I've snipped some paragraphs from your latest posting. This is the bit where we are discussing the declining family size in all western countries. (I guess this must be so among indigenous parents in America, too, but overlaid by higher immigrant birth rates):
At 16:35 27/08/2003 -0400, you wrote:
(KH)
<<<<
But of course -- parents have been having far fewer children for selfish motives (and also children have become more difficult to raise for all sorts of reasons).
>>>>
(EW)
<<<<
Selfishness may be one way to characterize it. In medieval times and until quite recently people had lots of children because they knew some would die but enough might survive to provide family support.
[snip]
Nowadays, people don't have many kids because there is no need to have many kids, and they look after them far better. A substantial workforce has emerge around an abundance of quality daycare, freeing parents to get on with their lives.
But, I would also suggest that people are having fewer kids because the economic slots (jobs) into which those kids might be fitted as adults have decreased or become filled up. When I left university with an undergrad degree in the late 1950s, I had six firm and good job offers in hand. It is now probable that fewer than one in six grads has a job offer in hand.
This may change as the baby boomers begin to retire. This will happen soon and replacements will be needed.
>>>>
I agree with what you've written above edcept for the last paragraph. With the present "job-less growth" going on in the US right now, I somehow don't think the replacement effect is going to occur.
It's occurred to me in the last day or two that the principal reason why the birth rate is declining steeply in the western developed countries is the increasing feminisation of jobs.
Boys are doing worse than girls at every age at school. They are still slightly ahead at university level but girls are fast closing the gap there, too. Jobs are being increasingly dominated by women and typical men's jobs are declining. (Where there are many openings in the caring professions, males are very disinclined to take them -- the percentage in nursing, for example, has hardly altered in years.) Males are failing at both school and at work. Because there are fewer marriagable males from which the females choose their partners, their failure is showing up in crime as well as unemployment figures. The economic change is highlighting the profound genetic differences between males and females.
I think there's a double whammy effect happening here. Because of the changing nature of jobs, there are more unmarriagable males, but because more females are getting into the higher ranges of organisations they are also going to be more discriminating as to which among the marriagable males they are going to choose.
The future of males will be increasingly precarious -- particularly of those with anything less than average IQ. Because of the narrow-focus nature of the male brain, no doubt most entrepreneurs will still be males (though females will be needed to manage them properly once the businesses are established), and they'll probably continue to dominate sports, car mechanics, plumbing and fire-fighting -- and will be increasingly filling the prisons. But, really, it looks pretty grim.
In England, there is an increasing shortage of small houses and flats suitable for single people. And by far the main demand comes from females in their 20s and 30s with jobs. Many of the males in their age group are either unemployed or too incompetent to look after themselves so they're staying at home with Mom. (The last phenomenon is already significant in two of the countries which have had the steepest decline in birth rate, Italy and Japan -- and the Moms are getting cheesed off about this in both countries!)
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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