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Comment by tjs8rj | Hacker News Reader

For a while, declining fertility rates were de facto considered a good sign in the demographic transition model. Usually experts would say "declining fertility is because people are chasing more fulfilling things! Our societies are so good that there is so much more to enjoy than children!". This always felt wrong. Why would the happiest society be the one that turns off it's natural processes? Is there any instance in nature where a declining birth rate is a sign of good things for a species?

Glad the tide is finally turning to recognize the obvious truth: declining birth rates is a sign of distress in a society.

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Declining fertility rates were considered good for multiple reasons:

* It's associated with lower infant/youth mortality rates (people have less children when they know each will survive)

* It's associated with higher per-person productivity and industrialization (it makes sense to have several children helping you on a farm, but with industrialization it makes more sense to send 1-2 to college)

Declining birth rates are not "a sign of distress". Assuming ideal conditions, fertility would float around the value we see in highly developed nations.

However, this is a problem economically, because our economy is built on indefinite growth and the idea that the younger generations financially support the elderly. With too few youth and too many elderly, the system collapses.

The economic problems will work out eventually, but it is going to suck financially for many until things stabilize.

> Why would the happiest society be the one that turns off it's natural processes?

The natural process is for women to not have a say in how many children they give birth to, and instead be subject to the whims of their male counterparts, who can obviously overpower them.

A decline from a certain fertility rate to a certain fertility rate can indicate that women are gaining agency.

Everyone is subject to the whims of society. Traditional societies were never about the goal of "oppressing women", but people fighting for survival. Of course women have the responsibility of bearing children, just as men have responsibilities of providing and going to war etc.

If women have gained more "agency" to reject their responsibilities to society, but men still have many traditional responsibilities, what does that say about the morals and ethics of your society? It's not positive, and you should examine it as a possible cause of this low fertility rate.

Right, so presumably, a society where there is no expectation of war and needing to pump out bodies to go to war would be a happier society.

Do women have a “responsibility” to birth x number of babies so people can have access to cheaper labor?

> Right, so presumably, a society where there is no expectation of war and needing to pump out bodies to go to war would be a happier society.

A society not prepared to fight for its existence will not survive. It's the men willing to go to war that keep it alive.

> Do women have a “responsibility” to birth x number of babies so people can have access to cheaper labor?

Women have a natural instinct to want and take care of children. By bringing this out in a healthy society, instead of convincing them they're "oppressed" and trying to make them go against their nature, the problem solves itself.

It's quite amazing that anyone could believe women were oppressed by men literally spending their lives protecting and providing for women. Responsibilities for thee but not for me

>A society not prepared to fight for its existence will not survive. It's the men willing to go to war that keep it alive.

Sure, but I was only responding to tjs8rj's claim about a "happy" society, not one which necessarily outlives all the others.

>Women have a natural instinct to want and take care of children.

>It's quite amazing that anyone could believe women were oppressed by men literally spending their lives protecting and providing for women.

These are enormous claims that require enormous evidence, not to mention that individuals were and are impacted very differently by different members of society.

And a corollary to that truth, traditional societies are actually far more reasonable in their values and "moral progress" is actually running in the opposite direction than commonly assumed, with society going backwards and committing suicide.

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