[deyouz]

The article is about women in STEM in Academia, not just STEM.

And I don't understand why people absolutely need to have biological children. I think more people should just adopt if they want to raise children.

I also think sexism in the US is the biggest factor for women leaving Academia or not entering STEM. In other countries more than 50% of the researchers are women and 40% of the students studying computer science are women.

[larrik]

> I think more people should just adopt if they want to raise children.

As someone who has adopted 3 children, I assure you that the biological route is way easier and cheaper. It's not like rescuing a dog from the pound...

[pgeorgi]

Except for birth and family planning related complications that are minimized in exactly the time frame where career effects tend to compound (or so the article seems to claim)

[icandoit]

>And I don't understand why people absolutely need to have biological children.

Consider these possibilities:

1. A best case scenario is that what you have expressed is a personal opinion that takes your genes out of the future in a Marty McFly fading away fashion as this opinion hardens.

Fine. Your choice. More pie for the rest of us.

2. A worst case scenario where this opinion accumulates in the market place of ideas and inevitably leads to human extinction.

Impossible right? Well, know that disgust with sex is climbing in rich nations (like Germany and Japan) and the number of births per woman is falling. Is this a function of wealth, or technology?

South Korea has fewer than 1.1 births per woman. That can only translate into a poorer, older, and smaller country for the future. [1]

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertil...

(I tell people that this was the thickly veiled premise of the movie Bird Box.)

If that is true, then can it be called a choice? Are people actually choosing to have fewer sexual partners than their parents generation? Are people really choosing to feel disgust at the thought of intimate contact?

Maybe repulsion-to-sex is a bigger threat to continued human existence as nuclear weapons.

Another fun article:

https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-...

[deyouz]

The average human's genes are not that great as to deserve preserving. I certainly see the benefit from preserving the genes of the woman who lived 122 years old, though.

I don't think it's bad to find sex repulsing. I mean, sex is inherently disgusting. It involves naked bodies and bodily fluids. You can'g describe sex in a way that doesn't sound repulsing.

Besides, people can have children without having sex through IVF. But if a woman is repulsed by sex, I can totally see why she would also be repulsed by pregnancy.

[yorwba]

> that disgust with sex is climbing in rich nations

Source? People are having fewer children, but is that because they are too disgusted to have sex?

[icandoit]

Nearly half of young women in Japan are "uninterested in sex" or "averse to sex"

- https://www.rt.com/news/377342-sexless-japanese-marriages-st... - https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/23...

I remember seeing a similar headline for German women but cannot find a source now. (I think people expect weird think from Japan so it's good practice to compare to other countries)

Maybe social media and instant communication has replaced (or dulled) some of, what used to be, our sexual appetites.

Half the world is sub-replacement-rate: "As of 2010, about 48% (3.3 billion people) of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

What statistics should I look for the document disinterest in sex?

[yorwba]

The RT article doesn't say anything about disgust, so why bother linking to it?

The Politifact article does involve aversion, but only aggregated with disinterest:

"The percentage of women who responded they were not interested in sex at all or felt an aversion to it was 60.3 percent for ages 16-19 and 31.6 percent for ages 20-24. Combine the age groups, and the average response was about 46 percent negative — the figure that drove attention-grabbing stories in Western media."

To interpret the numbers differently, a net 30% of Japanese girls aged 16-19 become interested in sex within 5 years.

I tried looking for the original report to disaggregate lack of interest and aversion, but I only found it on Amazon and don't feel like buying it. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4930807085

[icandoit]

The RT article said that "Nearly half the couples had not had sex in a month". That happens because they prefer to do something else instead.

Will you grant that this means that interest in sex has fallen?

The Politifact article says "In 2013 a whopping 45 percent of women aged 16 to 24 ‘were not interested in or despised sexual contact,’ and more than a quarter of men felt the same way."

Which matches my claim:

> Nearly half of young women in Japan are "uninterested in sex" or "averse to sex"

My claim was that disgust with sex is rising.

Another article makes these delightful claims:

https://time.com/5297145/is-sex-dead/

  - More than 40% of Japanese 18- to 34-year-old singles claim they are virgins.
  - the fraction of people getting it on at least once a week fell from 45% in 2000 to 36% in 2016.
  - more than twice as many millennials were sexually inactive in their early 20s than the prior generation was.
  - In 2016, 4% fewer condoms were sold than the year before, and they fell a further 3% in 2017.
  - Teen sex is flat and has been on a downward trend since 1985
  - The median age for first marriage in America is now 29 for men and 27 for women, up from 27 and 25 in 1999.
  - the highest drop in sexual frequency has been among married people with higher levels of education
  - those with offspring in the 6 to 17 age range were doing less of what made them parents

What do you make of these data points? I think they successfully demonstrate that interest in sex is falling.

[yorwba]

> My claim was that disgust with sex is rising.

> What do you make of these data points? I think they successfully demonstrate that interest in sex is falling.

You're equivocating between disgust and lack of interest, but these are very different things. I wouldn't have bothered asking for a source if you had blamed falling interest rather than rising disgust.

[tathougies]

There are few infants to adopt due to the success of americas adoption programs and the willingness of americans to adopt. The ones that are 'easy' to adopt almost universally have special needs that most people (especially working parents) simply cannot meet.

[sprash]

> And I don't understand why people absolutely need to have biological children.

Especially smart women in STEM should have children because cognitive abilities like intelligence and conscientiousness are largely inherited traits (e.g. IQ is between 50% and 80% inherited according to twin studies).

[cortesoft]

The desire for biological children is pretty ingrained in our psyche.

[dmitrygr]

Because many traits people care about (like intelligence), have been shown to be at least partially genetic?