Mads Larsen on the Fertility Crisis

Sex without consequences has consequences

Mads Larsen, a Norwegian scholar, says that our modern challenge is to maintain female equality while avoiding population collapse. He uses evolutionary psychology to tell a story of how this tension emerged.

Once upon a time, men could increase their chances of reproducing by having many sex partners at a time, but women could not. Men became genetically inclined to desire many sex partners, and women became inclined to be more selective. This is standard evolutionary psychology, love it or hate it.

(Note: Bret and Heather Weinstein argue that men have always had two strategies for achieving genetic success. There is the polygamous strategy. But there also is a monogamous strategy, in which investing your resources in one woman and her children enhances the survival chances of those children. Men vary in their propensity to choose between those two strategies.)

Culturally, humans discovered pair bonding. This amounted to a contract in which a woman gave a man access to sex and a man gave the woman access to resources to ensure her own survival and the survival of their children. Pair-bonding cultures out-competed cultures in which men were able to indulge with many sex partners.

Pair-bonding cultures punished women who would have sex outside of marriage. The loose woman risked becoming pregnant. She risked not having the support of a man to raise her children. And she risked ostracism in cultures that named and shamed them.

The pair-bonding culture began to break down as women attained more equality and independence. I would say that this probably was due to economic/technological changes that increase the value of women’s market labor relative to that of their household labor.

Fast-forward to today. We have reliable forms of birth control. Women continued to gain economic equality and financial independence, so that they can survive without the resources of a man. And social norms no longer punish women for having non-marital sex.

You may recall that my theory that the original reason for laws against abortion is that they helped support a social norm against non-marital sex for women. Once society became tolerant of non-marital sex for women, it became more tolerant of abortion.

Larsen also points out that the welfare state gives women independence. He says that in Norway in the aggregate, the welfare state transfers income from men to women. So men collectively still help support women, but a woman does not need a man for support.

But remember the evolutionary imprinting on men a desire to have multiple sex partners and on women a desire to mate with the highest-status man. This evolutionary imprinting has re-asserted itself in a modern context.

Larsen says that today, a woman can go on a dating site, have a very demanding set of specifications for a man, and get showered with offers for dates. So it appears to women that being highly selective is the right strategy. There is no reason for her to set low standards.

I noticed this with the minimum height requirement. If my wife had been in a dating-app environment 50 years ago, she could have gotten dates with much taller men. She would never have swiped right on me.

Nowadays, a woman gets to date the tall, physically fit investment banker. Because he mostly wants sex, and he likes variety, he will be happy to swipe right on her. The catch is that she is only one of many women that he has to choose from, so she probably doesn’t get him to the altar. Dating apps select for hot guys and select against monogamous ones.

Even if the dating environment were different, a woman might not be eager to settle for a short guy like me. Remember, with a modern woman’s equality and independence, she doesn’t need my resources.

Larsen points out that societies where birth rates are still high are societies without equality for women. In the future, will egalitarian societies all commit demographic suicide, leaving only old-fashioned patriarchies to carry on?

Larsen thinks that it is more than just an issue with the dating environment. People now want to have less children. And as the number of children decreases, the aspiration to have children probably will decrease. He describes this as society “circling the drain.”

When the podcast turns to solutions, Larsen talks vaguely about the need to have discussions among people. I would say that we need to hash out the issue of selectivity. If women really think they are better off single than married to a short guy, then I would say that our society will get the demographic suicide it deserves.

I would like to nudge men away from their inclination toward multiple sex partners, and to nudge women away from their inclination to select only high-status males. That would result in more pair-bonding, fewer men unable to date, and fewer women unable to get married.

Another cultural change that I would like to see is a reversal of the “slow lifestyle.” Don’t have people spend fifteen years after puberty accumulating educational credentials and living as dependents. Get them earning a living in their early 20s and married before their late 20s, so that more children become feasible. Large families are contagious. We had an outbreak after World War II. We can have one again.