by Qem on 6/12/25, 2:51 AM with 8 comments
by narratives1 on 6/12/25, 3:23 AM
Look at charts of birth rates in any country. Easy enough to google.
Look at the decline and when it declines.
There was a decline due to the global recession, yes. This pales in comparison to the decline that came precipitously decades earlier.
It’s: birth control and family planning.
Look at birth rates in: the US, the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea…now overlay it with when birth control became widely legal and family planning initiatives took off.
Look at countries that continue to have high birth rates and how they treat birth control/family planning.
Look at communities that continue to have high birth rates: the poor, the religious, the Amish.
Even today, something like 50% of births in the US are unintended or mistimed. Imagine what the birth rate would be with even MORE access to birth control.
Fact is: humans procreate by and large unintentionally. It’s enough to evolve a desire for sex, and the babies follow. When you introduce technology that severs this connection, you expose the shortcuts nature took all along.
If we want to fix this in the short term, it’s not clear how to do it. We can’t uninvent birth control, and heavily restricting it would be very unpopular and likely impossible. Baby stipends don’t seem to cut it.
In the long run, this fixes itself. Cultures, sociological conditions, genetics that result in more children will proliferate and the others will die out.
The future is either babies in incubators, or it’s Mormon. Maybe both.
by NoahZuniga on 6/12/25, 3:00 AM