I've thought of this conclusion before, but I wasn't sure it was a very big cause for low birth rates, and I'm extremely skeptical of the chain of reasoning you use. The Chinese government instituted a one child policy for reasons involving parent shaming? Chimpanzees steal babies, so the child protective services do too?
I've thought of this conclusion before, but I wasn't sure it was a very big cause for low birth rates, and I'm extremely skeptical of the chain of reasoning you use. The Chinese government instituted a one child policy for reasons involving parent shaming? Chimpanzees steal babies, so the child protective services do too?
I do agree that ignoring other people's attitudes towards What Should Be Done For The Children is a component in a high fertility lifestyle, but the demographic transition always followed a clear pattern, with falling birth rates attributed to socioeconomic factors like:
* contraception,
* urbanization,
* increase in the status and earning power of childless women,
* reduction in agriculture,
* reduction in the market value of unskilled (children's) labor,
* increase in in the cost and necessity for educating children, and
* reduction in social norms (& network effects) regarding marriage and childbearing
These aren't necessarily all particularly important causes for the drop in childbearing, but they are all at least established as having had an impact. And while the idea that culture matters is definitely a good general rule of thumb, *how* culture works, and how much exactly it matters, is usually a lot more complicated than just "parent shaming is the cause with a big C for the demographic crisis." Given everything we already see influences fertility rates, are you sure there's even the *possibility* for a big Cause? If the other factors I listed explain only 10% each, there's only even 30% left to explain.
I don't think shaming itself is that significant either. But I could believe that it's mainly shame that sets the normal standards and prospective parents then look at those standards and get discouraged without being directly shamed themselves.
I think all your causes mentioned are compatible with the parent shaming hypothesis. After all, I said that parent shaming is the cause with a big C - not that UNREASONABLE parent shaming is. When contraception is developed, people are shamed for not using it. When women can have careers, they are shamed for being housewives, when children's labor is no longer necessary people can afford to shame people for not sending their kids to university.
I think the Ultra-Orthodox Jews are a good example that the factors listed aren't that important after all. They use contraception, they are urban, their women are educated and have jobs, they most definitely aren't farmers, their children go to school all wake hours to 25 (I made that number up, for lack of statistics). Only the last one, norms for marriage, fits. I think that the high fertility of Ultra-Orthodox Jews is a strong indicator that shaming and counter-shaming is the most important factor behind high or low fertility. (Actually, I changed my mind when I learned about them. As long as I only knew about the Amish I made multi-factor models just like you.)
Yes, obviously I should have included "religion" in the long list of numerous influences on fertility. And I am dismayed that you keep wanting to think of sociology like a murder mystery where all the pieces have to fit, instead of in terms of statistics where outliers and exceptions neither prove nor disprove a rule.
Out of curiosity, I do wonder why you think the two of us had so many kids while (for two other examples) Aella and Kryptogal had none? This isn't a question that I necessarily think needs an answer, because I'm not concerned with all the pieces fitting. But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
The truth is that I am confident shame is not the big C cause of differences in fertility decisions across the planet because this is something I think I really do understand: People have kids because they want to. And people who don't want to, don't. It all just comes down to that. Norms, economic incentives, personal preferences, moral outlooks, and emotional drives all influence, either directly or indirectly, what people want to do. Yes, shame is there somewhere, and yes, it exerts an influence, but it was never more effective at preventing people from becoming alcoholics, nor homosexuals from having sex, than it was making people want, or not want, kids.
In sociology, just like in mathematics, every line of reasoning that can be simplified should be simplified as much as possible (but only as much as possible).
And that's why we have philosophy. Simplifying "religion" and "social norms" in a certain context into "parent shaming" gives a more transparent line of reasoning, in my opinion. And that's why I'm doing it. "Shame people less, praise people more!" is clearer and more concrete than "change social norms!".
>>But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
I said it was the big cause behind the aggregate fertility rate. Not the cause behind the decisions of individuals: Parent shaming is an important part if the landscape in which individuals make decisions. Since all four of us are probably unusually shameless we feel free to make non-typical decisions. As you say, people have children or abstain from children because they want to. Other people's shaming, laws and material circumstances are only background factors against which people make decisions.
And organized religion is obviously very strongly connected to social shaming. Leah Kaplan, an ex-Ultra Orthodox Jew, wrote about the social condemnation of childless women in the group in which she grew up. She described a woman who happened to be childless and how her childlessness made her seem ugly (although she was technically beautiful). If Leah Kaplan is right and her observation can be generalized, some organized religion is doing rather intense anti-fertility shaming.
Edit: Leah Vincent. I mixed up her different names.
I don't think there is a campaign of social condemnation of childless women and I assume Leah Vincent never meant that.
I think it is just the natural consequence of a society which views fertility as important. All humans have a sense of shame and failure when they don't accomplish something which their society views as important.
However, I that the critical factor is not valuing fertility but rather deemphasizing 'productivity' and human intervention. I think this is why religion in general, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Amish in particular are high fertility.
Yes, she only wrote about it very figuratively. A childless married woman couldn't appear attractive because childlessness made her unattractive. That was all she wrote, as I remember it.
I've thought of this conclusion before, but I wasn't sure it was a very big cause for low birth rates, and I'm extremely skeptical of the chain of reasoning you use. The Chinese government instituted a one child policy for reasons involving parent shaming? Chimpanzees steal babies, so the child protective services do too?
I do agree that ignoring other people's attitudes towards What Should Be Done For The Children is a component in a high fertility lifestyle, but the demographic transition always followed a clear pattern, with falling birth rates attributed to socioeconomic factors like:
* contraception,
* urbanization,
* increase in the status and earning power of childless women,
* reduction in agriculture,
* reduction in the market value of unskilled (children's) labor,
* increase in in the cost and necessity for educating children, and
* reduction in social norms (& network effects) regarding marriage and childbearing
These aren't necessarily all particularly important causes for the drop in childbearing, but they are all at least established as having had an impact. And while the idea that culture matters is definitely a good general rule of thumb, *how* culture works, and how much exactly it matters, is usually a lot more complicated than just "parent shaming is the cause with a big C for the demographic crisis." Given everything we already see influences fertility rates, are you sure there's even the *possibility* for a big Cause? If the other factors I listed explain only 10% each, there's only even 30% left to explain.
I don't think shaming itself is that significant either. But I could believe that it's mainly shame that sets the normal standards and prospective parents then look at those standards and get discouraged without being directly shamed themselves.
Yes. People are exactly that sensitive.
I think all your causes mentioned are compatible with the parent shaming hypothesis. After all, I said that parent shaming is the cause with a big C - not that UNREASONABLE parent shaming is. When contraception is developed, people are shamed for not using it. When women can have careers, they are shamed for being housewives, when children's labor is no longer necessary people can afford to shame people for not sending their kids to university.
I think the Ultra-Orthodox Jews are a good example that the factors listed aren't that important after all. They use contraception, they are urban, their women are educated and have jobs, they most definitely aren't farmers, their children go to school all wake hours to 25 (I made that number up, for lack of statistics). Only the last one, norms for marriage, fits. I think that the high fertility of Ultra-Orthodox Jews is a strong indicator that shaming and counter-shaming is the most important factor behind high or low fertility. (Actually, I changed my mind when I learned about them. As long as I only knew about the Amish I made multi-factor models just like you.)
Yes, obviously I should have included "religion" in the long list of numerous influences on fertility. And I am dismayed that you keep wanting to think of sociology like a murder mystery where all the pieces have to fit, instead of in terms of statistics where outliers and exceptions neither prove nor disprove a rule.
Out of curiosity, I do wonder why you think the two of us had so many kids while (for two other examples) Aella and Kryptogal had none? This isn't a question that I necessarily think needs an answer, because I'm not concerned with all the pieces fitting. But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
The truth is that I am confident shame is not the big C cause of differences in fertility decisions across the planet because this is something I think I really do understand: People have kids because they want to. And people who don't want to, don't. It all just comes down to that. Norms, economic incentives, personal preferences, moral outlooks, and emotional drives all influence, either directly or indirectly, what people want to do. Yes, shame is there somewhere, and yes, it exerts an influence, but it was never more effective at preventing people from becoming alcoholics, nor homosexuals from having sex, than it was making people want, or not want, kids.
Your accusation that I want the pieces to fit is an interesting one. Spontaneously I would call it an interest in philosophy, the way I define philosophy. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/philosophy-is-the-mathematics-of
In sociology, just like in mathematics, every line of reasoning that can be simplified should be simplified as much as possible (but only as much as possible).
And that's why we have philosophy. Simplifying "religion" and "social norms" in a certain context into "parent shaming" gives a more transparent line of reasoning, in my opinion. And that's why I'm doing it. "Shame people less, praise people more!" is clearer and more concrete than "change social norms!".
>>But if you think you have a big C cause, why doesn't it explain these four cases?
I said it was the big cause behind the aggregate fertility rate. Not the cause behind the decisions of individuals: Parent shaming is an important part if the landscape in which individuals make decisions. Since all four of us are probably unusually shameless we feel free to make non-typical decisions. As you say, people have children or abstain from children because they want to. Other people's shaming, laws and material circumstances are only background factors against which people make decisions.
And organized religion is obviously very strongly connected to social shaming. Leah Kaplan, an ex-Ultra Orthodox Jew, wrote about the social condemnation of childless women in the group in which she grew up. She described a woman who happened to be childless and how her childlessness made her seem ugly (although she was technically beautiful). If Leah Kaplan is right and her observation can be generalized, some organized religion is doing rather intense anti-fertility shaming.
Edit: Leah Vincent. I mixed up her different names.
> Said it was the big cause behind the aggregate fertility rate. Not the cause behind the decisions of individuals
OK, that makes sense. I don't really agree with the rest, though.
I don't think there is a campaign of social condemnation of childless women and I assume Leah Vincent never meant that.
I think it is just the natural consequence of a society which views fertility as important. All humans have a sense of shame and failure when they don't accomplish something which their society views as important.
However, I that the critical factor is not valuing fertility but rather deemphasizing 'productivity' and human intervention. I think this is why religion in general, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Amish in particular are high fertility.
Yes, she only wrote about it very figuratively. A childless married woman couldn't appear attractive because childlessness made her unattractive. That was all she wrote, as I remember it.