[milsorgen]

Testosterone and sperm counts have been decimated in modern times. Plus we are already seeing the vast majority of countries heading to births below replacement rate, yes even Africa. This could get deadly serious in terms of sustaining complex systems and ensuring resource production that can maintain relative comfort and security for everyone. I don't understand why this isn't a topic being vigorously discussed, even if it's not to fix things but even just to prepare for a shortage of new workers and tax payers.

[lotsofpulp]

I doubt lower sperm counts or health, if true, have anything to do with lower fertility rates.

The topic gets danced around because the biggest change is women achieving independence and being able to completely control when and if they have a child, and incentivizing them to want to have children means quite a bit of wealth transfer, or rolling back their independence and access to birth control. Obviously, men would also need to be convinced to have children too, but that seems secondary.

[AbrahamParangi]

It's so ridiculously Orwellian (or should I say Atwoodian?) that I can't imagine anyone except in the most deranged countries is going to roll back access to birth control.

The obvious long-term solution is that we do nothing and the fact that a desire for children is partially genetic solves the problem on its own.

[nobody9999]

>It's so ridiculously Orwellian (or should I say Atwoodian?) that I can't imagine anyone except in the most deranged countries is going to roll back access to birth control.

My country is, apparently, one of the most deranged then. While all forms of contraception are currently legal across my country, it's harder to gain access to it in some places than it is in others:

https://www.glamour.com/story/birth-control-laws

However, some places in my backwater country have attempted (but not yet succeeded) to limit various forms of contraception, despite its legality[0] nationwide since 1965:

https://stateline.org/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-tar...

And hundreds of elected representatives in the national government voted against[1] and finally blocked[2] nationwide legislation ensuring access to contraception. What's more, some members of our highest court have indicated that they'd like to revisit the issue[3] with an eye towards revoking such access.

I wish I didn't live in such a backwards country. :(

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-voted-again...

[2] https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/republican-...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contracep... (https://archive.is/dvON8 )

[WarOnPrivacy]

> a desire for children is partially genetic

While true, any western reduction in birth rates can be trivially explained by changes in child-raising. Children's critical hours of self-raising/peer-raising have been sharply degraded thru danger-culture & the erasure of free-roam areas. All of that is being forcefully replaced with adult micromanagement.

In short, we've swapped much of the joy with stress and stunting.

[abathur]

Thought exercise: functionally speaking, how similar is ~compromising the quality of high-school sex education (i.e., getting rid of it, making it elective, giving parents any control or veto over the curriculum, converting it to an abstinence-only curriculum, ensuring it's taught by prudes, etc.) to rolling back access to birth control?

(Edit: not really directed at parent poster. Just something you made me think of...)

[DoingIsLearning]

I am all for thought experiments but this discussion is fairly disturbing.

How about:

- 12 month parental leave for fathers and mothers

- 20 days minimum payed holiday

- paid sick leave

- Free childcare

- Insurance covered 15 days assistance at home post partum with a post-natal caregiver

- Child stipends up to the age of 18 years old

None of this is ground breaking in many developed countries.

So much work yet to do in implementing pro-child policies and yet your first step is entrapping teenagers into a pregnancy and a lifelong commitment?

[vladvasiliu]

Not sure how long parental leave we have, but here in France most [0] of your other points are available, yet birth rate has still been below replacement for 20 years [1]. So something else may be going on.

[0] While childcare is technically free, my understanding is that, in practice, places are limited, especially in big cities.

[1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/512101/nombre-enfants-p...

[newaccount74]

Same in Austria. Theoretically we have very affordable childcare. But in cities there are too few places, so only a small fraction of parents can actually use them. On the country side opening times of childcare are so limited that they are incompatible with most jobs (childcare Mo-Fri 8-12 is better than nothing, but there are very few jobs that are compatible with those times).

The result is that most mothers pause their careers while the kids are small. The consequence is that most couples only have one or two kids.

[ajnin]

Childcare is not free in France, it is subsidized but parents pay in proportion of their resources.

[arrozconcosas]

There is no correlation in practice between these benefits and greater birth rates. Countries with some of the most friendly policies to parenting have the lowest birth rates. In the past, people with much more difficult lives had many more children. This sounds nice in theory, but doesn't hold up in the real world.

[beiller]

Quick google for France shows 1.83 births per woman vs USA's 1.64. So maybe there is a correlation.

[nightski]

That's going to be very rough on small business. I think it all sounds fantastic don't get me wrong, but most mom and pop shops can't float employees for 12 months while paying in full for their child care and other services.

[scotty79]

It's usually mostly tax funded

[bzzzt]

That's why we pay taxes in the EU...

[Maakuth]

This is basically what Finland does, but it doesn't seem to result into larger baby count. These are very humane policies and I'm all for them but they don't solve this particular problem.

[saiya-jin]

I think the aim is rather to raise few well-balanced kids who are taken care of by professionals so parents' work is not FUBAR. Motivating modern parents to have >2 kids takes a bit more than that.

The simple fact is, parenting these days is effin' hard. Even if you have place to put your kids in 5 days a week. I mean hellishly hard for few years, people go very close to mental breakdown regularly, or sometimes quite deep into it - seeing it a bit around us.

The bar to call yourself a good parent ain't about kids simply surviving. We know that ignoring child's cries whole night, every night messes them up badly for later life. Day naps effectively ruin your weekends. Diapers, fights for toys, lack of sleep which alone will fuck up most people badly but here we talk about all of this and much more, for years, while work doesn't wait. No help there.

The fact is, most folks simply have enough after 2 kids, we sure as hell do. There is very little additional 'parenting satisfaction' after 2 kids, yet costs and stress mounts. Also seeing quite a bit of fertility issues after first child around us, but that's not what people like to talk about.

[abathur]

You seem to be imagining that I support the undermining of sex-ed. I am merely pointing to the dots. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_...

[lovich]

Oof, each one of those sounds like it might cost more than 10 dollars, much less all together.

Guess I’m going to vote for going with the dystopian choices or the more palatable one of sticking our heads in the sand and not deal with the problem until it’s a catastrophe

[rendall]

I suspect that the decline in birth rates in developed nations have to do with raised expectations. The amount of resources and time that parents are expected to devote to each child are quite high.

[hnbad]

While the GOP now literally has candidates in its primaries that explicitly position themselves in favor of "maybe some people should have access to abortion sometimes and we shouldn't put people in prison for it", prior to the catastrophic failure of its so-called culture war, the GOP actually had very vocal factions explicitly framing contraceptives as abortion - starting with the "morning after" pill, which literally prevents impregnation rather than inducing abortion in any sense of the word, but up to and including the regular "pill", which simply prevents ovulation at all.

Sure this is still not at the level of banning all forms of contraception, but it's not a long shot and given the historically evident incremental nature of this combined with the focus on "abstinence only" sex ed (i.e. no sex outside marriage, i.e. no need for easy access to condoms or any other OTC contraceptives) I don't think this can be dismissed as a "slippery slope" fallacy either.

[jtbayly]

You are spreading misinformation about basic scientific facts. You should do some more study. The Pill prevents birth via two major methods. One way is preventing ovulation, yes. The other main way is by preventing the fertilized egg from successfully implanting. That is also how the morning-after pill works.

A fertilized egg has its own unique DNA, and begins development and dividing immediately. By the time it implants, it is made up of 200-300 cells.

Yes, this is, objectively speaking, an abortion.

[hnbad]

You're conflating the two things I said. The pill interferes with the menstrual cycle to prevent ovulation and, usually, menstruation. The morning-after pill acts similarly in that it interrupts ovulation but additionally prevents any blastocysts from implanting, yes. That's why I'm saying it's usually the rhetorical gateway when trying to attack contraceptives before doing so is rhetorically viable.

A blastocyst has 200-300 cells, yes. But if you hadn't stopped reading the Wikipedia article (or high school biology textbook) you'd have noticed that it also says that a blastocyst begins to form about five days after fertilization and implants two days later. Also even without chemical intervention only 30% of fertilized eggs survive to develop into blastocysts and successfully implant -- with implantation failure being the most likely outcome even if the fertilized egg develops to that stage. A lot of the lead-up treatments in IVF processes only exist to ensure that a blastocyst can develop and sucessfully implant itself.

Note that the literal "morning-after" pill (effective within 72 hours after intercourse) available over-the-counter in most countries including the US often only contains a progestin, i.e. it's just a higher dose equivalent of the regular pill. What you are talking about are pills containing an antiprogestin, which indeed can also act as an abortifacient, even though I've never heard any medical professional refer to a failure to implant as an "abortion".

That you're conflating all three of these pills (the Pill, the OTC morning-after pill and the one containing an abortifacient) is a good demonstration of the "incremental contraceptive ban" strategy I described.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

A blastocyst that doesn't implant is not a pregnancy.

[jtbayly]

A blastocyst that is intentionally prevented from developing further by making the uterine environment inhospitable is precisely the same thing both in intent and outcome as what happens with a medication abortion (RU-486):

“RU-486 works by blocking the action of the hormone progesterone, which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg.” (From https://www.britannica.com/science/abortion-pregnancy )

The pill works at times by thinning the uterine lining, which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg.

You can talk about what changes have or haven’t taken place in the body of the mother, but these are the same thing, just accomplished by two different means. We have other means as well.

[yamazakiwi]

In this case no one is pregnant yet, so it is not an abortion by definition. It so deliciously ironic that you accuse them of spreading misinformation.

[jtbayly]

We could argue about the meaning of the word "pregnant," but let's be plain. contrary to the original comment, fertilization does occur still at times, and then biology tells us that a new life with its own DNA has entered the picture. (This is why nightly emissions have nothing to do with this, bringing in your other comment.)

That life is intentionally terminated by birth control and the morning-after pill in almost the same exact method as RU-486, which we know as the "abortion drug." Both cause the thinning of the lining of the uterus, preventing attachment or causing the loss of attachment to occur, respectively.

Most people who work in the field of abortion know this, and that is precisely why they bring up the loss of birth control as one of the (either intended or unintended) consequences of outlawing abortion.

In other words, both pro-choice and pro-life people know this is true, and acting like pro-life people are ignoramuses for believing this reveals a real lack of understanding of the science, not to mention the politics, and the moral questions involved.

[wly_cdgr]

The United States is literally in the middle of doing exactly that right now. And I don't think too many reasonably impartial observers would put the US in the top few dozen most deranged countries, for all its many serious flaws and faults.

[lossolo]

> the biggest change is women achieving independence and being able to completely control when and if they have a child

Ye, data seems to support that

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

Between 1961 and 1974 in USA birth rate per woman dropped from 3.6 to 1.8.

The early 1960s witnessed the approval and widespread availability of effective oral contraceptives (birth control pills). This revolutionary advancement in contraception allowed women greater control over their reproductive choices and family planning. The 1960s marked a period of cultural and social change, characterized by the rise of the women's liberation movement and changing attitudes toward women's roles and family dynamics. Many women began to prioritize education, careers, and personal pursuits over traditional roles as homemakers and mothers. As educational opportunities expanded for women, more of them pursued higher education and entered the workforce. This often delayed the age at which women married and had children, which in turn contributed to smaller family sizes.

[nprateem]

Women can only "completely control when and if they have kids" if they have no criteria about the father or have the money to pay for artificial treatments. I know several women who couldn't meet anyone to have kids with.

[lotsofpulp]

True, I guess the matchmaking market not clearing is also becoming an issue.

[lo_zamoyski]

[flagged]

[Capricorn2481]

This is a completely deranged and disgusting partisan rant, and paints a much rosier picture of what reproduction throughout most of history was like. If you think sexual exploitation is only enabled by contraception, you have completely drank the Kool aid. It is also laughable to claim this is actually the take that doesn't patronize women. I can assure you plenty of people have slept around throughout history, it's just that the men would abandon their children. Contraception has saved women from the diseases and consequences of the predatory men in their life

The weird stuff about sexual confusion is also unwarranted. You might think this is a measured take, but it's Q-ANON level nutso.

[yamazakiwi]

>Gen-Z are fapping in their parents basements.

Yeah this person is not living in reality. I don't believe any modern argument framed around generations are poignant, accurate, or worth discussing seriously. People just use this pop-topic to signal, its so boring. These conversations are brimming with generalizations and bias.

[thantsh]

I'm unsure as to what extent I agree or disagree with your viewpoint, but I appreciate reading an alternative perspective to the more mainstream ones expressed in this thread.

These are the type of thought-provoking comments that I visit HN for. Just wanted to give you some positive feedback amidst all the knee-jerk negative reactions.

[yamazakiwi]

I guess conspiracy theory can be thought provoking.

[kibwen]

This is preposterous. If people want to have children, they are free not to use contraception. To suggest that demographic decline is a bad thing while also suggesting that it is due to people voluntarily not having children would be to suggest that people should be forced against their will to have children, which is horrifying.

[yamazakiwi]

>notice how many Westerners today respond to big families; instead of joy, it is often disgust or horror

I don't want to live in a world where everyone is forced to be excited that you wanted spread your seed 10 times. Bringing more mouths into the world is not automatically incredible, magical, or special.

A lot of people showcase cynicism towards family life because family is a very personal thing, no one should be expected to jump for joy except hopefully the family, friends, or small community.

[oezi]

There is enough research to show that testosterone is still much higher in modern societies than in tribal communities. Likely linked to the abundance of calories in modern societies.

[hnbad]

There's also a very wide range for "healthy" testosterone levels. Turns out endocrinology is more complicated than looking at one value and saying higher is gooder. Fertility is not directly linked to testosterone levels or even meaningfully so: when my wife and I were trying for a kid, my doctor actually suggested that despite my T-levels being a bit low he would suggest delaying any treatment for that until after our family planning was complete, my testosterone levels weren't affecting my fertility (tho other complications can arise) but increasing them actually would have had a chance of impacting it negatively.

FWIW we have a healthy son now.

[watwut]

> Plus we are already seeing the vast majority of countries heading to births below replacement rate, yes even Africa

This has nothing to do with sperm counts. This has all to do with people not wanting to have the kids in the first place.

[AlecSchueler]

Just as a side note, Africa isn't a country and has widely varying demographics throughout.

[goodpoint]

> This could get deadly serious in terms of sustaining complex systems

Citation needed. Of all problems of this planet, underpopulation is not one of them.

[red-iron-pine]

Yeah we don't need more people. Arguably the amount of people we have now is leading to global ecological damage, even collapse.

"complex systems" -- whatever those are; global trade was a thing long before industrialization -- will survive slow declines. Japan is still a modern country even with a demographic decline.

[hnbad]

Oh no. Maybe we should finally do something about our system being set up to expect an ever increasing supply of new workers then? Even without declining birth rates that doesn't sound very sustainable given the finite resources of the planet?

For a start, we'd need to find a way to run industry without expecting an ever increasing growth of profits (i.e. surplus value) and structure society in a way so we don't let individuals hoard resources at the expense of everyone else. If we didn't try to squeeze water from stones, maybe that would also allow industry to sacrifice some cost efficiency (i.e. ability to generate surplus value) in order to use safer materials and cleaner processes that don't poison us and improve our survivability and fertility? Heck, we might even create circumstances that make it easier for people to raise a family and have more support if they want to have children while at the prime age for both working and reproducing rather than having companies literally pay for their high value employees to freeze their eggs and sperm to delay having kids until they're less economically useful.

Oh sorry, I just did an anti-capitalism again. Nevermind all that, line must go up. Let's find ways to make more kids. Maybe Elon Musk has the answer after all and we just need to have billionaires sire more children with their female employees until the net population growth rate looks better.