The Radical Cultural Shift Behind America’s Declining Birth Rate

The Ringer ^ | Jun 21, 2024, 8:58am EDT | By Derek Thompson

[thecodont]

We’ve done several podcasts on America’s declining fertility rate, and why South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world. But we’ve never done an episode on the subject quite like this one.

Today we go deep on the psychology of having children and not having children and the cultural revolution behind the decline in birthrates in America and the rest of the world. The way we think about dating, marriage, kids, and family is changing radically in a very short period of time. And we are just beginning to reckon with the causes and consequences of that shift. In the new book What Are Children For, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman say a new “parenthood ambivalence” is sweeping the world. In today’s show, they persuade Derek that this issue is about more than the economic trends he tends to focus on when he discusses this issue.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

In the following excerpt, Derek talks to Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman about their book and about their approach to explaining declining birth rates.

[alexander_busek]

Nonsense. Men are not hormone driven alley cats. They are perfectly capable of holding to moral standards as they expect women to. Laying all the responsibility at women’s feet is lazy and blame shifting.

• It's only the "top" 10-15% of all men (the so-called "playas") who are getting any "action." Vast swathes of the male population are virtually "invisible" to women. So the majority of all men are blameless here.
• The testosterone level - responsible for the sex drive - of men is 7 to 8 times than that of women. It thus costs women far less "self-control" to abstain from wanton sex with multiple partners than it costs men.

Regards,

[alexander_busek]

It’s still blame shifting responsibility.

No, it's assigning well-deserved blame to the parties (here: the females) who actually have most of the power and thus most of the responsibility in the situation.

In their late-teens and early 20s, women hold all of the cards. They are at peak Sexual Market Value. It's a Seller's Market for women. They have all the agency. They thus bear the lion's share of the blame.

The majority of men are regarded as worthless and forced to keep the margins. And our "woke" society now amplifies these forces.

Regards,