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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

This appears to be the crux of the problem...

"if you’re unwed at 25, you’re thought to be on the verge of spinsterhood, pretty much the worst failure imaginable"

This sentiment seems to be near-universal in all but the most "progressive" societies (and even in some parts of those). And it results in all manner of grotesque and absurd behavior that robs people - mostly women but also men - of their humanity and autonomy.

I applaud every young person with the courage to buck this trend in their own societies. The cost of doing so is often very high, but the pattern can only be broken by people brave enough to face those consequences and help craft a less restrictive world for the next generation.

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> And it results in all manner of grotesque and absurd behavior that robs people - mostly women but also men - of their humanity and autonomy.

I disagree that “humanity” and “autonomy” belong together in that sentence. I’m pretty sure that having kids by roughly 25 is how the human species has evolved to function. That’s the nature of “humanity”—the human condition.

That “sentiment” you decry—the social pressure to marry and have children in your 20s—is probably necessary for a sustainable society to exist. As you acknowledge, it’s nearly universal. And I can’t help but notice that the exceptions—what you call “progressive” societies, where “autonomy” has vanquished “humanity”—are all in decline. They are all propped up in the meantime by immigration from societies like the one I’m from, where moms and aunties start hassling you to get married once you hit 25.

No, you don’t understand, it’s completely normal and healthy for a society to shrink by close to half generation-to-generation. Sure, after 10 generations of this kind of decline, the population figure shrinks to only 0.1% of the former figure, and no longer sustains culture or even economy to keep all this autonomy practical (as healthy and productive economy is crucial to any degree of autonomy, the concept of autonomy and freedom from unchosen bonds is completely foreign to poor people in places like the Bangladesh you are from, due to simple economic reality), but think about all the autonomy the generation that inherited the civilization right at its peak, before it entered terminal decline (i.e. us) have enjoyed!

More seriously though, I don’t think it will be so bad. Evolution works. Blood lines of the autonomous people will perish, and the breeders will inherit the earth. For me, I’m doing my part.

A less restrictive world is not necessarily a better world. We live on and are proceeding to ruin a finite living area called Earth. Only with some kind of massive social re-engineering will any semblance of modern society still exist 200 years from now. That probably has to involve restrictions on how people eat, work, and mate.

The modern Western idea appears to be to treat life like an infinitely reconfigurable video game tuned to every individual. That will soon become a luxury for only the richest people. The rest of us need to get by as best we can, and that may mean young women and men will have to take what they can get and make themselves happy with it.

My wife dreams of winning the lottery and transforming our lives. Meanwhile we are genuinely content in our relatively hardscrabble existence… only because there is no alternative to it.

BTW I kidnapped my first wife (well she ran away from home to live with me, so her parents thought of it as kidnapping). She was 18, I was 17. But I had my own apartment, so… My second wife kinda sorta kidnapped me. Or at least she stalked me for a year before revealing herself and unleashing her plan to marry me. My son’s wife of eight years came for a visit from Canada and never returned home (for immigration reasons they were forced to get married sooner than they wanted to, so I guess America kidnapped her?).

You’re talking as if this was just some social construct, when it’s absolutely not. If a woman doesn’t have children by a certain age, then she will never have children. The idea that it will become impossible to have children is an intimidating thought for many women, even if they don’t necessarily have immediate plans to have them, and the appeal of committing to a relationship with a women who cannot have children is reduced for men (again, even if they don’t have any immediate plans for children).

Women get left behind by biological realities. Pretending this is just some form of social tyranny is clearly nonsense.

Clearly it's easier to conceive in your 20's for both men and women, but menopause (which tends to happen around age 50) is not necessarily the end of the story for women. Women can often become pregnant after menopause with their own pre-menopausal frozen eggs. If not, they can more often use a surrogate to bring their frozen egg to term. This can cost up to $40k for the procedures and storage, which is expensive but getting cheaper over time. I'd be surprised if girls being born now are ever nearly as anxious about menopause as today's quinquagenarians.

"If a woman doesn’t have children by a certain age, then she will never have children"

In what universe is this any of your concern? Not this one.

And of course it's tyrannical. People with little or no power (children, very young adults) are being forced, coerced, threatened by the power structures in their lives to make decisions they don't want to make. This is nearly a textbook definition of tyranny.

I would point out that it's of great concern to many women, often without any significant imposition by men.

I've never heard of a society that coerces women into not getting married and having children. And the imposition is by adult women and men against younger women and men, not simply men against women.

I absolutely do not agree with stigmatizing child freedom, or any notion of "spinsterhood", I just think we can acknowledge that this is a common concern with or without coercion, which is hard to measure and hard even to define.

> This sentiment seems to be near-universal in all but the most "progressive" societies (and even in some parts of those).

In what universe is this sentiment any of your concern? I presume you imagine this one?

I’m simply pointing out your mistake, which is that this is not simply some sentiment that can be modified with the appropriate social conditioning. It is the ordinary human reaction to undeniable biological realities. Nowhere in my comment did I suggest that this was an appropriate basis for actual tyrannical behaviour, so please don’t try to gaslight me into defending such a position, because it won’t work. As I have said elsewhere, even in the most progressive countries in the world, this is still a ubiquitous concern.

"It is the ordinary human reaction"

Here is a novel idea that apparently never occurred to you, let's allow each ordinary human to have their own reaction.

Why should anyone feel pressured to have children at all? That's a pretty horrible way to view the world, you're acting as if a woman's value is decreased once she can't have children anymore. That sounds a lot like social tyranny to me.

I’m not suggesting anybody is pressured to have children. Only that those who want to have to do so by a certain age, and the among those who do not or who are unsure, some portion of them decide that they do want to when confronted with the reality that they will no longer be able to.

> you're acting as if a woman's value is decreased once she can't have children anymore. That sounds a lot like social tyranny to me.

A woman’s value as a partner would be decreased for anybody who wanted to have children, or who at least wanted the option of having children. The idea that if you want a partner, you’re going to have to attract one, is not a tyranny. There are some people who think that this is tyrannical, for instance the incel community, but they are clearly wrong.

"A woman’s value as a partner would be decreased for anybody who wanted to have children"

Again, please explain why this is any concern of yours. If you want to seek out and help woman who voluntarily want help finding a partner and having children, get at it. Otherwise, supporting a system that coerces or forces young people into decisions against their will is a form of tyranny.

The age is not 25 and, anyway, who says being a mother is every woman's life's ambition?

I didn’t say it was every woman’s ambition. But many people reevaluate how they feel about the idea when they are forced to confront the fact that the choice will soon be taken away from them. This doesn’t happen at age 25, but probably starts to become more apparent for many people around that age. Keep in mind it often takes years of planning to go from deciding you want to have children to actually having them.

Most women I know had kids in their early-to-late thirties. Maybe you need to get out in the world and interact with more and different kinds of people, because it appears you perspective is severely limited.

The average age in the US is 26. Maybe your perspective is limited?

> Maybe your perspective is limited?

Almost certainly is. I wouldn’t be surprised if “most women I know” are women who work for corporations.

And the solution that's been arrived on is robbing women more fundamentally of any choice at all about what kind of life they will live. I think we're better off with the risk that maybe some people will wish they'd tried motherhood earlier than the alternative.

That’s clearly not true, because this issue still exists in societies where women have full autonomy and legal protections. It’s created by biological realities, not social conventions. It’s not simply a trendy sentiment that can be bucked (which is the claim made in the comment I originally replied to).

I'm not sure what is clearly not true but many women marry past 25 and have children.

I don’t think it is 100% society as much as it is biology that has shaped that ideology

So? Does that make it right?

Reproducing is biologically hardwired into us. That doesn’t make it alright to judge people who either can’t or choose not to but I also don’t think we are going to change something so core to our biology any time soon, and yes a part of that is the judgement that may come along with it. Doesn’t hurt to try though.

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