Rob Henderson on psychological sex differences; J. Sanilac on relationships and fertility; Megan McArdle on social fragmentation; Substack's AI use survey
"the declining birthrate is downstream of declining relationship formation. I suppose "selfish couples who hate babies" are a more respectable topic than the death of romance (and sex)?"
NO NO NO! Neither are about excessive selfishness or hate. They are both about the fact that it is now often easier not to initiate a relationship and not to have a baby than it is to go out and find someone or to take on the open-ended task that begins with nine months of pregnancy.
There are so many things one can do by oneself or with a small group that just aren't so emotionally freighted. And moderns seem to find it harder to make the emotional effort; they seem to be more afraid of emotional hurt; they seem to feel unsafe more easily and find it harder to take.
And there are so many things a married couple can do without children, many of which they will have to give up if they have a child. (This is often hidden as, "We can't afford to ..." while spending money on eating out, ordering in, streaming services, vacations that aren't cheap, etc.)
You're not entirely wrong in your analysis, except for the part about married couples declining to have kids. The vast majority of married women, and a significant percentage of cohabiting women, have at least one child. The 'opportunity cost' that has gone up is the cost versus benefits of getting married.
You are certainly right that, "The vast majority of married women, and a significant percentage of cohabiting women, have at least one child." But that includes women who got married 50 or 40 or 30 or 20 years ago. Opportunity cost for them was different from opportunity cost for women who get married (or cohabit for an extended period) today.
Today's figures reflect a double whammy: less pairing up and less having kids when you are paired. And I suppose a third, more often stopping at one child even when in a "long-term committed relationship".
A great incentive to do something can be, "I've go nothing else to do." Especially if the something is uncertain, uncomfortable, maybe scary. Nowadays, there is always something else to do.
The cool part about the opportunity cost is that it spawns the related corollary of maximizing cost shifting. For example, the well to do fulfill their societal obligation to reproduce by outsourcing the time consuming process to others. It’s the best of all possible worlds from an economic efficiency perspective - think about it.
It wasn’t too many days ago that our host was extolling the virtues of outsourcing lawn mowing. But, why stop there? Let’s go all in on comparative advantage.
There's a big problem with trying to cost shift that way. Come close, because I'm going to whisper a dirty word. No, not plastics, eugenics. A person who is likely to have smart or healthy or hard-working offspring is not fulfilling their societal obligation by encouraging the birth of people who are more likely to be stupid or sickly or lazy. But, shhhhh, you didn't hear it here.
We started outsourcing child rearing in the 1960s and population growth in the U.S. has increased significantly since then. All that’s required is that we refill the SNAP cards and then wait for outsourcing to work its magic. It’s just the invisible hand and comparative advantage doing their glorious things. Why are you so fervently objecting to this? I don’t mow my own lawn and I definitely don’t provide any additional population to the societal inventory when it’s easier to shift that on to someone else in a win win scenario for all parties involved.
But the GenX generation had population growth that while less than the early 1960s was STILL double the current population growth percentage.
Go look up the numbers yourself. Annual population growth has indeed kept declining almost continuously since the 1960s, and somewhere around 2010 is where it started falling even more significantly.
The only accurate thing you stated was that population growth was indeed low in the 1930s.
Well, in fairness, your implication that a *larger* share of our population growth (reaching almost 40% in the 2000s, and still 25%+ now) is from net immigration is also correct.
And of course under Biden for about 3.5 years and his illegal policy to let in millions of illegal immigrants, it is true that immigration *temporarily* became the highest percentage of population growth. Just call it a hunch, but I think that won’t continue beyond 2024…
If we could wave a magic wand and make both birth control and free unlimited Internet porn disappear for good, I suspect we'd be back to have lots of babies in no short order.
Of course, we can't wave a magic wand and do either of those two things, which makes it hard to see what the solution will be.
Re: relationships and fertility rates: are the two necessarily linked, or is it just modern convention that one requires the other? In previous centuries the companionate marriage was not the typical type of relationship.
Even on the American frontier, Teddy Roosevelt when he was a historian wrote about a relationship pattern in which the men were gone to either hunt, fight the Indians, or chop wood for months at a time while the wife tended the homestead. The frontiersmen were famous for fecundity even though the sex ratio was badly skewed, their poverty was extreme, and the violence of the natives make Hamas look like the Teletubbies by comparison.
Then if you look to the international aristocracy during the same period, and relations between the sexes were quite formalized but not quite so familiar as we tend to expect today. Then if you want to get very international, during e.g. the 17th-19th century there were still a lot of Islamic and other Asian empires that practiced polygamy at the high end. As any "women's studies" scholar could tell you, there are many different ways the sexes can relate to each other and have in the past.
In the current situation there is much less diversity than there once was in terms of relationship types across classes, countries, and religions. Most people expect their spouse to be a companion and friend, with both working outside the house. Social relations have been dramatically deformalized and sex segregation has been eliminated. For various reasons it seems like that companionate type of relationship, subject to so much deconstruction and criticism in recent decades, is becoming substantially less feasible than it once was.
Yes, childbearing rates are absolutely linked to relationship status. Modern statistics show that about 80 percent of married women have children. That figure drops to about 60 percent for women who are cohabitating, and to about *20* percent for single non-cohabiting women. The number of children born to all women (1.9) is virtually identical to the number of children born to women who are married (1.8) which also tends to indicate the vast majority of married women have at least one child. Given the much higher birth and marriage rates in the past it's hard to assume that figures from historical time periods are significantly lower. The big change from the past is that married women have far fewer children but the rate at which married women have at least one child has not changed much, if at all.
That wasn’t my point. My point was about the historical scope of that term as compared to our more limited definition for it. The Latin root term for the word doesn’t have anything directly to do with sexual relationships. It’s a post 20th century coinage. The current legal institution of marriage also is quite topsy turvy relative to all previous iterations of it.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, and the 20th century “relationship” is just one way of relating, and it has perhaps ceased to be effective.
That is certainly true of some modern versions of Christianity. But not of all, and certainly not true of a lot in the past.
After all, the Holy Book has the founder saying, 34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household" Matthew 10 (English Standard Version)
Once I heard it sketched out, I’ve generally subscribed to the belief that feminism (don’t know my “waves”, speaking of 2nd half of 20th century) = the bored neurotic daughters of immigrants hating their traditional, son-favoring fathers to the point of hysteria.
The “concern” then being the wish to universalize and ascribe that anger to women the world over.
Which is ever in tension with supposed concern for the downtrodden of the world generally, which involves deification of all that is not Western.
That this cannot be resolved is not an issue, as abstraction little troubles the female mind. (Or, that’s not quite right: its analysis that goes begging.)
In case this sounds overly judgmental: I haven’t been bored in 35 years, but I distinctly remember feeling bored as a teenager sometimes (I wasn’t asked to do much of anything at home; presently went and got a job). The brooding thoughts this boredom prompted were entirely worthless and solipsistic.
I've been frustrated with the way it has affected regular search results. When I put in a quotation or a combination of key words that would formerly get me to the page or article I wanted, now I get links to AI-generated slop "essays" on recent vintage domains, that are optimized to win the search results ranking game and which "bury the lede" of the info I wanted far down into the slop, if indeed it's there at all and not just a bunch of self-referential outline repetition wasting my time and calling it "engagement" or whatever. Now I feel compelled to use AI in order to deal with how much AI has ruined ordinary search.
“The sharp leftward lurch that consumed American media companies was driven by social media algorithms that rewarded left-wing political hot takes with high engagement.”
Sorry Mcardle’s claim here on causation is unproven and at best weak even if it’s true.
There is no evidence that social media algorithms were the prime driver that caused the media to go left, and plenty of evidence to show that a myriad number of other things played roles at least as important, and some surely moreso.
I remember reading some excerpt of a newsman’s memoir. I can recall nothing more but that it was from the 90s. He described a local tv station, in the South I think, that had been told by presumably the network it was affiliated with, to seek out a vibrant immigrant or nonwhite person to provide local comment on stories. Anyone can guess how due to laziness this would go: pretty soon the Asian woman was pronouncing on everything from a school bond election to the opening of a home decor store to a local murder.
Either the same memoir or another also traces how, during the late 90s, NYT staffers were urged to insert a race angle into the most improbable stories, to the point of comedy however inappropriate comedy was to the subject. Of course he could have no idea how ludicrous this practice would become, until there was often only “race angle” and *no story*.
Although I've thought that "over-engagement" with social media pushed folks to the Right, I suppose the better model is that it pushes people to the extremes.
Whichever it is, I think a tax on social media advertising, progressive in "engagement," would be healthful.
I think you are exactly right. Here is a selection from my 2017 post "The Tribe has Spoken."
The internet has greatly facilitated tribal division. Thirty years ago pathetic losers like “Incels” were too isolated to group together to inflame their delusions. These days, any unpopular view expressed on line invites a tsunami of vituperation from “injured” parties. Fifty years ago everyone got their facts from Walter Cronkite. When he famously turned against the war in Vietnam, the whole nation turned with him. Now everyone cherry picks the “facts” from the Web to confirm their own prejudices and reinforce tribal bonds.
"in fact it was fan service for a narrow demographic.
Of course, the Washington Post did the exact same thing. So did the Ivy League. And the universities weren’t chasing clicks."
Paging Tyler Cowen, “So, are you a regional thinker?” for Washingtonians and Ivy Leaguers. Maybe it should even be subregional thinker if there was an even narrower focus being that I have never been to Washington and spent very little time in the Northeast.
"the declining birthrate is downstream of declining relationship formation. I suppose "selfish couples who hate babies" are a more respectable topic than the death of romance (and sex)?"
NO NO NO! Neither are about excessive selfishness or hate. They are both about the fact that it is now often easier not to initiate a relationship and not to have a baby than it is to go out and find someone or to take on the open-ended task that begins with nine months of pregnancy.
There are so many things one can do by oneself or with a small group that just aren't so emotionally freighted. And moderns seem to find it harder to make the emotional effort; they seem to be more afraid of emotional hurt; they seem to feel unsafe more easily and find it harder to take.
And there are so many things a married couple can do without children, many of which they will have to give up if they have a child. (This is often hidden as, "We can't afford to ..." while spending money on eating out, ordering in, streaming services, vacations that aren't cheap, etc.)
Opportunity cost, people. Opportunity cost.
You're not entirely wrong in your analysis, except for the part about married couples declining to have kids. The vast majority of married women, and a significant percentage of cohabiting women, have at least one child. The 'opportunity cost' that has gone up is the cost versus benefits of getting married.
You are certainly right that, "The vast majority of married women, and a significant percentage of cohabiting women, have at least one child." But that includes women who got married 50 or 40 or 30 or 20 years ago. Opportunity cost for them was different from opportunity cost for women who get married (or cohabit for an extended period) today.
Today's figures reflect a double whammy: less pairing up and less having kids when you are paired. And I suppose a third, more often stopping at one child even when in a "long-term committed relationship".
A great incentive to do something can be, "I've go nothing else to do." Especially if the something is uncertain, uncomfortable, maybe scary. Nowadays, there is always something else to do.
”Opportunity cost, people. Opportunity cost.“
The cool part about the opportunity cost is that it spawns the related corollary of maximizing cost shifting. For example, the well to do fulfill their societal obligation to reproduce by outsourcing the time consuming process to others. It’s the best of all possible worlds from an economic efficiency perspective - think about it.
It wasn’t too many days ago that our host was extolling the virtues of outsourcing lawn mowing. But, why stop there? Let’s go all in on comparative advantage.
There's a big problem with trying to cost shift that way. Come close, because I'm going to whisper a dirty word. No, not plastics, eugenics. A person who is likely to have smart or healthy or hard-working offspring is not fulfilling their societal obligation by encouraging the birth of people who are more likely to be stupid or sickly or lazy. But, shhhhh, you didn't hear it here.
We started outsourcing child rearing in the 1960s and population growth in the U.S. has increased significantly since then. All that’s required is that we refill the SNAP cards and then wait for outsourcing to work its magic. It’s just the invisible hand and comparative advantage doing their glorious things. Why are you so fervently objecting to this? I don’t mow my own lawn and I definitely don’t provide any additional population to the societal inventory when it’s easier to shift that on to someone else in a win win scenario for all parties involved.
I see I didn't whisper loud enough.
“population growth in the U.S. has increased significantly since then.”
POPULATION has indeed increased significantly since then.
Population GROWTH has surely NOT.
In fact U.S. population is now less than half of what it was in the 1960s.
The baby boom is an obvious outlier to be ignored, particularly after it’s normalized against the really low population growth of the 30s.
Dude, YOU cited the 1960s as the start.
But the GenX generation had population growth that while less than the early 1960s was STILL double the current population growth percentage.
Go look up the numbers yourself. Annual population growth has indeed kept declining almost continuously since the 1960s, and somewhere around 2010 is where it started falling even more significantly.
The only accurate thing you stated was that population growth was indeed low in the 1930s.
Well, in fairness, your implication that a *larger* share of our population growth (reaching almost 40% in the 2000s, and still 25%+ now) is from net immigration is also correct.
And of course under Biden for about 3.5 years and his illegal policy to let in millions of illegal immigrants, it is true that immigration *temporarily* became the highest percentage of population growth. Just call it a hunch, but I think that won’t continue beyond 2024…
If we could wave a magic wand and make both birth control and free unlimited Internet porn disappear for good, I suspect we'd be back to have lots of babies in no short order.
Of course, we can't wave a magic wand and do either of those two things, which makes it hard to see what the solution will be.
Re: relationships and fertility rates: are the two necessarily linked, or is it just modern convention that one requires the other? In previous centuries the companionate marriage was not the typical type of relationship.
Even on the American frontier, Teddy Roosevelt when he was a historian wrote about a relationship pattern in which the men were gone to either hunt, fight the Indians, or chop wood for months at a time while the wife tended the homestead. The frontiersmen were famous for fecundity even though the sex ratio was badly skewed, their poverty was extreme, and the violence of the natives make Hamas look like the Teletubbies by comparison.
Then if you look to the international aristocracy during the same period, and relations between the sexes were quite formalized but not quite so familiar as we tend to expect today. Then if you want to get very international, during e.g. the 17th-19th century there were still a lot of Islamic and other Asian empires that practiced polygamy at the high end. As any "women's studies" scholar could tell you, there are many different ways the sexes can relate to each other and have in the past.
In the current situation there is much less diversity than there once was in terms of relationship types across classes, countries, and religions. Most people expect their spouse to be a companion and friend, with both working outside the house. Social relations have been dramatically deformalized and sex segregation has been eliminated. For various reasons it seems like that companionate type of relationship, subject to so much deconstruction and criticism in recent decades, is becoming substantially less feasible than it once was.
Yes, childbearing rates are absolutely linked to relationship status. Modern statistics show that about 80 percent of married women have children. That figure drops to about 60 percent for women who are cohabitating, and to about *20* percent for single non-cohabiting women. The number of children born to all women (1.9) is virtually identical to the number of children born to women who are married (1.8) which also tends to indicate the vast majority of married women have at least one child. Given the much higher birth and marriage rates in the past it's hard to assume that figures from historical time periods are significantly lower. The big change from the past is that married women have far fewer children but the rate at which married women have at least one child has not changed much, if at all.
That wasn’t my point. My point was about the historical scope of that term as compared to our more limited definition for it. The Latin root term for the word doesn’t have anything directly to do with sexual relationships. It’s a post 20th century coinage. The current legal institution of marriage also is quite topsy turvy relative to all previous iterations of it.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, and the 20th century “relationship” is just one way of relating, and it has perhaps ceased to be effective.
That is certainly true of some modern versions of Christianity. But not of all, and certainly not true of a lot in the past.
After all, the Holy Book has the founder saying, 34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household" Matthew 10 (English Standard Version)
That should be a reply to Cranmer, Charles. Oops, using a friend's computer.
Once I heard it sketched out, I’ve generally subscribed to the belief that feminism (don’t know my “waves”, speaking of 2nd half of 20th century) = the bored neurotic daughters of immigrants hating their traditional, son-favoring fathers to the point of hysteria.
The “concern” then being the wish to universalize and ascribe that anger to women the world over.
Which is ever in tension with supposed concern for the downtrodden of the world generally, which involves deification of all that is not Western.
That this cannot be resolved is not an issue, as abstraction little troubles the female mind. (Or, that’s not quite right: its analysis that goes begging.)
In case this sounds overly judgmental: I haven’t been bored in 35 years, but I distinctly remember feeling bored as a teenager sometimes (I wasn’t asked to do much of anything at home; presently went and got a job). The brooding thoughts this boredom prompted were entirely worthless and solipsistic.
I worry about this: AI is allowing writers to be parasitic on other people's research while funding for research is being cut.
I've been frustrated with the way it has affected regular search results. When I put in a quotation or a combination of key words that would formerly get me to the page or article I wanted, now I get links to AI-generated slop "essays" on recent vintage domains, that are optimized to win the search results ranking game and which "bury the lede" of the info I wanted far down into the slop, if indeed it's there at all and not just a bunch of self-referential outline repetition wasting my time and calling it "engagement" or whatever. Now I feel compelled to use AI in order to deal with how much AI has ruined ordinary search.
“The sharp leftward lurch that consumed American media companies was driven by social media algorithms that rewarded left-wing political hot takes with high engagement.”
Sorry Mcardle’s claim here on causation is unproven and at best weak even if it’s true.
There is no evidence that social media algorithms were the prime driver that caused the media to go left, and plenty of evidence to show that a myriad number of other things played roles at least as important, and some surely moreso.
I remember reading some excerpt of a newsman’s memoir. I can recall nothing more but that it was from the 90s. He described a local tv station, in the South I think, that had been told by presumably the network it was affiliated with, to seek out a vibrant immigrant or nonwhite person to provide local comment on stories. Anyone can guess how due to laziness this would go: pretty soon the Asian woman was pronouncing on everything from a school bond election to the opening of a home decor store to a local murder.
Either the same memoir or another also traces how, during the late 90s, NYT staffers were urged to insert a race angle into the most improbable stories, to the point of comedy however inappropriate comedy was to the subject. Of course he could have no idea how ludicrous this practice would become, until there was often only “race angle” and *no story*.
“An excessive concern with others and placing others’ needs before one’s own.” Also known as "Christian."
You might want to read that commandment again, and pay attention to the actual wording. It doesn't say what you think it does.
Re McArdle:
Although I've thought that "over-engagement" with social media pushed folks to the Right, I suppose the better model is that it pushes people to the extremes.
Whichever it is, I think a tax on social media advertising, progressive in "engagement," would be healthful.
I think you are exactly right. Here is a selection from my 2017 post "The Tribe has Spoken."
The internet has greatly facilitated tribal division. Thirty years ago pathetic losers like “Incels” were too isolated to group together to inflame their delusions. These days, any unpopular view expressed on line invites a tsunami of vituperation from “injured” parties. Fifty years ago everyone got their facts from Walter Cronkite. When he famously turned against the war in Vietnam, the whole nation turned with him. Now everyone cherry picks the “facts” from the Web to confirm their own prejudices and reinforce tribal bonds.
How is that worse than the whole nation following one guy who gets it wrong?
"in fact it was fan service for a narrow demographic.
Of course, the Washington Post did the exact same thing. So did the Ivy League. And the universities weren’t chasing clicks."
Paging Tyler Cowen, “So, are you a regional thinker?” for Washingtonians and Ivy Leaguers. Maybe it should even be subregional thinker if there was an even narrower focus being that I have never been to Washington and spent very little time in the Northeast.