These Fertility Stats Chilled Me： This Is Worse Than I Could Have Imagined
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and I discuss the alarming statistics on how many people are planning to have no kids in the next generation, and why it might not be as bad as we think it is. We talk about the economic and social headwinds that might be delaying people from having kids, and how this could have a big impact on the future of our generation.
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to go over some
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chilling statistics that I have been looking for for some time at this point.
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I've always sort of said in the background, because we found a bunch of other statistics
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on how few Gen Z plan to have kids today. And I've always been like, what was that number
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historically? And what percent actually completed having no kids? But I could never find that
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number historically. And I finally found it. And the number is so much worse than you would
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imagine. Okay, let's go into this. So if we go at a few surveys here, from 2018 to 2023,
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a Pew survey looking at adults under 50 who said they plan to have no kids, the numbers went from
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37% to 47% in 2023. So we're looking at around half in that survey, okay? Now, and this is Pew.
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If we go to Teen Vogue, you'll get slightly better results. Teen Vogue says for millennials and Gen Z,
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about a third plan to have no kids. If you look at research by one poll into a thousand people
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aged 18 to 34, this was in the UK, it found that over one in four had ruled out having a baby
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completely. And over 50% were unlikely to have a baby. Okay. Okay. So you get the idea here. So
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we're looking at like, maybe on the good side, like 31%, maybe up over 50%.
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But suffice it to say, having kids, or I guess the intention to not have any kids or expectation
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that one will not have any kids is higher now than it ever was before.
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Right. So I was trying to understand what did that look like historically?
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Historically, about 5% of women intended to be childless.
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And it looked at many years of data to get this. So this is like over a big swath of data. It
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wasn't just in that year. Like obviously it's been going up. It looked across countries.
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It looked across regions. Now where this gets chilling is that means that at a historic level,
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about 5% of people, women specifically in a country plan to have no kids. And the number
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who actually end up without any kids, it's three times that. So 15%.
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So there's always been a pretty big gap between people's intentions and reality when it comes
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Yeah. How do you even do the math when 31% say they want no kids or when 50% say they
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Yeah. Well, and I'm thinking about all these other factors like the Canadian housing market,
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which is so insane. I'm obsessed with this new account that just compares really crappy
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houses in Canada with tassels in Europe that cost less.
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And this just, there are so many headwinds that might make people delay having kids.
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Well, but I'm still thinking that like, there are, there are some factors. This definitely
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happened with us where we're like, we're going to start our family when, and ours may not have
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We moved to Peru, Simone, so that things were cheaper. Like you can move these people who
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I'm sorry. Wait, you think people are reasonable? You think people are willing to make sacrifices
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I understand, but I'm pointing out that I don't think it's healthy to buy into their fantasies
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of, I can't afford a house in Canada, therefore I have to genetically commit seppuku. You know,
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like that is not, no, no. That's a silly, silly argument by people who do not want to think
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outside the box or do the extra work that's required of our generation. And as we've seen
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historically, you know, the, the numbers just aren't that correlated.
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Yeah. Uh, I'm at least those who have a lot of kids are having them for ideological reasons
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and not because it's the right time or it's convenient.
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But the point I was trying to make with this for our listeners is when you talk to people
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and they go, how bad is it going to be? But when people wonder why I just keep being like,
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no, you don't get how bad this drop is going to be. If you're looking at historical data
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to attempt to predict it, a lot of people just like blow it off. They're like, oh,
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it couldn't possibly be that bad. It couldn't possibly be almost nobody.
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And that's what it might turn out to be for this next generation.
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Especially among educated groups, especially among groups with any degree of, you know,
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I mean, I've got other stuff I want to go over here, but just in case people are wondering,
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if you're looking at me and you go, Malcolm, your face looks insane right now. What happened
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to you? I have had a horrible flu and have extremely swollen lymph nodes right here. I'm
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going to a doctor and maybe a hospital tonight. So we'll see, but I'm never going to not give you
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guys an episode. And we're going to go into more stats here in just a second.
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Talk about dedication to the cause. Malcolm, I have massive respect for you and I'm really sorry.
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So right here, I'm going to put some graphs on screen. These graphs cover intended actual
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childlessness in percentages and then excess childness in percentages of the intended
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childness. And you can see it by different countries going up. If you're looking at the
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countries that had lower kids, those are now all of them had less kids than they had anticipated,
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but some had like way less than they had anticipated. The ones with the most less were
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Italy at the very top, then Germany, Greece, Spain, Austria, the Slovenian.
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What you'll notice here is a lot of Catholic and Eastern European ones that historically,
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well, one, they don't use IBF as much. So of course they're going to be well below what they
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Yeah. When you take any Catholic country that has people marrying later and later, they'll have
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high expectations and then they'll refuse to use help. And then they end up with these
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abysmal fertility rates. Yeah. You'll actually see here that their fertility rate was 20% lower than
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Now, if you're looking at the countries where it was not so bad, you're looking at countries like
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Bulgaria, Lithuania, the United States, the Czech Republic, France, Latvia, Norway, Estonia,
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Hungary, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom. So again, it's, it's, this is one of those clear
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Protestant Catholic splits here. And I think that people do not understand how much these traditions
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are leading to their own extinction. And it's part of why I put so little thought into like where
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they're going to be in the future, because right now I just don't see any way that they
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end up relevant players with the fertility rates being what they are and the, and the challenges being
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what they are. You know, people will be like, well, in my community, it works out. And it's like,
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well, as I often point out, I'm like, well, do you have a lot of deconverts? And they're like,
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well, you know, with the kids and it's like, yeah, well, that's like saying here's the battlefield.
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And I'm like, wow, it looks like a lot of people died. And they're like, oh, we don't count the dead.
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Obviously. It's like, no, that's what failing look. That's what losing someone looks like.
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Right. You know? So I think that's, that's a really important thing to look at here. Now,
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if we're going to read into what's going on in this graph, we've got grouping women into three
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groups by education attainment. We see that on average women in categories in almost all countries
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wish for two plus children enough to keep the population from collapsing. However, the more
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educated women, those with more money, more stable marriages, larger houses obtain relatively fewer
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than desired. So the more educated women, you see even more of a gap here than just having low kids
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is that they have less kids than they anticipated again, because you need fertility technology if you're
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waiting that long. They did also generally desire fewer, but this is not the main driver of the
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dysgenic pattern. So them desiring fewer is less important to their low fertility rate than just
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them having less than they anticipated. But rather their inability to get what they want,
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we can also redo this using actual intelligence data, USA 10 item vocabulary test. And this comes from
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a series of reviews of studies done by Emil Kierkegaard, who's been on fire recently with some really
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interesting posts. Yeah, seriously. Now, if we're talking about this old woman problem that I
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mentioned, there was a post on Reddit that I thought was really interesting in regards to this.
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I would point out, though, the argument that Emil Kierkegaard makes is that, look, women do want kids.
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The problem is that they're just having as many kids as they want. And I think the counter argument
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that you're trying to make here is, whoa, you're looking at really old numbers. You're looking at numbers
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long ago of when women wanted kids, and now far fewer women want kids, and those who even still
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want them are having them way later. So everything's just so much worse than you would think. And this
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current meme that has been circling around some pronatalist discourse of like, oh, just give the
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women what they want. Like, make it easy for them to have babies. Yeah, I understand why it's an appealing
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narrative, right? But it's not an accurate narrative. Not accurate as of now, yeah. Not accurate as of now.
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And I think that a bigger problem is just being unrealistic about when fertility windows are. So
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this post on the Arnatalism subreddit says, 60% of millennial women are already nearly infertile,
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and 80% of childless women regret not having kids. Is this why more women are crying on TikTok than ever
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before? Millennial women are those born between 1980 and 1994, and 35 is an established cutoff for
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fertility. Now he's wrong about this. This is the cutoff for geriatric fertility when you start having
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very likely problems. Yeah, it's not like you can suddenly stop. You won't have kids after that
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point. I mean, women have natural pregnancies well into their 40s. Yeah, but we started having problems
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in, I'd say, in terms of the genetic material. If we hadn't pre-banked, we would have major problems
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if we tried after 35. Yeah. Because we checked the genetic quality of the embryos we produced after 35,
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and they're just garbage compared to the other ones. So for the vast majority of millennial women,
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the ship has already sailed. I'm wondering if this is the first sign of the great tipping point
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where reality starts to settle in for women. There will eventually be a tipping point where the
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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,
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are also the demographic who consumes the most antidepressants. Let's consider the facts.
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A childless post-30 woman has about 70 years to live out a life of diminishing the looks and
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dopamine hookups from hedonism. Very true. You will not get the same dopamine hookups as you get older
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if you do not have kids. You are designed to have kids and transition to the next phase. It's very much
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like swearing off sex at puberty or something. It's just not the way your body is designed to work,
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and it's not that you can't live that way, or it's an invalid choice, but you will never experience
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the fullness that other people do. And you may not be able to realize that this is going to hit you
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because society doesn't talk about it because it's offensive to talk about, right? It makes people sad.
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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,
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it's not every one of your ancestors had children. You know, that's why you exist. If something
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motivated them to do that, you don't think that there's going to be some level of fulfillment in
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those older, you know, less formal years that is going to come from child rearing.
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Next, post hookup 20s, a portion of their friend circle will not be able to do girls night out
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anymore. Essentially, your female friends prioritize their children over you. The guys that are left are
00:11:41.420
either losers, more words, not theirs, or serial players. The A players got married early or continued
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being Hugh Hefner with younger women. The B players were probably selected as the stable
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providers. No man in his 40s has any reason to compromise his bachelor lifestyle with commitment
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to an infertile post-peak looks woman. That's absolutely true. The level of market strengths
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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,
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which a lot of people basically do. A lot of women basically do. They're like, oh yeah, that's how
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I make my core income. The, the, you, and I've seen this, I've seen this in my older friends. They
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basically have to become sex workers. I mean, they don't call it that, right? But you know, they sleep
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with guys who are sleeping with other people whenever they feel like it. And there's really
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nothing they can do about it because they have no power. They have no good income stream. They have no,
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you know, and this especially happens to divorced women who don't understand that. Like, well, I had kids
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and it's, yeah. And then you left the guy who cared about you and the kids. So now you're a sex
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worker. Like if you are a home raiser and you are a post-menopausal and you are out there trying to
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
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it's possible for people to find someone, but it is a lot harder and people are not, I think the more
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important problem here is people are not realistic about their fertility windows, both women and men.
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And that is one thing about that Reddit post you read that gets my goat, that whoever wrote it was
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clearly not aware of the fact that male fertility does diminish. And the genetic quality of
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babies conceived with older sperm is lower. And like whenever we hit dinner parties, the first thing
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I'm always doing with like young men who show up, I'm like heavy frozen ear sperm, heavy frozen ear
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sperm. And they walk away, I'm sure thinking I'm the creepiest woman in the entire world.
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I particularly love that stuff. They're like, oh, this woman gets it.
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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
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expensive and difficult to freeze eggs. And the outcome is a lot worse. You can freeze, you know,
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40 eggs and maybe that would only, you know, produce a small number of embryos. But for men,
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it's just so much easier. So yeah, it does. The bigger issue here is people not being aware of
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their fertility window and not getting married. I wouldn't even overly recommend freezing sperm.
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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
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out there who are no longer fertile. Because remember, like that's what creates attractiveness.
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That's why women all of a sudden start looking so like unattractive after like 45 to most men.
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And men, you know this, you know this. When you look, you're like, oh, this is like a different
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category of thing. This is not something I'm lusting after unless they like taxidermied themselves.
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But because what you're looking at is, is this, is this breedable? Is this, is this submissive
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and breedable is the question that goes through unless your destiny. And then you're like, is this
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dominant and breedable? Sorry. That episode did well. Okay. So next here, I want to go over a graph
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that I'm gonna put on the screen. It says the gap between ideal and realized fertility among women with
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different cognitive levels. And you see, it goes from, you know, you know, a couple standard
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deviations at one end, a couple standard deviations at the other end. And what you see is the gap is
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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
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generation. Well, if you combine that intelligence with a can-do attitude and a lot of
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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
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of color on that. So Simone, just like, well, for example, when we did her autism test, no prep,
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
00:19:27.220
just fucking do it. You know, oh, I'll start that pro natalist movement. Like, let's do it.
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
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
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
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,
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.
00:25:36.520
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:32:15.680
test them in the water to see if they weigh more than a duck. I think that a holiday celebrating
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
00:33:01.340
someone out to dinner that night, you know, or like buy stuff that isn't even that person's
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
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,
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
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
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,
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.
00:37:02.880
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
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
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,
00:37:43.020
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
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
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,
00:43:56.120
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.