Based Camp - Public Response To The Birth Gap： With Stephen Shaw

00:00:00.000 I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s, you know, antinatalists were, you know, I call them antinatalists.

00:00:07.020 Antinatalism to me is clear, though some people define it different ways.

00:00:10.380 It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children.

00:00:13.780 So this was to do with the world running out of food.

00:00:17.300 And then the world didn't run out of food with the Green Revolution and then became about the environment.

00:00:21.540 Maybe that was appropriate, but let's not get into that conversation because it's complicated.

00:00:26.680 But my point is right now they're shifting again.

00:00:30.400 I can see the shift.

00:00:32.140 The problem now is the patriarchy.

00:00:35.680 And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see the population maximizing right now.

00:00:43.940 So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view, but preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment.

00:00:50.940 It's about men forcing themselves on women.

00:00:54.540 We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because, you know, they have an agenda.

00:00:58.960 They are ideologists.

00:01:00.780 Would you like to know more?

00:01:02.100 Hello, everyone.

00:01:02.980 We are extremely excited today to be joined by Stephen Shaw, who is the creator of the Birth Gap documentary, which we consider to be the seminal documentary on demographical apps that covers the stats, but also the personal fallout from demographical apps already.

00:01:22.100 He interviews quite a few people.

00:01:24.060 It's really great.

00:01:24.720 The first half of it is available for free on YouTube.

00:01:27.340 There is no excuse for you to not check it out.

00:01:29.740 And welcome.

00:01:30.700 We're so glad to see you here.

00:01:32.100 What we'd really love to ask you to start, at least, because there's so many things we'd like to discuss, is after Birth Gap came out, did you encounter any surprises in terms of who was really excited about it, who it resonated with, and who didn't like it?

00:01:45.580 Because we found in our own journey with prenatalist advocacy that, or demographic collapse awareness advocacy that sometimes like surprising groups either really appreciated and also really don't.

00:01:56.720 We'd love to hear what you've experienced.

00:01:58.020 I've experienced everything, and I don't think I was prepared for it at all.

00:02:02.820 I knew I would get pushback.

00:02:04.440 I'd actually warned my kids several years ago that, hey, your dad's going to get some pushback.

00:02:08.300 Just be ready for it.

00:02:10.280 I thought it was mainly going to come from environmentalists, and I was preparing, rightly so.

00:02:17.900 It's part of a healthy discussion about population and the environment, and it's an argument I have

00:02:24.540 had many times, and I think I feel confident to explain that reducing birth is not exactly a very efficient way to help the environment.

00:02:33.700 It would take decades to have any impact, being one of those.

00:02:36.000 But actually, no, the main pushback came from what I can only describe as antinatalist groups who have been vocal, extreme, relentless.

00:02:49.100 And it's interesting.

00:02:50.260 Maybe we can pursue that.

00:02:51.420 But on the other side, the optimistic side also surprised me.

00:02:53.960 I admit the documentary feeling, frankly, quite pessimistic that this is a reality that we have to simply prepare for a world with fewer and fewer people and the inevitable consequences of that, personally, to communities and to societies.

00:03:09.440 But actually, looking into the eyes of so many young people who watch this who are, frankly, shocked.

00:03:15.780 I mean, anger is what's being used, that society is preparing them for a life of education first, career second.

00:03:24.380 And then, what do you mean we're going to run out of time to start a family?

00:03:27.720 What do you mean we might end up childless when we want families?

00:03:30.940 Those people give me confidence, despite their frustrations and anger, because I see in their eyes that very likely many of them will do things differently.

00:03:39.400 Can you talk a bit more about what is motivating, like, ideologically or dispositionally the antinatalist groups?

00:03:48.240 I assume many of them are in the negative utilitarian sort of David Benatar sphere of antinatalism?

00:03:53.460 Or are there other things that are motivating them, more just like general human pessimism?

00:03:58.460 There's part of that.

00:03:59.960 And actually, I mean, there's one or two very few people who come out and say that they believe in extinction.

00:04:05.600 And relatively speaking, I respect them speaking relatively, because they're saying what they believe, and you can discuss that, and not many people think that, so that's fine.

00:04:16.480 What worries me is that many people who perhaps think that, I don't know, but they cloak their arguments in many different ways, and it's so easy to see.

00:04:25.680 So, I mean, just to maybe answer your question in terms of what the rationale is, these are clearly ideologists who are threatened by the idea that people, women in particular, actually want children, and that many who end up childless have regrets, or more rather, grieve.

00:04:46.180 And that's why I show, in part two of the documentary, there's a lot of deep grief that is felt by these organizations.

00:04:53.320 And so, in some ways, I've realized that, you know, by challenging the pre-mind that women don't really want children, and that if they don't, it's fine, actually goes to the heart of their own ideology.

00:05:06.980 So, I think they have to argue against it, because otherwise, their ideology is finished.

00:05:12.640 Oh, continue.

00:05:13.360 Well, I was just going to say, so in a sense, it's a compliment, in other words, to me, that, you know, they've been forced into that position.

00:05:19.240 Well, I, to put, like, reword what you said, because I think it's really interesting, it's the lifestyles a lot of large groups in our society right now are promoting lead to people not being able to have kids.

00:05:32.480 And when I say lifestyles, I mean, like, college degree and independence before you marry a man.

00:05:37.560 I'm not, you know, like, just generic mainstream lifestyles and groups.

00:05:43.200 What you're saying is an aspect of this is a cognitive dissonance.

00:05:46.060 They don't want to take responsibility for the pain that this advocacy that they're pushing causes.

00:05:52.500 And so, to do that, they're sort of denying or punishing anyone who brings up that there are negative consequences of this.

00:05:59.680 Well, I think cognitive dissonance is a big element, but it's not the entire story.

00:06:04.440 I think there are people who are persuaded to focus on those things, persuaded, perhaps, indeed, that children aren't that important.

00:06:11.840 And I have seen twice in screenings of my documentary in Tokyo where women have had breakdowns.

00:06:20.180 I'm talking about women in their 50s who, I mean, one of them argued that the documentary wasn't fair on women, that no one didn't need their children.

00:06:30.820 Then spent a weekend, I later found out, with her curtains closed, didn't come out of her apartment, remembering that she had one of the kids one day.

00:06:38.040 But finally came to terms with it and invited me to lunch.

00:06:42.100 And suddenly it was like, thank you for allowing me to grieve the reality that I had when the kids.

00:06:47.580 So that's cognitive dissonance, where you're trying to kind of avoid the reality that perhaps for...

00:06:52.420 No, no, no. I will say this. I want to say this. We should say this.

00:06:55.440 A minority, I think somewhere around 5% of women do not ever have the desire of children.

00:07:02.080 I am to be fired at those women in the documentary, and they're entirely happy. They have no regrets. 0.98

00:07:06.580 I'm not saying it's entirely binary. I don't know that, but it's clear that for some who simply never, ever want children, they can and will go through life quite happy.

00:07:15.900 That's what they wanted. It's the remainder.

00:07:18.820 I think it's a significant majority of childless people who either had wanted and life didn't work out.

00:07:23.640 They didn't have a partner at the right time. They left it too late.

00:07:26.940 We can't blame people. Society, though, is at the heart of this.

00:07:29.860 We tell people as society that it's fine to have children in your 30s.

00:07:35.180 Too many things get in the way and leave so many people childless.

00:07:39.360 What I really appreciated about the way that you framed things in the documentary, too, was just how clearly you presented two really interesting dichotomy of issues between men and women, which we see a lot just among our own social networks.

00:07:57.020 Where women are interested in having kids often, but they're just delaying, delaying, delaying because of education and career, and then it's too late. 1.00

00:08:05.560 Plus, they're really struggling to find male partners who are willing to have kids. 0.71

00:08:09.780 And then on the other end, there's, I think, a lot of sort of societal pressures on men.

00:08:14.720 Holy smokes. Sorry, two birds just randomly flew into my window.

00:08:18.700 I think that they're not doing too much.

00:08:20.060 They were probably chasing each other, but they're not doing so well right now.

00:08:25.200 They both passed out.

00:08:27.520 That men are sort of discouraged from living anything but a sort of freewheeling, hedonistic life where they don't want to give up their freedoms.

00:08:35.860 They don't want to give up their ability to travel at the drop of a hat, do whatever they want, live their lives.

00:08:40.680 And they're certainly not celebrated for making any of those sacrifices.

00:08:43.600 So that makes it even harder for women who, once they are ready, to find partners who are willing to take that leap.

00:08:50.940 And I mean, it showed up a lot in part one.

00:08:54.040 And it was really interesting to me because people don't really discuss that weird bifurcation as much as I would expect because it is such a big part of the problem, culture. 0.97

00:09:02.400 Well, you know, I came to realize quite quickly that, you know, men generally, including myself, I have to say I'm divorced, not by choice, just life.

00:09:12.400 I want to live in the U.S. 0.80

00:09:13.740 My ex-wife didn't want to leave London and that happened. 0.98

00:09:17.160 And I think I did expect at some point in time I'd meet someone else.

00:09:19.900 But I think as men get older, what we forget is we're effectively competing with our younger selves for the pool of younger women who are able to have children.

00:09:27.380 So technically we can have children later in life, much later in life, but actually you still have to find a woman willing to have a child with you.

00:09:36.460 So it all evens out.

00:09:38.020 And, you know, what we might see on occasion from Hollywood A-list stars marrying someone 30, 40 years younger.

00:09:44.080 My gosh, I mean, that doesn't happen to the man in the street at all.

00:09:48.700 So it affects everybody.

00:09:50.320 We're just not thinking this through, whether, you know, certainly men and society is not, you know, helping at all.

00:09:57.060 Well, to the point that you made, and this is something I would strongly advocate our listeners because I often talk to young men and they act like they have an infinite timeline on having kids.

00:10:06.280 And that perception is one of the reasons why people who go at life with that mindset are unlikely to have kids.

00:10:14.720 And I think just a good heuristic is you should plan to have all of the kids you are going to have in your entire life by like 35 if you plan to do this naturally.

00:10:26.300 Now, if you're freezing embryos, that's a bit different, which means that realistically you likely need to have secured the partner you're going to marry by like 27.

00:10:34.540 And this is just not the time society is giving.

00:10:37.960 Another thing that I really wanted to advocate for our audience here, because, you know, this is like the pro natalist movement or the closest thing to a hub the movement has, is something that has constantly surprised me.

00:10:49.980 And it's something that you mentioned here is allies that are out there for us and that want to be the pro natalist movement's allies.

00:10:58.020 Are women who feel that they were hoodwinked by the system, never had any kids and are grieving and want to help reach out or through donations, help younger women not follow the same path that they followed.

00:11:12.580 And it's really important to note this as a movement, because I think that sometimes young people in the movement can get really excited and be very dismissive of these individuals like it's their fault that they fell for all this, that it's their fault that they everyone was telling them this, you know, everyone was telling them they were good people for doing this.

00:11:30.900 And when you lack compassion for these people who are genuinely suffering, you isolate the movement from a huge fraction of people who could be very strong allies.

00:11:42.060 And this is especially true because we have a lot of like manosphere types who watch our podcast and stuff like that.

00:11:47.240 If you want to convince young women to change priorities, like red pill guys telling them to do that isn't going to work.

00:11:54.260 Old women who didn't have kids is going to work. 1.00

00:11:57.160 Yeah, and that's what I'm finding too.

00:12:01.060 I think women, from what I see, and perhaps men too, simply being made aware that the fertility window is likely much shorter than you expect.

00:12:12.960 And that there are other factors.

00:12:14.060 It's not just fertility.

00:12:15.240 It's do you have a partner at that time?

00:12:17.280 Are you sure you're not going to go through a divorce or breakup?

00:12:19.420 Because that's quite commonplace these days.

00:12:21.060 How sure are you at that age you want to have a child, age 35 or whatever it is, that you're going to have everything lined up that turns out to be the biggest reason, you know, for not having children?

00:12:32.840 And, you know, another point as well, I think, Chair, is that, you know, whatever statistics you may come up with, a lot of people want to know, well, what is the age when fertility falls off?

00:12:42.220 And you hear different things about this.

00:12:44.080 But the reality is there's a huge variation in this.

00:12:46.620 You can't assume, as a woman, that your fertility level is the same as the average woman.

00:12:55.480 So if children are important, erring on the side of caution is a common sense thing to do.

00:13:02.560 One of the greatest conversations I had was with a young Japanese 24-year-old who had it all worked out.

00:13:07.480 She was in a long-distance relationship, and I, you know, cautioned that.

00:13:11.220 So don't worry, I'm giving it one more year because if it doesn't work out, that gives me two more years to find the next boyfriend.

00:13:16.300 If that doesn't work out, I can still meet someone by 30, and I can still have the three children I want.

00:13:20.760 Oh, my gosh, love her.

00:13:22.260 Right.

00:13:22.800 I mean, it sounds cold and calculated, but actually it's smart if children are important.

00:13:28.600 Yeah.

00:13:28.740 Well, and speaking of cold and calculated, a statistic I always love to cite is if you look at the rates of love in arranged marriages versus the rates of love in marriages that were chosen for love, they are about equal.

00:13:39.200 But when you account for survivalship bias because love marriages have higher divorce rates than arranged marriages, they're actually higher.

00:13:45.240 So applying a level of clinicalness to relationships, even though society will shame you for it, can have really positive outcomes for what is, without a doubt, the most important decision you're going to make in your life.

00:13:59.840 Yeah, and I haven't looked into that specific statistic, but it's interesting.

00:14:03.220 I do live in Japan, and it's certainly true that when arranged marriage was commonplace that there was more marriage and there were more births.

00:14:11.320 I'm not totally convinced that that's necessarily meaningful in today's society, but you still have this culture in Japan of people helping each other find dates.

00:14:19.420 It's a thing where people effectively, you know, three men, three women meet together, and they get to know each other without any pressure.

00:14:27.040 It hasn't helped the birth rate, though, I have to say, but it is still, I think, a nice way to potentially meet that person.

00:14:33.400 Yeah.

00:14:33.640 Also, something I want to bring up here that's important for fans to know when they're thinking about planning their own life is this actually comes from a call we were having this morning.

00:14:41.320 It was Rye Egg Nationalist, sort of going over all the stats on just how much male fertility has dropped in the last 50 years or so.

00:14:48.240 We are not dealing with the same biologies that our grandparents had, and it is dramatically harder to get somebody pregnant today than it was historically, whether you're looking at sperm motility dropping over 50% in the last 51 years.

00:15:01.420 No, 51% in the last 50 years.

00:15:03.780 What is it?

00:15:04.380 Testosterone drop.

00:15:05.040 It's like 30% in the last 20 years.

00:15:06.420 I'm sure you remember that stat better than I do, or, you know, the, the, like, TIDE studies and endocrine disruptors and stuff like that, which means that you may need to approach fertility in a clinical fashion that may even feel unromantic.

00:15:20.740 And, and, and, and fertility isn't always a romantic thing anymore.

00:15:23.340 You know, we, we are in many ways becoming a more sterile species.

00:15:26.960 Yeah, and this is not my specific area of expertise, but I do have a couple of comments to add.

00:15:38.200 I'm a little bit skeptical whether this has yet been, become a major factor in overall fertility.

00:15:45.040 It might do, it may have recently, but my argument is one of my findings was that mothers, once they do have the first child in recent decades, are having the same number of children as decades, well, decades ago.

00:15:57.020 So in the U.S., you know, the average mother was having 2.4 children, 1980s, today it's actually up to 2.6.

00:16:04.040 And this is universal in Japan, 6% of mothers today are having four more children.

00:16:09.400 That's exactly the same as it was 50 years ago.

00:16:11.440 So it seems to be about having that first child, maybe it's sperm levels dropping to a point where you can't even.

00:16:17.120 Oh, that's interesting.

00:16:18.500 Yes.

00:16:19.200 So, you know, family, family sizes haven't been changing.

00:16:21.780 That's a common myth that's out there.

00:16:23.500 The only thing that's changed is a rapid increase in childlessness.

00:16:26.740 And most of that is what I call unplanned childlessness.

00:16:30.840 But that would be what you would expect if a large portion of the population was infertile.

00:16:34.840 Because they wouldn't be able to have child number one.

00:16:36.680 Well, might you argue that those with number one, if it's falling off, would be less likely to have number two and number three.

00:16:43.220 Again, that's not my expertise.

00:16:44.860 But, you know, I just say, well, look, someone needs to do more work in this.

00:16:49.480 Do I worry that this fall off is going to impact us?

00:16:53.020 Maybe it's happened maybe in recent years.

00:16:56.000 It's an additional factor.

00:16:57.720 We'll take fertility down yet again.

00:16:59.580 And my area of focus is really what's happened over the last 50 years.

00:17:03.900 Yeah.

00:17:04.300 And the rise in childlessness is the key thing.

00:17:07.040 I want to pull on the statement you just made because I think it's really interesting.

00:17:10.520 And it really contrasts with our thesis around fertility, which is to help very high fertility cultural groups maximize their fertility rates because their kids are more likely to have more kids.

00:17:21.200 Whereas for you, it seems that thesis is actually to get the people who have no kids to have that first kid, and then the rest will work itself out.

00:17:30.180 Can you talk a bit about what kind of interventions you've seen be effective there?

00:17:33.680 Because we haven't even looked at that as a potential solution.

00:17:35.860 Yeah, well, just one thing to put on the table here is that if you look at someone with two children, they were more likely than not thinking of two or maybe three.

00:17:49.660 Most people don't want one child.

00:17:51.480 Even those who do have one child don't recommend overall having one child.

00:17:57.020 It's the hardest.

00:17:58.220 Yeah, nothing against one child, you know, parents at all.

00:18:02.940 It's just it's not the general preference.

00:18:05.480 Not, you know, those who are three, we're probably thinking of three or four, maybe two.

00:18:10.220 Those who are four, we're probably thinking of four or five, maybe three.

00:18:12.700 That's the way it goes.

00:18:14.000 Those with no children, we're not generally thinking of zero or one.

00:18:18.600 Oh, that's a fascinating point.

00:18:22.480 Most of those were thinking of two, three, four plus, just like everybody else.

00:18:26.060 Wow.

00:18:26.460 So if you like the kind of the power of that group, if they were to have that first child, in terms of changing the overall birth rates of nations is much higher than increasing six to seven children, for example.

00:18:42.920 So how much of this do you think, if you were going to say, is dating market failure?

00:18:47.760 Now, when I say dating market failure, I don't just mean finding a partner.

00:18:50.260 I mean, the men who are on the market are not what the women who are on the market want.

00:18:53.980 And the women who are on the market are not what the men on the market want. 1.00

00:18:56.460 And how much of it do you think is missed expectations around timing?

00:19:01.520 Well, I think it's both.

00:19:02.880 I'm glad I'm not in the dating market right now.

00:19:05.180 It certainly doesn't look any easier.

00:19:06.440 But I think another reality, you know, whether it's these days or decades ago, is that when you're in your 20s, you can build a life together.

00:19:16.340 By the time you get into your 30s, you've got your career, you know, pretty much what city you want to live in.

00:19:22.220 You have your friend group.

00:19:23.460 You have your hobbies.

00:19:24.600 Now you need someone to match those things as well as someone you actually like and want to spend the rest of your life and have kids with.

00:19:31.820 In your 20s, you can build much of those things together.

00:19:34.900 So by definition, the pool of people available is less.

00:19:40.060 Also, the fact that many people have already got married in their 20s, so the pool is less anyways.

00:19:44.600 So by definition, it cannot get easier.

00:19:47.760 And, you know, during the documentary, but certainly after, there have been so many people trying to find that partner struggling with dating apps.

00:19:55.260 But I'm not sure it's just the app's fault.

00:19:57.520 I think it's a timing thing.

00:19:58.840 Therefore, I think it is.

00:20:00.240 You know, if you are looking at the smaller group of people who might match you, who meet all of your criteria, you know, it gets harder and harder.

00:20:11.540 Yeah.

00:20:12.340 And this is definitely something we experienced in our relationship.

00:20:14.900 I do not think Simone and I could have been good partners for each other if we met when we were much older than we did.

00:20:19.640 Yeah.

00:20:20.280 Because you can grow together a lot more when you're early in your career.

00:20:23.800 Yeah.

00:20:24.240 You know, my own experience is to share.

00:20:27.260 I mean, I've dated since I divorced.

00:20:30.060 And, you know, one of the irritations I found is when you're with someone and they're a little older, they will say things like, oh, when I was in my 20s, I had this friend.

00:20:38.240 I had a friend who did this.

00:20:39.220 I had a friend.

00:20:39.940 And you kind of put this map together of all these friends, but you've never met them.

00:20:43.420 You never know who they are.

00:20:44.480 And then later it's like, is that the same friend?

00:20:46.440 It becomes complicated to unravel someone's life and enjoy those conversations instead of having been there and actually recall them together.

00:20:54.240 It's a personal perspective, but again, it doesn't get easier.

00:20:58.600 This is a fascinating way to frame it because this aligns with our experience when we started dating, which is we got rid of almost all of our social network that we had before we started dating, after we started dating.

00:21:09.260 And to an extent, you should almost think of all the socializing you do before you get married or find the person you end up marrying as sort of wasted effort, which might encourage you to find the person you're going to marry earlier.

00:21:21.080 Well, that may or may not work for everybody, but certainly I'm not saying experiences before meeting the right person have no validity at all, but it does make it more complex as time goes on.

00:21:34.980 And you just haven't been there to experience those emotions, those friendships, those experiences, not necessarily together, but to know, oh, yes, I remember you went on that trip with that group of friends.

00:21:45.060 I met those friends and now I understand that story better. So let's say a slightly more shallow series of conversations.

00:21:53.660 I'm curious after you release a documentary, if you've come across any innovations or interventions that give you hope or where you feel like people are recognizing the problem, either with dating markets or starting early enough to have a family or anything related to these declines in fertility, where you're like, oh, wow, like this is a solution that seems to be working well.

00:22:16.760 Or are you really only starting to see people innovate now? I mean, we personally aren't seeing much.

00:22:22.400 So I'm curious to see if you've seen anything in all your travels and interactions.

00:22:26.980 Yeah, a lot. Well, first of all, a lot of things have been tried in the field.

00:22:29.980 I mean, I often do is explain, you know, some great policy that's going to be tried in a certain country and we'll show you all the exceptions as to why that hasn't worked.

00:22:38.840 The one thing I would like to see, because I do believe it will make the biggest difference is within our high school, college textbooks, biology textbooks to just explain when we talk about fertility, which we mostly do, that there's a fertility window.

00:22:53.500 You know, we don't explain that. I'm not sure why that is. Like, why wouldn't we? It's just objective information from science.

00:22:59.520 And I have a pretty good idea why that might be. There's certain people who prefer that young people don't have that information.

00:23:07.280 And I cover that in part of the documentary as to why our education system has really not been sharing the reality of that fertility window.

00:23:16.180 I think that would make a huge difference if young people were prepared for that. But the optimism I get often.

00:23:21.820 I was wondering if you would mind summarizing your thesis here, why the school system is hiding this from people.

00:23:26.020 Yeah. Well, if you look at the U.S. high school system, the biggest educator on population, I'll call them out, organization called Population Connection.

00:23:38.320 They have educated 50,000 U.S. teachers and those U.S. teachers every year are responsible for educating, I believe it's three or four million U.S. high school students.

00:23:50.440 Now, I interviewed the CEO of the organization in the documentary and asked him why he's not including information on falling fertility rates around the world.

00:24:01.660 And his response was, that's not our thing.

00:24:05.040 So they, for example, you know, would be and it's not just them.

00:24:08.240 They happen to be the most prolific. And let me explain briefly the heritage.

00:24:11.600 They were formerly known as ZPG, founded by Paul Ehrlich, the author of the famous Population Bomb book in the late 1960s.

00:24:20.940 They have millions and millions of donations every year from groups of people.

00:24:24.380 I suspect many going back to that time who thought we were about to experience a population bomb.

00:24:29.380 So there's an organization out there educating our children on population matters.

00:24:33.080 And, you know, the kind of things that educate them on are that, you know, that the world's population is starting here, started here in 1800 and then kind of did this.

00:24:41.320 And then they stop there.

00:24:43.000 Why would they stop explaining if they're, you know, if they're trying to be objective about the reality that we know that everything's going to flatten out beyond that time?

00:24:51.660 They don't do that.

00:24:52.760 And when I asked upon that scene online, they try to, you know, say, well, in the year 2100, there's going to be the same number of people as 1970.

00:24:59.300 Yes, but most of those are going to be really all people that society is going to have to support.

00:25:04.640 So there are organizations out there.

00:25:06.920 Another point, you know, if you look at the collection of organizations who share that message, they don't ever come out with messages like South Korea.

00:25:16.900 It's low enough now.

00:25:18.120 Please, please stop your low birth rates and, you know, stabilize it.

00:25:21.280 They keep saying, no, less is more, less is more.

00:25:26.140 And, you know, I'm sorry to get me talking about this.

00:25:28.740 I could talk a long time.

00:25:29.660 But one more thing is, you know, they preach, call it that, a lot about your high birth rates in Africa.

00:25:35.600 Okay, fair enough, you might say.

00:25:37.500 But they don't preach about that so much in Africa, maybe not at all in Africa.

00:25:40.980 They preach to young, you know, American, European high school students.

00:25:45.280 And they say, look at this.

00:25:46.980 Think about this.

00:25:48.000 Those were the exact words they got.

00:25:49.560 They want U.S. high school kids to think about how many children are in Africa.

00:25:54.460 That is, you know, to me, that's propaganda.

00:25:56.520 That's like, think about having less kids yourself to balance out what's happening in Africa. 0.96

00:26:02.500 So to me, it's, it's high, you know, best, I would say it's, you know, partial information.

00:26:09.700 I would be, I'm open to go much further than that and just say it's ideological.

00:26:13.900 It's driven by mindsets of the 60s that haven't changed and needs to stop.

00:26:17.880 Yeah, well, let's talk about who, who has, because you talked a bit about this, but I just find it's really interesting.

00:26:22.980 What have been unexpected supporters that you've had?

00:26:25.620 Any, any groups where you're like, I did not expect this group to be as happy about this.

00:26:30.720 Not, not as happy about your work, not that situation.

00:26:34.460 I'm not sure unexpected, to be honest with you.

00:26:37.860 I mean, there have been a wide range of groups, religious groups.

00:26:41.460 Groups that support, you know, marriage have supported this a lot.

00:26:44.860 So I'm agnostic as a person, I, you know, marriage is probably a good thing for most people, I think, but I'm not certain of that.

00:26:51.400 I don't try to get into those moralistic judgments at all.

00:26:55.280 So, you know, while I'm happy that they are supporters, well, let me just call it one more thing.

00:27:01.460 I think it's, it might not be a direct answer to your question, but I have been on quite a number of conservative podcasts and conservative TV stations.

00:27:11.380 I do not choose to be on conservative podcasts or TV stations.

00:27:15.960 They're the only ones who want to talk about this.

00:27:18.740 I mean, just literally no one from the left wants to talk about it.

00:27:22.820 Yet this impacts the left at least as much as the right.

00:27:26.200 You know, if you look at education levels, I would argue that there's more people on the left are left in a state of unplanned childlessness.

00:27:33.680 So it's terribly sad that some people want to want to talk about this.

00:27:38.780 Yeah.

00:27:38.960 As we often say, this is the right to global warming, which doesn't mean that either one of them is a true or untrue.

00:27:47.320 But just what we're saying is it's very toxic for the other side to talk about it.

00:27:50.500 It's so much so I actually had a professor at Harvard, which was talking to me.

00:27:54.560 She's like, I follow you guys was my secret account, my secret Twitter account, because I don't want my students to know.

00:27:58.900 But even so, one of my students somehow accused me of being a pronatalist, like accused her of potentially being a pronatalist, which she saw as being threatening to her tenure.

00:28:09.660 That was insane to me that it has become that hyperbolic that being a out pronatalist could lose you your tenure at a major college.

00:28:20.700 So my own solution to that, I actually believe it's a good idea.

00:28:23.580 So let me share it with you.

00:28:24.620 I call myself a pannatalist.

00:28:26.880 Pannatalist, meaning I equally support those who don't want children to live a life without children and to support those who do want children.

00:28:35.600 So perhaps anyone who feels conflicted can come out with something like that and actually say they support both sides because people who don't want children should not become parents.

00:28:44.740 They're probably not making very good parents.

00:28:46.120 They're something that want to look after children. 1.00

00:28:47.860 That's fine.

00:28:48.360 Yeah.

00:28:48.840 No, we really agree.

00:28:50.700 In fact, one of the reasons why we're really fighting for this is we know that basically reproductive choice and especially the option to not have children if you don't want to is largely contingent on those who are feminist, those who do support reproductive choice, having kids and sort of carrying their culture forward into the future.

00:29:10.500 Because if in the end we end up in a future where only those who don't support these things are around, people aren't really going to have as much choice as they did in the past.

00:29:19.040 And we totally agree that, you know, not everyone is cut out to be a parent, not everyone wants to be a parent, not everyone's lucky enough to be in a situation to be a good parent.

00:29:29.800 I mean, I think, like, for example, I would have been a terrible parent or I would have preferred to not have any kids at all in the vast majority of permutations of my potential life.

00:29:38.640 Only because I met Malcolm, who's like absolutely perfect for me, am I really excited to be a parent and I would not want to be in a world where I would be forced to be a parent otherwise.

00:29:46.720 So, yeah, we really support that.

00:29:48.580 And it's I mean, I arguably this is much more a problem for the hyper progressive groups that don't support pernatalism, either out of environmental concern or out of reproductive choice concern or the desire to not have kids than it is for the conservative groups that that support marriage, that support having families.

00:30:07.020 They're going to be fine, largely speaking.

00:30:09.800 And we really agree with you on the like an armed movement does not take a stance on things like do you need to be married to have kids?

00:30:15.880 We say everyone right now that is attempting a different cultural solution to having kids is attempting a hypothesis.

00:30:21.840 Our hypothesis is that intergenerationally that won't work like it'll lead to lower fertility rates and those groups will die out.

00:30:27.560 But I don't think that we, you know, time passes that judgment, not us.

00:30:32.080 Yes.

00:30:32.380 I don't think people realize how quickly the transformation will happen.

00:30:37.880 You know, of course, year by year, things look the same, even decade by decade to some extent.

00:30:44.440 But, you know, I call this a tipping point because, you know, as you as birth rates get lower, you know, I have a thing that we share with you.

00:30:52.160 It's it's it's in the second part of the documentary.

00:30:55.240 That's not it yet.

00:30:55.780 But I call it the societal half life, the time taken for low birth rates to materialize and half the number of babies being born.

00:31:05.260 And most of the industrialized world right now, that's somewhere around 50 to 70 years.

00:31:10.620 I mean, halving the number of newborns in 50 to 70 years is frighteningly fast.

00:31:16.140 Now, if you so what will happen is it will be those groups, perhaps ideologies, those who have more children, those will be the ones.

00:31:23.640 For the one thing we do know is that religiosity is associated with higher birth rates, but also, you know, that that can be that that's inheritable.

00:31:32.800 So I agree with you.

00:31:35.220 I would really caution anyone who thinks that we're going to glide down to a planet with fewer people.

00:31:42.340 We're all going to have more space and life's going to be beautiful.

00:31:44.920 No, the world's going to be a very, very different place.

00:31:48.320 Civilizations will have changed and people may not like what we're heading for.

00:31:52.180 Yeah, as we often point out, not only is this relevant to the economy, but when a developed economy collapses or goes downhill, it's much worse than it is at equivalent economic levels if it's developing.

00:32:04.920 And we keep pointing to South Africa as a good example of what a developed economy looks like as it collapses, because, you know, you get rolling blackouts, you get security issues that are much higher than equivalent income levels in developing countries.

00:32:17.800 And we have other videos that talk on this.

00:32:20.720 But, yeah, this idea that this all can just happen quietly in the background, I think, is completely delusional when you look at the statistics on how much we rely on the young to support the old in our society. 0.78

00:32:34.160 Completely.

00:32:34.860 And, you know, we've really lost, you know, the sense of community has disappeared, really.

00:32:39.400 And, you know, my own feeling is that national governments have only a minor role to play in the solution.

00:32:44.080 The real solution will come from, you know, people, young people, by definition, you're finding communities and societies where they're able to have the children they want to have.

00:32:53.560 And a lot of the problems are there's no one around health support to be role models, et cetera.

00:32:58.980 So a lot does have to change, but we've got to be very careful that it changes in, you know, a positive way, because, I mean, for example, can I share now, you know, in Iran right now, Iran's got very low birth rates.

00:33:11.840 It's terrible, but they, I think, two years ago, banned vasectomies to increase birth rates.

00:33:18.080 I'm hearing, I don't know if it's correct, but I'm hearing that the number of vasectomies in China has fallen by over 80%.

00:33:24.160 There's no specific order about that, but that's how things like that will happen.

00:33:28.780 And, you know, some people speculate that at some point there will be a ban on abortions in China to force birth rates up.

00:33:34.180 So seeing things go down too fast will likely have a counterreaction in many cultures that, you know, people should not be gleeful that we're, you know, heading to smaller populations.

00:33:45.940 There will be a lot of turbulence along the way.

00:33:48.740 Well, we really don't like those policies because, you know, when we look at when these policies have been implemented in the past, they don't actually solve the problem.

00:33:55.960 They may cause a temporary boost and then a huge depression in the future because, you know, all these people then associate fertility with coercion and with, you know, being low class and all these things.

00:34:06.920 Like when this happened in Romania, horrible fallout after that.

00:34:10.040 So it's a scary, it's a scary world.

00:34:13.100 And I think something that's captured in your work that's not captured in any of our work, and our viewers know this about this, we're completely heartless and we are incapable of approaching things from a heartful matter.

00:34:22.960 But your work really shows the amount of genuine human pain that this is causing and the amount of people who wanted larger families than they had, but due to social and cultural reasons, were not able to find partners that they were satisfied with.

00:34:41.340 And I think when we look at today, you know, whether it's on TikTok, whether it's the gender wars or everything like that, it's really easy to like fractionalize yourself and have teams and everything like that and dunk on women or dunk on men or, you know, whatever.

00:34:55.640 But these lead to behavior patterns which make long-term partnerships really unviable.

00:35:01.900 And it's, I think, one of the things that is causing this.

00:35:05.160 And so, and I think that this is more of a progressive issue than anything else.

00:35:08.860 These people on TikTok who are gladly stolen them not having kids because they get virtual, like, like social points for that.

00:35:16.780 They get validation for that and they move up within their local social hierarchy because it's seen as a high value thing to, to, to signal.

00:35:24.320 Without considering the long-term pain they might be causing to impressionable young people by convincing them that they will always feel the way about kids they do in their early 20s.

00:35:35.240 And that's one of the hardest things about kids is when you really, really want kids is generally after it's, it's easy to have them.

00:35:44.220 You need to have been preparing for the way you feel about the world to shift before it happens.

00:35:50.060 In the same way that our school system prepares us for puberty before we go through it, you need to be prepared for this like baby puberty beforehand.

00:35:56.740 Because if you don't have a partner, by the time this biological flip happens, you know, there really isn't anything you can do at that stage often.

00:36:05.300 Yeah, I agree with that.

00:36:06.900 Again, I get confidence from just seeing younger people watch the documentary because I think people figure this out for themselves.

00:36:12.420 I don't think we have to, you know, say more than just like hear examples of people with regrets.

00:36:17.180 And people have, people generally aren't aware of that, certainly haven't seen those emotions.

00:36:21.960 And if I could explain, I didn't go, I mean, I was, I come from the world of data science.

00:36:26.200 I don't know if your viewers know that, but I'm not a filmmaker.

00:36:28.600 I ended up throwing myself into this project, realizing that something was out in the data.

00:36:33.020 Why would all these countries have falling birth rates at the exact same time?

00:36:36.400 And the data itself wasn't answering this question.

00:36:40.140 I thought I needed to talk to people about what's happening in their lives.

00:36:42.740 A one-year project to film in a few countries turned into a seven-year project filmed in 24 countries and 230 people I interviewed.

00:36:51.340 But what kept happening when I met people mid, well, mid 40s, 50s, certainly, much more often than not, these emotions of some level of regret would come out.

00:37:04.640 I'm not saying everybody's life was completely grief ridden.

00:37:08.340 That wouldn't be true.

00:37:09.480 But there's grief there for the vast majority.

00:37:11.740 In some cases, that grief was intense, very, very intense.

00:37:16.460 And, you know, that's why I kept going, because I felt these people are telling these stories for the first time.

00:37:23.180 You know, it wasn't that they're sharing these emotions, even with their close friends and family.

00:37:26.640 I opened up, you know, the topic.

00:37:29.920 So I think people, when they see that this is a reality, which is why I think these antinatalists are so, you know, upset with my documentary, because, you know, it goes against the idea that people, you know.

00:37:41.020 So a couple of other things that I just throw in.

00:37:43.840 I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s, you know, antinatalists were, you know, I call them antinatalists.

00:37:50.400 Antinatalism to me is clear, though some people define it in different ways.

00:37:53.480 It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children.

00:37:57.200 So this was to do with the world running out of food.

00:38:00.720 And then the world didn't run out of food with the Green Revolution. 0.97

00:38:03.400 And then we came about the environment.

00:38:04.980 Maybe that was appropriate.

00:38:07.120 But let's not get into that conversation because it's complicated.

00:38:10.500 But my point is, right now they're shifting again.

00:38:13.740 I can see the shift.

00:38:15.560 The problem now is the patriarchy.

00:38:17.900 And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see the population maximizing right now.

00:38:27.380 So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view, but preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment.

00:38:34.580 It's about men forcing themselves on women.

00:38:37.960 We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because, you know, they have an agenda.

00:38:42.740 They are ideologists.

00:38:43.740 And I want to say one more thing that you use in your statement there about the people who don't have children.

00:38:49.440 And do you know if you go online, you will find comments, tweets between those extreme, they are extreme people who don't like children.

00:39:02.240 I can't call them anti-natalists.

00:39:04.560 Attacking people who are childless by choice.

00:39:08.860 Saying, why are you complaining about not having children?

00:39:11.600 You can get out of bed anytime, you know, you can have all the vacations, stop this.

00:39:16.880 And the bigness and the attacks that those people are receiving, I mean, it's just horrendous.

00:39:23.840 So, you know, that's why it's very clear to me, okay, these are ideologists who don't care about people's feelings.

00:39:28.820 They don't care about facts.

00:39:29.920 They don't care about people's suffering.

00:39:31.960 They just want to pretend that human nature doesn't exist and women don't have children, which is just nonsense. 1.00

00:39:38.460 Yeah, well, I think one of the things that I often mention on the show is if you're at a party in New York with a bunch of, you know, wealthy progressives, which we often go to, and you bring up the concept like fertility rates, uncommon for someone to say.

00:39:54.980 In fact, I'd say it almost happens every time if you're in a group of five or more for someone to say, is it really so bad if humans go extinct?

00:40:01.100 And I think that this concept has been normalized among a large part of our society, and they know they're not supposed to talk about it publicly.

00:40:08.520 I mean, some do, but I think it's more commonly held than people would think.

00:40:14.420 Yeah, well, you know, if that's true on that scale, it explains a lot of these ideologists.

00:40:21.720 I think they're concealing their real motives or their, you know, benefactors maybe have those motives in terms of setting up these organizations.

00:40:30.660 It would explain a lot because they never change the message.

00:40:33.380 It's always about fewer children.

00:40:34.840 There's one organization that just promotes the idea, have fewer children than you want.

00:40:39.600 And I asked them, well, what if you only want one child?

00:40:42.140 They didn't respond.

00:40:43.400 And then one of their own donors jumped in and said, you know, that's, you know, just unacceptable.

00:40:48.380 Everybody has a human right to have a child.

00:40:50.480 They don't care.

00:40:51.120 It's just have fewer children down to zero.

00:40:53.660 It's endless.

00:40:54.420 I mean, there's the other one about the environment.

00:40:56.200 Gosh, I could talk about this for a long time.

00:40:58.280 There's so many examples.

00:40:59.120 They try and make us think that people without children are happier. 0.96

00:41:04.140 You look at the research, it doesn't show that at all.

00:41:06.740 They're so selective in that, that the impact on the environment of having a child is much bigger than all of these other things.

00:41:14.660 You look at the research and it doesn't support that at all.

00:41:17.460 So there's people out there with agendas.

00:41:21.580 Yeah, absolutely.

00:41:22.980 It's interesting to me, though, as I hear you talk about your experiences, I feel like you've come across so many more pronatal people than we do.

00:41:30.120 And I wonder if that's because of your international focus and creating this documentary, whereas, like, Malcolm and I are mostly interacting with probably coastal elites in the United States.

00:41:42.020 And the antinatalism among that group is much more vehement than that.

00:41:47.020 I've never heard someone say, oh, everyone has a right to have one kid.

00:41:49.760 And what we're more used to hearing is, wouldn't it be better if there were just no more humans at all, which is really sobering.

00:41:57.200 But it's encouraging to hear that, like, even the more skeptical groups that you're coming across are a little bit more friendly to children.

00:42:05.540 I didn't expect to be pleasantly surprised by that.

00:42:08.060 So it does give me some hope.

00:42:10.100 Well, where can we point people that would be most useful to your efforts?

00:42:12.900 Well, we have a website called birthgap.org.

00:42:16.820 We've got around 4,000 members.

00:42:18.880 It's a community just where we share information and thoughts and data that the maps I created, for example, in the documentary are on there.

00:42:25.540 You can direct message me on there.

00:42:27.140 I'm on Twitter at Stephen J. Shaw, S-T-E-P-H-E-N-J-S-H-A-W.

00:42:32.540 And on YouTube, you can find part one.

00:42:34.360 If you search for Birth Gap, the childless world, part one's on there. 0.99

00:42:37.880 And there are actually two more parts that will be out in the months ahead.

00:42:42.900 We are so honored that you took the time to come on with us.

00:42:45.380 And I really hope that we can together continue to grow this movement.

00:42:49.180 And I really love your voice here because it is so orthogonal to ours in its ability to capture the emotions behind all of this.

00:42:57.860 Yeah, you're like the non-sociopath in this movement.

00:43:01.860 Very necessary.

00:43:03.140 We're really, really, really grateful for your work.

00:43:05.040 And please keep us posted on anything we can do to be helpful to you.

00:43:08.240 Thank you. Enjoy the conversation.

Based Camp - November 21, 2023

Public Response To The Birth Gap： With Stephen Shaw

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