Women and the slowing global population • Hacker News Board

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#51

Post by drdeadringer » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

lev99 wrote: post #49

qubax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get the feeling this article is conflating birth rate with actual population growth. It's not. Fertility rate for the US and the developed world is below replacement. And in the developing world, it has been dropping consistently. > One reason why people have less children is that more of them survive. That's a reason why women don't have 5 or 6 children, but that's not a reason why women has less than 2 on avera…

In an agricultural society children are an asset. In an industrial or service based economy children are a sacrifice. This has always been my view on why birthrates are declining.

I find that to be an interesting wording of this distinction and at the moment I like the phrasing.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#52

Post by evunveot » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

>Imagine a world with double the amount of people living in it.

I find it mildly disturbing that the author assumes everyone reading this sentence is going to agree that it's an ominous prospect. Obviously, the implication is that it would be a world of fourteen billion people the vast majority of whom are on the brink of starvation, but we've (as a species) overcome Malthusian obstacles before. Why shouldn't having as many thriving human lives as possible be a goal worth striving for? If every human life has intrinsic (not to mention economic and cultural) value, then declining reproductive rates are a form of opportunity cost, not "one of the most important ... achievements in human history." And if we can't agree (or at least agree to act as if) every human life has intrinsic value, we're on our way to undermining the foundations of peaceful coexistence.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#53

Post by conscion » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

I think a lot of these articles miss an important consideration. The underlying economies of the world have functioned on an unseen assumption: the population (i.e. consumers & producers) always increase. This has been true for the entirety of modern history. There should be some discussion on how that changes once the population either stops increasing, or declines.

This is somewhat discussed with the aging baby boomer generation being larger than their childrens, but that dynamic will likely become the new norm in many countries. Japan in particular is experiencing this first hand with one of the lowest birth rates.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#54

Post by Shaddox » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

lev99 wrote: post #49

qubax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get the feeling this article is conflating birth rate with actual population growth. It's not. Fertility rate for the US and the developed world is below replacement. And in the developing world, it has been dropping consistently. > One reason why people have less children is that more of them survive. That's a reason why women don't have 5 or 6 children, but that's not a reason why women has less than 2 on avera…

In an agricultural society children are an asset. In an industrial or service based economy children are a sacrifice. This has always been my view on why birthrates are declining.

I share your view. I believe it was during the industrial revolution where the family was redefined from an economic unit to a loving unit. Kind of strange how nowadays it feels like it has always been this way.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#55

Post by mercutio2 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

YinglingLight wrote: post #45

llampx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responsibility for the sake of responsibility is not going to suffice for most people. Why take on more responsibility than you need to? For example, having kids was a direct advantage in earlier times. More hands on the farm, or more muscle for your clan, or other advantages like receiving dowry. This is also why some cultures preferred one sex or the other. Today, what do you get by raising a kid that you then have…

"The higher degree of responsibility you voluntarily choose to bear, the richer your life will become. ...You have a complicated job, you try to solve problems, to aid suffering, and there's weight to that. There's deep meaning in that." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg7NhHJsGq0

You might be shocked to learn that many people do not consider Jordan Peterson an authority on philosophical questions like what the good life consists of.

Also, minor etiquette point, many of us block YouTube, so for people like us, providing a link that forces us to open a separate browser that doesn’t block YouTube so that we can figure out who you’re quoting isn’t the ideal way to convey your point.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#56

Post by OctoberThoughts » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

Posting from a throwaway account for privacy on this one.

For me personally it's never seemed worth it, even though I am well off and healthy. I've never been with a man I trusted enough to feel safe with, like he could protect me or take care of me while I was in the vulnerable state of pregnancy / early motherhood. Partly this is emotional and not rational, I'm capable of taking of myself. The men, on the other hand, have all had chronic depression.

I told each of them fairly early on in each relationship that I did not want to have children, but I never told them why. It's a harsh thing to say, right? "I don't want to have your children because you have depression and so it'd be worse than raising kids alone."

But I would rather never have children than try to raise them with someone who can't get themselves to work on a regular basis. My partner right now already needs so much from me, if we had children there'd be nothing left of my life.

He is a brilliant, loving person, but if it weren't for birth control I'd never risk a relationship at all with someone like him.

All this exposition is for my point: which is that even if you have food and shelter, there's reasons to not be willing to bear the responsibility of a(n additional) child.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#57

Post by bwood » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

lev99 wrote: post #47

belorn wrote: post #30

> But - big picture - what’s important is that reproductive rights are extended to all women and men. Reproductive rights for men as consistently ended at the point of conception, with the modern feminist movement seemingly being one of the strongest voice against men having any rights beyond that point. Did Professor Peter McDonald just mistype when he includes men in this part off the article?

What specific right do you want to give men after the point of conception?

In most developed countries there is no easy way for man to "opt out" of responsibility for an existing pregnancy. The argument goes that women can have an abortion or give the child up for adoption if the pregnancy is unwanted, but men have no guaranteed say in what happens. One slip up and they are on the hook for child support, etc.

Basically, some people think men should have a right to abdicate responsibility for a pregnancy at least up to a certain point.

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#58

Post by lev99 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

bwood wrote: post #57

lev99 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific right do you want to give men after the point of conception?

In most developed countries there is no easy way for man to "opt out" of responsibility for an existing pregnancy. The argument goes that women can have an abortion or give the child up for adoption if the pregnancy is unwanted, but men have no guaranteed say in what happens. One slip up and they are on the hook for child support, etc. Basically, some people think men should have a right to abdicate responsibility fo…

> Basically, some people think men should have a right to abdicate responsibility for a pregnancy at least up to a certain point.

Are there any specific plans for this that are not harmful to the child or society?

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#59

Post by quotemstr » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

evunveot wrote: post #52

>Imagine a world with double the amount of people living in it. I find it mildly disturbing that the author assumes everyone reading this sentence is going to agree that it's an ominous prospect. Obviously, the implication is that it would be a world of fourteen billion people the vast majority of whom are on the brink of starvation, but we've (as a species) overcome Malthusian obstacles before. Why shouldn't having…

FWIW, this idea is what philosophers call "the repugnant conclusion", and the problem it presents is largely unsolved in normative ethics. It's one reason that I don't think formal ethical reasoning is a useful activity: in the end, we do what feels right or wrong, and we can't reason ourselves into a feeling.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/

Re: Women and the slowing global population

#60

Post by belorn » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

annabellish wrote: post #43

belorn wrote: post #30

> But - big picture - what’s important is that reproductive rights are extended to all women and men. Reproductive rights for men as consistently ended at the point of conception, with the modern feminist movement seemingly being one of the strongest voice against men having any rights beyond that point. Did Professor Peter McDonald just mistype when he includes men in this part off the article?

I don't think this is a fair analysis of either current feminist thought or the current state of affairs. The reproductive rights of men are important and there's no suggestion any should be removed, but that doesn't mean that in a sexually dimorphic society both members of a childbearing couple (or more generally, all members of a childbearing group) have the same _options_. Men and women both have the right of bodi…

Talking about bodily autonomy to be the start and end of reproductive rights is a bit unfair to the concept at large. Planned parenthood is not "planned bodily autonomy", except given a different name. Planned parenthood, pro-choice, and similar initiatives talk about the choice to be a parent and the benefit in society where children are born from adults that want to have children. There is no physical reason why a sexually dimorphic society can not provide planned parenthood that gives both adults the same choices, rights and responsibilities regardless of gender or if its woman - man, woman - woman or man - man. In Sweden we even have a new law where the state will sponsoring single women that want to become single mothers through artificial insemination.

After the point of conception what rights do men in general have? Its not their signature on the paper that specify who the parents to the child are. They can't decide if they will become a parent or not. All rights and responsibilities are exclusively decided by the mother, as the law dictate. Bodily autonomy has nothing to do with those laws, and the human right of bodily autonomy doesn't need to end simply because men are given the choice to decide if they want to take the responsibility to be a parent and raise a child.