What kind of people will not wanting children likely select for?
At least two kinds come to mind:
1) People who love children and are willing to have them regardless of the impact on their financial situation.
2) People living in societies where women (and likely some men) lack a say in whether or not to have children.
The first kind could be very good.
The second is definitely not something we should look forward to.
I agree that these days, the bulk of the drive to procreate comes from your culture/memetics.
There is a "replacement" crisis but it's being addressed by pearl clutching and those advocating for forced birth.
Having children is expensive all the way around. And women's reproductive rights have enabled them to (rightfully) make their own choices about motherhood.
To state the obvious: children literally are the future of humanity and we need to address the issue accordingly. A lot of it would be via changing the economics of having a child, and the rest would be by making the world a "village to raise a child".
This is all eminently doable. We just need to agree on what that looks like and how to best invest in it.
Even Scandinavian countries and France, with generous parental benefits, have not materially increased their fertility rates.
At least in the US, protecting agency and autonomy that might be challenged is easily solved with the second amendment for defense, as well as long term and permanent birth control for those who would not like to have any children or more children. The potentially vulnerable reproductive age population shrinks perpetually year after year, continuously reducing potential attack surface.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48733976 (citations)
Those who govern us see us as an economic zone to exploit, so perpetuating core social values isn’t really a concern. Although even countries who recognize this problem are having trouble finding a solution.
It may simply be that the future doesn’t look very much like the “developed world”. The only nations (or large subcultures like the Amish) that still have high fertility rates also have values and lifestyles that appear very foreign to us.
I’m not passing judgement, it’s just Darwin in action.
I have a thesis that people need stories to inform and inspire them. I also believe that this problem is technically solvable, and that the stories we have today are either backwards (the woman belongs at home making babies and taking care of daddy), or too hand-wavy (we just need to fund Head Start and make schools free).
I'm all for the latter approach but it doesn't address the fact that children are money, time, and energy vampires (albeit lovable and worthy of those things). We need more than that. Programs that augment school itself (the arts, scouting, DIY/maker stuff, etc). Those exist but are not evenly distributed and we need way more of it.
Lastly, the "village" part of encouraging communities to help families thrive instead of struggle; to make sure that kids have the options they need rather than turning to drugs, gangs, etc.
C'mon everybody, let's kumbaya!
You are not using “people” in the same sense. I mean “people” as a national culture, which does shift from generation to generation, but generally not in a radical sense. Immigrants assimilate over time, although they do leave lasting influence on the culture as they merge with it. Families pass on aspects of their attitudes and beliefs. Generations pass on cultural knowledge through media. This is why millennial culture in the US is a continuation and evolution of Boomer culture, despite all the intergenerational strife.
As the culture is replaced, revolution and/or national disintegration becomes more likely, as there is little to unite people in the face of significant challenges. (Why should I sacrifice for neighbors I can’t relate to? Why should I follow the laws and cultural codes of a nation I have no deep connection to? Perhaps my own culture’s standards are better!) It’s a natural process that’s happened many times throughout history.
(This sounds overly cut and dry, but culture is complicated, and a national culture is made up of tens to hundreds of regional cultures and subcultures that all have a share of influence. In the end it’s an abstraction. You can’t really force a culture of any size to behave in a certain way, nor can you “preserve” it except in the form of documentation. But culture does produce a lineage of identifiable characteristics that gets passed down, if it survives.)