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Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

theguardian.com

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Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#91

Post by squirejons »

threeseed wrote: post #60
emiliobumachar wrote: post #33

Is there hard evidence that this is bad? Resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization. Seems straightforward that severe population decline should be desired, and voluntary refraining from reproduction should be welcome. (Please don't just extrapolate the trend till extinction. See http://xkcd.com/605/ . )

It's bad because Japan has an extremely low net migration rate. For comparison Australia has 16x that of Japan. So whilst globally yes we should be aiming to reduce the total population Japan specifically has serious problems.

yeah, less mass immigration means a lower supply of labor, which means higher wages for workers. That's horrible!

Oh, wait, you were speaking from the perspective of the corporations and rich investors who have to pay wages.

Funny how you adopted that perspective when you are a worker yourself.....

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#92

Post by asksol »

nl wrote: post #34
usernew1817 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"

I'm married to a Britisher (which is not used in Great Britan anyway) sounds similarly awkward. Married to an Englishman/Welshman/Irishman works, but is gender (and England/Wales/Ireland) specific. I'm married to a Scott works though. Not sure there is a general purpose word you can use to say "I'm married to someone from Britian".

"My wife is from Britain", "My husband is British" ? Maybe these are now archaic

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#93

Post by duopixel »

Sagat wrote: post #86
emiliobumachar wrote: post #33

Is there hard evidence that this is bad? Resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization. Seems straightforward that severe population decline should be desired, and voluntary refraining from reproduction should be welcome. (Please don't just extrapolate the trend till extinction. See http://xkcd.com/605/ . )

The problem is that not everyone is making less progeny. Japanese and European populations may be in decline, but African, Asian, Arabic, and Hispanic ones are growing at a brisk pace. So yes, it's pretty bad for some people to limit births. You are essentially diminishing your influence and putting yourself at risk of being swallowed up by other cultures.

Population growth rate is declining all over the world, but the effect is more pronounced in developed countries. As standard of living increases people tend to have less children.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#94

Post by epo »

nl wrote: post #34
usernew1817 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"

I'm married to a Britisher (which is not used in Great Britan anyway) sounds similarly awkward. Married to an Englishman/Welshman/Irishman works, but is gender (and England/Wales/Ireland) specific. I'm married to a Scott works though. Not sure there is a general purpose word you can use to say "I'm married to someone from Britian".

My $partner is Japanese/British/American ...

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#95

Post by randomafrican »

novalis78 wrote: post #56
randomafrican wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more an imbalance between social expectations and modern living. More conservative societies see a steeper decline in birthrate as women participation in the workforce increases. That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.

I disagree, I think the opposite is the case. American Caucasians have a higher fertility rate than almost all Western Europeans; birth rates in France typically include recent immigrant fertility rates which are significantly higher. The arguments to avoid children are similar to the Japanese: independence, more money for consumption, etc Disclaimer: I grew up in Germany/Austria and find the topic of Europeqn demogr…

America does have a quite liberal attitude about gender roles.

As far as France and immigrants go, I'm not sure relevant studies are available (since France has very specific policies about not mentionning race/origin in its official data). But My intuition is that the role of the immigrant population is overrated. Mostly because the keyword here is "recent" and while France has a rather large population of second or third generation immigrants, the recent immigrant population is probably not much higher than anywhere in Europe.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#96

Post by westicle »

veidr wrote: post #73

This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex. What westerners might call 'casual sex' -- sex without the framework of a relationships that implies various other promieses/committments -- is normal, and also not likely to be spoken about frankly, especially to a reporter, and much less a British one. Sometimes I'll witness a young woman asked about it at a social gathering (as people…

This certainly isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Japan either.

I know plenty of western young people who have no interest in marriage, procreation or families. Maybe they're more interested in their work. Maybe they're more interested in rock-climbing. Maybe they're more interested in Pokemon.

More power to them, I say.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#97

Post by paborden »

einhverfr wrote: post #22
m_mueller wrote: post #14

The subject is interesting, especially because I'm married to a Japanese - but man do I hate articles that go round and round like this one. Here, have a little bit of a sociological hypothesis - but let's not go too deep for your little brains shall we? Here, have a little bit of anecdotal evidence instead. Enough of that? Alright, let's start over again. [...] Oh I'm outa time, let's end the article now, kthxbye. I…

+1, especially on wishing there were more really good social sciences blogs out there covering issues like this. One of the big problems of course is the fact that while outsiders can see dynamics of and sometimes critique cultures, such critiques are necessarily incomplete (well all critiques are necessarily incomplete but outsider ones are especially likely to be). But on your final question, I think one of the big…

Are there ANY good social sciences blogs covering issues like this? Looking for recs ...

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#98

Post by willvarfar »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #77
emiliobumachar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm counting war over the increasingly scarce resources as part of the risk, so the current influence of mildly scarce resources over politics is evidence. I agree with your point that, from a nationalist perspective, population size is basically nation size.

Wars aren't generally fought over resources these days.

As an armchair student, I'd judge most wars to be about resources. We must differ in definition of resources.

Which recent wars are not about resources, do you think?

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#99

Post by _random_ »

DasIch wrote: post #44
netcan wrote: post #31

There is something about Japan that really brings home the meaning of 'foreign' to me. I think that being the first rich, advanced large country that isn't western is the reason. On paper, they have a similar relationship with money, technology, their religion and traditional culture. I can't explain the strangeness away with those differences. When I read something like this about some trend or supposed cultural pat…

Actually this phenomenon isn't that foreign. Less children being born, a falling number of "serious" relationships etc. are all things that can be observed in any technologically advanced society. Japan is just an extreme case because their current set of values doesn't deviate as much from more traditional values, which escalates the problem. Germany is actually somewhat similiar to Japan when it comes to these issu…

Unless you make your country wide-open to all sorts of immigrants. Than your birth-rate will be "OK".

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#100

Post by camus2 »

novalis78 wrote: post #56
randomafrican wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more an imbalance between social expectations and modern living. More conservative societies see a steeper decline in birthrate as women participation in the workforce increases. That's why France has one of the highest birthrate in Europe for instance.

I disagree, I think the opposite is the case. American Caucasians have a higher fertility rate than almost all Western Europeans; birth rates in France typically include recent immigrant fertility rates which are significantly higher. The arguments to avoid children are similar to the Japanese: independence, more money for consumption, etc Disclaimer: I grew up in Germany/Austria and find the topic of Europeqn demogr…

Yeah but it's because you get a lot of welfare when you have babies in France,especially when you have 3 or more.

Stop giving these freebies and fertility rates will drop in no time.

The question is , should we encourage it? in the long run ,it doesnt make sense. We often hear on the radio here how Germans dont make babies anymore and it will doom Germany. I dont think so, one country doesnt need perpetual population growth in order to survive, i believe Germans are smarter on these issues.

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