But just to tunnel into the psychology of it for a moment: the current pitch of the religious conservative natalists is something like, “You should have children. —Why? To save civilization of course. Do it for others. But to do this you need to have religion. —What is the connection? —Because we have sociological correlation studies that tell us that women who have children and are married tend to be religious. So it’s that you can find religion— Why should I be religious? —Because we have studies that show religious people tend to have higher fertility and marriage rates. That could be you.” This isn’t exaggeration. Maybe it’s never stated so plainly but the range of arguments never leave this loop
Of course BAP has a problem with Christianity.
A stronger but similarly fruitless argument exists about reestablishing traditional family forms in some way. Essentially this means subjugating or enslaving women, though no one dares to speak this way. But aside from this element, there can be no “traditional family with high fertility” in the sense meant. Elon also doesn’t dare to openly say what he means about birth rates in the end by the way: that he cares about the fertility of smarter, higher quality or at least tax-paying people. I hope anyway that this is what he means. But this is a case where not saying what you mean can lead to the opposite of what you want. There are no proposals from Elon or anyone else to select even by some polite proxy for high-quality births. Current-day natality “crisis” isn’t randomly distributed. Highly dysfunctional people are still having children, or at least at higher rates; this following graph is very depressing. A lot of attention is paid to “identity-based” groups and their differential fertility because it’s so loaded politically, socially and even triggering psychologically. But there’s a big fertility difference among groups that don’t correspond to human identities. Basically the obese, mentally ill idiot “community” is having more children than those unlike them:
Yes, instead of increasing dysgenic fertility, we need eugenics.
Marriage can survive as an outward form without it being actually “traditional” in the sense desired by its conservative and natalist advocates. I don’t think marriage is the cause of fertility: this is a social engineering wish and its factual basis is only a correlation.
He is correct about this. On Vosstack, it was shown that German marriage rates lagged behind desired number of children. In continental Europe today, many couples formalize marriage after the first child. Marriage is the only decent way to raise children, but it’s not the cause of children.
And a very large percentage of women of high quality in the modern world don’t end up in this life path. The reasons for that childlessness are not understood but in my opinion those women would be the least likely to be susceptible to ham-handed “be religious” and “you marry now” propaganda or incentives.
He’s too soft on feminist women. They are childless because they are not high quality mothers. They may be smart, yes, but they like money and stätus more than babies. Ultimately they will be replaced by womanly women. Forcing them to marry would piss them off, sure, which may be a goal to some, but it would also allow that type to persist in the gene pool. Isn’t it more humane to just let them have 0 or 1 child, as they wish? In 200 years it won’t be an issue any more.
And if it’s a question not of incentives but of “the stick,” of coercion or penalties of some kind, I don’t see a legal or political path to that either. Even in most theocratic states those types of “coercions” on their own don’t work. In the end even forced marriages wouldn’t work with such women I think: with these women you don’t know what would happen in the context of a “forced marriage,” or induced marriage. It could be that they’d remain childless even if formally married.
Why wasn’t it an issue in the past? Well, my answer is likely to piss off some folks on X … Of course there is no political path when politics are predicated on egalitarianism. One body, one vote will never go for good policies.
A Korean woman will absolutely not marry a Korean man who has any educational (or any other “social status”) level below her own, and this drastically reduces pool of available mates
Not adjusting for sex here is absolutely retarded on the part of the women. They should choose a man at the same within-sex percentile as themselves. Maybe statistics education could fix Korean fertility? Lol – it’s more likely than any other memetic proposal. Though still unlikely.
See then the utter uselessness of conservative and traditionalist imagery and rhetoric when it comes to this group. The Asian college female leads a conservative and meritorious life. On average she is not an impulsive hedonist, nor a bohemian. She doesn’t have indiscriminate sex, doesn’t do drugs, is conscientious, responsible, goes to college, gets a good job, is law- abiding, not a criminal, generally I believe “high trust” and “low time preference” and many such things.
Yes but importantly this abstract female has one great sin which is that she is a feminist. She may not identify as one, but failure to marry by a suitable age for women is feminism. It’s walking a path of the opposite sex. Not arrahwr, verboten, haram, c’est interdict. How does BAP miss this important fact?
I’ve seen frequently this pattern: an intelligent, articulate woman, not bad-looking has a series of monogamous relationships, often including cohabitation (which in my view is marriage in all but name). None of these “work out,” none result in children. At some point she realizes she’s 44 and childless.
In most cases it’s the woman’s fault. Only in some cases does a man lead her on. This should be some level of illegal. A woman and her family should demand marriage in a suitable period of time, 1 to 3 years perhaps, and if a man enters an agreement to this effect he should be liable if he breaks the contract without good cause. A bachelor and his family have the right to the same. There…