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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

> Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses its women then it takes significantly longer to repopulate, because one woman can't have multiple babies at the same time so the birthrate will necessarily be reduced.

People keep repeating this, but nobody has so far answered my follow-up question: do you have any example where that actually happened? Even in heavily impacted countries (like Serbia in WWI, which lost around 50% of its prewar male population), there were no laws or campaigns to allow harems or one man - multiple women combinations.

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There is research regarding this.

At least in Russia it meant: less options for women, a more male centric dating market and more children born out of wedlock.

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/...

And the research seems to disprove the core premise of the person I responded to ("only men are drafted because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country, because 1 men can get multiple women pregnant"). From the abstract:

> Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility

Lower rate of fertility is the important bit.

You probably should look at single mothers' statistics.

Edit: To provide more context: It was not exactly "official policy", but single mothers became much more common in Britain after WWI due to the fathers either dying in the war or, well, being already in another marriage. To the point the women started organizing and campaigning for their rights https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/about-us/gingerbread-history/

Naively, it seems like there'd be a lot more of the "dead fathers" case than the "out of wedlock because women want to have kids but there aren't enough husbands to go around" case.

Given one of their first goals was to end the discrimination against bastards (children with unknown father), I would say not.

Why on earth would you think laws would be necessary? This mechanism is older than laws or human civilization itself.

Some people want laws for everything.

Because in practically every country there are laws on marriage, and it's usually (Muslim world being the exception) 1:1 in partners. It adds legal and financial protections for both parts of the couple. Unless there's a law change, how do you see this working? A married man going around spreading seed and women getting pregnant and going at it alone?

Infidelity exists. Serial monogamy exists. No-strings liaisons exist. Polyamory exists. Etc. Single mothers exist even with an equal number of men and women. The exact legal nature of marriage is not going to stop any of these. Enormous numbers of people have lived and reproduced without any legal or financial protections at all, including the majority of your ancestors.

And the core premise I'm disagreeing is that countries on purpose draft only men, because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country in case of military disaster.

IF that were the case, governments would do something, anything, to encourage such behaviour (one man getting multiple women pregnant) after the war is over. Nobody is able to come up with any examples of anything like that happening, which again leads me to believe that the premise is bullshit and the real reasons why only men are drafted are somewhere between biology and misogyny.

Fertility rates do not decrease after a war, which means fewer remaining men get the same number of women pregnant.

From a sibling comment, in Russia fertility rates did indeed decrease:

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/...

Because so many civilians died, including women, and harsh living conditions due to wide spread destruction.

I am not even in Russia, but that war pulled so much out of every region, including mine (which did not see fighting directly, but provided many conscripts and resources), that after the war there simply wasn't much to eat or too many people to work the fields. My grandparents first ate caramel candy in 1952, IIRC. Good luck increasing your fertility rates in these conditions.

The URSS did draft women. Also, massive civilian casualties.

>And the core premise I'm disagreeing is that countries on purpose draft only men, because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country in case of military disaster.

It's one of the concerns, not necessarily the primary. Somebody had to keep the household going, raise and feed the existing children, and so on (which, at the day, and even today in most parts, was the role of women).

>IF that were the case, governments would do something, anything, to encourage such behaviour (one man getting multiple women pregnant) after the war is over.

That doesn't follow. Governments would only need to "do something, anything" if the thing didn't just happen by itself - which generally, it did.

And of course the morals of the day wouldn't have them explicitly promote anything of the sort.

> and the real reasons why only men are drafted are somewhere between biology and misogyny.

Sounds about right. Historically, the military culture is obviously deeply rooted in patriarchy. Men are to defend their countries, in the same way that 'women and children' have been supposed to go first into lifeboats.

There are some arguments to be found in the above mentioned Rostker v. Goldberg, and in the legal debate that followed:

Once the combat issue is put in proper perspective and the evidence of women's recognized ability to perform military functions is assessed, it becomes apparent that an exclusion of women from a draft registration requirement would be the product of the archaic notion that women must remain 'as the center of home and family.'

and

Congress followed the teachings of history that if a nation is to survive, men must provide the first line of defense while women keep the home fires burning.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150502095151/http://digitalcom...

> It adds legal and financial protections for both parts of the couple. Unless there's a law change, how do you see this working?

I see it working without the luxury of extra legal and financial protection.

> A married man going around spreading seed and women getting pregnant and going at it alone?

Well that and more. It's a combination of all available options:

* Men having kids outside of marriage

* Men having kids from 2-3 marriages

* Women marrying older men who normally are out of the reproduction race

None of that is unheard of even in peace times, and just becomes more frequent.

> women getting pregnant and going at it alone

Women going at it alone is a very modern phenomenon. It takes a village to raise a child, not just your partner. And conversely if you do have a village to support you then you don't need your partner that much.

So all of it certainly can work and did work in the past. How it will pan out in the 21st century no one knows yet. I hope we'll never have to learn.

Back in the day we're talking about (up to WWI, WII) there was not much in "legal and financial protections" for either part, and the little that were were not really enforced that widely. Men having and abandoning children with multiple women was common, especially in lower and working classes.

I suspect that humans will sleep around enough that you don't need specific laws to make it happen...

Yeah, in fact such laws would make it less tempting (they'd mean those men would have to take financial responsibility and cater to the kids they spread, etc.). Whereas the sheer choice and ability to f... around more is way more tempting and naturally sustainable.

>there were no laws or campaigns to allow harems or one man - multiple women combinations.

You don't need laws or campaigns, it happens naturally, due to the increased sexual selection availability. And of course, given that, why would men opt of harems (especially where they aren't even historically relevant to their culture)? They'd just have relationships on the side, jump ship and marry again, etc.

> You don't need laws or campaigns, it happens naturally, due to the increased sexual selection availability

Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world? It naturally happens that men become more desirable because there's less of them, but is there any actual case where it became widespread for men to get multiple different women pregnant to repopulate the country?

Not to mention, even if it did happen (and again, nobody has come up with any examples in the tens of times I've asked this question, and Google hasn't been helpful either), unless there was a concentrated government policy to that effect, you'd be mistaking correlation with causation - less men than women, so men are more desirable and can pull off multiple kids from multiple women doesn't mean that's the reasoning why only men were drafted.

>Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world?

You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths"

You can read about similar post-war periods with similar problems and outcomes in history books too.

>unless there was a concentrated government policy to that effect you'd be mistaking correlation with causation - less men than women, so men are more desirable and can pull off multiple kids from multiple women doesn't mean that's the reasoning why only men were drafted.

Women were needed to raise the present kids, and to be able to raise future kids. People didn't need to have this spelt out in law, or to have subsidies for sex with more different partners post war.

Even so, the very link you continue to ignore mentions such legal changes too in the case of post-WWII USSR:

"The impact of sex ratio imbalance on marriage and family persisted for years after the war's end and was likely magnified by

(...wait for it...)

policies that promoted nonmarital births"

> You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths"

The fertility rate (amount of kids per woman) dropped, so no.

> policies that promoted nonmarital births

Nonmarital births does not mean that men were getting multiple different women pregnant at the same time.

>The fertility rate (amount of kids per woman) dropped, so no.

Of course it did, since tens of millions men still died and tons were left with severe impairements. It's not about it remaining stable or raising after the most horrible war casualties in history it's about it not dropping as much. It's about it being elevated to where it would be if what we describe wasn't the case.

"The magnitude of the effect on completed fertility is relatively small in light of the scale of male losses, perhaps due to the pronatalist policy that promoted out of wedlock births"

>Nonmarital births does not mean that men were getting multiple different women pregnant at the same time.

Who said anything about "same time"? Men had more choice and thus more affairs/women and reduced being tied to marriage. This translates to more women pregnant by fewer men over the previous period - doesn't mean men got 2-3 women pregnant at a time.

In any case, I think this is more of a "hands on the ears" mode, than a discussion mode, so I'll stop here.

Post-WW2 Soviet Union, or maybe Paraguay post-War of Triple Alliance

In no cases were there laws, government doesn't need to pass laws to make it happen, just just because there weren't laws doesn't mean it didn't happen a lot

Post-WW2 Soviet Union had a drop in fertility rates, so no: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/...

Any data on Paraguay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8icpnrLqx0

Why do you think the sexual revolution happened right on the heels of WW2?

WWII ended in 1945. The sexual revolution was a full generation later.

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