The lack of births in affluent societies

It is common nowadays for women to decide against having children. This decision can change later in life but is also sometimes consistently adhered to and put into practice. Is that good or bad? It would in general seem mostly to be good—as long as it is a well-informed decision. It is good in the sense that children deserve better than having a mother that does not want them.

The caveat about the decision being “well-informed”, however, is very important. Many women who have been long disinclined to be mothers but who do nonetheless for whatever reason become mothers, change their attitudes radically after the birth and become very pro-parenthood. What happened was that all that they previously knew about babies was dirty diapers, crying, social disruption and an all-round nuisance. Nobody had effectively communicated to them the great happiness that children also bring. In conversation, parents tend to stress the negatives of parenthood (it is a form of self-deprecation or politeness) and assume that you know the positives. But many people nowadays seem NOT to know the positives.

If, therefore, anybody reading this is against children on the grounds of the nuisance that they constitute, you might be wise to talk to some happy mothers and fathers and ask them what it is that they like about having children. You might hear things that you did not previously realize.

We must at the present time, however, expect that many well-informed women will still not want to have children. Up until quite recently, parenthood was virtually compulsory for all. Now that we have both the contraceptive pill and permissiveness, this is no longer so. In the past, many non-motherly women had children. They had no real choice about it. But their daughters do not have to. So their daughters generally won’t. So the non-motherly genes will steadily cease to be transmitted and women of that type will die out. The children of the future will be much more likely to have mothers that want them. Isn’t that wonderful?

This sifting out process is, of course, causing a temporary downturn in the overall birthrate but the bigger and bigger proportion of female births being of motherly types means that the birthrate will lift again as these females themselves grow up and start to have their own babies.

Posted by jonjayray on Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 05:21 AM in Social Conservatism
Comments (16) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on June 28, 2005, 06:20 AM | #

John,

This is the first note of optimism I have come across in all the scores of articles I must have read on feminism, the marxian attack on the family and our approaching demographic disaster (on which subject see Mark Stein in today’s Telegraph). I hope you are right. However, there are some glitches in the theory.

First, there has to be a heck of a high proportion of unmotherly women out there to make it relevant to the facts on the ground - even notwithstanding that proportion of “normal” women who, having learned screwing around + unmotherliness in youth, go on to discover the deep satisfactions of parenthood in their thirties and forties.

(I am, btw, waiting for Fred to wake up, switch on his PC and ride to the honour of women everywhere in this respect.)

Second, if you are suggesting that unmotherliness is genetic, what about lesbianism? That frolics down the generations of women without, presumably, all that many butch lesbians producing offspring. It doesn’t disappear. So why should unmotherly women?

Third, will rising motherliness impact upon demographics before the demographics impact upon us? I don’t see the agency of motherliness as nearly fast-acting enough us to save us from our suicidally anti-nationist elites and the mobile Third World. It might help to keep pace with the breeding going on in the inner cities. But it ain’t no solution to the bind we are in.

Posted by jonjayray on June 28, 2005, 07:42 AM | #

David
Homosexuals of all kinds would have died out years ago if social pressures had not forced them into parenthood. Tolerance of homosexuality removes that pressure and ensures that they will mostly die out quite soon. That is more true of males than of Lesbians as some lesbians do have chilren (often with donor sperm from a male homo!). But we are living in a peak of homosexualty right now. Our children will see less of it and our grandchildren even less.

Yes. I guess about 50% of women are not very motherly at the moment. Social pressures to have children were strong within living memory.

A shrinking population is regrettable in some ways but it is no disaster. Greenies love it!

Posted by Mark Richardson on June 28, 2005, 08:37 AM | #

From the July edition of Melbourne’s Child magazine the following advertisement (one of many such):

“I am a loving, passionate and financially independent woman, and grew up in the security of a happy, stable family. I have always dearly wanted my own family, but waited too long for a Mr Right to eventuate, and have been on the IVF program for 3 long, unsuccessful years. I am now looking for an understanding and healthy woman between 25 and 35 who is willing to help me fulfil my dream through the generous donation of your eggs ... I already have a suitable sperm donor.”

This woman had a good start, but there’s so much that can go wrong in getting a woman to motherhood.

I can almost guess what happened. Fed a dose of feminism at school and being earnest and conscientious, she struggled hard to build up career and financial independence, rejecting suitable men in her early 20s in order to avoid entaglements, then reaching her 30s and finding her social life dwindling and the available men becoming less committed to family life, she finally attempts single motherhood but finds it too late even for this option.

Which is simply to say that a healthy birth rate requires more than maternal genes (which I expect 95% of women have) or even “informed” individual choice. There are political, cultural, economic and psychological factors - and a society serious about reproducing itself will take heed of all of these.

Posted by jonjayray on June 28, 2005, 08:37 AM | #

It also seems likely to me that it is mostly Leftists who are not reproducing. Too miserable for it. Conservatives are happier.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 28, 2005, 08:41 AM | #

”[...] women who, having learned screwing around + unmotherliness in youth [...]. (I am, btw, waiting for Fred to wake up, switch on his PC and ride to the honour of women everywhere in this respect.)” (—GW)

GW I fancy myself someone with few of the kind of illusions about women you’re alluding to above, in case that’s the impression I give. Here, does

this

(scroll down to the Comments) look dainty and naïve?:

<i>Well, but a pure slut will always find a slutty world to move in, won’t she—especially a slut like this one who is so obviously proud of her sluttiness and can’t wait to tell everyone about what a slut she’s been because she imagines all will be envious of her. This sort of one-hundred-percent amoral female is part of what drives women’s lib (along with lesbians, clueless hetero women who are depressed and have low self-esteem, red-diaper-baby women Marxists like Betty Friedan, and so on)—strangely enough, this type of slut both loves what she’s doing and resents society for the fact that she’s doing it—sort of senses it’s not fulfilling her and all that’s happening is everyone’s taking advantage of her (but is too much of a slut to stop) and at the same time blames ‘society’ and ‘the Patriarchy’ for the fact that they ‘force her into it,’ or something. Women like this tramp, by the way, are mannish, not feminine, and have the reputation—so I’ve heard—of being very so-so ‘in bed,’ not at all the objects of male desire they imagine themselves to be. It takes two to tango, Miss Tindall—cads can’t very well be such cads without plenty of pure sluts like you around to enthusiastically do their part. Oh, and I’m not going to buy your book, sweetheart—detailed descriptions of your pathetic ‘exploits’ with the creeps you slept with interest me about as much as detailed descriptions of a month’s worth of your bowel movements. Posted by: Fred Scrooby | June 19, 2005 05:45 AM”

[GW that Book of Kells selection is beautiful, btw—just gorgeous! Thanks for posting it! Great choice!]

Posted by Fred Scrooby on June 28, 2005, 08:45 AM | #

(Of course, I really threw that in just to spice up the thread a bit—it was getting too motherly ...)

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on June 28, 2005, 09:11 AM | #

A shrinking population is WONDERFUL—the problem is to get the Third World to adopt civilized Italian/Japanese reproduction habits.

The other problem is that reproduction is intellectuially differential, particularly with pro-natalist welfare policies, so the middle classes have no kids and the underclass breed like rabbits. If we really want to stop this, we either need to abolish welfare or the two career family, preferably both but particularly the latter. Two careers equals no parents; it’s why most modern teens are werewolves.

I LIKE kids (particularly my own.) I also like slutty women. Non-slutty career women don’t like me because I’m not rich and am a MALE CHAUVINIST PIG! But these traits too can be dealt with.

Posted by Steve Edwards on June 28, 2005, 12:39 PM | #

“A shrinking population is WONDERFUL—the problem is to get the Third World to adopt civilized Italian/Japanese reproduction habits.”

That’s the problem, you see. There has been a massive shift in the balance of power over the course of the 20th century precisely because of population growth (among other factors)in many parts of the Third World.

And in areas of low capital accumulation and economic maladministration, higher population growth generates growing pressures for mass migration to developed countries. And the elites in the developed countries (bar Japan) seem to welcome said migration, even if it is of questionable quality.

I think the best approach to our demographic catastrophe would be to cut age pensions, or make them contingent on how many children you had (Sailer). Also, allow income splitting for couples (which makes marriage a tax minimisation exercise).

Posted by Steve Edwards on June 28, 2005, 12:41 PM | #

“So the non-motherly genes will steadily cease to be transmitted and women of that type will die out. The children of the future will be much more likely to have mothers that want them.”

Don’t worry John, the liberals will find a way to prevent this from happening.

Posted by Phil on June 28, 2005, 06:04 PM | #

That is more true of males than of Lesbians as some lesbians do have chilren (often with donor sperm from a male homo!).

Clearly then, Homsexuals won’t go extinct because the Lesbian women won’t just have female children but also male children.

Posted by Phil on June 28, 2005, 06:07 PM | #

I also like slutty women.

LMAO

Posted by Phil on June 28, 2005, 06:09 PM | #

A shrinking population is regrettable in some ways but it is no disaster. Greenies love it

This shrinkage is nothing. When Peak Oil hits, populations in some parts of the world will contract faster than a penis in ice water.

Posted by Phil on June 28, 2005, 06:13 PM | #

Martin,

You’re in contradiction with yourself. You dont want the low IQ population to keep outbreeding the high IQ population in the West. Therefore, you would like to reduce the growth rate of the low IQ population.

And yet, you want us to keep dumping hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars into Africa which has the millions of people who would be characterised as mental retards in the West. Why?

Also, if you like slutty women, you are arguing against your own taste when you say you want the low IQ population (in the west, by which I assume you mean low IQ whites) to shrink. The overhwlming majority of slutty women are low IQ.

Posted by jonjayray on June 28, 2005, 06:48 PM | #

LOL
Peak oil nonsense even gets into this thread!

BTW
For once I think Mark Richo’s post above is spot-on

Posted by Phil on June 28, 2005, 06:58 PM | #

John,

Even assuming that your fairytale assumptions of unlimited supply are correct, there would be nothing unusual in a massive contraction in world population. And it won’t be something silly like Global warming that will do it.

You could have a major volcanic eruption or a meteor strike or another ice age. Those are things human beings have no absolutely control over - no matter how advanced we become, we won’t ever have control over those forces of nature.

And any one of those global catastrophies would shave off 95 percent of global population in no time. There would be nothing unusual or bizarre about it either. It has happened several times in the Earth’s history (including our own).

Posted by jonjayray on June 29, 2005, 02:30 AM | #

“fairytale assumptions of unlimited supply”

The oil price is already pretty close to where ethanol could take over from gasoline

Tropical farmers are salivating at the prospect.

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