I challenge your premise. The idea that each child would add X amount of anxiety to the mother’s life, therefore she limits the number of children, seems completely backwards to me.
Instead, I’d imagine the model would be something like : Each child has some chance to have a terrible thing happen to it, therefore I’ll have as many kids as…
I challenge your premise. The idea that each child would add X amount of anxiety to the mother’s life, therefore she limits the number of children, seems completely backwards to me.
Instead, I’d imagine the model would be something like : Each child has some chance to have a terrible thing happen to it, therefore I’ll have as many kids as possible so at the end of the day I am guaranteed at least a few healthy survivors into adulthood.
If the second model is true, then number of children should rise alongside perceived childhood danger. This has historically been the case and still continues to be the case in the much of the world. Since we don’t see this pattern here in the states, I’d say the fertility situation may have little to do with perceptions of risk and danger.
I almost agree. I only disagree with what I see as a confusion of "anxiety" and "risk". Analyzing risks is a typically male pursuit. Feeling anxious is typically female. Although the feeling of anxiety evolved to handle risks, it works very differently from risk analysis. A rational risk analyzer would follow your model. But anxious mothers are mostly not rational risk analyzers. They are just feeling afraid, more or less like animals feel afraid.
I do think that the number of children people have is positively correlated to perceived risk. The other day Anders and I talked about that Israeli fertility might be unusually high because Israelis have the sense of living a bit dangerously. A missile can come and strike them any time. Probably that makes them less anxious to always use the very latest model of car seat.
Having a child means taking a number of risks. That will be easier in societies where risks are an accepted part of life.
The difference between a risk analyzer and an anxiety “emotion feeler” is a good one. Maybe women in the west have a poorly calibrated anxiety trigger relative to the risks that such an emotion evolved to respond to in the first place.
That said, what’s to explain why women in actually riskier environments seem to experience less anxiety and/or have a more rational response to it relative to women in the west. Why would women in the west be paralyzed by anxiety relative to those in much riskier environments? Sounds like a John Haidt explanation would help here.
Being a worrier myself, I know that anxiety is triggered by what one CAN do. For example, I can be so anxious over the idea of forgetting to turn on the breathing alarm on my baby's bed that I can't sleep without going up and double-checking. If breathing alarms didn't exist, worrying about that would have been meaningless.
That way, worrying is very adaptive. People who worry worry about not doing what they can. From that follows that the more there is to do to fight bad outcomes, the more people worry. It is fully logical for Western women to be paralyzed by anxiety than women in much riskier environments. Because Western women can do so much more for their children. Women in risky environments can't do very much anyway (if they could, they probably wouldn't have been in a risky environment).
I challenge your premise. The idea that each child would add X amount of anxiety to the mother’s life, therefore she limits the number of children, seems completely backwards to me.
Instead, I’d imagine the model would be something like : Each child has some chance to have a terrible thing happen to it, therefore I’ll have as many kids as possible so at the end of the day I am guaranteed at least a few healthy survivors into adulthood.
If the second model is true, then number of children should rise alongside perceived childhood danger. This has historically been the case and still continues to be the case in the much of the world. Since we don’t see this pattern here in the states, I’d say the fertility situation may have little to do with perceptions of risk and danger.
I almost agree. I only disagree with what I see as a confusion of "anxiety" and "risk". Analyzing risks is a typically male pursuit. Feeling anxious is typically female. Although the feeling of anxiety evolved to handle risks, it works very differently from risk analysis. A rational risk analyzer would follow your model. But anxious mothers are mostly not rational risk analyzers. They are just feeling afraid, more or less like animals feel afraid.
I do think that the number of children people have is positively correlated to perceived risk. The other day Anders and I talked about that Israeli fertility might be unusually high because Israelis have the sense of living a bit dangerously. A missile can come and strike them any time. Probably that makes them less anxious to always use the very latest model of car seat.
Having a child means taking a number of risks. That will be easier in societies where risks are an accepted part of life.
The difference between a risk analyzer and an anxiety “emotion feeler” is a good one. Maybe women in the west have a poorly calibrated anxiety trigger relative to the risks that such an emotion evolved to respond to in the first place.
That said, what’s to explain why women in actually riskier environments seem to experience less anxiety and/or have a more rational response to it relative to women in the west. Why would women in the west be paralyzed by anxiety relative to those in much riskier environments? Sounds like a John Haidt explanation would help here.
Being a worrier myself, I know that anxiety is triggered by what one CAN do. For example, I can be so anxious over the idea of forgetting to turn on the breathing alarm on my baby's bed that I can't sleep without going up and double-checking. If breathing alarms didn't exist, worrying about that would have been meaningless.
That way, worrying is very adaptive. People who worry worry about not doing what they can. From that follows that the more there is to do to fight bad outcomes, the more people worry. It is fully logical for Western women to be paralyzed by anxiety than women in much riskier environments. Because Western women can do so much more for their children. Women in risky environments can't do very much anyway (if they could, they probably wouldn't have been in a risky environment).
in many European countries the start of WW2 was accompanied by a substantial fertility increase. European baby boom started in 1940. Humans are weird.