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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Socially liberal societies, in their current form, are literally not sustainable. And what sustainability they appear to have is actually propped up by socially conservative natives, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democra... and immigrants from socially conservative countries.

This isn’t related to modern society, necessarily. The US total fertility rate was well over 3.0 in the 1960s, but even then most women worked outside the home. It’s also not necessarily preference. The average number of children women say they want is 2.7, while the fertility rate is now well under 2.0. I strongly suspect it’s the result of the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families.

[1] This is actually a fairly new phenomenon, appearing in the last few decades.

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I wouldn't be so quick to blame the sexual revolution. There are many other relevant factors that have changed since the 60s, such as the cost of owning a home and raising kids. People are less likely to have nearby family to share childrearing responsibilities, and so on. It's likely a confluence of factors.

The cost of owning a home has gone up, but so has the size of the average house, right?

Where I live that sort of problem - an ever increasing housing standard - is mostly brought by the house builders to increase profits, not necessarily by the average family's new found demands. Affordable housing in decent quality and like 80m2+ would never be unoccupied in a larger (western-)European city I reckon.

Good article on this, mostly for the graphs:

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

If you built smaller houses, people would buy them. Debt and Speculative ownership is are too cheap

>which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families.

I'm sure the government assistance rules that discourage marriage (i.e. the several thousand year old stable child raising family unit) aren't stalling that trend.

Marriage as we know it probably formed to fit the needs of an agricultural society. We aren’t that any more. For hundreds of millennia before that, humans lived in small tribes, and that was natural for that environment. I don’t know yet what our post-agricultural living arrangements will turn out to be, but it might not be the nuclear family.

> which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families.

Men are way more involved in their families then they used to be. Also, it is women who are more likely to initiate the divorce. It is men who seem to cry all the time about not having girlfriend, there is comparatively much less women making whole movements out of being single.

> Men are way more involved in their families then they used to be.

I would observe that the men who have families are more involved, but there are also many more men who do not have families to be involved with.

> Men are way more involved in their families then they used to be.

What makes you think that?

For one, this is something multiple old people I know commented on. The change in how much males interact with their kids or generally do housework. Plus, there is less social pressure to spend time after work away from familly - men after work take kids outside instead of going to drink with buddies in bowling league.

Second, sociological studies are consistent with that - fathers and husbands are more involved, do more work at home.

This is where that revolution is headed now ... here's some of the top search results from Google in no particular order:

https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/groups/Universit...

https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/seeking-arrangements-sugar...

https://www.insider.com/teachers-are-increasingly-becoming-s...

> ... and immigrants from socially conservative countries.

True, they're coming from socially conservative countries. But, do those immigrants represent the socially conservative ideals of the countries they're from? In my experience, that question doesn't have a tidy answer... but my expectation is that the more liberal folk are more inclined to move to more progressive countries, and more conservative folk would rather stay put.

This highly depends on if the newcomers are immigrants or refugees (not a refutation, just an aside to your comment).

Reminds me of the adage 'leftists procreate via propaganda'

> in the 1960s, but even then most women worked outside the home

Is that actually true? I'm very surprised if so.

No. It was 30-40%. Male labor participation was 60-75% overall (I am not sure from stupid graph I found about exact number).

I added males so that comparison can be more fair, some people are too young, in school, too old etc.

> I strongly suspect it’s the result of the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which made it socially acceptable for men not to commit to raising families.

Isn't this just a more politically correct way of complaining about a more gender equal society?

How is that related to equality? Previously, it wasn't socially acceptable for women not to commit to raising families either.

Yes, and that was both oppressive and unequal?

You are totally confused. Look at Swedens numbers and then think about your hypothesis. It's falsified in one fell swoop.

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