[simonh]

What's the mechanism by which consumerism and media lead to lower child births though?

It's easy to see that in poorer countries with minimal or no pensions or social security having more children leads to greater productive capacity for the family, and a better chance of the parents being cared for in old age. Family connections are crucial support networks everyone relies on. Each extra child is another insurance policy for the future. In wealthy countries with pensions and social security none of that is an issue.

[keiferski]

Maybe it's not so much that media technology itself leads to lower child births, but that the particular media being pushed results in lower child births. Consumerism is the vehicle by which this happens, because corporations have little use for the family unit and much use for individualized consumers that buy, not make things.

My interpretation is that there are innumerable cultural things that are popular nowadays which discourage people from having children, whether that be TV shows that make "family values" seem outdated and backwards, urban housing that's too small for families, and so forth.

My general point is more that the problems with birth rates are more of a contemporary cultural issue (largely an exported Western one) and not something that just automatically comes with technological/economic development.

[simonh]

I just did some digging around on the research on this and that doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere, and it's a well studied issue. After all, for example existing housing stock hasn't got any smaller so that's easy to correct for in the data. The main correlative factors seem to be economic affluence, higher education levels meaning more women have careers, and access to birth control.

I really don't but the corporations pushing an agenda theory. Like all conspiracy theories, people doing the conspiring would have to actually conspire. They would to communicate about it, lots of people would know, some of them would change their minds, there would be leaks, especially for a conspiracy that has broad reach and engages with huge swathes of public culture communications.

[keiferski]

Where did I say anything about a conspiracy theory? Corporations care about their profits and shareholders, not on promoting any kind of societal values like family and children. This has nothing to do with a group conspiring in a smoky room. An entity pursuing its interests is not a conspiracy.

Honestly if your immediate jump is to accuse someone of conspiracy theory thinking, this isn’t a conversation worth having, because you’re not willing to think slightly deeper about the situation.

[simonh]

You're talking about corporations manipulating media ("the particular media being pushed") to discourage people having children. I'm talking about the pushing you referred to.

Even beside that I don't see how that works even from an incentive point of view. Lots of corporations sell things to children, or to parents for their children. There are huge swathes of industries organised around that. How is it to the benefit of companies to have fewer customers?

[keiferski]

Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough.

It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized.

And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood?

Maybe it’s an oversimplified to say corporations “push” stuff into the media; and more of a cyclical process of culture and corporate interests, but I find the examples I mentioned (popular TV shows, etc.) to be pretty obvious and undeniable.

[simonh]

>Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough.

There are several major factors here. One is more women having access to higher education, driven by increased social independence and the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. Women want education and careers, I have two daughters so I know this. No corporation is telling them to do it.

Another is competition for middle class jobs requiring an education, there are more jobs like this now in the developed world than ever before, and more educated people people seeking them out so competition is huge. This includes international competition, hundreds of millions of people in the developing world getting added to the global middle class has had a huge effect. It's meant a precipitous collapse in poverty, but devalued middle class jobs so that wages have stagnated.

Another is housing competition. Everyone wants the nicest house they can get for their family, but supply isn't keeping up with demand. As a result all those people with dual household incomes are competing with each other, bidding up the prices of houses. As a result the older generations are now pretty well off overall, but most of their net worth is tied up in their house.

>It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized.

How are they expecting to get more individual consumers if people aren't having children? That makes no sense to me. The incentive structure is all wrong, particularly for the whole swathes of industries that cater to families and children.

>And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood?

Every company I have worked for has done. The company I'm with now offers flexible hours, subsidises child care and offers far more generous parental leave than required by law. My previous company also had a specific hiring programme to recruit and retrain women returning to work after having children.

People make TV shows to make money. They'll make the show that sells, not ones that push some nebulous economic agenda that wouldn't even have any effect until a whole generation later.