Based Camp - These Fertility Stats Chilled Me： This Is Worse Than I Could Have Imagined

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to go over some

00:00:04.040 chilling statistics that I have been looking for for some time at this point.

00:00:08.660 I've always sort of said in the background, because we found a bunch of other statistics

00:00:12.680 on how few Gen Z plan to have kids today. And I've always been like, what was that number

00:00:18.440 historically? And what percent actually completed having no kids? But I could never find that

00:00:23.960 number historically. And I finally found it. And the number is so much worse than you would

00:00:27.280 imagine. Okay, let's go into this. So if we go at a few surveys here, from 2018 to 2023,

00:00:34.700 a Pew survey looking at adults under 50 who said they plan to have no kids, the numbers went from

00:00:39.560 37% to 47% in 2023. So we're looking at around half in that survey, okay? Now, and this is Pew.

00:00:47.440 If we go to Teen Vogue, you'll get slightly better results. Teen Vogue says for millennials and Gen Z,

00:00:52.860 about a third plan to have no kids. If you look at research by one poll into a thousand people

00:01:00.580 aged 18 to 34, this was in the UK, it found that over one in four had ruled out having a baby

00:01:07.280 completely. And over 50% were unlikely to have a baby. Okay. Okay. So you get the idea here. So

00:01:13.780 we're looking at like, maybe on the good side, like 31%, maybe up over 50%.

00:01:18.020 But suffice it to say, having kids, or I guess the intention to not have any kids or expectation

00:01:24.460 that one will not have any kids is higher now than it ever was before.

00:01:28.400 Right. So I was trying to understand what did that look like historically?

00:01:31.860 Yeah.

00:01:32.560 Historically, about 5% of women intended to be childless.

00:01:35.600 Ah!

00:01:36.280 Is about 15% ending up without children.

00:01:39.240 Wow.

00:01:40.060 And it looked at many years of data to get this. So this is like over a big swath of data. It

00:01:45.360 wasn't just in that year. Like obviously it's been going up. It looked across countries.

00:01:48.800 It looked across regions. Now where this gets chilling is that means that at a historic level,

00:01:56.020 about 5% of people, women specifically in a country plan to have no kids. And the number

00:02:00.920 who actually end up without any kids, it's three times that. So 15%.

00:02:04.520 Oh no.

00:02:06.200 So there's always been a pretty big gap between people's intentions and reality when it comes

00:02:11.680 to kids.

00:02:13.200 Yeah. How do you even do the math when 31% say they want no kids or when 50% say they

00:02:19.320 want no kids? You can't just triple it. 1.00

00:02:22.300 Yeah. Well, and I'm thinking about all these other factors like the Canadian housing market,

00:02:27.320 which is so insane. I'm obsessed with this new account that just compares really crappy

00:02:34.040 houses in Canada with tassels in Europe that cost less.

00:02:37.840 And this just, there are so many headwinds that might make people delay having kids.

00:02:43.200 I think that's all nonsense.

00:02:45.760 Well, but I'm still thinking that like, there are, there are some factors. This definitely

00:02:49.820 happened with us where we're like, we're going to start our family when, and ours may not have

00:02:57.480 been as solid.

00:02:59.160 We moved to Peru, Simone, so that things were cheaper. Like you can move these people who

00:03:04.560 actually-

00:03:04.920 I'm sorry. Wait, you think people are reasonable? You think people are willing to make sacrifices

00:03:09.380 to have kids?

00:03:09.780 I understand, but I'm pointing out that I don't think it's healthy to buy into their fantasies

00:03:14.580 of, I can't afford a house in Canada, therefore I have to genetically commit seppuku. You know, 0.93

00:03:21.300 like that is not, no, no. That's a silly, silly argument by people who do not want to think 0.99

00:03:27.880 outside the box or do the extra work that's required of our generation. And as we've seen 0.98

00:03:32.700 historically, you know, the, the numbers just aren't that correlated.

00:03:36.720 Yeah. Uh, I'm at least those who have a lot of kids are having them for ideological reasons

00:03:41.460 and not because it's the right time or it's convenient.

00:03:43.920 But the point I was trying to make with this for our listeners is when you talk to people

00:03:51.100 and they go, how bad is it going to be? But when people wonder why I just keep being like,

00:03:55.720 no, you don't get how bad this drop is going to be. If you're looking at historical data

00:04:01.400 to attempt to predict it, a lot of people just like blow it off. They're like, oh,

00:04:05.960 it couldn't possibly be that bad. It couldn't possibly be almost nobody.

00:04:11.840 And that's what it might turn out to be for this next generation.

00:04:17.460 Especially among educated groups, especially among groups with any degree of, you know,

00:04:23.440 intellectual freedom.

00:04:25.580 You can see that.

00:04:27.140 I mean, I've got other stuff I want to go over here, but just in case people are wondering,

00:04:30.620 if you're looking at me and you go, Malcolm, your face looks insane right now. What happened

00:04:34.640 to you? I have had a horrible flu and have extremely swollen lymph nodes right here. I'm

00:04:41.440 going to a doctor and maybe a hospital tonight. So we'll see, but I'm never going to not give you

00:04:45.860 guys an episode. And we're going to go into more stats here in just a second.

00:04:49.720 Talk about dedication to the cause. Malcolm, I have massive respect for you and I'm really sorry.

00:04:54.400 So right here, I'm going to put some graphs on screen. These graphs cover intended actual

00:05:00.860 childlessness in percentages and then excess childness in percentages of the intended

00:05:07.460 childness. And you can see it by different countries going up. If you're looking at the

00:05:12.340 countries that had lower kids, those are now all of them had less kids than they had anticipated,

00:05:19.500 but some had like way less than they had anticipated. The ones with the most less were

00:05:25.520 Italy at the very top, then Germany, Greece, Spain, Austria, the Slovenian.

00:05:31.900 Huh.

00:05:32.760 What you'll notice here is a lot of Catholic and Eastern European ones that historically,

00:05:37.880 well, one, they don't use IBF as much. So of course they're going to be well below what they

00:05:41.320 had anticipated.

00:05:41.660 Yeah. When you take any Catholic country that has people marrying later and later, they'll have 0.97

00:05:48.500 high expectations and then they'll refuse to use help. And then they end up with these

00:05:53.920 abysmal fertility rates. Yeah. You'll actually see here that their fertility rate was 20% lower than

00:05:59.360 they had anticipated.

00:06:00.740 Oh man. Oh.

00:06:02.800 Now, if you're looking at the countries where it was not so bad, you're looking at countries like

00:06:06.900 Bulgaria, Lithuania, the United States, the Czech Republic, France, Latvia, Norway, Estonia,

00:06:13.500 Hungary, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom. So again, it's, it's, this is one of those clear

00:06:22.660 Protestant Catholic splits here. And I think that people do not understand how much these traditions

00:06:28.820 are leading to their own extinction. And it's part of why I put so little thought into like where

00:06:33.920 they're going to be in the future, because right now I just don't see any way that they

00:06:36.980 end up relevant players with the fertility rates being what they are and the, and the challenges being

00:06:42.380 what they are. You know, people will be like, well, in my community, it works out. And it's like,

00:06:45.580 well, as I often point out, I'm like, well, do you have a lot of deconverts? And they're like,

00:06:48.880 well, you know, with the kids and it's like, yeah, well, that's like saying here's the battlefield.

00:06:53.220 And I'm like, wow, it looks like a lot of people died. And they're like, oh, we don't count the dead.

00:06:57.040 Obviously. It's like, no, that's what failing look. That's what losing someone looks like.

00:07:01.380 Right. You know? So I think that's, that's a really important thing to look at here. Now,

00:07:04.880 if we're going to read into what's going on in this graph, we've got grouping women into three 0.98

00:07:09.340 groups by education attainment. We see that on average women in categories in almost all countries

00:07:15.760 wish for two plus children enough to keep the population from collapsing. However, the more

00:07:21.180 educated women, those with more money, more stable marriages, larger houses obtain relatively fewer 0.99

00:07:28.260 than desired. So the more educated women, you see even more of a gap here than just having low kids 1.00

00:07:33.720 is that they have less kids than they anticipated again, because you need fertility technology if you're 1.00

00:07:38.360 waiting that long. They did also generally desire fewer, but this is not the main driver of the

00:07:43.560 dysgenic pattern. So them desiring fewer is less important to their low fertility rate than just 0.89

00:07:49.080 them having less than they anticipated. But rather their inability to get what they want,

00:07:54.980 we can also redo this using actual intelligence data, USA 10 item vocabulary test. And this comes from

00:08:02.640 a series of reviews of studies done by Emil Kierkegaard, who's been on fire recently with some really

00:08:08.280 interesting posts. Yeah, seriously. Now, if we're talking about this old woman problem that I 1.00

00:08:13.480 mentioned, there was a post on Reddit that I thought was really interesting in regards to this.

00:08:18.280 I would point out, though, the argument that Emil Kierkegaard makes is that, look, women do want kids.

00:08:25.920 The problem is that they're just having as many kids as they want. And I think the counter argument

00:08:30.600 that you're trying to make here is, whoa, you're looking at really old numbers. You're looking at numbers

00:08:35.500 long ago of when women wanted kids, and now far fewer women want kids, and those who even still 1.00

00:08:42.400 want them are having them way later. So everything's just so much worse than you would think. And this

00:08:47.760 current meme that has been circling around some pronatalist discourse of like, oh, just give the

00:08:52.940 women what they want. Like, make it easy for them to have babies. Yeah, I understand why it's an appealing 0.99

00:08:57.180 narrative, right? But it's not an accurate narrative. Not accurate as of now, yeah. Not accurate as of now.

00:09:03.420 And I think that a bigger problem is just being unrealistic about when fertility windows are. So

00:09:09.740 this post on the Arnatalism subreddit says, 60% of millennial women are already nearly infertile,

00:09:16.340 and 80% of childless women regret not having kids. Is this why more women are crying on TikTok than ever 1.00

00:09:22.600 before? Millennial women are those born between 1980 and 1994, and 35 is an established cutoff for 0.96

00:09:30.100 fertility. Now he's wrong about this. This is the cutoff for geriatric fertility when you start having

00:09:33.780 very likely problems. Yeah, it's not like you can suddenly stop. You won't have kids after that

00:09:37.820 point. I mean, women have natural pregnancies well into their 40s. Yeah, but we started having problems 0.97

00:09:43.300 in, I'd say, in terms of the genetic material. If we hadn't pre-banked, we would have major problems 0.84

00:09:47.980 if we tried after 35. Yeah. Because we checked the genetic quality of the embryos we produced after 35,

00:09:53.520 and they're just garbage compared to the other ones. So for the vast majority of millennial women, 1.00

00:09:56.840 the ship has already sailed. I'm wondering if this is the first sign of the great tipping point

00:10:01.980 where reality starts to settle in for women. There will eventually be a tipping point where the 1.00

00:10:06.860 majority of women from a generation can no longer have babies. Since men's fertility is unaffected by

00:10:12.320 this, men just date down. Perhaps this is why the most educated demographic of women, older white women, 1.00

00:10:18.240 are also the demographic who consumes the most antidepressants. Let's consider the facts.

00:10:23.620 A childless post-30 woman has about 70 years to live out a life of diminishing the looks and 1.00

00:10:30.340 dopamine hookups from hedonism. Very true. You will not get the same dopamine hookups as you get older

00:10:35.320 if you do not have kids. You are designed to have kids and transition to the next phase. It's very much

00:10:40.960 like swearing off sex at puberty or something. It's just not the way your body is designed to work,

00:10:45.640 and it's not that you can't live that way, or it's an invalid choice, but you will never experience

00:10:50.280 the fullness that other people do. And you may not be able to realize that this is going to hit you

00:10:57.300 because society doesn't talk about it because it's offensive to talk about, right? It makes people sad.

00:11:03.520 And, you know, people who mention it, like if we mention it, people will be like, oh, that's such an

00:11:07.500 offensive thing, you know, a child marrying the choice. And I go, well, I mean, genetically,

00:11:12.260 it's not every one of your ancestors had children. You know, that's why you exist. If something

00:11:18.740 motivated them to do that, you don't think that there's going to be some level of fulfillment in

00:11:22.260 those older, you know, less formal years that is going to come from child rearing.

00:11:27.960 Next, post hookup 20s, a portion of their friend circle will not be able to do girls night out

00:11:34.860 anymore. Essentially, your female friends prioritize their children over you. The guys that are left are 0.99

00:11:41.420 either losers, more words, not theirs, or serial players. The A players got married early or continued 0.95

00:11:48.220 being Hugh Hefner with younger women. The B players were probably selected as the stable

00:11:54.060 providers. No man in his 40s has any reason to compromise his bachelor lifestyle with commitment

00:11:59.640 to an infertile post-peak looks woman. That's absolutely true. The level of market strengths 0.66

00:12:06.020 that these women have really cannot be understated. I mean, what do you do, especially if you're low

00:12:10.680 skill or something like that? You're basically become, if you plan on making money off of dating guys,

00:12:16.500 which a lot of people basically do. A lot of women basically do. They're like, oh yeah, that's how 1.00

00:12:19.460 I make my core income. The, the, you, and I've seen this, I've seen this in my older friends. They

00:12:25.160 basically have to become sex workers. I mean, they don't call it that, right? But you know, they sleep

00:12:29.320 with guys who are sleeping with other people whenever they feel like it. And there's really

00:12:34.140 nothing they can do about it because they have no power. They have no good income stream. They have no, 0.99

00:12:37.740 you know, and this especially happens to divorced women who don't understand that. Like, well, I had kids 1.00

00:12:42.100 and it's, yeah. And then you left the guy who cared about you and the kids. So now you're a sex 0.67

00:12:46.580 worker. Like if you are a home raiser and you are a post-menopausal and you are out there trying to 0.99

00:12:53.920 secure a guy, you can, but it is hard. Especially if you don't have an income. I think that there are

00:13:00.980 pockets of men who are post-divorce, post-widow, who are kind people who really do just want a monogamous

00:13:11.200 partner. Not necessarily because they're low value, but honestly, for many people, just like

00:13:15.960 either they're more traditional or they're not keen to spend all that energy. And I think that

00:13:23.140 it's possible for people to find someone, but it is a lot harder and people are not, I think the more

00:13:28.480 important problem here is people are not realistic about their fertility windows, both women and men.

00:13:34.160 And that is one thing about that Reddit post you read that gets my goat, that whoever wrote it was

00:13:39.620 clearly not aware of the fact that male fertility does diminish. And the genetic quality of

00:13:49.940 babies conceived with older sperm is lower. And like whenever we hit dinner parties, the first thing

00:13:59.340 I'm always doing with like young men who show up, I'm like heavy frozen ear sperm, heavy frozen ear 0.87

00:14:04.220 sperm. And they walk away, I'm sure thinking I'm the creepiest woman in the entire world. 0.99

00:14:08.240 But it's kind of their fault.

00:14:11.040 I particularly love that stuff. They're like, oh, this woman gets it. 1.00

00:14:14.300 But it's their fault if they have children with worse health outcomes because they waited

00:14:20.080 and they failed to do the easiest thing they could possibly do. I mean, for women, it's pretty 0.58

00:14:25.960 expensive and difficult to freeze eggs. And the outcome is a lot worse. You can freeze, you know,

00:14:31.560 40 eggs and maybe that would only, you know, produce a small number of embryos. But for men,

00:14:36.340 it's just so much easier. So yeah, it does. The bigger issue here is people not being aware of

00:14:43.300 their fertility window and not getting married. I wouldn't even overly recommend freezing sperm. 0.95

00:14:48.240 Just find a partner. Like really, really, you need a partner quite early if you want to have a large

00:14:53.680 Yeah. And like who wants to raise kids when they're super old? You can't chase after them as easily or

00:15:01.000 Well, I mean, I think that's actually one of the best options for the sort of post-wall women 1.00

00:15:05.620 out there who are no longer fertile. Because remember, like that's what creates attractiveness.

00:15:09.640 That's why women all of a sudden start looking so like unattractive after like 45 to most men. 1.00

00:15:14.240 And men, you know this, you know this. When you look, you're like, oh, this is like a different

00:15:17.520 category of thing. This is not something I'm lusting after unless they like taxidermied themselves.

00:15:21.960 But because what you're looking at is, is this, is this breedable? Is this, is this submissive

00:15:27.200 and breedable is the question that goes through unless your destiny. And then you're like, is this

00:15:30.940 dominant and breedable? Sorry. That episode did well. Okay. So next here, I want to go over a graph

00:15:40.860 that I'm gonna put on the screen. It says the gap between ideal and realized fertility among women with

00:15:46.340 different cognitive levels. And you see, it goes from, you know, you know, a couple standard

00:15:52.480 deviations at one end, a couple standard deviations at the other end. And what you see is the gap is

00:15:57.780 huge, especially once you get over the sort of 50% mark and really big at the highest level of

00:16:03.040 intelligence. Which means if you are intelligent, you should be able to clean up within the next

00:16:09.440 generation. Well, if you combine that intelligence with a can-do attitude and a lot of

00:16:16.240 initiative, which doesn't necessarily correlate. There are so many incredibly smart people we know

00:16:21.960 who aren't getting it done. So. So true. Quick, because in the discord, somebody was asking this,

00:16:30.720 and I actually thought this was an interesting question to, you know, focus on just a little

00:16:33.400 bit. Okay. They were saying they'd always wondered what IQ you and I were. So I can provide them a bit

00:16:39.600 of color on that. So Simone, just like, well, for example, when we did her autism test, no prep, 0.81

00:16:44.800 no extra work, no extra time, no extra anything, just goes out, does the test, ends up in the top

00:16:50.700 0.5% of the verbal section. It was a nonverbal section. I think she was top 90%. For me, I've

00:16:57.660 never done one, but I relate to intelligence tests in a pretty unique way, which is to say that,

00:17:04.460 you know, whether an intelligence environment's in a pretty unique way, which is I get a lot better

00:17:09.300 over time. And I know you're not supposed to as IQ. It's just, I'm very good with persistence and

00:17:14.060 learning patterns. So, you know, in high school, for example, I started my high school in the bottom

00:17:18.880 half of my class. Like a lot of people don't know that. Like, yeah, I graduated near like the top,

00:17:22.960 tippy top, but I started in the bottom half. And, and, and this in, in, in Stanford business school,

00:17:29.060 yeah, I graduated near the tippy top of the class, but I started so bad. They were thinking about

00:17:33.280 kicking me out. When I did my GMAT, which is a testing to get into Stanford business school,

00:17:39.180 I went to the GMAT testing service thing that you can do where you can like practice for it.

00:17:44.400 It was like a group of people. And people like actually laughed, like actually laughed in the

00:17:48.720 room when I said, I plan to go to Stanford business school. For people who don't know,

00:17:52.420 that's like the top business school by a dramatic margin. And they were like, like much harder than

00:17:56.420 Harvard, for example. And they were like, Oh my God, like, what do you mean? Like you are, I mean,

00:18:00.960 I remember I was like 35% on tests and stuff like that in the class. I was by far the bottom. I hadn't,

00:18:07.120 I hadn't done the full reading beforehand. I hadn't, you know, and so then year after year,

00:18:12.800 because I started this at a young age, I started this midway through college. And that was the

00:18:16.160 other thing. All the other people were older, but I was like, okay, I'll think ahead. I'll plan ahead.

00:18:19.740 That's just always the way I've done things. And I'll just practice this test every single summer

00:18:23.860 for years. And then I ended up being in the top 0.5% as well. Eventually, eventually that was in

00:18:30.860 verbal. And I think in math, I might've been in the top 98% if I remember correctly, but it's been a

00:18:38.580 while. But what I would say is I don't think that I'm like naturally, whatever, whatever my genetic

00:18:44.200 coding is around IQ, it is not the generic brilliance coding. Any thoughts before I go further?

00:18:48.740 Just to reiterate that those who are rather smart, it does look like from the data that they do the

00:18:57.500 worst on sort of performing with their fertility intentions. So yeah, very, very bad, which,

00:19:03.560 you know, it might actually be that this, whatever weird, like grit type intelligence I have, which is

00:19:08.320 just forward thinking, not leaving things to later and like a ton of aggressive action. It might be

00:19:14.040 the very thing that is causing me to do well on some tests and get into advanced, like academic

00:19:18.900 environments or that start the pro natalist movement. Or, you know, as Kevin Dolan says, like my

00:19:23.620 weird superpowers, I'll have like this crazy idea of like, oh, I'm going to start a religion and I'll 0.99

00:19:27.220 just fucking do it. You know, oh, I'll start that pro natalist movement. Like, let's do it. 0.97

00:19:31.720 But the point being is, is, is that it might actually be that whatever is correlating with

00:19:35.920 what people think of as intelligence in me is what correlated to my ridiculous fertility rate.

00:19:41.260 Yeah. And I would imagine that the reason why intelligence tends to correlate with lower

00:19:47.080 fertility is, is people who aren't quite intelligent are incentivized to lean into the systems that

00:19:53.820 utilize intelligence, which are like high paying jobs that demand all your time and high educational

00:20:00.060 degrees and all of these things encourage you to delay.

00:20:02.480 Yeah. Well, and this is the other advantage of me is I am pathologically lazy. Like it's interesting.

00:20:08.320 I'm like pathologically hardworking when I believe like I have a reason to do something,

00:20:11.440 but like for jobs and stuff, I just can't, you know me, Simone. I am, I am very good at outsourcing,

00:20:17.560 let's say. Yeah. Delegating. She'll give me something and then I'll, I'll go to Upwork and

00:20:22.360 I'll be like, is there a way to do this here? Is there a way to do this with AI? Is there a way to

00:20:25.480 do this with? Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to put up another graph here, which I thought was

00:20:31.420 interesting. This one says, if you had to do it over again, how many children would you have

00:20:35.760 or would you not have any at all? So this is really interesting. Among those with children,

00:20:42.700 only 7% said they wish they had had no children. A very low number. Only 7% of people with kids

00:20:50.220 wish they had had no kids. Of those who had no kids, 56% wish they had kids. Right. So you're way

00:20:58.060 more likely to end up regretting your decision if you choose to not have kids than if you choose to

00:21:03.620 have kids. Way more likely, way more likely, 7% to 56%. And if you're like, oh, I can satiate this

00:21:12.260 with one kid. Think again. Nobody wants one kid. You might actually be surprised about this,

00:21:16.400 Simone. People with no kids, only 3% said they wish they had one kid.

00:21:20.760 Well, I imagine also like if, if we were to dig deeper and ask that 7% that regrets their choice

00:21:28.500 of kid, why they regret that choice, it probably had to do with poor partner choice or not being in a

00:21:36.000 good relationship to begin with. I mean, more and more kids are sort of born even before there's a

00:21:40.860 really solid relationship in place at this point. So I would imagine that that 7% has more to say 0.72

00:21:47.700 about the partner than it has to say about actual parenthood. And one thing that you and I didn't

00:21:53.460 realize until we had our kids was just how much our kids are just combined versions of us. So if you

00:22:02.320 find out that you don't really like your partner, you're really like, even if they die or you kill

00:22:11.620 them, but you have kids with them, you're stuck with your partner forever. And that's that I imagine

00:22:18.580 that that's the vast majority of what's going on in that 7%, which is one of those things. It's really 0.91

00:22:23.980 easy to control for. I doubt that this 7% that lastingly doesn't like their kids isn't the kind

00:22:31.360 that was like, Oh, I thought I'd had kids. And then it just happened. And I just wasn't.

00:22:36.500 Well, you know, we had another episode a long time ago where we sort of investigated the phenomenon

00:22:41.120 of parents who regretted having children and we're bragging about it to progressive news media. This was

00:22:45.580 like a thing a couple of years ago. All these articles were running on like, Oh, the parents who regret

00:22:50.140 it. The silent horror, the, you know, and if you, if you read those, I think what you actually see

00:22:57.700 more than people not liking their partner was, was my read was people not liking themselves. And they,

00:23:03.140 they saw in their kids, the things they hated about themselves. Oh, that. Yeah. And a lot of people

00:23:10.860 hate themselves, Simone. So, you know, it's a little surprising that only 7% are like, yeah, I would have

00:23:16.420 had no kids. Well, I think the redeeming thing as much as I hate myself is I see so much of you

00:23:21.640 in our kids, so it makes it okay. Come on. You, you must like you, you really like our kids that

00:23:27.920 are like you. You're taking them, leave them now. You, you used to like them. No, I love them very

00:23:34.880 much. The things about me that I see in them are often the things that drive me the most nuts

00:23:41.840 because they drive me the most nuts about myself. Come on. I mean, but there are, there are things

00:23:47.140 I like about you or tolerate, you know, because you're so sweet and I love that. The other people

00:23:54.520 really like these kids. The one, the one who you're thinking of at the hospital today, at the hospital,

00:23:58.540 the clinic today, the clinic workers were like, he has the best smile I've ever seen.

00:24:04.540 Um, and they just love trying to talk to him because he was doing his little doot-doot-doot 0.96

00:24:09.420 dance. He's got a doot. But I, I also found, so if you look at the, among those who had kids,

00:24:17.180 remember I said among those without kids, only 3% wanted one kid. Only 6% wanted one kid,

00:24:21.840 which I also thought was pretty interesting. And, and you see, you know, like four to six kids.

00:24:26.880 Let's, let's see the math here really quickly. So you got, yeah, of people who have had kids,

00:24:36.180 24% wish they had had four or more. Of people who haven't had kids, 10% wish they had had four

00:24:45.040 or more. Do you think a lot of this is men? Cause a constant thing that we come across,

00:24:50.480 like even at the pro natalist conference is men who'd be like, oh yeah, I wish I had more kids,

00:24:56.380 but it's not up to just me. And then they like look over at their wife. Who's maybe glaring at

00:25:01.640 them. Do you think this is mostly men who want to have this many kids? Is that what's going on?

00:25:09.320 You know, I don't think it's men. I think it's mostly women, to be honest.

00:25:12.820 Who want to have more? Yeah. When I hear regret over a number of kids, well, I guess I see it about

00:25:18.120 equally in both. A lot of women like screw over men, like in my family and say, oh, you know, 1.00

00:25:23.580 I told you I was going to have X many kids, but I had Y many kids and that's too much work.

00:25:28.180 You know, and I see this over and over again. I think that this is, you know, within everyone.

00:25:33.780 What? We see it a lot with everyone.

00:25:36.520 Well, yeah, I'd say within our culture, within techno puritanism, I'd say it's one of the worst

00:25:40.620 sins you can commit because you, you stole somebody's life. 0.78

00:25:45.460 Oh, you should promise a certain number of children and then renege.

00:25:48.700 And then renege and renegotiate once you're in a position of power. And I think what should

00:25:53.100 happen if people attempt to do this is, is their partner should just leave them to get

00:25:56.820 on their own. Yeah. You'll have to pay child support or whatever, but no, I think it needs

00:26:00.540 to be harsh and it needs to be severe. It needs to learn how extreme it is what they're doing.

00:26:05.280 Like you're, you're, you're trying to create a chilling effect, but I think the data on crime

00:26:10.220 and punishment more or less indicates that chilling effects don't work that well.

00:26:16.040 Okay. Okay. Here's a better solution. If somebody decides voluntarily, but they're capable

00:26:21.060 of continuing to have kids to stop, within techno puritanism, you're allowed a second wife. 0.86

00:26:25.100 Yeah, that makes sense. I, that, the, the, the, well, if you don't want to have kids,

00:26:30.660 then I will find someone who will, it seems to me like a more reasoned.

00:26:34.780 Same with, same with husband. The husband's like, we're going to stop at X many kids. It's like,

00:26:38.460 well, then I guess I need a second husband. Yeah. That makes more sense to me. That sounds

00:26:42.520 like a more practical approach because people need to, yeah, there needs to be like consequences

00:26:46.400 for this. And I think that's a fair consequence. You know, they're like, well, I need more help.

00:26:49.420 Okay. Well, you need more help. Apparently you can't handle this on your own. People used to do this

00:26:53.760 all the time, you know, whether it's because their wives died young or, you know, et cetera. So

00:26:57.100 I don't have as much problem about that, especially given that the person did the worst type of lie

00:27:03.600 possible. The, the cucking somebody lie. Um, and it's not quite cucking. It's like leading

00:27:13.280 along, but again, that's not the primary form of cucking. I mean, you're lowering their genetic

00:27:18.240 success through your misrepresentation. Yeah. It's, I mean, regardless, it's bad. Okay. Next,

00:27:25.420 next graph here. Okay. Okay. So in this graph, younger parents are more likely to wish they've

00:27:30.620 had more children. Overall, if you could turn back time, would you percent 1017 British parents?

00:27:38.180 Okay. So for younger parents have the same number of kids. The number was 46%. Have more children. 0.55

00:27:45.640 The number was 32%. Have fewer children. The number was only 6%. And no children. The number

00:27:51.440 was 2%. So of British young people who had kids, the ones who would prefer no kids, 2% in this younger

00:27:57.440 25 to 49. And that's a pretty, you know, that's like most middle-aged people these days. Right. You

00:28:03.020 know, so again, we're still talking about a group that's already kind of grown up looking in hindsight.

00:28:08.600 And what we're most concerned about now is younger generations that haven't even, haven't yet

00:28:14.240 embarked on their fertility journey yet? Because this is where there's an intervention. 0.68

00:28:18.980 29 years old. What are you talking about? 29 years old. 49 years old. I'm saying these people

00:28:26.080 are old. They're not young people. Yeah. They're not people who haven't engaged yet. They have

00:28:31.500 experienced their full fertility window. Yeah. And I'm saying that doesn't really matter so much.

00:28:36.240 Like they're, you look at older people, for example, I don't understand what you mean by it doesn't 1.00

00:28:39.900 matter. If you look at older people, the numbers are quite different. So if you look at 50 to 64

00:28:44.680 year old parents, you're looking at 56%. So more say that they're happy with the number of kids they

00:28:50.640 had. 29% want more. But in terms of no children at all, it gets up to 5%. And 2% would have had

00:28:57.560 fewer children. If you get to 65 plus, 61%, so the most who are satisfied with the number of kids

00:29:02.800 they've had. 25% would have had more. 3% would have had fewer. And 6% would have had none at all. So the

00:29:08.100 highest number. So like the none at all goes up over time. I can, I know exactly why that's

00:29:12.580 happening. What, just a different type of institution of marriage when these people were getting married?

00:29:18.460 No, it's that they've had the time to see who their kids grew up to be. Oh no. And a number of

00:29:23.200 them are just like those little, that seems reasonable to me. 6% of 5% of parents are just

00:29:28.580 like, after their kids become adults, like, oh. Like, you know what? World would have been better

00:29:33.260 off without you. Yeah. Hmm. But that's a, you know, maybe their fault in terms of, you know,

00:29:37.280 like their own genes, their partner, or their child-rearing abilities. Maybe, maybe they tried

00:29:41.320 a gentle parent, right? And they end up with these psychos. You never know. All right. One in 12 0.98

00:29:47.860 parents regret having children in this graph here. To what extent, if at all, do you regret having

00:29:52.980 children? This is the same study. A great extent, only 1%. A moderate extent, 2%. A small extent,

00:30:01.320 5%. Well, I mean, they really twisted that to make it sound worse than it is. Only 1%

00:30:07.160 a great extent, and only a 2% a moderate extent, and then 5% is that, you know. This is actually

00:30:11.940 interesting. If you look by the, like, age breakdown, 25 to 34-year-olds, great extent,

00:30:18.620 3%. So very low. Moderate extent, 4%, medium. And a small extent, 6%, which is like, I can 0.94

00:30:24.800 understand, especially while the kids are still young. But here's the number that gets interesting

00:30:27.960 to me. The 35 to 44-year-olds, 0% said a great extent. 2% said a moderate extent, so very low

00:30:34.280 numbers. And then a small extent, and actually a pretty high number, 9%. Which, yeah, I can get 0.99

00:30:38.160 that, like ups and downs, right? You know, I've seen national lampoons, family vacations. Then the

00:30:42.540 45 to 54-year-old range, you get 1% a great extent, 2% a moderate extent, and 6% the small extent,

00:30:49.120 which, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then again, you get, for the 55 plus, 0% a great extent,

00:30:53.660 1%, a moderate extent, and then a small extent, 4%. So what you see is just that it is astronomically

00:31:01.800 rare to regret having kids a great extent. If this is something you're thinking about.

00:31:06.680 Again, the risk of things not, yeah. I would love to include in this conversation a discussion of what

00:31:15.720 you would recommend in light of this additional context, just that like young people are

00:31:22.820 heading into such a terrible gap. I think what we need is a holiday

00:31:29.980 called Old Maid's Day, where people get like foam bats. And you know, if you have kids,

00:31:36.340 you get to wear a certain color, like in St. Patrick's Day. And any woman who's not wearing 1.00

00:31:40.300 it as an old maid gets hit in the head with a bat, like a wiffle bat or something to give a good 0.99

00:31:45.000 like donk. So everybody knows that they're donking up society for everyone else. Same

00:31:49.680 with guys. We're going to do this for guys too. So anyone, you know, or people who aren't with

00:31:53.340 their spouses, you know, cause you gotta, you gotta, you can't just have kids with somebody and then

00:31:57.260 disappear. I don't know about national days of hate. I think that carrots are way more powerful

00:32:02.960 than sticks. And I think that this is an evidence supported stance on my part. I think,

00:32:09.180 I think, I think witches are dangerous. Okay. And these women are basically witches and we should 1.00

00:32:15.680 test them in the water to see if they weigh more than a duck. I think that a holiday celebrating 0.98

00:32:23.780 young couples or getting married or something like that would be, would be. I mean, we've got

00:32:31.500 Valentine's day. What's wrong with that? Because Valentine's day right now is more something

00:32:37.720 celebrated by, I would argue, not married people, not committed together people than it is not like

00:32:46.000 it. Valentine's day is a day for hedonists and dilettantes, not for people who are frugal,

00:32:51.240 not for people who are whatever. Right. Because like the only people who are dumb enough to celebrate

00:32:55.700 holiday, it's like Valentine's day are the people who are dumb enough to like spend a premium to take 0.99

00:33:01.340 someone out to dinner that night, you know, or like buy stuff that isn't even that person's 0.96

00:33:07.940 favorite stuff on a day when isn't necessarily the day when they need it. I don't know. I just think

00:33:12.980 it's, it's a hedonist holiday that is more of a misdirection and that also frames relationships

00:33:19.560 around love and especially erotic, romantic love instead of family. And when you and I first

00:33:27.620 talked about shifting families to be more along the lines of our values, we suggested turning the

00:33:35.820 month of February into a month about understanding the meaning and importance of different relationships,

00:33:42.060 colleagues, family, friends, and only there being this tiny, tiny segment for romantic love,

00:33:49.020 because it is one, very fleeting and two, not a good thing to build your life around.

00:33:53.000 Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. We had done it around like our family as well for like

00:33:58.980 celebrate Valentine's day with the kids about like family and why it's important. And I think that's

00:34:04.660 a good way to do it. I also think like in terms of punishing people, you need to punish people before

00:34:10.340 it's too late. Like the idea of punishing people who are already like chronic bachelors or quote unquote

00:34:16.720 old maids, you're missing it. You want to punish someone the first time they appear to be dilettantishly 1.00

00:34:24.540 dating. The first time they're not dating for marriage. Yeah. I think that's a good point.

00:34:29.820 I think also it was influencers to really shame the influencers who are sleeping around and don't

00:34:33.840 have a large family. Yeah. Like, Oh, like, I mean, it should be something that people feel self-conscious

00:34:39.180 about if it, it turns out or looks like they're dating for anything aside from marriage, prompt

00:34:47.060 marriage. I agree. I agree. But again, this is why I like the cuck framing. I think calling them cucks

00:34:51.860 is the way to do this for men, at least for women. And I think, you know, old maid is the tradition, 0.95

00:34:56.180 but up to you. So I, I don't know. I also disagree when I think back to how I grew up. And I think a lot

00:35:06.780 of women are like this, you, you kind of want to check the boxes and marriage was just never one 1.00

00:35:12.280 of the boxes. Well, that's what I'm saying. You make it a box by applying shaming and status.

00:35:16.640 No, by applying status. Yeah. Shaming. Not really. It's not like I traveled because I felt I would be

00:35:25.380 shamed if I didn't. Yeah. But you didn't say things that are like anti-DEI because you were afraid of

00:35:30.980 being shamed. You didn't question the, you know, trans narrative because you were afraid of being

00:35:34.560 shamed. I wasn't afraid of being shamed for that, actually. At all. I just didn't know I was allowed

00:35:42.300 to hold certain opinions. I don't think you understand what like membership in the cult feels

00:35:47.100 like. You could never, ever possibly be a member of a cult. So. One of the main problems is the

00:35:54.660 conflict in time use with careerism. Women spend more time on education than men. This is probably an 1.00

00:36:00.640 effect of higher conscientiousness and desire to follow the path that society tells them to follow.

00:36:06.460 Get a degree, become self-sufficient in your career. Then maybe you'll find a husband at the

00:36:12.520 age of 30. This default life playbook needs to be geared more towards marriage and motherhood, 0.82

00:36:17.540 shorter education, less worry about being self-sustainable. Among married couples, there is

00:36:21.980 no recent fertility decline. And this is really interesting if you look at this chart right here.

00:36:26.220 So what it shows is the fertility rate change of different groups. And this first red dotted line

00:36:31.800 here is chained marital status TFR. That was in 2001. Then this one going down, this like solid red

00:36:39.220 line here, this is chained 2008 chained marital status TFR. And then the solid black line here is

00:36:46.820 a raw TFR. And then 2001 raw TFR is the black dotted line. So I think it's wrong to say that there's been

00:36:53.020 no change in marital TFR, but it certainly hasn't been as bad as it has been for other communities.

00:36:59.900 So that's it. What are your thoughts, Simone?

00:37:02.880 My thoughts are we need to change the framing around what people need to start their lives.

00:37:10.180 And a lot of things. I mean, it's clear, for example, that younger generations are not going 1.00

00:37:16.520 to grow up with the resources and expectations and wealth of boomers. And yet I think kind of like

00:37:22.600 with trad wives in the 1950s with family values or like family composition and what traditional 0.98

00:37:27.240 families look like. Many of us, even very recently born people who are way younger than us have

00:37:35.340 anchored to this level of wealth, like home alone wealth, and kind of expected that like,

00:37:40.800 ah, yes, I will be ready.

00:37:43.020 I could not agree more. I look at the types of toys that people are buying now. Cause I can like

00:37:46.580 look at stores and stuff like that. And they're all these like single use toys.

00:37:49.300 Like, and this is like at Walmart, this isn't like at like fancy areas, right? Like

00:37:53.720 why is that the case? It's because people have, uh, normalized to a level of luxury that is beyond

00:38:00.100 what anyone expected when I was growing up. And the people who are like, oh, it's not,

00:38:03.840 no, it's so much worse now, et cetera. And it's like, well, then why, why are you getting all these

00:38:09.000 one use toys? Okay. Well, why is that the fad right now at the toy stores?

00:38:13.140 Yeah. I mean, well, that's, that's not exactly what I'm talking about. A lot of the reason why

00:38:17.980 people are getting disposable everything is that people have found that they can still

00:38:23.880 technically get a lot of the appearance of what older generations lived with furniture, toys,

00:38:31.420 clothing, but the stuff that they're buying is no longer durable or lasting. Like I was just

00:38:39.380 watching a YouTube video that was going over how furniture has changed over the past 20 years

00:38:44.340 and how durability has changed. Material composition has changed, but not everyone has the time or car

00:38:51.040 for pickup or luxury, you know, or even like skill to upgrade the furniture that they get that, you

00:38:57.200 know, has damaged and often needs a little bit.

00:38:58.700 But actually I'm going to put you back here. You know, you look at like the chair I'm sitting

00:39:01.840 in, right? Right. The chair you're sitting in. Both of these are new chairs, right? They were

00:39:06.620 not particularly expensive. I think in the couple hundred dollar range and they are still holding

00:39:10.860 up after like half a decade. Like I don't. Yeah. They're great. Yeah. Not, not everything's bad.

00:39:16.160 What, what, what I'm trying to say is, is what you're looking at is, is people are buying disposable

00:39:20.000 stuff because they want to have the same like numerical number of things. They want to, they want

00:39:23.940 to have the trappings of what maybe their parents' generation had or their grandparents,

00:39:28.920 but they, they cannot afford to get like the quote unquote real thing. What I'm arguing for

00:39:34.040 is something very different. What I'm arguing for is we need to drop the expectations of

00:39:40.440 building a life that we have seen in movies and on TV and instead be like, all right, what

00:39:45.400 do I value? And then what do I technically really need to start that? And won't I maybe

00:39:51.060 be better off if I start that? And that doesn't take us away from tradition per se. It used to

00:39:56.540 be tradition that maybe out of high school, you'd get married and then start to build your

00:40:01.000 life with your partner and you would grow up together. Like you'd really raise each

00:40:05.060 other. So I think that that's more what needs to be reworked out, not just from the perspective

00:40:12.120 of relationships and having kids, but also from the perspective of how people spend their

00:40:16.800 money and how people spend their time. Um, like maybe going on a vacation multiple times

00:40:22.160 a year is, is not feasible. Maybe, I mean, the, the number of people who are going to debt

00:40:27.780 just to go on vacation is insane. To go into debt. Yeah. Vacations used to be seen as,

00:40:34.120 is something that like nobody, but the ultra rich would do. And that changed with the train

00:40:37.920 system where they developed a one day a week where you could travel for, I think it was

00:40:41.360 a penny. And then people begin to normalize to the idea of vacations and vacation destinations.

00:40:45.200 This is in the, I can't remember when, but the point being is it's not like part of the

00:40:48.700 human condition that you need to do that. Like this is something you've chosen to burden

00:40:52.100 yourself ways. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, also the level of luxury that people now have weddings

00:40:59.800 with and travel with is super crazy. Even when you consider what, for example, the British Royal

00:41:08.360 family experienced with many of their like services or amenities or vacations in the past.

00:41:14.380 And you can even kind of see this with the crown, like the places where they were going on

00:41:19.380 vacation. Like Valmoral is not that nice. Yeah. It's like, uh, okay, this is all right,

00:41:25.500 but it's, it doesn't look like the bougie vacation resorts of today. Everything now has become hyper

00:41:31.980 luxurious. Valmoral, which was their core vacation destination in Scotland, their core one period

00:41:37.360 is about maybe about twice the size of our house and about as nice.

00:41:43.120 Oh no, it's, it's significantly bigger. I mean, you only toured a very small part of it, but

00:41:47.200 it's, it's not like it. Yeah. I mean, we, we, yeah, basically we need to reset on, on expectations

00:41:57.960 and on understandings of what we should be focusing on with our resources and stuff. And I think that's

00:42:04.080 more where we should be going now. And I think the bigger issue to your point and what you're trying

00:42:10.740 to add to the discourse with this episode is hold on guys. This isn't just, Oh, women actually do 1.00

00:42:16.900 really largely want kids. They're just starting their marriages way too late and having fewer

00:42:21.660 them. That's an issue, but a bigger issue is a lot of kids just don't. So a lot of women just don't 1.00

00:42:26.420 want kids at all. And I don't think that that's because they actually don't want kids. I think

00:42:31.160 that that's because kids have been removed from the evoked set and it's important to bring them back

00:42:36.960 in a sustainable way. But going back to tradition is not the way. And I would say like going to try to

00:42:44.940 make, to, to, to shove in kids to the present understanding of what they're fully desirable

00:42:51.780 is also not going to work. So something new, a new path has to be formed.

00:42:55.320 I just found the number shocking, which to me indicates that the fertility crash may be way

00:42:59.080 worse than anyone has anticipated, given it was 5% anticipated having no kids in the past.

00:43:03.700 And now we're looking at like 50% anticipated having no kids. Who knows what these numbers are

00:43:08.680 going to look like in a few years, but I think, you know, buckle up. All right. Love you, Simone.

00:43:16.900 I love you. I'm not going to be having dinner tonight. I might just come down.

00:43:20.420 Why don't you just go to sleep? I might do that. Yeah. Cause I got to head out for the

00:43:24.160 six o'clock doctor's appointment. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm kind of worried about your health and I'm like,

00:43:28.520 if your body's telling you to sleep right now, you should probably listen to it.

00:43:32.700 Yeah. I don't know why it's telling me to sleep all the time.

00:43:34.960 Something's very wrong and you need to make sure that you get it sorted, but also getting

00:43:40.060 it sorted tonight might involve going to another clinic or whatever. And then you're going to

00:43:44.140 get really tired. So sleep right now. All right. Thank you, Simone. All right. I love you.

00:43:49.600 Look at that. Every time it seems like maybe we stopped talking and officially recording,

00:43:53.700 then she gets quiet. Okay. Okay.

00:43:56.120 Okay. I'm going to push him now. Ready? Yeah. One, two, three.

00:44:09.860 I'm going to push you now. Ready? I'm going to push you now. One, two, three.

00:44:25.860 Push. Go.

Based Camp - January 29, 2025

These Fertility Stats Chilled Me： This Is Worse Than I Could Have Imagined

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript