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Comment by knuthsat | Hacker News Reader

There are belief systems that promote making children (Amish, Islam, etc.). Populations that practice these systems will eventually take over.

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I would be curious to see how the birth rate in those populations would fare if the women in those populations had financial independence.

That's so obvious that the writers of those religions gave women little to no financial independence.

Probably just as well? That seems like a page from the usual Western feminist perspective that if a woman isn't pursuing STEM, wanting to be a corporate "girl-Boss", or a she-preneur; she's surely a victim of a barbaric sexist culture instead of an individual actor just avoiding pursuits that she doesn't find appealing.

I mean you're talking about religion here. It's almost a universal that religion takes some of the best and brightest people it has and then has them dedicate their lives to something that has no material rewards, much less "financial independence".

There is a vast difference in birth rates in cultures where women have 3+ kids as the norm and cultures where women have 1 or 2 kids as the norm.

I do not know any aunts or cousins that wanted to have more than 2 kids, maybe one or two that had 3. And almost all came from moms or grandmas that has 3+ kids, usually 4 or 5.

It has nothing to do with Western feminist or STEM or whatever political nonsense, it is simply a result of giving birth and breastfeeding being a very costly event with very real risks for almost all women.

> giving birth and breastfeeding being a very costly event with very real risks for almost all women.

Natural selection suggests that women who find giving birth and breastfeeding more difficult than average women, will die off over time and be replaced by the descendents of those women who found it easier than average women.

Natural selection does not work in timescales relevant to discussions about our civilizations.

It works faster on cultures than on genes, of course. That's called "memetic evolution".

If you consider only the selection pressure from the mother’s side then yes that is the case.

However you must consider that the mother and the father are in an arms race with respect to the carrying capacity of the mother. The selection pressure from the father will always tend towards an offspring that is the maximum capacity at which the mother can bear.

That's true only if the selection pressure on individual children favors largeness, right? On an island or without as much nutrition, it might be an advantage to be smaller, since you could get by on less food.

That's a prisoner's dilemma situation. As a group, smaller islanders are less likely to run out of food (the cooperation strategy). But as an individual, a bigger islander can beat up the smaller ones and take their food (the defection strategy).

Of course if everyone defects, the group as a whole is worse off.

I dunno. If they really were trapped in a Prisoner's Dilemma, then the equilibrium would be that they get big, I think (unless there's a "repeated games" angle here). Yet what we actually observe, of species that get isolated on islands, is that they do get small.

If that's the case then women who have an easier time having kids than average will be more desirable mates and attract higher quality men than women who have a harder time having kids than average.

Financial dependence makes massive difference in peoples lives and that includes non materialistic religious people. It is not about being the boss. It is about being able to make decisions for yourself. Decision not to marry, for example. Or, decision to leave the relationship without ending up poor.

It makes difference in terms of who gets to decide whether you have another kid or not. Or, whether you will be in couple in the first place. Religious people still have all the human issues and needs. They have disagreements or even power struggles within their families, they have mix of failing and working families. And when you and your kids completely depends on somebody else that someone else will by able to make quite a lot of decisions for you.

Also, regardless of religion, ability of women to be financially independent and make decisions for herself in fact does lower average birth rates pretty consistently.

First there was B.1, then there was delta, then there was omicron.

Christianity too. On the extreme side, quiverful or evangelicals.

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