Contraceptives are causing the biggest evolutionary pressure mankind has ever faced.
Groups like the Amish who want to have kids have a ton while the secular population decreases.
Groups like the Amish who want to have kids have a ton while the secular population decreases.
I wonder if Amish women are completely free to decide how many kids they want.
Sort of like in western world people have no „complete agency“ to refuse consumerist work/buy/die life. Technically they can, but in reality the society is stacked against that.
I'd argue that Amish are even more flexible than mainstream. Amish communities kick out the young to explore the world and then return on your own accord. Is mainstream society willing to kick out the kids to live with amishes or something along those lines? As far as I see, with very few exceptions, it's reinforcing the work/buy/die cycle.
How? If they reject it, they then need to go out and find shelter, and food, and income, in a world where they are negotiating with men, more who are all more physically powerful, as well as cognizant of the woman’s lesser negotiating position.
I do not know about Amish forcing their young to do non Amish things or whatever, but without a financial nest egg, or otherwise ability to afford security, a woman can easily feel more intimidated about striking it out on their own. Men simply do not have to worry about their physical safety in the same manner.
Most Amish communities do send kids out to explore the world. And looking at other comments, Amish women are usually more adopted to outside world and have modern office skills helping men construction etc businesses.
Semi-related... In my post-soviet country, we've a huge problem that women were forced out of home to the workforce in soviet era. Yet men were still sofa kings. Then 90s rolled in with huge unemployment and frequently women were handling both home & working, while men camped on sofas unemployed instead of taking care of the house.
Guess who is propagating this culture? Mothers and grandmothers mostly. For decades they treated boys as a special case who should go out and play and they'll clean up the house. With the help of girls, obviously. In my own childhood, it was a recurring conflict. Mom telling me to do cleaning after school. Grandmother not allowing me to do that and kicking out of the house while cleaning herself. And talking around, it's a very common pattern. Also, guess who is talking shit how men are lazy?
If your claim is that only women are responsible for propagating cultures where women are considered property, require dowry payments, lack women’s rights such as schooling, property rights, voting, driving, etc., then we will have to disagree.
I am pretty sure men have something to do with shackling women in certain societies.
I do not know where you intend to go with your thoughts, but if you are holding women solely responsible for the way men behave, again, we will have to simply disagree.
In very traditional societies, (grand)fathers spend very little time with kids compared to (grand)mothers.
Of course it's not just women to blame. Men themselves can bring the change too. But blaming just men is ignoring the elephant in the room. In traditional societies, women do have a crapton of power. It is power in a slightly different sense, but I'd argue that it's much bigger power.
In modern world, men and women can easily operate on their own by fixing problems using money. In traditional society... Men are toasted if they loose women. Of course, women do have a damn hard time without men too. But this dependence is mutual.
Seems to directly contradict any notion of both sexes having similar levels of power. Hell, 2022 USA is removing women’s power to get the healthcare they need.
Looking from a different background, postmodernist „freedoms and objective power“ seem very narrow definition that skips a lot of nuances. Individualist postmodernism needs some diversity of thought in this area.
P.S. It makes my brain freeze that killing fetus is „healthcare they need“. The new baby needs healthcare as well. For the record, I'm not against abortion per se because sometimes it is the lesser evil. But calling it „healthcare“ sounds batshit insane to me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar
> The new baby needs healthcare as well.
And the new baby is welcome to get it outside the womb, where it is no longer affecting someone else. Note that no doctors or women are going around terminating 39 week fetuses for the fun of it.
>They lack freedoms and objective power according to your perception. At the same time women who don't need to care about making income in consumerist world can focus on family and local community. Which, coincidentally, gives a lot of power on raising the next generation.
Being dependent on men for food, shelter, water, security, and other basic needs is not a limitation of freedom due to my perception, hence my use of the word “objective”, meaning outside of one’s perception. If my daughter cannot choose to live life without the help of a man, that is a restriction of her freedom, and reduction of her power.
If a government gave women a universal benefit of housing, food, etc and told them not to work, then maybe your scenario would be true. But I have never heard of a society where the woman does not have to worry about earning income and their spouse earning income, which being dependent on the latter gives them all the power. Objectively.
That's just another way of saying the same thing. In societies where non-childbearing-women are not valued, of _course_ having children increases your place in society.
Patriachy isn't men dictating every action of every individual, it's structuring society so that the only real choice is the one that benefits the ruling class.
No, that's literally what patriarchy means, that the ruling class is men.
When the ruling class is women, that's called matriarchy.
When the ruling class doesn't favor either, it's neither.
So "X is not in the ruling class and X made a choice to improve their life" does _not_ suggest that a system of rule is not in place.
What does this mean? Women’s financial independence is dependent on their ability to secure income to provide for themself without the help of others. I do not see what it has to do with alimony and child support.
And the few unfortunate women I know who do rely on child support to help raise kids... I do not envy those women. Their lives are anywhere from hectic (single-parenting with fulltime jobs) to hard (trouble making ends meet, despite economizing).
E.g. chance to procreate has reverse correlation to IQ.
In Muslim communities, however, I would expect number of children to correlate with wealth/income (which is correlated with IQ) and with religiosity (which is not). So the overall picture is a lot more murky.
Big, developed cities like Istanbul and Tehran have TFR well below reproduction rate and very similar to European values. Backwaters like rural Afghanistan or Niger, where literacy is still uncommon, have tons of kids.
Basic education for women is very well correlated with lower TFR everywhere in the world.
Here's one thing some people in this thread need to understand. Nature doesn't care. Nature doesn't judge you if you don't have kids. Your genes being slightly less prevalent down the timeline isn't a punishment.
There's no high score table at the end of time saying "This is how good your genes did".
Even the idea that they are "yours" is pretty incoherent.
If stuff like who gets most kids worries you, you seriously need to look elsewhere for meaning in your lives. That's one thing you could learn from the Amish.
Nature doesn't judge you, it just gets rid of you.
I die because nature has selected humans to have a certain lifespan.
In many species, almost no individuals reproduce. Worker ants never have children. Same with worker bees. Plenty of species select have some/most members not reproduce to protect assist species.
From evolutionary perspective, only your genes are „your“ genes. And from tribal perspective, procreation of each (quality) member is for the better.
P.S. At some points in human history we had a similar only-chosen-procreate tendency. But it was overturned. I'd argue that for the better. Humans who have a stake in the future seem to care more about the society. Compared to ants-like society where warlord procreates and the rest of men just guards his harem.
A human being is a continuous process both genetically and culturally. Your forefathers form who you are and you form people who will live long after you.
There should be things which matter for their own sake, here and now, no matter what happens in the future. I can promise you that if you don't find them now, you won't find anything that matters in the future either.