On stealing genitals - Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker:

‘The “total fertility rate” is a coarse estimate of the number of children an average woman will bear. A population will be stable if it reproduces at the “replacement rate,” or about 2.1 babies per mother. (The .1 is the statistical laundering of great personal tragedy.) Anything above that threshold will theoretically generate exponential expansion, and anything below it will generate exponential decay. In 1960, the tiny country of Singapore had a fertility rate of almost six. By 1985, it had been brought down to 1.6—a rate that threatened to roughly halve its population in two generations. As the economist Nicholas Eberstadt told me, “For two decades, the leaders of Singapore said, ‘Oh, uncontrolled fertility has terribly dangerous consequences, so the rate has to come down,’ and then, after a semicolon, without even catching their breath, said, ‘Wait, I mean go up.’ ” The nation’s leaders launched a promotional campaign: “Have-Three-or-More (if you can afford it).” Singaporeans were known to be good national sports, but, despite the catchiness of the slogan, they proved noncompliant.’

(…)

‘Paranoia has ensued. In the past year, hundreds of men in the Central African Republic have reported the presumably delusional belief that their genitals have gone missing. In Nigeria, where the fertility rate has fallen from seven to four, a widely read tabloid blamed a conspiracy of perverts in the French intelligence services who had been “using secret nanotechnology innovations to steal penises from African men in order to reverse the extinction of Europeans unwilling to bear children.”’

(…)

‘The global population is projected to grow for about another half century. Then it will contract. This is unprecedented. Almost nothing else can be said with any certainty. Here and there, however, are harbingers of potential futures. South Korea has a fertility rate of 0.7. This is the lowest rate of any nation in the world. It may be the lowest in recorded history. If that trajectory holds, each successive generation will be a third the size of its predecessor. Every hundred contemporary Koreans of childbearing age will produce, in total, about twelve grandchildren. The country is an outlier, but it may not be one for long. As the Korean political analyst John Lee told me, “We are the canary in the coal mine.”’

(…)

‘Outside of Seoul, children are largely phantom presences. There are a hundred and fifty-seven elementary schools that had no new enrollees scheduled for 2023. That year, the seaside village of Iwon-myeon recorded a single newborn. The entire town was garlanded with banners that congratulated the parents by name “on the birth of their lovely baby angel.” One village in Haenam, a county that encompasses the southern extremity of the Korean peninsula, last registered a birth during the 1988 Seoul Olympics.’

(…)

‘This population explosion coincided, oddly, with a downward fertility drift in Europe. The pioneers were French aristocrats: in the interest of consolidating familial wealth and prestige, the nobility increasingly delayed marriage, and then sought to limit the number of offspring who might expect their share of an inheritance. This made sense. But the practices diffused, through mimicry, to the lower orders. This made less sense. Evolutionary imperatives, it seemed, could be eclipsed by cultural contagion.’

(…)

‘If economic prosperity decreased fertility, it seemed intuitive that lower fertility should, in turn, increase prosperity. During the Cold War, population control came to be seen as a kind of master key—a panacea for social and political ills. In a forthcoming book, “Toxic Demography,” the scholar Jennifer Sciubba and her co-authors write that American élites believed “population growth caused poverty, and poverty caused communism.” It was in the best interests of the West, leaders such as President Lyndon Johnson affirmed, to subsidize the proliferation of birth control and sex education. It was unfortunate but apparently unavoidable that the principal instrument of family planning was the female body. The president of Planned Parenthood, an organization founded in alignment with the eugenicist sympathies of early-twentieth-century progressive movements, warned that an overly precious concern for “individual women” would impede progress: “We dare not lose sight of our goals—to apply this method to large populations.”’

(…)

‘Carlson has accused liberals of a plan to replace native-born Americans with immigrants. Even if this were true, it might not be the most provident strategy. Studies have shown that newcomers from high-fertility countries tend to adopt the reproductive customs of their host nation within a generation. Hispanic women account for a large share of America’s recent fertility decline. Only two communities appear to be maintaining very high fertility: ultra-Orthodox Jews and some Anabaptist sects. The economist Robin Hanson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that twenty-third-century America will be dominated by three hundred million Amish people. The likeliest version of the Great Replacement will see a countryside dotted everywhere with handsome barns.’

(…)

‘The most sophisticated liberal arguments interpret fertility decline as a symptom of more serious underlying problems—economic precarity and an “incomplete” gender revolution. Men and women alike struggle to provide for their families, but the participation of fathers at home has not caught up to the participation of mothers at work. A more generous welfare state, and a more equitable culture, should therefore produce more children. This does not seem to be the case. Finland famously provides all new parents with “baby boxes” full of useful, high-quality products, and Sweden has normalized extended parental leave, especially for fathers, and flexible work hours. The Nordic countries are wonderful places to be parents, but their fertility rates are lower than our own. These trends are not reducible to budgetary concerns. Child care is virtually free in Vienna and extremely expensive in Zurich, but the Austrians and the Swiss have the same fertility rate.’

(…)

‘For most of human history, having children was something the majority of people simply did without thinking too much about it. Now it is one competing alternative among many. The only overarching explanation for the global fertility decline is that once childbearing is no longer seen as something special—as an obligation to God, to one’s ancestors, or to the future—people will do less of it. It is misogynistic to equate reproductive autonomy with self-indulgence, and child-free people often devote themselves to loving, conscientious caretaking. At the same time, we should be able to acknowledge that there is something slightly discomforting about a world view that weighs children against expensive dinners or vacations to Venice—as matters of mere preference in a logic of consumption.’

(…)

‘If current trends continue, in several decades there will be many fewer Koreans, and virtually all of them will live in metropolitan Seoul—a city-state surrounded by wilderness, ruin, and, if they are lucky, robotic rice cultivation.’

(…)

‘Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seems to have been motivated in part by Vladimir Putin’s desire to increase the motherland’s quantity of ethnic Russians.’

(…)

‘Chang Pilwha, who has been an influential women’s-studies scholar for forty years, echoed this bewilderment. “Many of my best feminist friends say the best thing they’ve ever done is have a child, and nobody should brand that as conservative or liberal,” she said. She is apprehensive about what society will look like once fewer and fewer people are parents. As she put it, “Becoming a mother or a father is a precious process of learning to be human, and the lack of that experience with vulnerability is only going to create more ruthlessness.”’

(…)

‘Children are variables in our lives. But they are also strange birds of their own. Religious people talk about them as carriers of the divine spark, technologists as messengers from the future. Secular humanists are content to mumble something about the imagination. In any case, they should probably be prevented from sticking their fingers into sockets or setting fire to our homes.’

Read the article here.

It’s demography stupid.

Procreation a matter of lifestyle, why not?

Machines will replace us, small comfort, but better than no comfort.

The country side, the new desert.

Forget the masses, the future belongs to the Amish, at least in the US.

I always say: ‘First another bestseller, then a second child.’

I can’t help myself.