html
OT: This Year in PC:
“EGGED ON BY WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE, WHITE MALES GO ON SHOOTING RAMPAGES
Black American males commit murder at a rate roughly four times their quotient of the population and are even said to be overrepresented in “crimes involving the death of four or more people.” Despite all that, dumb white dudes and dumb white chicks insist that shooting rampages are due to dumb ideas such as “white male privilege,” which my arrogant and entitled sense of white male privilege leads me to deny even exists outside the warped minds of sheltered white academics.”
http://takimag.com/article/2012_the_year_in_pc_jim_goad/print#disqus_thread
“Not to even mention Africans and Middle-Eastern people.. there is so many of them that they won’t even be able to feed themselves or provide themselves with drinking water.”
They dont have to provide themselves with drinking water or food.. YOU must be able to DEFEND YOUR drinking water and food from them. and as you stated, there are sooooo many of them.. and That is why replacement levels with a majority single culture are important to any society.
@realist
You said that “There is no way to put it in PC terms, but let’s just say it is way too many people.”
This is just something we’ve been told over and over again as part of our training. It’s no different than saying global warming over and over. Or women have always been oppressed. Or the more recent war on women. It’s just something that’s repeated ad naseum until it becomes a new truth.
All that aside I’ll take your numbers at face value. You say there’s 1,344,130,000 Chinese. However, women are the bottleneck in reproduction and have a window of about 20 years, plus most of that number isn’t fertile women of reproductive years, probably no more than 15%. So that gives us 201,619,500 Chinese women who are able to reproduce. If China continues it’s present policy of one child per couple, which is half of replacement rate, and you add into the mix that more boys are being selected to be born, roughly 55/45. Plus some women choosing not to have children, the math can be pretty startling pretty quickly.
If we take that number and multiply it by the number of women being born its 201,619,500 x .45 = 90,728,775. Now let’s say roughly 80% of women choose to have children, which seems like a pretty fair number. So that’s 90,728775 x .8 = 72,583,920. So in one generation, (20 years) the number of chinese women able to reproduce went from 201,619,500 to 72,583,920. Which is roughly 1/3 of what it is now.
So using 1/3 is a pretty good estimate of the number of Chinese women able to reproduce every 20 years. So if the present policy is followed for the next century we can calculate out the number of women who are of fertile years and able to reproduce in the year 2113.
In 20 years roughly 73,000,000.
In 40 years 73,000,000 x .33 = 24,090,000.
In 60 years 24,090,000 x .33 = 7,949,700.
In 80 years 7,949,700 x .33 = 2,623,401.
In 100 years 2623401 x .33 = 865,722.
So if China continues it’s present policy there will be less than one million fertile women that are able to reproduce in one century. You can easily see that it isn’t “far fetched” in the least that many countries are worried about their own destruction. If I can do the math, so can they.
It’s primarily the level of status and power you give women in a society that determines birthrate as well has how much status is given for being a mother. In the western roman empire, women had high status and many rights. In the eastern empire women had low status and very few rights. Western birthrate collapsed, while the eastern empire stayed strong. Cities where women are given non menial jobs also has the same effect.
Appears that the below book makes a similar claim:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_remembered_gate.html?id=pcu1AAAAIAAJ
“Maintains that the historical roots of modern feminism are found in the complex responses to the social change that accompanied the urbanization and industrialization of America in the first half of the nineteenth-century.”
“The concept was as women became more urban they were able to form associations to aid their destitute sisters. They did this in response to the plight of sailors wives left with children but no support. It was not the abolition movement but this earlier shift in self perception that began to lay the foundations of American Feminism.”
Not to even mention Africans and Middle-Eastern people.. there is so many of them that they won’t even be able to feed themselves or provide themselves with drinking water.
They’ll need to better cultivate their infrustructure and agriculture; something nomadic hunter/gatherer tribes never fully assimilated to. Problem is they’re always too distracted killing each other over Holy Land or minerals or some centries old grievance.
They dont have to provide themselves with drinking water or food.. YOU must be able to DEFEND YOUR drinking water and food from them. and as you stated, there are sooooo many of them.. and That is why replacement levels with a majority single culture are important to any society.
Sure, but that is not so much a matter of actual increase of the number of people (as I said, there are more Europeans today than there ever have been), but more of an issue of politics and strategy. There should be some international development policy on behalf of the West; but there is no obligation to let anyone in. Europeans would do fine driving the taxis and cleaning their bathrooms themselves. That’s how it was in the old days. And you can close up countries, in fact, Denmark almost did it successfully. And history shows that it’s not that hard either – doesn’t mean you have to become a totalitarian country, just close the borders again.
Political feminism has barely made inroads into Asia, but the women there are behaving in much the same manner as their Western counterparts. This suggests that it isn’t feminism that effected the cultural and lifestyle changes in large metropolitan areas, but rather that feminism is merely a political expression of post-industrial urban culture — a symptom, not a cause.
————————————-
keynesian economics is the cause of many of the problems that poison male female relations as political feminism. As I noted in my comment on heartiste’s blog http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/womanly-economy/
The reason that more men are not in college or at least not achieving the way that women might like is that the economy has specifically been re-arranged to accommodate the feminine preference for material risk aversion making it difficult for men to extract status out of working. There are two ways of organizing society – as noted by Victorian Lawyer Sir Henry Maine A) Status (Compulsory cooperation) and B) Contract (Voluntary cooperation) and the modern progressive movement is a giant step backwards towards compulsory cooperation and away from voluntary cooperation. How a group of people determine achievement says nearly everything about how their lives are going to be lived – this is why Kay Hymowitz noted that these degrees “take years” in “preadulthood” but mistakenly blamed the “knowledge economy” instead of noting the shift away from material resourcefulness and towards credentialing as the source of social standing.
Welmer, urbanization is itself a function of wealth and excess resources far beyond the survival level. If everyone is a subsistence farmer, there are no cities. However once agricultural production increases to the point that not everyone needs to farm, then trading centers will come into existence.
Cities have been population sinks probably as long as they have existed. Sumer probably had a lower than replacement birth rate, but that didn’t matter because there were always more Sumerians being born out in the valleys.
I don’t think we can say that feminism is just a side effect, though. There are cities in Yemen, but the birth rate there remains high. However, there’s precious little feminism there, I wager.
The east Asian nations are finding out that feminism takes many forms. Japan’s population dropped by about 200,000 in 2012. There were about 1 million births, and 1.2 million deaths. All the other East Asian countries – S. Korea, Taiwan, China, Viet Nam, Thailand, etc. are heading the same way. At least the Japanese got rich before they got old. China won’t have that luxury – their work force is likely at its peak right now, and will begin to decline sometime after 2020 if not sooner.
It will be interesting to see what form war takes in a world of declining population. I am skeptical that the Chinese government will be able to make war on any large scale, when all their soldiers are the Little Emperor of a family, the only son and only grandson of an entire family. Perhaps the US remote-control vehicle (“drone” ) war ongoing in Pakistan is the wave of the future? There are some weak points in that system…
The strongest correlation that I have ever read of with regard to birth rates is subtle: literacy. Teaching women to read seems to cut down on the number of children they bear over a life time.
It’s hard to argue against equality of opportunity, which was why so many men could happily agree with it and be co-opted to the cause. It’s the final stage that’s the killer. Although addressed in the same terms of victimhood and suppression of “natural” rights, the desired result is very different and very destructive for all.
——————————-
I can most certainly disagree with the notion of equality of opportunity for women or men or anyone else for that matter. At one time in our country private property and liberty of contract were held to be sacrosanct. Its not as simple as to merely state that women were “denied” a position – someone has to offer it. Its one thing for women for women to say that they wanted a chance to play a somewhat different role after being liberated from domestic drudgery in the home due to technological improvements a sentiment I could go along with – its quite another to enshrine these concept into federal law. Either individual discretion determines who gets what or you are back in the Soviet Union. The people in the EEOC are not qualified to run the railroads on time.
So what if the population goes down. 1969 the US population was about 202 million and they where able to get a man on the moon.
Some great insights here that never occurred to me.
But, surely, you just cannot discount the effects of feminism given that it has carried huge sway over so many areas that are undoubtedly connected with having children.
As for home-making being drudgery – not any more, it isn’t.
For most people, going out to work is drudgery.
@Epoche*
Equality for women today means that men cannot discriminate and hire only men for certain occupations if they so chose. When you combine this with men allowing women an equal vote at election time, it means that men have no means to control women. What this in turn means is that women no longer are compelled by men to meet the needs of men or children, themselves for that matter, or the long term needs of a civilization. This means misery (which is where we are at) and then death.
‘the late Roman empire, and wonder whether there wasn’t a similar process at work there.’
It would explain the difference between the Southern Italian (J type haplgroup) and the Northern Italian (R1b type haplogroup). Here’s a snippet from a book by Ernest Martin concerning urban population replacement in the late Roman Empire:
“Therefore, when the urban inscriptions show that seventy per cent of the city slaves and freedmen bear Greek names and that a larger portion of the children who have Latin names have parents of Greek names, this at once implies that the east was the source of most of them[..]. In his list of slaves that specify their origin as being outside Italy [during the empire], by far the larger portion came from the east, especially from Syria and the provinces of Asia Minor, with some from Egypt and Africa [which for racial classification may be taken with the east]. Some are from Spain and Gaul, but a considerable portion of these came originally from the east. Very few slaves are recorded from the Alpine and Danube provinces, while Germans rarely appear, except among the imperial bodyguard. Bang remarks that Europeans were of greater service to the empire as soldiers than servants. This is largely true, but, as Strach has commented, the more robust European war captives were apt to be chosen for the grueling work in the mines and in industry, and largely they have vanished from the records. Such slaves were probably also the least productive of the class; and this, in turn, helps to explain the strikingly eastern aspect of the new population.
Frank, “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,” pp.700–701
Source: http://www.askelm.com/people/peo011.htm
Matt Strictland said:
‘In the past, people died in droves and were replaced from the countryside where they though they could get a better living.’
That’s still happening today, albeit on a larger geographic scale than formerly happened i.e. thousands of miles rather than tens of miles. The movement of people to the West today is from deprived rural environments i.e. third world countries
There’s an interesting academic paper on the topic of population growth by Volkmar Weiss called ‘The Population Cycle Drives Human History – from a Eugenic Phase into a Dysgenic Phase and Eventual Collapse’:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/6557/
i am not familiar how fertility rate is quantified. can you explain?
I haven’t read all the comments so forgive me if this is redundant, but a really good resorce on this is the Demographic Winter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZeyYIsGdAA
Long but well worth watching the whole thing.
I’ve seen both Demographic Winter and Demographic Bomb and I agree with Mikediver . Both are pretty good.
What I don’t understand is why is everyone here so alarmist about the low level of fertility? As it is, the planet can barely substain the current human population, and with continuing economic growth the situation will only get worse. I do not see why we should cheer for ever-growing population?
Anyway what is striking to me, as a student of demographics, is that this article has no science at all to it. The determinants of fertility (and it’s decline) is probably like the most studied subject in demography, and there’s tons of good, solid science on the reasons of the decline in fertility rates. One can find a good overview in any “Introduction to Demographics” -type of book, or pretty much pick any journal of demographics to find articles on the subject. I suggest that the writer reads some suchs texts before venturing further into a fruitless speculation. Like seriously, if a site operates under the slogan “piercing the shield of ignorance”, it’s reasonable to expect some effort instead of, well, ignorance.
“i am not familiar how fertility rate is quantified. can you explain?”
Most common (but certainly not the only one) statistic used is total fertility rate (TFR), which tells how many children will an average woman have during her fertile years (commonly taken to be 15-44, but 15-49 is sometimes used too). If TFR is below 2.1, it means that over time the population will get smaller. This is because each woman must on average give birth to one man and one woman (plus 0.1 to make up for those children that die before having their own childrens) for a population to reproduce. TFR is commonly used, because it is not sensitive to age structure of a population making comparisons between populations easy.
If you want to formula, see http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/DemographicMethods/PDFs/idm-sec9.pdf
It would be a good time for the West to bring back Eugenics, voluntary of course. Give gifted couple incentives (tax breaks for one) to have more children. And give retarded single mothers money if they agree to have their tubes tied. In any case, let them know that no more aid will come after their first bastard.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Does a big city “make” people not want to have babies or does it simply “attract” a certain segment of the general society that don’t want to have babies.
For example you won’t find too many husband and wife couples pushing baby strollers on Wall Street in NYC. I think it is obvious the Wall Street area of NYC attracts people with a certain objective in mind and we all know what it is. You go to Wall Street to make money, not to make babies and start a family.
My theory is that the city does not decrease the fertility rate, it simply attracts a certain segment of society. More specifically people who would rather spend their surplus money on living the “city lifestyle” rather then spending it on raising kids. That’s what the suburbs are for.
Urbanism & modernism IS feminism
Who drives men to the suburbs? Women
Do most men want to commute 4 hours to work everyday? Only a woman insists on something that ridiculous
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/modern-contraception-destroyed-internal-slavery/
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It is easy for a well-read person living in this connected age to see that all major systems of socio-economic organization, from capitalism to communism, socialism and pretty much every other well-known system has either failed or is in the process of failure. But why is that so? Some of you might believe that the eventual failure of all socio-economic systems is part of some grand cosmic cycle or is otherwise inevitable.
But is that really the case? What if there is another, albeit, darker explanation?
I have previously mentioned that all civilizations and cultures to date are ponzi schemes, which depend on the an ever larger supply of youthful and naive suckers to power themselves. I had also explained the mechanism, if briefly, as it relates to CONservatism. The rest of this post can be considered a somewhat more detailed explanation of the underlying mechanism and how it has powered all known forms of civilization.
While I would prefer to use colorful animations to make my point, I am not motivated enough to go through that process at this moment and you will have to do with a text-based explanation.
Let us consider two fertility scenarios-
A. The median woman has 2 or fewer kids who reach adulthood over her lifetime.
B. The median woman has 4 or more kids who reach adulthood over her lifetime.
Throughout human history, we never had scenario A except in the aftermath of famines, massive epidemics or wars. However, today scenario A is the norm even in countries where the previous generation of woman lived with scenario B.
So why is this fact important and how does it affect the structure of socio-economic institutions and ideologies?
To understand that we must understand that the number of people on earth has been fluctuating between half a billion to a billion for many centuries. The major restriction for population growth was lack of technology which led to an almost constant struggle between people for a pretty pathetic existence. You have to understand that every single ideology which we discuss, read about or live in was created during the pre-modern technology era.
This pre-modern era was characterized by a lack of technology but virtually endless quantities of youthful suckers who could be utilized or manipulated towards any end, even if it was destructive to them. Therefore all popular and somewhat successful ideologies are built around the paradigm of disposable hardworking youth to the extent that they cannot function without that ‘resource’.
So how did that work in practice?
Since it was understood, if at a subconscious level, that there were simply not enough seats in this game of musical chairs the emphasis was on normalizing and rationalizing the exploitation of both young men (for their labor) and women (for their fertility). All older socio-economic systems and ideologies therefore stressed sacrifice, duty and honor even though their own elders and elites acted otherwise.
Naive younger people were used in a number of endeavors- from fighting and dying in wars to performing back-breaking work. While their efforts created value, most did not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of their labor. The survivors and elites did however benefit greatly from the sacrifice of their naive kin. Most older ideologies celebrate fertile women primarily because they provided an endless source of suckers to burn in the ‘machine’.
That is correct! Pre-modern civilizations are best seen as ‘machines’ which use youthful disposable workers to shovel more fuel into the boiler and then use most of those disposable workers as fuel, once they are dead- just to keep a minority of the population in decent shape. Nazi death-camps and soviet gulags were therefore merely a chronologically compressed version of the basic modus operandi of pre-modern human civilization.
Every major socio-economic arrangement, ideology and theory of society is based on the implicit assumption of endless disposable youthful labor which will create value without asking and ‘disappear’ before they can demand their share of the pie they helped to bake.
Capitalism, communism, socialism and all your other -isms cannot function under conditions where the number of youthful suckers decreases to replacement levels and/or they have to make good on the promises made to the majority of individuals. Technological gains and ideological zealotry can delay the end, but not by much.
Modern contraception and bio-medical advances put a wrench in this system by creating conditions where limiting female fertility was booth desirable and necessary. It is no longer necessary to have 10 kids to have 3-4 of them reach adulthood. However the very act of voluntary restriction of female fertility also simultaneously removes the extra suckers who could be exploited and played against each other for the benefit of others.
But here is the problem- even though the supply of naive and disposable suckers had dried up and is starting to adversely affect the ‘machine’, most people especially the older generation who occupy positions of power in the hierarchy act as if the system parameters have not changed. You therefore keep on hearing solutions that involve harder work, more education, lesser paying jobs, manning up and pulling yourself by your bootstraps etc.
But all of these “solutions” are attempts at recreating a dynamic which is not resurrectable. You cannot solve the problems inherent in any of the popular -isms by acting as if things have not changed. Indeed, none of these -isms can solve problems requiring them to work without that core assumption.
We have run out of ‘extra’ naive suckers and no system which requires that pre-condition can be either stable or functional.
@anoncoward
Your points are well taken, but… I don’t know about the use of the word “suckers” to describe ninety or ninety-five percent of the population. My dad would be a really good example and you’ll hear why. He was born before the great depression. He was the oldest of eight, with six younger sisters… And he was born on a farm in the Midwest. And his father was a hot-tempered Irishman. And they lost their farm in the depression and and moved to a lesser farm. His brother and his sisters all attest to the fact he was worked like a horse and whipped like a dog. He enlisted and fought in WW Two because it was a way to escape his father. After the war, he busted his ass supporting six kids and a wife until a health issue brought him down and caused his death just before and then at the time of normal retirement age. So, if there was ever a guy that could be called a “sucker” by your definition, (other than an actual slave or the modern day divorced father) it would be him. But, if you would ask him, despite everything that occurred in his childhood, he was still glad he had it, in other words, the good outweighed the bad. And despite everything that happened in adulthood, he was still glad he had it, in other words, the good outweighed the bad.
Regarding adulthood, if you would ask him, I am positive that he would say that what made it worth it (busting his ass) was his grateful wife and his grateful children. He got a return for his efforts. That is the rub with today’s world. If you get married, you have to bust your ass just like he did, but there is a good chance your wife is going to be a psycho bitch from hell and after divorce, your kids are going to turn into psycho kids from hell and you are going to be busting your ass to pay for your asshole ex and your all to frequently asshole kids.
I’m divorced. I’ve got custody of my son’s because I was one of the lucky ones. My wife was just crazy enough… But, I bust my ass for them and I believe they are happy and grateful for my efforts, I love them and they love me and I’m glad I’m doing it and I would do it again.
Fathers busting their asses for women and children that they receive no benefits from? I don’t think I would even call them suckers. Victims would be a much better word. Because they give but don’t receive, (at least not enough) the fruits of their labor are essentially being robbed from them.
@ anoncoward:
What if she has exactly 3?
Ode
My theory is that the city does not decrease the fertility rate, it simply attracts a certain segment of society. More specifically people who would rather spend their surplus money on living the “city lifestyle” rather then spending it on raising kids. That’s what the suburbs are for.
That doesn’t match up with history, however. Cities have had lower birth rates than the countryside throughout human history. The “sub-urb” is a relatively modern creation in many ways.
In ancient times, cities were most likely population sinks due to disease. It’s much easier to pass typhoid around in a city than out in the countryside. The Black Death devastated cities first, then the countryside as city people fled.
The majority of humans now living on the planet live in cities. Space costs more in cities – not just Manhattan apartments are more expensive than, say, Secaucus, but Mexico City apartments cost more as well. Any city increases the cost of each child, and leads to lower birth rate.
And again, the strongest correlation is “literacy”. Those countries with the lowest rate of female literacy have the highest birth rates .There are exceptions – Orthodox Jewish women are literate and tend to bear 3 or more children – but they are still exceptions.
The “population bomb” is a dud. Almost every country on the planet is following the same trajectory; a population increase induced by lower infant mortality rates, followed by a decrease in the number of babies born per mother per lifetime to the ZPG level, followed by a further decrease to population decline zone. Japan shows where this leads, the population of that nation has been smaller every year since 2007.
It will be interesting to see how humans cope with this. Perhaps the means for extending lifespans, and more significantly healthspans, will make up for the difference in decades and generations to come.
Createring fertility is a product mainly of the availability of state pensions, or jobs with which a woman can save for a pension.
For the past hundred thousands year or more the main problems of women has been to grow children as pension investments, for when a woman is too old to be able to survive on their own. Children, and in particular grandchildren, have been the main investment of the grandmatriarcate that has shaped humand society for the past hundred thousand years.
For this reason women marry men: they need someone who provides the funding needed to grow her children until they are old enough to become pension resources. Usually men have died well before women got old, so they are usually not suitable as direct pension resources.
For this reason women have usually preferred male children, and female children need dowries when they marry, and women in many poor countries carry out out a lot of port-birth abortions of female babies: because male children are better investments because they work harder and in more productive occupations, and other women mean more competitors for the output of men. You can imagine women having an attitude to men, both partners and their male children, similar to the attitude eskimos have to sled dogs.
For this reason the number of children a woman has is inversely proportional to her income, as even if a higher income means that she could afford more children: women regard children not as things they want, but as expenses they need to do only if they are poor. A woman who is poor has to make more children because she has to assume that her children will be poor too, and the more there are the better her chances of some of them supporting her in her old age she has. Instead the higher her cash income is the higher her ability to pay for a pension instead of raising children.
As children become expensive hobbies, instead of being necessary investments, and therefore they compete with other large expenses like a faster career, a bigger house, a better car, nicer holidays, and therefore high income women will have them very late and as few as possible, typically one or none.
That is also why the only rich countries where fertility rates have not collapsed are those where having children is heavily subsidised, like the Nordic countries, where having children is still a hobby but a lot less expensive than in other countries, and therefore women have children because it does not compete as much with other lifestyle expenses on houses, cars, holidays.
Between relatively cheap pensions and relatively expensive children women choose the former.
Feminism is a consequences of a few different causes, and indeed it is in part a consequence of the reduced need women have for a man to provide funding for raising “her” children, as she no longer needs that many children.
Indeed, and therefore a very big point is implicit in this insight: that women who don’t have children are exploiting for their pensions women who have children.
Because women who don’t have children will have the same pensions as those who have spent a lot of money and years in having those children, yet those those children will be those paying the pensions of both groups of women.
Imagine a situation where all women decide that they don’t need children, even as hobbies, and thus none have children. Eventually only old women remain, and they have 100% of the votes at elections, and they can vote themselves enormous pensions and every conceivable right, but who is going to do the work to implement that?
Then imagine the same where half of the women have one child and half don’t. Old women will still have the overwhelming majority of votes, and will be able to vote themselves anything they want, but the children of half of the women will have to work for the half who did not have chidren.
Here’s a reality bit as we argue ideology .
Is it cold where you are because in my town ten men will freeze to death this month .
This is a direct result of feminist hijacking shelter funds to House Baby mommas witch practice feminist theory .
up to 70% of these men will have degree’s . they will be murdered by by social policies that make them slaves . There only Crime is The idea of freedom and the unpalatable choice of being a slave .
@ Guys
Its not my article… head on over and argue with the blog owner. He has very many interesting views.
@Whatsnew
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For this reason women have usually preferred male children, and female children need dowries when they marry
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http://dissention.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/asian-women-plan-and-commit-female-infanticide/
This might be worth reading as well (including other parts on the site)
http://hereticsway.gluontheferengi.com/2011/01/06/we-are-allowed-to-exist-only-so-long-as-we-are-useful/
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In 19th century Scotland there was a series of infamous events known as the Highland Clearances. To tell it very simply, sheep became a more valuable asset than people. The people had to go. No hard work or determination could have saved the peasantry. All the economic incentives pointed towards sheep.
Within a couple of generations, entire regions of the Highlands had been emptied of people. Many of these once populated regions are empty to this day, serving as hunting reserves for the rich.
In our own times, people are just not as useful as they used to be unless they can be considered ‘skilled’. Only a few people are skilled.
People clamor for employment in our times but they make the assumption that it is in the interest of decision makers to create employment.
We should never forget the frailty of our wellbeing. In the tally of a mass society, whether we consider ourselves great or small, we are but numbers in a ledger. If we collectively fail to yield sufficient profitability it’s just a matter of time before we too are cleared away and relegated to the history books. There is nothing sure about our future.
In a mass society that can care nothing for individuals and communities, devoid of higher purpose, driven only by capital gain, there is no reason to suppose that we are guaranteed continued existence let alone a decent existence.
The right incentives have only to come into alignment to spell the end of spontaneous human societies. It is but a matter of time before competing nobles allow only the most useful, pleasing, and/or loyal strains of human to breed. Thus humans would be steadily replaced with sheep. This time once and for all.
“That is also why the only rich countries where fertility rates have not collapsed are those where having children is heavily subsidised, like the Nordic countries, where having children is still a hobby but a lot less expensive than in other countries, and therefore women have children because it does not compete as much with other lifestyle expenses on houses, cars, holidays.”
You are right about the Nordic countries, they have done well maintaining their birthrates by alleviating the women’s position, although there is one caveat – most Nordic women do not live in houses, but in apartments, most do not own cars, but rather ride bikes. Surely they have a high living standard, salary and price level is high, there are many high quality state services (such as free higher education and subsidized daycare), but they have nowhere near the kind of living standard that Americans enjoy – with their big McMansions, two cars per family, abundance of cheap food, and all the other comforts that Americans take for granted, but Nordics don’t even have or have no use for.
whatsnew
Createring fertility is a product mainly of the availability of state pensions, or jobs with which a woman can save for a pension.
To the best of my knowledge, Japan does not have a state pension system. This is one reason why the savings rate in Japan was extraordinarily high for generations. Until fairly recently, married women as a rule did not work in jobs that paid pension (mom ‘n pop grocery does not count, I refer to Sony or Sanyo, etc.)
So Japan appears to contradict your hypothesis; it has been in population decline since 2007, and in 2012 the population declined by about 200,000. That is, there are 200,000 fewer Japanese in Japan than there were 1 year ago.
That is also why the only rich countries where fertility rates have not collapsed are those where having children is heavily subsidised, like the Nordic countries, where having children is still a hobby but a lot less expensive than in other countries, and therefore women have children because it does not compete as much with other lifestyle expenses on houses, cars, holidays.
Please support this with cites. List the median number of children per woman per lifespan. Use the terms Welmer used in the OP.
Italy, for example, has a birth rate of 1.36 children / woman.
List off the rates for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland for good measure, as well as Iceland. Yes, I know Finland is not a Nordic in many way. List it anyway.
I do not believe the facts support your claim. So far as I can tell, every European nation is at or below ZPG, except possibly France.
Nordic countries do not have a “high fertility” rate. For them (e.g. White liberals) “high fertility” rate = replacement level (which is around 2 or even 1.5). Nordic countries, and even France, are barely at replacement level (think 1.8 or 1.9) if you just count the natives. It’s the difference between 1 and 2. There is literally no country in Europe (whether Northern, Central or Southern) which is double the replacement level (think 4 children per woman). The ironic thing is that the welfare system in Nordic countries, and Germany, don’t really create an incentive for native women to have babies. It just creates an incentive for the immigrant women. Most immigrant women go to Nordic countries to have babies because of the benefits.
They don’t quite reach the replacement level (except in Iceland and Faroe Islands), but they are much closer to that than other European countries:
Iceland – 2.14 (in 2008), 2.22 (in 2009 and 2010), 2.02 (in 2011).
Norway – 1.98 (in 2009), 1.88 (in 2011).
Population in Norway was around 2 million in 1900, it is 5 million now.
Faroe Islands (probably 98% white) – 2.4 (2012 estimate).
Finland – 1.87 (in 2010), population rose from 2.5 million to 5 million in a hundred years.
Sweden – 1.67, although, strangely, Wikipedia gives bigger numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
Denmark – 1.89 (in 2008), 1.87 (in 2010).
All these populations have pretty much doubled in the last 100 years.
The point about France was correct – yes, the socialist France has high fertility for European standards, but France is much less ethnically European compared to Scandinavia.
The source is Wikipedia, UN and CIA have slightly varying data.
“Most immigrant women go to Nordic countries to have babies because of the benefits.”
One cannot live off of benefits in Scandinavia, as it is too expensive there. Most of these immigrant women have a husband who works and they stay at home and their families generally have lower living standards than native Scandinavians. Besides, immigrant women in Scandinavia now have a lower birth rate than the native ones.
It should be pointed out that population control measures were actually in place before the “one child policy”, they just weren’t as widespread or formal. The “晚，稀，少” （wan, xi shao, or “birth later, birth less often, and birth less”) policy in place before that was already encouraging lessened childbearing activity in Chinese women. There was a scientist, his name escapes me, who was noted in the early days of the revolution for advocating more fertility control. He was discredited and expelled, because the party line at the time was more babies=more revolutionaries, but reinstated later, because they realized he was right. Some of his suggested policies were in place way before the official one child policy. That also contributed to the declining birthrates pre-OCP.
@MKP, Justinian
What makes you think these women are going to have any regrets about what they are doing? Among all the never-married women I know, all of them are quite happy with the life they’ve chosen.
The only way to cure the problem is strong social pressure, and if need be, force.
Ok, listen up folks!
This quote is from a World Bank report on development in 1984, but it may explain why women, as the majority sex entering college, have the affirmative action programs yet men don’t get any:
“More education for women is one of the strongest factors in reducing fertility. It is true that, in poorer countries, women with a few years of primary schooling have slightly higher fertility than do women with no education at all, especially in rural areas. Some education may be associated with a lower rate of sterility, and it often leads to a decline in breastfeeding not offset by greater use of contraceptives.”
This is page 109 (PDF page 123) of the following PDF file:
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2000/12/13/000178830_98101903341963/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf
In that report, it also talks about economic incentives and disincentives to drop fertility, and even mobile sterilization units! This is a purposeful World Bank program to reduce world population…
I think you’re confusing the political and economic here.
Yes, politically feminism lowers the birthrate, but so does raising taxes.
And this environmental argument isn’t arguable, it’s a proven fraud.