I can’t believe more people don’t think about men’s contribution to all this! The fact that nearly every article I see bemoaning low birth rates is written by a man, who will never suffer through birth, and focuses solely on what is `wrong’ with women, who not only suffer and die in childbirth but also take on all the caregiving…I mean, they answer their own question.
Great essay! I think there is a third way which involves parents (mostly mothers) having the flexibility to work at jobs where they can a. Bring their kids, or b. Work from home. This is working out well in industrialized countries but I've also noticed it in places I've traveled to in Latin America (kids hanging out in the shops, fields while their parents work).
I largely agree, but from a humanist perspective rather than a pronatalist one. It probably won't move the needle very much, and we should simply accept that birth rates will be relatively low (compared to the past) for a while while our population in severe ecological overshoot slowly rightsizes itself.
Another thing I should note that the Nordic countries and also the Netherlands and France have is a significantly shorter workweek, and the USA needs to do the same as well. I would also argue for UBI as well as a more robust social welfare state in general. Again, from a humanist perspective, not pronatalism.
Thanks for this perspective! I'm curious what you see as the ultimate "rightsizing" target. I'm personally very concerned about the fate of a country like South Korea where the population of young people is shrinking dramatically and the average age is approaching 60. If the goal is a depopulated world overall, I think we will go through significant challenges when the age pyramid inverts.
You're very welcome. I consider the ultimate rightsizing target to small enough that the entire world's population could have a decent standard of living. Which, as leading scientists like David Pimentel have determined, is about 2-3 billion for the world, and 150-200 million for the USA. And that should be allowed to happen organically, with no coercion of any kind. Female empowerment and poverty reduction will allow such a thing to happen ethically.
Yes, there will be social and economic challenges with an aging population, to be sure, but those challenges will pale in comparison to the problems of ecological overshoot. And with today's technology, the problem of labor shortages can be easily resolved. And any fiscal problems can be solved by Overt Congressional Financing per Dr. Joseph M. Firestone, basically.
As for UBI, for the record, I believe it should be not only for parents, but for everyone. Though I would be fine with parents getting more than non-parents, of course.
But ultimately, the "everybody must procreate" dogma is every bit as outdated and outmoded as the "everybody and their mother must work for a living". Both dogmas need to fall by the wayside. Buckminster Fuller was a wise man indeed.
Now, the "lowest low" countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. are outliers, and my otherwise rosy assessment may not apply to them. Those few countries are likely to hit a "pothole" on the road to sustainability, and thus probably should increase their birthrates by any *ethical* means necessary. But those at at TFT or 1.5 or higher (or perhaps even a little bit lower if briefly) I twill age and shrink more gently and gradually, and should be fine on balance overall in the long run IMHO.
Yes, I worry about the countries with a TFR below 1. And the fear is that when the TFR gets to 1.5, it's easy to slide down lower because you start to develop a culture that is less friendly to children en masse.
I think "small enough that the entire world's population could have a decent standard of living" is a great goal but it will take some pain to get there when we have more old people than young people for a period of time.
That is true. But even then, I still think that the predicted pain has been grossly exaggerated by 1) the capitalist oligarchs who benefit handsomely from the current "growth for the sake of growth" Ponzi pyramid scheme, and 2) the right-wingers, tradcons and religious zealots who also benefit from high birthrates and demographic growth.
Yes- although I also think that progressives care about births and babies because we are the ones pushing for a better-funded educational system, better maternal and child healthcare, and for policies like parental leave and childcare. Building a more pro-child world is actually more in line with the progressive vision than the oligarch one, IMO. Which is why I feel like we should not let the far right "own" the natalist issue space.
Won’t number 2 just make fewer men want kids, and make those who do want kids want to have fewer? Given that the hypothesis seems to be that women would have more children if they had less responsibility, why wouldn’t men want fewer if they have more?
Great question! The difference between option 1 and option 2 is the difference between 1) women doing ALL (or almost all) of the unpaid labor and 2) couples splitting unpaid labor, such that men are doing close to half of it (which realistically might look more like 35-40% which is what time diary research tells us men do when their spouses out-earn them). I think that 2 is more sustainable for both people than 1! Curious if you agree.
I guess number 2 doesn’t really look like a viable option to me, at least long term. Enough women want a bread winning spouse that it is rational for straight men to focus on and make career decisions to achieve that. But that means routinely working more than 40 hours a week. Then you include everything else on top of it? My impression from men working white collar jobs is that they already do around 33% of the household labor on average. And that already they have so little time outside of work and family/household stuff that they have to sacrifice some combination of sleep, friendship, hobbies, exercise, and community life. The only people I have seen that type of life really work for are super extraverted religious people who are able to get most of their needs met through work and church, and to basically get free childcare from church while they can socialize with other parishioners.
In other words, I think that the problem with number two is that you are asking men to sacrifice their health and happiness (and probably wealth as well) in order to have more kids, and that will be just about as persuasive with men as it is with women.
Your comment that men "have so little time" does not square with the time use data we have. In couples where men and women earn the same incomes, men actually have, on average, about 4 more hours per week of leisure time than women, and women spend more time in housework and childcare. So men are not more overwhelmed with work/family responsibilities than women are-- they are less overwhelmed. These data are here:
In terms of "asking men to sacrifice their health and happiness" I'm not sure this is true- many men report that they enjoy having children, enjoy spending time with children, and derive a lot of meaning from parenting. I think the unhappiness comes in when one partner is shouldering all or most of the load with no sense of equity...that's how you get to a situation like South Korea where increasing numbers of women say they don't want to get married at all.
I’m not saying that men are more overwhelmed, just that the white collar men that I know are already overwhelmed. I looked at the Pew data for parents in egalitarian marriages, and it looks like men’s time is this: 44.3 hours paid work, 9 hours caregiving, and 2.2 hours on housework. That adds up to 55.5 hours per week total (and doesn’t include commuting). Women are 40.8, 12.2 and 5.1, which adds up to 58.1. So there is a difference, but it isn’t large (2.6). And those numbers include a bunch of people who have marriages where men do less than that. So what I see where I live (liberal meds and Eds town) among younger, educated, dual career parents (millennials and gen Z) is different from the average. It pretty much already is the scenario that you are suggesting as option number two, and the men are largely overwhelmed. Not all of them, some have personalities resistant to overwhelm and burnout in that kind of situation, but they are the minority.
It isn’t straightforwardly discussed, but when people talk about kids in this milieu, the men are very lowkey trying to dissuade each other from having kids or having more kids. So this isn’t an argument about how couples should divide responsibilities, but rather just an extrapolation from personal experience that the combination of intensive parenting norms and more egalitarian patterns of careers and household labor lead to burnout among men as much as they do for women, and seem to have the kind of impact that you would expect on men’s desire to have children, though for various reasons men don’t seem to be talking about this much (I think that they believe they would be criticized for publicly expressing feelings of burnout, and be viewed as selfish, lazy, entitled, misogynistic, bad fathers and husbands, etc).
Yes I think you are right that men get burned out as well as women. And intensive parenting is a problem - travel sports, extracurriculars, etc. I think the question is whether it's better for couples to share the burden, or to shift it all onto the mom. Certainly women are voting with their feet in many countries and opting out of parenthood. Maybe burning men out a little bit is better than burning women out all the way.
Oh, I definitely think that it is better for couples to share the burden. All that I am arguing is that shifting more of that burden towards men is going to lead men overall to have less desire to have kids or have more kids. I think that in the long run that is a good thing, and there will be fewer couples where one partner is pushing for more kids that the other doesn’t really want.
Indeed it probably will have that effect to some extent. And that is fine IMHO from a humanist perspective, albeit not so fine from a strictly pronatalist perspective. There are really no perfect solutions, only trade-offs.
Yes, I found something very similar (while also reporting a fertility piece for slate https://slate.com/life/2024/12/fertility-rate-united-states-trump-administration.html), "the distribution of the burden of child care between mothers and fathers is a key determinant of fertility" in high income countries per "Bargaining over Babies: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications" from Matthias Doepke and Fabian Kindermann. And this paper from Giulia Briselli Libertad Gonzalez tracks the same pattern, "Are Men's Attitudes Holding Back Fertility and Womens Careers? Evidence from Europe". I've been suprised that this hasn't been a major focus in the 'falling fertility' hysteria.
I agree that it is surprising it hasn't been more of a focus - but also I think many of these conversations have been led by men, who aren't eager to take on more housework! Your Slate piece is terrific and I agree with your conclusions.
South Korea is also an outlier, showing what happens when you combine a modern labour market with thoroughly pre-modern male attitudes. Italy a bit similar.
Excluding those two, the effect is small, and NRR seems to be bounded above by 1.8. That makes sense if you assume the mean desired number is a bit above 2 and that there more downward shocks (infertility, absence of a suitable partner, financial constraints) than upwards (unplanned but completed pregnancies, second families).
Communities like the Amish and the Mennonites, as well as the ultra orthodox in Israel, seem to have higher birth rates.
Cities have always been population sinks. We have eliminated the obvious causes; poor sanitation, communicable disease, and other obvious safety hazards. Cities are still population sinks.
Women sabotage each other. They encourage each other in short term behavior, such as promiscuity, tattoos, and piercings, which reduces their mate value. They encourage each other to treat their mates badly. I suspect they do this less with their relatives.
It’s not a question of blame. It’s a matter of instinct vs socialization. There is a set of behaviors in mammalian females called female reproductive suppression, which is just what it sounds like.
In this case socialization has combined with instinct to suppress reproduction generally.
Women have always had control over their fertility, in the positive direction. Now they have control in the negative direction, too.
Women compete with each other, as men do, just not overtly. Most of their competition is zero sum. Zero sum games can become negative sum.
You bring up a really interesting comparison, but it’s focused on the wrong component, imo. The difference between Haredi, Amish, and other high fertility subcultures is far greater structure and religiosity than the larger population…for the men. Men in those cultures live very restricted lives, focused on spirituality and family, via formal schooling for up to 12 hrs a day until they are at least 18, often past that. Women in those cultures are pretty much left to their own devices, and they form community with each other naturally. For the men, it must be formalized. Compare that to the lack of structure in western men’s formative years, the focus on money and career over family, etc., and a hypothesis begins to take shape.
So basically, in order to raise birthrates significantly, women's rights need to be revoked or at least severely curtailed across the board, as it is a collective action problem. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. I strongly disagree with you, of course, but thanks anyway ☺️
I did not say that. I described a factor which might be responsible. I did suggest one way to ameliorate it, but I don’t _think_ that remedy would curtail women’s rights.
Fascinating piece, Darby. I'm going to re-read this a few times. Thanks too for your clarity and explanations about how you generated and analysed the data. Plenty to ponder over..
Control for work hours, rent prices, and population density. Rent is super expensive in Seoul, where the city is crowded and the workweek is brutally long (especially for men). South Korea is overpopulated and its low TFR is the market forcing a TFR correction through high prices and low hour and skill adjusted wages (as well an education rat race that makes parenting a stressful nightmare). There is a similar story in Taiwan, Singapore, and to a slightly lesser degree the US.
A better mildly pro-natal solution is to tax the wealth of the Boomers who benefitted from decades of asset price appreciation. Instead of property tax laws that "grandfather" in lower rates for long-time incumbent homeowners, property taxes should escalate with tenure (after a certain period of about 15-20 years of total homeownership) to encourage empty nesters to sell their large homes to young families who need the space and to downgrade to a condo or smaller home. There are lots of 55-75 year old Gen X and Boomers living in large homes with 3 or 4 empty bedrooms while Gen Z and Millenial couples are struggling to find an affordable 2 bedroom apartment.
In most areas that men are interested in there's a lot of "gear" and it becomes a bit performative & status signally. Consider the modern male kitchen as a kind of prototypical example. So I wonder if there's a way to "weaponise" that for other chores. If we normalised $1,000 Dyson vacuums would men do more vacuuming? If shopping carts were designed with the same plethora of slots and crevices and hooks as a toolbox would men do more grocery shopping?
That said, one big elephant in the room is the fact that that humanity has kind of always been a "lion's pride" writ large, with men being the lazier gender overall, to one degree or another. This has been true even in matriarchal societies too, by the way, sometimes even *a fortiori*. One concern of mine is that when the proposed "carrots" fail to move the needle enough, the pronatalists will resort to using "sticks" to varying degrees, and not only on men either. It can easily become a slippery slope and ultimately an "own goal" if we are not extremely careful about it.
:It’s possible that there’s a social contagion effect that happens when some sectors of society have a lot of kids, such that even the less religious folks want to have them too." This was Tim Carney's claim in Family Unfriendly.
Of course, by thus increasing the cost of fatherhood, then men will want to have even *fewer* kids on average, or opt out of fatherhood entirely. So there are unfortunately trade-offs to that strategy. Pick your poison, basically.
Really interesting! Something I had noticed in a lot of baby/toddler groups I have been to lately is that the few dads that are there (generally mums>grans>nannys>dads) tend to have more than one child or say they would like more. So their input does seem to be generating results of a sort!
I genuinely believe that a lot of men would make better carers, be better at house work, and benefit more from doing these things than they think. What I would write about, if I understood it better, is what sets men's expectations here. There is a presumption that men don't do more because it is not in their interests but I don't think that is quite right. Often they don't realise when it would be in their interest.
Being a dad who is doing the majority of the childcare (or even a significant minority) or being a man who does all the housework still feels quite counter-cultural. Even among liberals. I don't mean that people are mean about it. Just that it creates a little friction, is not celebrated (not that I'm asking for that!) and is noticably uncommon at times. I suppose that is connected but I can't quite draw the arrows clearly.
I really like the way you put this: "benefit more from doing these things than they think." I think that's right, after talking to a lot of dads while writing my book; we tend to assume that father involvement is mostly good because it takes some of the load off of moms, but it's also good in its own right, because it helps dads to feel more socially connected and find more meaning in their lives - which is much needed during a time of increasingly loneliness.
FWIW, there is actually a pretty simple, albeit quite unethical, way to quickly and dramatically raise birthrates in South Korea. They simply need to take a page from high-fertility Israel and 1) get into a protracted shooting war with their neighbor(s), AND 2) draft women (many of whom will get pregnant just to get out of being sent into harm's way). Social contagion will then do the rest, and a new baby boom will thus occur. Note that BOTH factors are needed together to have this effect, hence why we haven't seen that happen outside of Israel yet. I of course am NOT advocating this, in South Korea or anywhere else!
I can’t believe more people don’t think about men’s contribution to all this! The fact that nearly every article I see bemoaning low birth rates is written by a man, who will never suffer through birth, and focuses solely on what is `wrong’ with women, who not only suffer and die in childbirth but also take on all the caregiving…I mean, they answer their own question.
Great essay! I think there is a third way which involves parents (mostly mothers) having the flexibility to work at jobs where they can a. Bring their kids, or b. Work from home. This is working out well in industrialized countries but I've also noticed it in places I've traveled to in Latin America (kids hanging out in the shops, fields while their parents work).
Great point- I totally agree! I wrote about that here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/opinion/parenting-helicopter-ignoring.html
Indeed, helicopter parenting does more harm than good in the long run, and unnecessarily increases the mental load of (mostly) mothers.
I largely agree, but from a humanist perspective rather than a pronatalist one. It probably won't move the needle very much, and we should simply accept that birth rates will be relatively low (compared to the past) for a while while our population in severe ecological overshoot slowly rightsizes itself.
Another thing I should note that the Nordic countries and also the Netherlands and France have is a significantly shorter workweek, and the USA needs to do the same as well. I would also argue for UBI as well as a more robust social welfare state in general. Again, from a humanist perspective, not pronatalism.
Thanks for this perspective! I'm curious what you see as the ultimate "rightsizing" target. I'm personally very concerned about the fate of a country like South Korea where the population of young people is shrinking dramatically and the average age is approaching 60. If the goal is a depopulated world overall, I think we will go through significant challenges when the age pyramid inverts.
I agree with you in terms of the work week and UBI! I wrote about UBI here: https://darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/universal-basic-income-for-parents
You're very welcome. I consider the ultimate rightsizing target to small enough that the entire world's population could have a decent standard of living. Which, as leading scientists like David Pimentel have determined, is about 2-3 billion for the world, and 150-200 million for the USA. And that should be allowed to happen organically, with no coercion of any kind. Female empowerment and poverty reduction will allow such a thing to happen ethically.
Yes, there will be social and economic challenges with an aging population, to be sure, but those challenges will pale in comparison to the problems of ecological overshoot. And with today's technology, the problem of labor shortages can be easily resolved. And any fiscal problems can be solved by Overt Congressional Financing per Dr. Joseph M. Firestone, basically.
As for UBI, for the record, I believe it should be not only for parents, but for everyone. Though I would be fine with parents getting more than non-parents, of course.
But ultimately, the "everybody must procreate" dogma is every bit as outdated and outmoded as the "everybody and their mother must work for a living". Both dogmas need to fall by the wayside. Buckminster Fuller was a wise man indeed.
Now, the "lowest low" countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. are outliers, and my otherwise rosy assessment may not apply to them. Those few countries are likely to hit a "pothole" on the road to sustainability, and thus probably should increase their birthrates by any *ethical* means necessary. But those at at TFT or 1.5 or higher (or perhaps even a little bit lower if briefly) I twill age and shrink more gently and gradually, and should be fine on balance overall in the long run IMHO.
Yes, I worry about the countries with a TFR below 1. And the fear is that when the TFR gets to 1.5, it's easy to slide down lower because you start to develop a culture that is less friendly to children en masse.
I think "small enough that the entire world's population could have a decent standard of living" is a great goal but it will take some pain to get there when we have more old people than young people for a period of time.
That is true. But even then, I still think that the predicted pain has been grossly exaggerated by 1) the capitalist oligarchs who benefit handsomely from the current "growth for the sake of growth" Ponzi pyramid scheme, and 2) the right-wingers, tradcons and religious zealots who also benefit from high birthrates and demographic growth.
Yes- although I also think that progressives care about births and babies because we are the ones pushing for a better-funded educational system, better maternal and child healthcare, and for policies like parental leave and childcare. Building a more pro-child world is actually more in line with the progressive vision than the oligarch one, IMO. Which is why I feel like we should not let the far right "own" the natalist issue space.
Excellent article and comments.
Won’t number 2 just make fewer men want kids, and make those who do want kids want to have fewer? Given that the hypothesis seems to be that women would have more children if they had less responsibility, why wouldn’t men want fewer if they have more?
Great question! The difference between option 1 and option 2 is the difference between 1) women doing ALL (or almost all) of the unpaid labor and 2) couples splitting unpaid labor, such that men are doing close to half of it (which realistically might look more like 35-40% which is what time diary research tells us men do when their spouses out-earn them). I think that 2 is more sustainable for both people than 1! Curious if you agree.
I guess number 2 doesn’t really look like a viable option to me, at least long term. Enough women want a bread winning spouse that it is rational for straight men to focus on and make career decisions to achieve that. But that means routinely working more than 40 hours a week. Then you include everything else on top of it? My impression from men working white collar jobs is that they already do around 33% of the household labor on average. And that already they have so little time outside of work and family/household stuff that they have to sacrifice some combination of sleep, friendship, hobbies, exercise, and community life. The only people I have seen that type of life really work for are super extraverted religious people who are able to get most of their needs met through work and church, and to basically get free childcare from church while they can socialize with other parishioners.
In other words, I think that the problem with number two is that you are asking men to sacrifice their health and happiness (and probably wealth as well) in order to have more kids, and that will be just about as persuasive with men as it is with women.
Your comment that men "have so little time" does not square with the time use data we have. In couples where men and women earn the same incomes, men actually have, on average, about 4 more hours per week of leisure time than women, and women spend more time in housework and childcare. So men are not more overwhelmed with work/family responsibilities than women are-- they are less overwhelmed. These data are here:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-growing-share-of-u-s-marriages-husbands-and-wives-earn-about-the-same/
In terms of "asking men to sacrifice their health and happiness" I'm not sure this is true- many men report that they enjoy having children, enjoy spending time with children, and derive a lot of meaning from parenting. I think the unhappiness comes in when one partner is shouldering all or most of the load with no sense of equity...that's how you get to a situation like South Korea where increasing numbers of women say they don't want to get married at all.
I’m not saying that men are more overwhelmed, just that the white collar men that I know are already overwhelmed. I looked at the Pew data for parents in egalitarian marriages, and it looks like men’s time is this: 44.3 hours paid work, 9 hours caregiving, and 2.2 hours on housework. That adds up to 55.5 hours per week total (and doesn’t include commuting). Women are 40.8, 12.2 and 5.1, which adds up to 58.1. So there is a difference, but it isn’t large (2.6). And those numbers include a bunch of people who have marriages where men do less than that. So what I see where I live (liberal meds and Eds town) among younger, educated, dual career parents (millennials and gen Z) is different from the average. It pretty much already is the scenario that you are suggesting as option number two, and the men are largely overwhelmed. Not all of them, some have personalities resistant to overwhelm and burnout in that kind of situation, but they are the minority.
It isn’t straightforwardly discussed, but when people talk about kids in this milieu, the men are very lowkey trying to dissuade each other from having kids or having more kids. So this isn’t an argument about how couples should divide responsibilities, but rather just an extrapolation from personal experience that the combination of intensive parenting norms and more egalitarian patterns of careers and household labor lead to burnout among men as much as they do for women, and seem to have the kind of impact that you would expect on men’s desire to have children, though for various reasons men don’t seem to be talking about this much (I think that they believe they would be criticized for publicly expressing feelings of burnout, and be viewed as selfish, lazy, entitled, misogynistic, bad fathers and husbands, etc).
Yes I think you are right that men get burned out as well as women. And intensive parenting is a problem - travel sports, extracurriculars, etc. I think the question is whether it's better for couples to share the burden, or to shift it all onto the mom. Certainly women are voting with their feet in many countries and opting out of parenthood. Maybe burning men out a little bit is better than burning women out all the way.
Oh, I definitely think that it is better for couples to share the burden. All that I am arguing is that shifting more of that burden towards men is going to lead men overall to have less desire to have kids or have more kids. I think that in the long run that is a good thing, and there will be fewer couples where one partner is pushing for more kids that the other doesn’t really want.
Shortening the workweek to, say, 30 hours or less would dramatically reduce the burnout problem for people of all genders though.
Indeed it probably will have that effect to some extent. And that is fine IMHO from a humanist perspective, albeit not so fine from a strictly pronatalist perspective. There are really no perfect solutions, only trade-offs.
Yes, I found something very similar (while also reporting a fertility piece for slate https://slate.com/life/2024/12/fertility-rate-united-states-trump-administration.html), "the distribution of the burden of child care between mothers and fathers is a key determinant of fertility" in high income countries per "Bargaining over Babies: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications" from Matthias Doepke and Fabian Kindermann. And this paper from Giulia Briselli Libertad Gonzalez tracks the same pattern, "Are Men's Attitudes Holding Back Fertility and Womens Careers? Evidence from Europe". I've been suprised that this hasn't been a major focus in the 'falling fertility' hysteria.
I agree that it is surprising it hasn't been more of a focus - but also I think many of these conversations have been led by men, who aren't eager to take on more housework! Your Slate piece is terrific and I agree with your conclusions.
good point. someone should tell ezra klein to interview you. thank you for making these graphics too. sharing!
South Korea is also an outlier, showing what happens when you combine a modern labour market with thoroughly pre-modern male attitudes. Italy a bit similar.
Excluding those two, the effect is small, and NRR seems to be bounded above by 1.8. That makes sense if you assume the mean desired number is a bit above 2 and that there more downward shocks (infertility, absence of a suitable partner, financial constraints) than upwards (unplanned but completed pregnancies, second families).
Can you compare fertility rates between women who spend more time with female relatives and those who spend more time with unrelated women?
Good question...I don't know of any research on this. What is your prediction?
Communities like the Amish and the Mennonites, as well as the ultra orthodox in Israel, seem to have higher birth rates.
Cities have always been population sinks. We have eliminated the obvious causes; poor sanitation, communicable disease, and other obvious safety hazards. Cities are still population sinks.
Women sabotage each other. They encourage each other in short term behavior, such as promiscuity, tattoos, and piercings, which reduces their mate value. They encourage each other to treat their mates badly. I suspect they do this less with their relatives.
It sounds like you are blaming women for lower birth rates. What about men's responsibilities? Are men not also guilty of "short term behavior"?
Indeed, he sure seems like it. And that is precisely where the "everybody must procreate!" dogma ultimately leads to.
It’s not a question of blame. It’s a matter of instinct vs socialization. There is a set of behaviors in mammalian females called female reproductive suppression, which is just what it sounds like.
In this case socialization has combined with instinct to suppress reproduction generally.
Women have always had control over their fertility, in the positive direction. Now they have control in the negative direction, too.
Women compete with each other, as men do, just not overtly. Most of their competition is zero sum. Zero sum games can become negative sum.
You bring up a really interesting comparison, but it’s focused on the wrong component, imo. The difference between Haredi, Amish, and other high fertility subcultures is far greater structure and religiosity than the larger population…for the men. Men in those cultures live very restricted lives, focused on spirituality and family, via formal schooling for up to 12 hrs a day until they are at least 18, often past that. Women in those cultures are pretty much left to their own devices, and they form community with each other naturally. For the men, it must be formalized. Compare that to the lack of structure in western men’s formative years, the focus on money and career over family, etc., and a hypothesis begins to take shape.
The Amish and Mennonite men work, and interact with the world. The women work too, but more at home, and with relatives.
I suspect that the Haredi women also work primarily with relatives. Unrelated outsider women would be more disruptive.
So basically, in order to raise birthrates significantly, women's rights need to be revoked or at least severely curtailed across the board, as it is a collective action problem. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. I strongly disagree with you, of course, but thanks anyway ☺️
I did not say that. I described a factor which might be responsible. I did suggest one way to ameliorate it, but I don’t _think_ that remedy would curtail women’s rights.
My bad, I thought you seemed to imply that. Thanks for clarifying.
Fascinating piece, Darby. I'm going to re-read this a few times. Thanks too for your clarity and explanations about how you generated and analysed the data. Plenty to ponder over..
Thank you, Sarah! This was a fun one to work on.
Control for work hours, rent prices, and population density. Rent is super expensive in Seoul, where the city is crowded and the workweek is brutally long (especially for men). South Korea is overpopulated and its low TFR is the market forcing a TFR correction through high prices and low hour and skill adjusted wages (as well an education rat race that makes parenting a stressful nightmare). There is a similar story in Taiwan, Singapore, and to a slightly lesser degree the US.
A better mildly pro-natal solution is to tax the wealth of the Boomers who benefitted from decades of asset price appreciation. Instead of property tax laws that "grandfather" in lower rates for long-time incumbent homeowners, property taxes should escalate with tenure (after a certain period of about 15-20 years of total homeownership) to encourage empty nesters to sell their large homes to young families who need the space and to downgrade to a condo or smaller home. There are lots of 55-75 year old Gen X and Boomers living in large homes with 3 or 4 empty bedrooms while Gen Z and Millenial couples are struggling to find an affordable 2 bedroom apartment.
In most areas that men are interested in there's a lot of "gear" and it becomes a bit performative & status signally. Consider the modern male kitchen as a kind of prototypical example. So I wonder if there's a way to "weaponise" that for other chores. If we normalised $1,000 Dyson vacuums would men do more vacuuming? If shopping carts were designed with the same plethora of slots and crevices and hooks as a toolbox would men do more grocery shopping?
I love this idea! There's already a lot of fancy and elaborate baby gear but maybe we make it more tactical?
That said, one big elephant in the room is the fact that that humanity has kind of always been a "lion's pride" writ large, with men being the lazier gender overall, to one degree or another. This has been true even in matriarchal societies too, by the way, sometimes even *a fortiori*. One concern of mine is that when the proposed "carrots" fail to move the needle enough, the pronatalists will resort to using "sticks" to varying degrees, and not only on men either. It can easily become a slippery slope and ultimately an "own goal" if we are not extremely careful about it.
:It’s possible that there’s a social contagion effect that happens when some sectors of society have a lot of kids, such that even the less religious folks want to have them too." This was Tim Carney's claim in Family Unfriendly.
Yes - I think that's plausible!
Simple. Hold them more financially accountable.
Of course, by thus increasing the cost of fatherhood, then men will want to have even *fewer* kids on average, or opt out of fatherhood entirely. So there are unfortunately trade-offs to that strategy. Pick your poison, basically.
Really interesting! Something I had noticed in a lot of baby/toddler groups I have been to lately is that the few dads that are there (generally mums>grans>nannys>dads) tend to have more than one child or say they would like more. So their input does seem to be generating results of a sort!
I genuinely believe that a lot of men would make better carers, be better at house work, and benefit more from doing these things than they think. What I would write about, if I understood it better, is what sets men's expectations here. There is a presumption that men don't do more because it is not in their interests but I don't think that is quite right. Often they don't realise when it would be in their interest.
Being a dad who is doing the majority of the childcare (or even a significant minority) or being a man who does all the housework still feels quite counter-cultural. Even among liberals. I don't mean that people are mean about it. Just that it creates a little friction, is not celebrated (not that I'm asking for that!) and is noticably uncommon at times. I suppose that is connected but I can't quite draw the arrows clearly.
I really like the way you put this: "benefit more from doing these things than they think." I think that's right, after talking to a lot of dads while writing my book; we tend to assume that father involvement is mostly good because it takes some of the load off of moms, but it's also good in its own right, because it helps dads to feel more socially connected and find more meaning in their lives - which is much needed during a time of increasingly loneliness.
FWIW, there is actually a pretty simple, albeit quite unethical, way to quickly and dramatically raise birthrates in South Korea. They simply need to take a page from high-fertility Israel and 1) get into a protracted shooting war with their neighbor(s), AND 2) draft women (many of whom will get pregnant just to get out of being sent into harm's way). Social contagion will then do the rest, and a new baby boom will thus occur. Note that BOTH factors are needed together to have this effect, hence why we haven't seen that happen outside of Israel yet. I of course am NOT advocating this, in South Korea or anywhere else!