[lotsofpulp]

“Anti natalism” is not a genetic trait that gets inherited. Any woman can look at what another woman goes through during pregnancy/childbirth/infant rearing and think they might want to avoid that. Or avoid doing it multiple times.

[RGamma]

OTOH there are some with a great desire to procreate even though it might mean (temporary) hardship or doesn't fit with their socioeconomic status. I know several of those.

The ones who shall inherit the earth.

[carlmr]

>“Anti natalism” is not a genetic trait that gets inherited.

Citation needed. There are many things influenced by genetic traits. So many that I think the burden of proof is that you'd have to show that there's no influence of genetic traits here. Add to this memetic influences, and it's clear evolutionary biology that those that want to produce children will have more offspring and thus at some point antinatalism should be reduced as a portion of society.

[lotsofpulp]

It is possible for genes to influence the desire to birth more children, but it seems apparent to me that humans are capable of sufficiently complex cause and effect analysis that genetic influence would be insufficient to drive this specific decision making process, since it’s not a snap decision and there’s so many opportunities to reverse course.

Human beings are the only animal (that I am aware of) that can short circuit the process of reproduction by completely de-linking sex and pregnancy.

It is possible that evolution resulted a trait (cognitive plus physical ability to manipulate nature) that ultimately is not conducive to procreation.

And it is possible that in a million years, perhaps humans continue to exist because a tribe removes women’s ability to not become pregnant, or humans don’t exist but some other species exists with a different mechanism of reproduction, or humans figure out how to make babies in artificial wombs, or humans start living a lot longer, etc etc.

[kelipso]

More likely social evolution will take care of it long before biological evolution. Muslims have fertility rate of 3.1, for example.

[lotsofpulp]

Yes, that is what I meant with

> perhaps humans continue to exist because a tribe removes women’s ability to not become pregnant

I guess technically it should be “because a tribe removes women’s ability to not become pregnant, be financially independent, and physically independent/secure”

[kelipso]

Well more typical would be something like the tribe that survives into the future has always removed women's ability to not get pregnant while the other tribe dies off.

I guess there are two types of social evolution, or evolution in general... One is where one tribe changes its customs over time, so evolves through intra tribe competition. Another is where you have multiple tribes with different customs, so evolves through inter tribe competition. Reality would be a mix of these two models.

[beeflet]

I think that children inherit a lot of their values from their parents, its not all genetics

[lotsofpulp]

Evidently, not for this topic, since outside of a couple cult-ish tribes, total fertility rate dropped precipitously across the globe.

[shiroiushi]

>Any woman can look at what another woman goes through during pregnancy/childbirth/infant rearing and think they might want to avoid that.

They can, but then in some cultures, their religious leaders will tell them they need to go through all that, many times, or else their god will be angry with them.

[lotsofpulp]

Yes, I was alluding to that. My greatest concern for my daughter or her kids is the eventual loss of women’s rights simply due to shrinking of population of tribes that support women’s rights and proliferation of tribes that do not.

[shiroiushi]

Yes, I don't have a daughter, but I'm also very concerned about that. It feels like there's an assumption that the tribes that don't support women's rights will adopt that cultural mindset over time, but I'm not so sure it's a good assumption.

[faangguyindia]

Desire to have kids is driven by mostly fear, uncertainty, death.

This is partly why poor people with little social safety net have most kids.

The more safeties exist in a country, the less kids are there.

Simple as that.

[lotsofpulp]

Completely wrong in my experience.

Poor women have children because they often don’t have the choice not to have children. That is why every single country when women gain rights and financial independence, the total fertility rate plummets.

Lower and middle class people in developed countries have fewer kids because they want to provide a home with their kids’ own room, be in good school districts because they are afraid of what happens if their kid doesn’t get into a good college, etc. The fear of not being able to provide a certain minimum quality of life prevents many from having kids.

It actually switches back to richer women having more kids because they have more security of owning their home, affording childcare while still being able to save for retirement, having health insurance, etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-12/the-ri...