Declining birth rate

[enchanted]

Is  declining  birth rates the biggest problem humanity  faces? A species that doesn't  replace itself can't survive right?  Declining birth rates might be a bigger problem than climate change or war and might actually be the real case for allowing high levels of immigration, something that politicians and citizens don't want to admit. But what if the immigrants also turn into a culture who aren't interested in family life and start having less kids?

Does anyone know what causes declining birth rates? And what are some possible solutions? How come more people aren't talking about this?

Edited Wednesday at 07:11 PM by enchanted

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

There are no solutions I think. Burden of consciousness and complexity is too heavy to bear and people don't want to pass it down onto another generations; they are far too distracted to even attempt to do so. Entropy is winning LOL

[Spiral]

It’s a societal issue. You can think of societies as creatures, some dominate others are sickly and weak. 

Demographic collapse is like the disease that kills a society, after all societies typically last 250 years. 

We are overdue and it will get messy, but better times lay ahead.

It’s a disaster for the people who live today but not for our species as a whole.

[Lila9]

Short answer: patriarchy.

Longer answer: society punishes motherhood, underestimates it, and underappreciates it. There is no incentive to be a mother, only cons.

It takes a village to raise a child. But now one woman is expected to do it alone, in addition to working in a regular job. 

 

[enchanted]

3 hours ago, Lila9 said:

Short answer: patriarchy.

Longer answer: society punishes motherhood, underestimates it, and underappreciates it. There is no incentive to be a mother, only cons.

It takes a village to raise a child. But now one woman is expected to do it alone, in addition to working in a regular job. 

 

The patriarchy might be one reason but then how does it explain Africa and the middle East where there is more patriarchy and very high birth rates?  And Iceland, a country with the most gender equality, still have low birth rates below replacement?

Edited 8 hours ago by enchanted

[Ramasta9]

Keep those epstein Jabs up then complain about infertility  

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Pay woman a wage to raise and have kids.

It's a risk to our bodies and a full time job to raise a child to adulthood. And do it WELL. Which isn't happening.

This would also stop women feeling so unsafe; they wouldn't be trapped in fear not having a living wage and being beholden to just their husbands earnings.

I'm telling ya, there are a TON of women who would love to do this, but cannot. 

[aurum]

58 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Pay woman a wage to raise and have kids.

It's a risk to our bodies and a full time job to raise a child to adulthood. And do it WELL. Which isn't happening.

This would also stop women feeling so unsafe; they wouldn't be trapped in fear not having a living wage and being beholden to just their husbands earnings.

I'm telling ya, there are a TON of women who would love to do this, but cannot. 

Careful though.

Once you socialize motherhood, that opens up a whole can of worms. It's an increase in blurring the lines between private and public life. There will be serious tradeoffs, like additional regulations and politicization around parenting.

Mothers need support. But how much role the state should play is not an easy question.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Just now, aurum said:

Careful though.

Once you socialize motherhood, that opens up a whole can of worms. It's an increase in blurring the lines between private and public life. There will be serious tradeoffs, like additional regulations and politicization around parenting.

Mothers need support. But how much role the state should play is not an easy question.

Oh yeah, I agree there are problems it will introduce for sure. Workers are becoming the commodity - and women are opting out of helping with that supply. 

I can already foresee parenting need to be done in a certain, acceptable WAY as dictated by an external body. 

In my mind it would be a quick fix that would instantly boost birthdates - even if temporarily so we can re-establish stability of population.

The new set of problems it would introduce would need to be addressed.

[aurum]

5 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

In my mind it would be a quick fix that would instantly boost birthdates - even if temporarily so we can re-establish stability of population.

National Shaboink Day 

[zurew]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

Once you socialize motherhood, that opens up a whole can of worms. It's an increase in blurring the lines between private and public life. There will be serious tradeoffs, like additional regulations and politicization around parenting

One easy way to deal with the worry you bring up is to leave unpaid and by that non-regulated motherhood open. If you want to be paid by the government you need to deal with x set of regulations, but you are free to choose the kind of motherhood where those restrictions dont apply to you, its just that in that case you dont get paid for it.

 

 

If you just want to bring up a general heruistic, where we are catious about what new thing we implement, then I can agree with that .  On the other hand, If you want to make a more broad point that it is expected that certain issues will come from blurrying the lines - then I would need to see how that would bring a novel new set of problems that isn't already present to the private-public life issue.

 

I view this similarly to the freespeech absolutist arguments, where a slippery slope worry is brought up like "Well, if we start to regulate speech in any kind of way, then that regulation might be misused to the point where people will be just randomly banned from everywhere and their ability to speak will be taken away forever. Whats stopping instituitions and people from the misuse of power?"

The slippery slope needs to be motivated by some kind of supporting argument for it to be somewhat expected. Like I imagine you wouldnt buy into a free speech absolutist slippery slope argument like "Look, childporn cant be banned because that restriction can be misused in malicious ways, where people can use your computer to upload CP and by that they can get you arrested or they can just maliciously miscategorize the content that you upload as CP when it is 100% not CP".

It is true, that by the move of introducing restrictions we also introduce new possible misuses of power, but the thing that is interesting is: given the moral character of people and given the judicial system and given the incentive structures -   how easy, and how expected it is that people will misuse their powers and how much damage you need to deal with if you dont implement the restriction.

Edited just now by zurew