It is a common belief that social conservatism leads to couples having more babies. I have vaguely subscribed to that idea, though I have leaned more toward a having-hope-for-the-future explanation. Young evangelical and trad Catholics do seem to have more upbeat people among them, while is is the more liberal young people who foresee destruction, marry less often, and "can't see bringing a child into this terrible world." So when there is a "fertility crisis" of nations falling farther and farther behind replacement levels of population, it is natural to think that maybe that's part of the picture.
Aria Babu has an interesting twist that shows something more opposite: while the more conservative members of a society do have more of its children, the more conservative countries have fewer children overall. As societies contain many varieties of people it can be difficult to sort out which countries we would call socially conservative and which socially liberal. For example, the Scandinavian countries have significant safety nets, but are quite economically conservative otherwise. Where do we place them? Northern and southern Italy are quite different in attitudes...what do we think is the overall? But she uses some plausible measures to show that places like Italy, South Korea, and Japan are actually quite socially conservative countries, but have plummeting birth rates, and have for two full generations now.
Now, many of the most widely respected women don’t have children. In fact, it’s probably higher status for a woman to excel in a profession than it is for her to have three kids and raise them well. And, if she has these children, and puts in the effort, then she will harm her chances at excelling in that status-accruing career. Basically, the lesson of the last few decades is that women can’t have it all – and sometimes the thing they choose to give up is motherhood. (This is basically the underlying message of the Barbie movie.)
On an intra-national level, this theory holds up. Republicans have higher birth rates than Democrats.
But, strangely, on an international level, countries with conservative values do not have higher birth rates. My friends at the Boom campaign have written about how “family values”, as found in the European Values Survey, and TFR have a surprising correlation. More conservative values, like believing that one has a duty to society to have children, are held in countries with lower birth rates.
Fascinating stuff. I love having to relook at stuff. Sometimes I just find it unpersuasive. More often, it causes me to modify and refine a viewpoint to a greater of lesser extent. We'll see with this one.
7 comments:
There is a danger in extrapolating from the general to the specific, especially when going from a country-wide population to the specific. Two immediate factors spring to mind: women, the people having children, are typically less conservative than men, and in countries with a strong social safety system,there often is a stigma associated with needing to use that social system. In general, a country that has a weaker social care component, but is culturally acclimated to protecting its women, is generally going to be a more fertile population. That does come with its own baggage, of course. Just my off-the-cuff opinion.
Two things come to mind: they use averages in their comparisons, but it might be of interest to know the distributions, however poorly defined (strongly agree, agree, neutral, etc), because the "response function" might vary and a minority skew the totals.
Also, as you note below, there's a difference between thinking about something and acting on it. I may believe some things are very important and fervently hope that other people do them, though I can't be bothered.
Or they may have just come up with the wrong questions to concentrate on. Perhaps questions about "the importance of child-rearing" is a naive approach, and better might be something more along the lines of hope, other-centeredness, and possibility (which ties into his point about economic pressures to not have kids: most cars are designed for a maximum of three, and even most vans/SUVs only for five kids).
"More conservative values, like believing that one has a duty to society to have children, are held in countries with lower birth rates." For that specific value, it makes perfect sense: The higher the median age, and the lower the fertility rate, the less one encounters babies and children, and the more conscious one is the is that the demographic pyramid of your culture is an impending disaster. Of course the counties with the lowest fertility rates are the one most likely to view fertility as a duty.
Two "james" again...
I blame your parents
Cheap and effective contraception selects against certain segments of a population, although the disfavored segments seem to change over time. For instance, the old fear that morons would inherit the earth seems to have been overblown. But I think material factors are at least as important as ideology when it comes to modern fertility, since modern children are very expensive to raise. I know some will say we could have more children if we did not indulge them with luxuries, but I say austerity is an excellent way to persuade one's children that their parents' values are for the birds.
I still worry about "demographic winter," but I also realize that reduced population pressure would be a good thing in many countries. The challenge is to let the indigenous population shrink without rushing foreigners into the vacancies, and then stabilizing the replacement rate at some lower population level. I'm not sure exactly what traits they will be, but I am sure certain personality traits will be winnowed out in this process of voluntary self-elimination.
I've read a red pill/PUA saying about relationships that goes "Women are the gatekeepers of sex, men are the gatekeepers of commitment." I look at this in a light from the SubStack you linked a while ago that positied a correlation between birth rates and male social status. Having a child is, or at least should be, the ultimate sign of long-term commitment to a relationship. A review of mainstream churches in the US shows that it is quite common to hold traditional/conservative beliefs about the importance of children and family and even when sexual activity is permissible while at the same time assuming the root of the family formation problem is men not 'stepping up' to their role.
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