That's Connor Leahy, and I've got a problem with his abuse-a-mammal theory. Of course, he meant to say "Do you know how hard you need to abuse a non-human mammal to make them not have children?" But non-human mammals don't have access to birth control (and abortion). They haven't disconnected the sex drive from reproduction. Having "children," for them, was never about wanting to have children. It was about wanting to have sex. It might take a lot of "abuse" to make them stop having sex and therefore babies, but we can't infer that it's an equivalent amount of "abuse" that causes human beings to stop having babies.
Leahy wants to control the use of digital technology, so he's focused here on dating apps, as if dating apps were causing human beings to choose not to have children. But the situation is far more complex. In the old days, people weren't choosing to have children. They were driven by sex and stuck with — or blessed by — the consequences. Don't be so quick to assume that the people in the past were more apt to choose to have babies. And don't assume the non-human animals of the present are choosing to have babies!
There's a lot of censorship — and self-censorship — on the subject of wanting children. I don't need you to chide me or perseverate about how dearly you love your children. As Leahy said, you can see it all over the world. People given the power to choose are choosing not to have children. That's a powerful statement to be taken very seriously, not just plugged into your antagonism toward dating apps and other digital tools or whatever might happen to be your pet issue.
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70 comments:
Pauline Kael to the white courtesy phone, please (IYKYK- I'm at the end of a trip visiting my 7 grands this weekend).
I'm fine with the enemies of western civ not reproducing.
Infanticide is hardly unknown, and in some cases pretty common, among animals
Self-absorbed people like Leahy and his friends don't have kids. Meanwhile, my early-30s kids have kids of their own, and so do most of their friends.
Conditioning sets behavior
That's one less "burden" for a woman, one giant leap forward for RAATs.
A generation of women have been told that they don't need kids, and now they're all miserable.
> Of course, he meant to say...
That is by no means evident. The fact that the abuse isn't physical doesn't mean it is not abuse.
From the Rosetta Stone of Boomers, "The Big Chill":
Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Animals cannibalize their young. Humans cannibalize or advocate to abort perchance cannibalize then sequester the little "burden". #RAAT
Planned Parenthood has a chilling, necrotizing effect.
I attended a large wedding a few weeks ago. 250 guests. Sheesh. New born babies, infants, and little kids - everywhere.
The lady who sat across from me brought her 2 day old. (Totally insane)
The girls and boys who fuck them just want one less "burden" to harsh their mellow.
Also - the couple who were married - met using a dating AP.
Assuming a dating app would solve your problem of finding a mate is just another step of absolving yourself of responsibility for yourself.
I have two children and two step children all in their 30s and early 40s. 3 are very smart, attractive and fit women…one of whom I suspect has never had sex. No progeny propagated among them are in prospect.
I’d like to hope that my contribution to their parenting is not the cause of this.
- Krumhorn
To be fair, Diversity that excludes the individual based on color, and fiscal carelessness, are persuasive arguments to abort a child and a forward-looking liability where bloc lives matter.
It's a good way to provoke and stimulate the discussion on the topic, but yes it's mostly not about biological stresses. People can choose to not engage modern technology, or the threat of shaming on social media. I don't think it's to the extent of suppressing biology. Maybe it's more like a case of over-consumption of something not required for biological survival ?
Shifted, outsourced, aborted responsibility.
Like we told you guys before this is a lefty problem. Conservatives tend to still have children but enough prog women don’t that it skews the average. Gotta love it every time the elite bleat a Pauline Kale paraquote.
Kael. Oops.
I live in an area with a large Mennonite community. At any public event, such as a fundraising chicken barbeque, there are waves of youngsters scurrying around. Then there are the lower income women, who you might see with 2 kids, usually from different fathers. Forty percent of kids on our school district come from single parent homes.
But like the guy in the video, I have no answers.
Same subject matter: “no one I know”
Wasn’t the percentage of births to foreign parents up to like 40-something last year? Making it even more likely no one she knows is doing so.
"But non-human mammals don't have access to birth control (and abortion). They haven't disconnected the sex drive from reproduction."
I take his point to be that the instinct or drive to have children is normal, and should be ingrained in us. Even if humans have the choice, choosing not to have children should be the rare exception.
So, when did girls and germs transition with a nonviable choice and sexual orientation? Did it happen on a Cloud, in a bordello, in a socialist seance, with Planned inhalation of fumes from our Posterity? Is it a progressive condition in liberal la-la land?
This generation is generally pessimistic about the future. Two sources of pessimism are Trump and global warming.
What sane person would want to bring children into a MAGA world run by the fascist Donald Trump? He’s destroying America!
And the Left pushes the global warming scam. The Earth’s going to burn up so why subject your kids to a certain death?
I’ll never forget the Texas Book Festival when a beautiful UT coed asked Samatha Power if she had her permission to bring children into this world which is in such terrible shape with CAGW being at the top of the list.
Power kind of walked the young woman off the cliff but her book is just typical fake doom-and-gloom to scare the weak minded in order to get votes and power.
Progressivism clearly explained is indistinguishable from mental illness.
Poor leftist victims. Life is so hard.
Don't trust anyone who wants to "blame the system".
Which system? What assumptions did you have? How much blind faith did you put in to that?
Michael said...
I live in an area with a large Mennonite community.
I'm an hour or so away from Amish communities. Their system isn't broken.
My old neighborhood friends and I are just retiring. Most of us were raised Catholic, but a few were Protestant. Some of us fell away and some are devout. We all have children in the 30 to 40 year old range. Some of them fell away and some are devout, but all of them have two or three kids.
None of them look like Wolfman Jack or belong to an institute.
Apps try to thrive and spread, just like mammals.
Take responsibility for your life. The Amish decide what technology is good for them, and reject the rest. Yeah, they draw the line quicker than most of us, but they have the right idea.
Yes, modern dating culture seems really messed up, but the Nexus Institute should come up with a plausible alternative to dating apps, rather than start banning tech.
I had understood that the young folk are also having a lot less sex than prior generations. So - if true - there goes the abortion/birth control thing: it's not just that they're choosing to ignore one very powerful drive, they're choosing to ignore two. I'd say that's not simplistic or trivial.
And the point about dating apps is well known too. I just listened to a podcast a few months ago about an app that was trying to change the incentive structure by paying out if you marry someone from the app - maybe there was a waiting period on the payout; I don't remember. It was priced for rich users, if I recall, and there was a screening process to try to ensure that the users weren't just trying to game it. Interesting concept - because we're not going back to a time before dating apps.
Children went from being a unit of family production in the family farm to being units of consumption expending resources. Now they seem to be regarded as components of adornment. But to the humble and non-self obsessed, the secret is that they are love multipliers.
or video games
or sub-prime used car loans
or edibles
or AR-15s
or $5 donuts
...
Kale, Kael, meh. Both indigestible.
"People given the power to choose are choosing not to have children" Depends on the meaning of choice. Corollary to the Althouse theorem on belief: people don't choose what they profess to choose.
Overall, birth control (including abortion) has been a disaster for women. With birth control, there's an endless supply of women for men to have sex with who don't require the commitment of marriage (because BC removed the risk of single-motherhood, which often meant a lifetime of poverty and struggle). Thus, birth control made it much harder for the typical woman to find a suitable husband and father. That in turn led to women getting married later and later in life, or not at all. And as they age out of their days of youth and beauty, it only becomes that much harder for women to find companionship and fulfillment, and eventually they become crazy cat ladies like you see at a No Kings rally.
My wife and I are Orthodox Jews in our early 60s with 4 kids. They all got married in their early 20s and we have 6 grandchildren so far. I realize we are a tiny minority in this country. But it simply isn't true that "no one's having kids." Self absorbed people who think that the only goal in life is their own pleasure are not having kids. People who have found or are seeking a deeper meaning and are living a life of sacrifice and commitment are having kids. It's all for the good - natural selection and all that.
"Blame Trump" is deeply misleading, a political lie. Anyone awake during the last fifty years saw the trend developing. Remember "Silent Spring", "The Population Bomb", the first Earth Day?
As Leahy said, you can see it all over the world. [Women,] given the power to choose are choosing not to have children.
FIFY.
The question is: given the ability and capacity to choose their fertility, on average how many children will women choose to have?
No one knows. It is evolutionarily unprecedented. The signs point to substantially fewer than two.
My son met our daughter in law through eHarmony; they had their first child a couple weeks ago.
The best dating app is church. I wonder if Connor Leahy has heard of it.
We live in Hidden Springs, ID. Beautiful community. Kids everywhere. Playing. Outside.
Howdydoody, "The future belongs to those who show up."
But I still have to argue with people who think the childless should have authority over children, superseding even parents.
Leftist circles are doom loops. I'm ok with that. Please - don't pro-create. Thank you.
-I don't need you to chide me or perseverate about how dearly you love your children.
It isn’t just the kids, it’s the grandchildren.
The liberal women I have known have had very poor parenting skills. I don’t think that’s accidental.
People all over the world ARE choosing to not have babies. The data not only shows it, but is a living red flag waving in our faces. What's weird is that it is the natural urge in every living life form on earth to reproduce. Not necessarily to have babies, but to engage in the activity-sex- that produces babies. Life forms evolve by staying alive, generation after generation fine tuning their ability to survive and persist.
We are, today, an anomaly in the entire history of life on this planet. I like to say that we are so sophisticated, we're sophisticating ourselves right out of existence. And that is true. We've allowed the new intelligentsia to set the new standard for us in how we run our lives. What is a family and is a family a good thing? Is creating and raising a family a good thing? These things were always asked, but people used to come to the conclusion that, yes, by and large, it is a good thing. It is good to further your lineage, to keep the family name going, the community going, and on down until your tribe or culture or nation stays strong.
But those in charge of 'modern' or 'new' thinking determined that they didn't want any of that and that the most important thing in life had nothing to do with creating a family or extending the lineage. The most important thing became getting a degree. No matter what it was in or if it would help you further your life- just get the degree. And then...get a job. Work. Or better yet, go into academia.
We literally made getting a degree and working a priority over extending the family. We furthered it by denigrating the family structure for decades, and celebrating the power of women- but only those with degrees and the right kind of job. Those who did not accrue multiple degrees were slighted, those who had no degrees were insulted. And of course, we encouraged and literally celebrated abortion.
And as if all of that were not enough, we confused the idea of gender. We taught our kids that gender is not what's between your legs, that it was fluid and could be whatever you felt, or wanted to feel, or were told to feel from day to day. We made up and distributed new and exciting pronouns that made no sense, but made their point. And this laid the groundwork for the next step which was to encourage the changing of genders- not just in adults, but in kids. Literally encouraging it and keeping it a secret from their own parents.
All the while all of this was going on, we spent a few decades drugging our young boys, then teaching them that they (males) were toxic, evil, and future rapists.
What kind of society does all that then wonders why replacement rates are crashing? In short, we became the first and only life form on earth to make a conscious decision to not extend the species. It's not an algorithm that did that. What a ridiculous notion. We did it. To ourselves. And we continue to do it.
It's one thing to follow a trendy idea, but when that idea becomes the suicide of entire cultures, nations, and perhaps the species, rational beings would choose another path. Hell...even a daffodil knows better. We seem not to.
He goes hard at the tech companies.
Then he is followed up by an evil female socialist who probably has 0 kids.
I assume they all danced around the real problem. Evil Female socialists.
We have told a generation of women that they should rule the world. But female leaders have a fundamentally restricted mindset. Women compete in the reproductive marketplace by sabotaging the offspring of other mothers to give their offspring a better chance at survival.
Women will always bend towards socialism. They are biologically wired for communist/redistributionist policy.
The only real solution to the demographic doom loop is for women to have kids when they get out of high school instead of going to college.
I just asked my son, who's about to turn 29, about his social circle: two couples with a child each and one more couple expecting one. In Seattle. That's not bad for a deep blue and deeply pessimistic place.
My daughter and her boyfriend, in Houston, haven't hit 25 yet; still, one couple they know (their age) is trying to have a child right now.
We attended our other son's graduation in Salt Lake City this weekend (from the U, not BYU - substantially fewer LDS students and more "alt" ones). I saw 3 master's candidates who walked with their babies or toddlers. At the after-party, my son met one classmate's fiancee, who is only a junior. And of course bring in SLC for the better part of a week, we've been surrounded by young families most of the time.
I know it's much more a progressives' problem. But with regard to Althouse's comment about choosing to have children, of course the problem is that you don't know what they're good for until you have them. No amount of explaining or fangirling will accurately convey the "happiness multiplier" someone mentioned above.
And one should consider the messengers too: who is pro-children? Your parents, your grandparents, Republicans - old, boring people. (And Elon Musk, whom the young folk hate now.) Who is anti-children or children-later? Coastal DINKS and singles Living Their Best Life™ who sell it - their lives and their childlessness - as the only reasonable choice if you want to enjoy your youth, feel fulfilled, travel, careermaxx... They're so beautiful and fascinating. Don't you just want to be like them? Young people are still dumb, as dumb as we were.
Anyway. I feel so rich this weekend with all my kids and one who I'm sure will be joining the family in due time around me. Literally nothing in my life has ever felt better than this. And that's not going to change a single GenZ mind.
The RAAT race is selfieish, misogynistic, and transhumane.
Dating apps are useful for scheduling appts.
You may not be having kids, but Muzzies are.
Think of that.
The girls and boys who fuck them just want one less "burden" to harsh their mellow.
Sometimes, "harshing" the "burden" before it sprouts, fucks-up a whole lot of "mellow", down the road. Pray for the girl who picked a name for the "burden" and later gave it to the first "born". She's sorry...
"harshing" the "burden" before it sprouts, fucks-up a whole lot of "mellow", down the road.
Absolutely. Life is compelling and not so short.
Among those who choose to not reproduce (on purpose) are those who believe they're "God's Gift" and those who believe they're "God's Mistake". Sometimes plans go awry.
“Development is the best contraceptive” is attributed to Karan Singh, India’s minister of population, who famously said this during a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest.
This has proven to be very true as birth rates dropped in developing countries as they developed. As they got improvements in child mortality and disease control. As they left the familial-labor intensive subsistence farming and entered cities.
But it seems the good life isn't what's needed to spur having children. It appears to be related to hope of a steady job for the near future. Births went up in England at the start of the labor, i.e., jobs, intensive early phase of industrialization. But in the UK and the US, birth rates dropped steadily to just at 2 until the Baby Boom pop of the 1950s where it went to 3.5 in 1960.
But that pop was said and done by 1973 when the US TFR (total fertility rate) dropped below the replacement of 2.1. Where it hovered until a slight rise to 2.1 for the 1990s. Now in the 1990s US, people were starting to think there was a steady employment future after the 1970/80s factory offshoring disruption. But by 2007, reality was creeping in when the current significant decline started.
But don't worry as soon as the AI-driven job disruption/uncertainty settles out, and people can see a life that can support a child, the birth rate may return to replacement. But population will continue to decline since the peak birth years of Millennials hit 35 this year so fewer potential mothers in every year younger. Maybe Gen Alpha will get baby fever and have a half dozen or so children per couple? And, oh, reverse the 55 decline in heterosexual marriages
Dogma and Pony Show said...
Overall, birth control (including abortion) has been a disaster for women.
Hormonal birth control did open up low risk of pregnancy sex to "good" middle class girls. After all, it allowed her to be "seduced" rather than evidence planning by having condoms in her purse.
So the practices of the poorer urban girls went wide. The middle class girls could now step out of class and onto the city streets to be pursued for their physical charms. And also be able to give into her passions to keep those nights out coming.
"As Mr. Canby adds, “The boys sought elsewhere for what they did not get in friendship and the respectful amorousness of equals. They raided the amusement parks or the evening streets in search of girls that could be frankly pursued for their physical charms. ‘Chippies’ was the cant name.…” But the boys preferred to think of “nice” girls of their own class in other terms, and under the code which they followed a kiss was virtually tantamount to a proposal of marriage. "
--'The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950' (1952), Frederick Allen Lewis
No one's having kids. And this is across the world. This is across both the West, the East, everywhere it's happening. So why do I not have kids?... Do you know what dating app algorithms do?
...I hope something significant happened in the place of that ellipsis because the way it's written makes it sound like this woman believes the only way she will meet a man is thru online dating...
“…the system has failed them ….” How is that, hair bag? 66+ million US abortions since 1973, equal to about 20% of the population, is not about “the system.” It’s about women who don’t want children having unprotected sex and slaughtering their unborn babies.
“it is good to further your lineage, to keep the family name going”
This may be it: the double whammy of birth control and, beyond just de-emphasis, an actual aversion to lineage - the casual mockery of ancestors. Yet at the same time, the popularity of family-tree research shows how much lineage still matters to people.
excerpt from Untitled (poem from Hope Gap)
by William Nicholson:
My father - first among men -
my teacher and my judge,
the man I know I will become.
You grow older now.
You’re still ahead of me as you always will be Forever further down the road.
Forgive me for needing you
to be strong forever.
Forgive me for fearing
your unhappiness.
As you suffer
so I shall suffer.
As you endure
so I shall endure.
"There's a lot of censorship — and self-censorship — on the subject of wanting children. I don't need you to chide me or perseverate about how dearly you love your children. As Leahy said, you can see it all over the world. People given the power to choose are choosing not to have children. That's a powerful statement to be taken very seriously, not just plugged into your antagonism toward dating apps and other digital tools or whatever might happen to be your pet issue."
Given the power to choose? They already have that power. What many, if not most, of them have been given, is messaging that it's irresponsible to bring children into this horrible world and that the efforts to rear them are not worth the trouble.
That message is propaganda. It's a means of controlling their behavior.
Mike Judge told that class the truth with Idiocracy but they won't listen. Too icky.
"I just asked my son, who's about to turn 29, about his social circle: two couples with a child each and one more couple expecting one. In Seattle. That's not bad for a deep blue and deeply pessimistic place."
Less that 50% replacement in one generation? That's recipe for generational collapse.
I just asked my son, who's about to turn 29, about his social circle: two couples with a child each and one more couple expecting one. In Seattle. That's not bad for a deep blue and deeply pessimistic place.
Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights.
Althouse said...
"...I've got a problem with his abuse-a-mammal theory."
"You've proven to be a most useful mammal."
Mother Nature KNEW what she was doing when she designed humans to be MOST fertile during our MOST stupid and MOST horny years = teenagers! We have ceased reproducing when women are most physically suited for it at 18 or so. It's a hormone fueled "descision" - once we get past peak horny biochemistry, of COURSE humans are going to "think" more about the consequences. Thinkers = less babies; little thinking and going by instinct = more babies. Idiocracy is upon us.
People who had great childhoods are having kids. People who had crappy and abusive childhoods are choosing not to.
Perhaps this is a large-scale reset. In a generation or two, we will have erased poor-parenting genes and multi-generational trauma out of the surviving population -- at least in the developed countries.
Maybe God has had enough of watching humans trying to make Marxism work, and is wiping out those who would have continued to try.
poor people have more more kids. Working lower middle class cannot afford it. Mom and Dad both working to make ends meet, then have to pay daycare. How many geezers here had stay at home wife taking care of kids and household while Dad's blue collar paycheck was enough to actually buy a house and pay the bills?
A non skilled person on welfare, housing assistance, food stamps, and medical would need a decent paying job they are not qualified for in order to become self supporting. Kids get older, benefits expire, more kids equals more govt assistance. Perhaps not a reason to keep producing, but the assistance makes it easier to have more if you want them.
I saw a statistic that fully half of marriages in the 1940s were “shotgun” weddings. I’m not sure humanity will successfully survive decoupling sex from reproduction. Honestly.
Jessica said...
I saw a statistic that fully half of marriages in the 1940s were “shotgun” weddings.
Knock her up, get married. Or, girl "goes on vacation" for awhile. Shame on un-wed moms.
And, "pregnant" girlfriend has "miscarriage" when boyfriend is not interested in getting married.
Do you know what dating app algorithms do?... They don't optimize for you to meet the love of your life. They optimize for you to keep coming back to the app.... We have treated technology as a wild west.
Maybe if you got your face out of your GD phone for a change, you could find a decent partner and raise a family.
"Maybe if you got your face out of your GD phone for a change, you could find a decent partner and raise a family.
"Good point. Where does a young man or woman working 40 hours a week plus travel time meet such a person? Besides church or the bar?
How many geezers here had stay at home wife taking care of kids and household while Dad's blue collar paycheck was enough to actually buy a house and pay the bills?
My parents both worked.
Say what you will about the women, but a man with the desire to impregnate women will eventually find willing candidates. I've been doing it for 40 years, and have no intention of stopping. Children are vastly more entertaining than high culture.
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