This post gradually seems to tiptoe towards eugenics, which makes me a little nervous, closing with this bit:
> If we took this history seriously, we might spend more money on not only parents of young children but also the basic scientific breakthroughs that would make it easier for future parents to have the children they want, whenever they want them.
This is in the context of enabling broader fertility by making it easier to get pregnant, to be completely fair. But for me it does raise the question of what 'the children they want' looks like in a modern climate where heritable traits not only affect your capabilities in life but now dramatically impact how you are treated, whether it's being mistreated based on skin color or being at a disadvantage in education & the workplace due to conditions like adhd, chronic fatigue, etc. Raising a child with heritable conditions (or random genomic quirks) can also be much more expensive than a child that is closer to the norm, too.
I'm still not sure where I land on the question of whether it's appropriate to try and edit these 'disadvantageous traits' out of an embryo. It seems like a classic slippery slope problem and I don't know if it's possible to trust anyone (or anything, if one were to suggest AI as a solution) to navigate it right.
The assumption that a war would trigger another baby boom is incorrect. The conditions are very different than in the 50s and there's no going back. World devastation, reverting to the stone age or some agriculture society will not result in a population growth for decades, maybe a generation at best, as western society falls into the familiar throes of barbarism and resource starvation.
The more likely approach is some sort of mass socialism, for starters. Even if you had technological innovations to breed humans en masse, there would have to be subsidized care. Creating a breeding class, who's job it was to breed and care for children would require a massive upheaval in the social fabric. It's not possible anytime soon.
If it was easy, another boom would have already happened.
(Purely anecdotally, my own and my peers experience) We’re seeing educated people waiting longer in life to have children. Fertility drops, assistance from older generations drops, the village has gone, nursery and care prices are ridiculously high, support from the government (UK) is a bit of a farce if you’re earning anything more than a living wage in cities, the opportunity cost of a parent putting a (more developed as older) career on hold
Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of this, however people know what the sacrifices are, and very understandably don’t want to make them.
Hedgehog's dilema. Interacting today with random average human being leads in 99% to such a painful disappointing conclusion that I got PTSD from it. Just being within a line of sight of another human being makes me nervous and looking for a place to hide.
You would need an economy where the average man can work and provide a life for his stay-at-home wife to raise the 3-4 kids at a decent living standard.
Maybe it was the strange mix of capitalism and socialism that existed in America at that time? High taxes, high levels of investment and well paid public servants:
These studies never seem to look at time spent parenting, between baby-boom years and now.
My parents parented a few hours a week and were entirely typical. I parented ceaselessly, just like my parenting-peers.
My parents world was possible because kids roamed with peers (and without adults) for many hours a week. This was my childhood, my parents childhood, my grandparents childhood.
My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting, moving from one adult-curated, adult-populated box to the next. They are also typical of their generation.
Parenting and childhood are radically altered from the baby boom era. Our birth rates (and youth mental health stats) seem like a natural outcome of that.
My bet is on banning the pill and reversing the sexual revolution. We probably don't want to do that. Frankly, I don't think we need to do anything about this problem. Evolution will work its magic and in a couple of hundred years we'll have overpopulation the way we used to have before artificial fertilizer.
Having children younger. This builds villages and generates the community flywheel. The problem now is that it's close to impossible for the vast majority of younger people to buy a home with a single income. So the choice becomes dual income and farm out the raising of your children (requires even more money and negates the benefits of enjoying your children which is part of the reason to have them in the first place), or delay having children until you are financially secure. Couple this with the constant inundation of social media and the myriad experiences available with the click of a button and people are simply taking the short term gratification route.
Society needs to change and we need to incentivize it.
Hope. Hope that the world was on track to be better and better. Faith that people would do the right thing. Confidence that good would triumph over evil.
Good read. I've been reflecting recently on the idea of demand-side economic growth as something that happens across two variables: consumption and reproduction. Until very recently in history, only the reproduction variable ever moved the big number much at all. It could be that as each of our own energy needs continues to increase, especially as compute-hungry AI proliferates and personalized medicine extends lifespans, it becomes culturally more normal for populations to fall.
Though as others have pointed out, nothing about our society seems to be set up to accommodate that at all, which makes it terrifying.
As a new parent, it’s money. Daycare costs $400 USD per week in my area, from 7am-6pm, 5 days a week.
So for one child that is roughly 20,000 USD annually.
Once you hit the 3-5 kid mark, it usually does not make sense for the spouse to work, unless they are earning well above 6 figures.
So then you’re going down to one income supporting a family of 3-5. That’s risky for a variety of reasons.
If you want actual actions congress can take:
1. Expand limits on the dependent HSA account to allow more than 5,000 annually. Daycare alone is much more than 5,000 USD, it seems making that completely tax free will help.
2. Subsidize the entire cost of daycare. This will never happen but by golly it will work.
My grandmother passed away almost ten years ago in her late nineties. She was born in the 1920s and was a teenager when ww2 broke out.
One of her memories is interesting and very relevant. There were a lot of soldiers trained in Canada and the government put on dances to entertain them. Had my gram or of her sisters asked to go to a dance with a bunch of soldiers in 1936, they would have been locked in a barn while he burned something down. But by 1939, it was his patriotic duty and he’d buy his girls dresses and take them to the dances.
When my Gram was in her nineties, she would talk about the soldiers, the music and the dances. Then she’d start to glow and her neck would turn red. Romance of the times is a comfortable euphemism. :)
111 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 79.7 ms ] threadSeems like some politicians are doing their best to arrange that
WW2
>What Would It Take to Have Another?
WW3
> If we took this history seriously, we might spend more money on not only parents of young children but also the basic scientific breakthroughs that would make it easier for future parents to have the children they want, whenever they want them.
This is in the context of enabling broader fertility by making it easier to get pregnant, to be completely fair. But for me it does raise the question of what 'the children they want' looks like in a modern climate where heritable traits not only affect your capabilities in life but now dramatically impact how you are treated, whether it's being mistreated based on skin color or being at a disadvantage in education & the workplace due to conditions like adhd, chronic fatigue, etc. Raising a child with heritable conditions (or random genomic quirks) can also be much more expensive than a child that is closer to the norm, too.
I'm still not sure where I land on the question of whether it's appropriate to try and edit these 'disadvantageous traits' out of an embryo. It seems like a classic slippery slope problem and I don't know if it's possible to trust anyone (or anything, if one were to suggest AI as a solution) to navigate it right.
The more likely approach is some sort of mass socialism, for starters. Even if you had technological innovations to breed humans en masse, there would have to be subsidized care. Creating a breeding class, who's job it was to breed and care for children would require a massive upheaval in the social fabric. It's not possible anytime soon.
If it was easy, another boom would have already happened.
Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of this, however people know what the sacrifices are, and very understandably don’t want to make them.
https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/back-when-america...
https://www.unfpa.org/swp2025
My parents parented a few hours a week and were entirely typical. I parented ceaselessly, just like my parenting-peers.
My parents world was possible because kids roamed with peers (and without adults) for many hours a week. This was my childhood, my parents childhood, my grandparents childhood.
My kids grew up under 24/7 adulting, moving from one adult-curated, adult-populated box to the next. They are also typical of their generation.
Parenting and childhood are radically altered from the baby boom era. Our birth rates (and youth mental health stats) seem like a natural outcome of that.
Being online is not the same as being in the real world.
You have to take risks, including speaking with people, face to face, and forming meaningful relationships.
Swiping right is not the same as approaching someone attractive in person.
Complaining on Reddit is not the same as talking directly with lawmakers.
Interpersonal communication, persuasion, is hard work that should be re-embraced.
Society needs to change and we need to incentivize it.
We have none of those things at present.
Though as others have pointed out, nothing about our society seems to be set up to accommodate that at all, which makes it terrifying.
So for one child that is roughly 20,000 USD annually.
Once you hit the 3-5 kid mark, it usually does not make sense for the spouse to work, unless they are earning well above 6 figures.
So then you’re going down to one income supporting a family of 3-5. That’s risky for a variety of reasons.
If you want actual actions congress can take:
1. Expand limits on the dependent HSA account to allow more than 5,000 annually. Daycare alone is much more than 5,000 USD, it seems making that completely tax free will help.
2. Subsidize the entire cost of daycare. This will never happen but by golly it will work.
What would cause another baby boom would be a recovery of catholic cultural confidence.
https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2014/02/04/50-...
Re: Figure 1. Trends in American Religious Affiliation, 1957-1971
One of her memories is interesting and very relevant. There were a lot of soldiers trained in Canada and the government put on dances to entertain them. Had my gram or of her sisters asked to go to a dance with a bunch of soldiers in 1936, they would have been locked in a barn while he burned something down. But by 1939, it was his patriotic duty and he’d buy his girls dresses and take them to the dances.
When my Gram was in her nineties, she would talk about the soldiers, the music and the dances. Then she’d start to glow and her neck would turn red. Romance of the times is a comfortable euphemism. :)