TRIGGERnometry - The Modern Dating Catastrophe, Sex Recession & Population Collapse - Louise Perry

00:00:00.700 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:00:06.520 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:00:11.780 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:00:15.780 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:00:22.660 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:00:27.120 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

00:00:31.000 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:00:36.860 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:00:42.120 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:00:46.120 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:00:52.820 Now through June 7th, 2026, at The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:00:57.140 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

00:01:00.000 Why is this such a controversial subject to say, we're not having enough children and maybe we should think about ways of encouraging people to reproduce the society in which they live?

00:01:13.360 Why do people think it's inherently fascist?

00:01:15.720 Yeah.

00:01:16.760 Every country cares about this up until five minutes ago.

00:01:19.740 If your country has a shrinking population, you don't have enough young men to form an army.

00:01:25.660 Obviously, you're incredibly vulnerable.

00:01:27.160 I mean, this just seems sort of, it's like one-on-one stuff.

00:01:31.020 Do you think there's a way to stop the decline?

00:01:35.060 Louise Perry, so good to have you back.

00:01:37.380 We had you on the show a couple of years ago.

00:01:40.060 You're doing great work since, and I'm really delighted because I thought it's probably one of our most watched interviews and certainly one of the most popular internally among everyone here.

00:01:49.200 It was absolutely fantastic discussions, mostly about your last book.

00:01:52.800 I know you're working on another one, but that's still to come.

00:01:55.860 And we were talking mostly about men and women in the modern context and relationships and so on.

00:02:02.580 What's happened in the time since?

00:02:04.400 Where are we?

00:02:05.400 Has the needle moved in any direction?

00:02:07.880 Have the relations between the sexes improved?

00:02:10.560 Yeah.

00:02:10.720 I think not really.

00:02:11.540 I had this question the other day, actually, from a reader.

00:02:15.420 Would you write it differently now?

00:02:17.500 I mean, I started writing A Case Against the Sex Revolution four years ago now, I think.

00:02:23.960 And I don't think that anything has really changed substantially in terms of the issues I was writing about.

00:02:30.940 So, like, dating and porn and marital breakdown and things like that.

00:02:35.820 I think possibly I've changed a little bit.

00:02:39.820 Tell us more.

00:02:40.940 So, I think I've maybe become...

00:02:44.340 There were certain things I sort of wavered on in the book.

00:02:47.600 So, you know, to summarise very briefly, like, the argument of the book is that sexual evolution is often presented by progressives as being unambiguously good for women.

00:02:56.400 My argument is actually there's been costs to women and to men in lots of important ways.

00:03:01.340 And that there's wisdom in some old sexual norms, which we've thrown out the window post-sexual revolution.

00:03:08.120 And actually, like, there's a lot to be said for resurrecting them.

00:03:11.140 So, marriage is one example that actually marriage is really good for protecting the interests of women and children in a lot of ways.

00:03:18.020 And I made...

00:03:21.020 So, okay.

00:03:23.440 So, one example.

00:03:24.120 I made the recommendation in the book for women reading in particular to wait for maybe six months into a new relationship before having sex as a way of having a chance to assess this guy's character, not be befuddled by hormones, all that stuff.

00:03:45.200 And I did think at the time, should I just go for it and say, wait until engagement or wait until marriage?

00:03:54.440 Because what better indication is there of genuine commitment, et cetera, particularly if you're going through marriage counselling and all that kind of stuff?

00:04:04.100 And my mum said, no, don't, because if you say that, that's the only thing anyone will remember about that book.

00:04:09.920 And that will be, like, the first line of every review, you know, like, crazy lady makes the case for waiting till marriage. 0.81

00:04:18.960 And so I didn't.

00:04:19.740 I thought, okay, like, six months or something, that's sort of my compromise position.

00:04:22.400 And now I sort of think, I think it's true that that would have been the top line of every review.

00:04:27.460 But I also think, actually, probably waiting till engagement is actually what I would tell my children to do.

00:04:34.180 So maybe I should have said that.

00:04:35.420 Do you know what's interesting about, isn't, I just think it's such an interesting thing about the modern world in general, where I think lots of people who are in the public eye to any extent now, we have, like, a thing we say in public, and then there's the thing we will say to our children.

00:04:50.460 Yeah.

00:04:50.960 Or our friends.

00:04:52.120 Or, yeah.

00:04:53.120 Yeah, yeah, it's true.

00:04:54.700 Yeah.

00:04:55.040 And almost always, almost always, the thing that people are saying in private is more right wing.

00:05:00.500 Yeah.

00:05:02.040 It's not what they're saying publicly.

00:05:03.880 Yeah.

00:05:04.740 Yeah.

00:05:05.420 That is absolutely spot on.

00:05:08.860 That is so spot on.

00:05:10.500 That's why everybody's terrified that people are going to get access to their WhatsApps or their Telegrams.

00:05:14.620 Indeed, yeah.

00:05:15.400 Because then they'll just get outed as, like, this right wing person.

00:05:18.880 Well, and I suppose what that says is high status opinions are left wing.

00:05:23.500 Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:23.680 Low status opinions are right wing.

00:05:25.340 Yeah.

00:05:25.520 Even if, on some issues, the more practical opinion is, as in this case, the right wing opinion.

00:05:34.340 So, Louise, you're very, why are opinions that don't work in a practical sense high status?

00:05:41.180 Well, I suppose, I mean, Rob Henderson's luxury beliefs thesis is very persuasive.

00:05:46.960 There's probably a lot to do with signaling.

00:05:49.980 I think, as well, that one of the features of modernity, I suppose, is you don't get a lot of immediate feedback on bad decisions.

00:06:00.180 Particularly, say, so, like, one example would be the welfare state, the modern welfare state acts as a cushion, basically.

00:06:09.660 That if you make some bad decision, the welfare state is there as a safety net to cushion the blow.

00:06:18.500 So, I think that if that weren't there, people would probably be forced to reckon with reality a lot more in, I don't know, something like, something like single motherhood.

00:06:32.420 You know, it's absolutely true, you know, the feminist critique of the shaming of single mothers, that the shaming of single mothers causes a lot of harm to women and their children.

00:06:43.620 It's also the case that single motherhood is itself catastrophic, particularly in eras when there isn't a safety net, you know, like, you really are facing some very difficult choices.

00:06:54.040 And that's, of course, why traditional norms around not hooking up with some random guy exist, because that's a catastrophic outcome for the mother, for her children, for her family, etc.

00:07:05.400 I guess the welfare state exists, the welfare state can now cushion that blow, at a very high cost, you know, it's still really rough being a single mother dependent on welfare.

00:07:18.220 It's also true that it probably, like, removes some of that immediate feedback to bad norms, and therefore allows us to continue thinking that these norms are okay.

00:07:32.540 And also, particularly when, of course, the people who are expressing luxury beliefs, they're not really worried about their daughters becoming teenage single mums or whatever, right?

00:07:39.660 Because it's so class-based.

00:07:42.300 I agree with you.

00:07:44.780 I also think, as well, when it comes to talking about single mums, we talk about single mums a lot.

00:07:50.720 We don't talk about the men who know that they have children and have walked away from their responsibilities.

00:07:56.940 And as someone who used to be a teacher, you can all drink now, I've said it, that used to make me so angry.

00:08:04.280 It used to make me so angry, because I could see the damage it did to these kids.

00:08:09.020 Having an absent father, or actually, even worse, having a dad who one day wanted to play dad, and then for a couple of months couldn't be bothered.

00:08:17.660 Yeah, and just dropping in and out.

00:08:19.120 Yeah, which is actually worse from the effects that I saw.

00:08:21.780 Yeah, it's true. And hey, I mean, the fact that single mums get shamed more than deadbeat dads, which I think generally they do, is dreadful, because they're the ones who hung around. 0.92

00:08:32.080 They're the ones who made the commitment to their children.

00:08:35.600 It's curious, isn't it, that we don't shame deadbeat dads more than we do?

00:08:38.760 I don't know. I don't know why that is.

00:08:42.680 I mean, so the feminist argument would obviously be that there's sort of particular shame attached to female sexual indiscretion more than to male. 1.00

00:08:54.520 And that's true, but then I generally don't believe in patriarchy.

00:08:58.240 So, like, in terms of patriarchy, there's this, like, great explanatory force, this, like, invisible force which influences all of society.

00:09:09.680 So there's probably, it probably comes down to the fact that in the ancestral environment, women are the more valuable reproductive resource, to put it in really crude economic terms. 0.98

00:09:26.000 It's because a woman can have maybe one baby a year max, like, the number of women you have in your society determines how many babies you can have, basically. 1.00

00:09:36.380 Whereas in theory, men can impregnate women all the time.

00:09:39.380 And, like, you could, in theory, have just one man who's fathering loads and loads of children.

00:09:44.840 So there is, which is where the male expendability thing so-called comes from, the idea that men are less valuable than are women.

00:09:51.400 I think in this instance, what's happening kind of perversely is that because of that, because of that valuable nature of women's reproductive potential, women making unwise sexual decisions is worse, is worse for society, is worse for her family, and therefore attracts more opprobrium.

00:10:14.800 I think that's probably what's going on.

00:10:15.780 And it's also a vicious circle, and I don't think people talk about this enough, because if you're a kid from a single-parent family, you're more likely to be a single parent.

00:10:26.640 Yeah.

00:10:27.080 And because we replicate what we see, particularly in childhood.

00:10:31.500 So if you've never seen a healthy, positive relationship, then it's going to be far more difficult to have one for yourself, because you don't know what that looks like.

00:10:40.560 Yeah, absolutely. And it becomes really normalised. And this is one of these weird things about the invention of the pill, right?

00:10:45.980 Like, who could have predicted that the invention of the pill, and also the decriminalisation of abortion, which happens soon after, would have produced more illegitimacy?

00:10:55.140 That's really weird, right? You'd expect the opposite, because suddenly women have control over their fertility. 1.00

00:11:01.860 But I think the reason is, it's because the absolute amount of extramarital, premarital sex that was happening increased.

00:11:11.260 And because contraception, particularly that early form of the pill, isn't actually that reliable, of that amount of extramarital, premarital sex that was happening, you know, even only 1% of women getting pregnant, that's still a lot.

00:11:28.700 Some of those women are always going to keep the baby, they're not going to want to have an abortion for whatever reason. 1.00

00:11:32.120 And so all of a sudden, you have this spike in illegitimacy. And I think that produces this sort of feedback loop, where it becomes normal, and it becomes normal.

00:11:44.540 And now, I mean, I think in the UK, it's like half of kids are now born outside of wedlock. I think we crossed that threshold a couple of years ago.

00:11:52.020 And in some groups, it's even higher.

00:11:55.540 Do you think there will be some kind of snapback against it, or is it single parenthood all the way down?

00:12:02.480 I don't know. I mean, I suppose it might be that we're just reverting to a...

00:12:08.060 The human mating norm is polygynous, right? 0.52

00:12:15.020 Just explain that for people.

00:12:16.380 Where you have one male having multiple female partners and some portion of men not having any, right?

00:12:24.000 The monogamous system that prevails until recently in the West is quite unusual.

00:12:30.340 I think it's 20% of societies have a monogamous system, which does, of course, include some of the most successful civilisations to have ever existed,

00:12:38.960 including Christendom and Roman Empire.

00:12:42.600 But it's still kind of an outlier.

00:12:44.300 So it may be that we're just...

00:12:47.400 Now that we've lifted the monogamous expectation, it may be that people are now reverting to the species norm,

00:12:56.200 which is a smaller number of attractive men having lots of different women.

00:13:02.640 So the Genghis Khan model. 0.75

00:13:04.360 Yeah, maybe not quite as extreme as the Genghis Khan model, but yeah, move in that direction. 0.55

00:13:07.640 But effectively moving in that direction.

00:13:09.260 Yeah.

00:13:09.480 Ah, interesting.

00:13:11.920 Well, you already hear stories.

00:13:13.920 I won't mention names of celebrities and successful podcasters who are practising very, very, very much along those lines.

00:13:22.440 Yeah.

00:13:23.140 And I suppose unless you are really strongly indoctrinated culturally, I certainly am.

00:13:29.740 Like, I'm someone who's just like, I'm just monogamous, my brain's wired in that way, right?

00:13:34.900 I guess from a male perspective, you worked your ass off to be at the top of whatever profession you're at.

00:13:42.800 Even if it's not about sex, it's about reproduction.

00:13:46.660 Well, I mean, if it's there and you've got the resources, isn't this what you fought for?

00:13:52.480 Yeah.

00:13:53.640 Yeah.

00:13:54.180 I mean, I think it's not, I'm just, I'm surprised in literally zero cases when you find out that some high status man has lots of women on the go.

00:14:02.860 I mean, obviously there are men who don't do that, regardless of how successful they are.

00:14:07.520 But it's so common because I think they kind of can.

00:14:12.200 And also because, I mean, I think he said politicians.

00:14:14.860 Politicians are always kind of famously philanderers also because they, I think a certain type of personality is attracted to politics.

00:14:21.940 I'll put it gently, which is probably also attracted to that kind of, you know, lots of dark triad traits, right? 0.60

00:14:29.500 At the top of politics.

00:14:32.340 They get in less trouble for it now than they used to as well.

00:14:35.380 In, say, the 1950s, that would have been quite a big deal.

00:14:39.620 And hiding the fact of your affairs was, I mean, look at how much effort was put into hiding JFK's philandering, for instance.

00:14:46.520 We now know about, in retrospect, but at the time, lots of effort made to keep this quiet.

00:14:51.740 I don't know if they'd bother now.

00:14:53.520 I mean, like Trump's philandering, no one seems to care.

00:14:55.500 It's just like part of the package.

00:14:57.420 I mean, it's got to the point now where I go, oh, at least it's not a kid.

00:15:00.340 Yeah, basically, that's the win.

00:15:05.820 Yeah, well, you know, at least it's legal.

00:15:11.140 Oh, dear.

00:15:12.260 Welcome to Trigonometry. 1.00

00:15:18.280 You're such a fucking idiot. 1.00

00:15:19.060 Take a moment. 1.00

00:15:20.720 It's genuinely what I think, though.

00:15:23.260 That's where I am.

00:15:24.700 That's where I am now with it.

00:15:26.420 Okay, well, there we go.

00:15:28.440 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:15:35.620 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:15:40.880 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:15:44.880 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

00:15:48.960 The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:15:51.620 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:15:56.240 But I think the thing is, as well, like when I see politicians, I also think this phenomenon,

00:16:04.620 which is actually replicated in places like the comedy industry, where you look at a lot of these guys and you think,

00:16:11.300 at school, you wouldn't be the popular guy.

00:16:14.360 You wouldn't be the guy that's attractive to women. 0.99

00:16:16.220 Nobody has ever wanted to say, oh, I'd love to shag a young conservative.

00:16:21.020 Yeah.

00:16:21.480 And then you get to the point where you have money, you have power, you have influence,

00:16:24.560 and then all of a sudden, the doors open.

00:16:27.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:28.520 And it's even more novel for that reason.

00:16:30.520 Yeah.

00:16:30.960 Yeah.

00:16:31.640 Yeah, I mean, like women are attracted to status. 1.00

00:16:34.160 Like, what's new?

00:16:35.740 Men are attracted to youth and beauty.

00:16:37.000 Although I always think that we probably do slightly exaggerate that in terms of, I mean, I think that there are obviously plenty of examples.

00:16:44.560 Leonardo DiCaprio is kind of the famous example of this, right?

00:16:47.000 The guy who will never date a woman over the age of 25.

00:16:50.380 But which I always think is kind of funny because he's also never had children with any of these women.

00:16:53.560 So it's almost like he's like, the point of that drive is to reproduce with, like, maximally fertile women with great genes.

00:17:02.000 It's kind of like he's just amassed, like, a fleet of Ferraris and he's never driven them or something.

00:17:06.500 Like, it's like, it's like weird, it's weirdly maladaptive behavior, even though it's driven by an evolutionary...

00:17:14.200 There is a kind of teenage dimension to all of this.

00:17:17.440 Yeah.

00:17:18.000 That it's just, yeah, just pure status, but nothing more productive than that long term.

00:17:23.200 Right.

00:17:23.740 So coming back to this erosion of monogamy, I'm going to guess this isn't good for women. 1.00

00:17:29.820 No, I don't think so.

00:17:30.760 I mean, there would be some...

00:17:32.480 So someone like Diana Fleischman, who you've had on the pod, haven't you?

00:17:34.620 She's a friend of mine.

00:17:36.860 She's poly. 1.00

00:17:38.500 I'm sure, you know, she's very open about this.

00:17:40.960 And she would say that there's, like, there's a threshold in terms of how attractive a man is where women are willing to tolerate not being the only woman.

00:17:50.880 Like, if he's so attractive and the condition of being with him is that you're part of a harem, there's a point where women will be like, okay... 1.00

00:17:59.820 Some women, I mean. 1.00

00:18:00.580 Some women. 1.00

00:18:01.140 Yeah, some will be more averse than others.

00:18:02.680 But, like, yeah, and I guess she'd say, well, it's up to them.

00:18:07.960 You know, if the women are willing to tolerate not being the only one, it's obviously different if they're being lied to. 1.00

00:18:14.100 But if he's being open about what's going on, then I suppose you could say they're adults, they can make the decision.

00:18:22.220 I think, though, that having...

00:18:24.220 I think it's totally possible, and in fact there are loads of cases where this is the case, where you can say that at an individual level that might be fine and that for some people that might be fine.

00:18:32.740 But having it as the norm is bad.

00:18:37.300 Well, right, coming back to our conversation about children growing up without fathers...

00:18:42.360 Precisely.

00:18:42.680 ...if there's 100 children with one father, it's probably going to struggle to give them, you know, a lot of...

00:18:48.440 That's certainly true.

00:18:49.000 Yeah, that's certainly true.

00:18:50.320 And I think also it's probably bad for societies to have lots of men without mates.

00:18:55.240 Yes.

00:18:55.900 Yeah.

00:18:56.120 Because we do know that fatherhood kind of tames men in terms of men commit less crime and, you know, that just societies with lots of sexually frustrated men are more, less peaceful societies.

00:19:11.060 And also I know you can go from that to be like, oh, well, in that case we need to be apportioning women to all of the incels and, you know.

00:19:18.440 There's a very dystopian vision that could lead from that insight.

00:19:25.480 But it's also just, you know, you can compare, say, different African countries, some of which are side by side, some of which are Muslim, some of which are Christian and therefore either permit polygamy or don't.

00:19:34.860 And you can see straightforwardly these otherwise similar societies are made more violent and unstable and have more domestic violence and have more child abuse and whatever by virtue of not being monogamous.

00:19:44.640 So just based on the data, you can quite clearly see that the monogamy norm is a good one.

00:19:50.320 I quite agree with you.

00:19:51.620 I think what's really interesting at the moment in society, Louise, is that we're talking, we seem to be talking about sex more than ever.

00:19:58.300 Pornography is literally the click of a button away or the tap of a screen away.

00:20:03.540 Like, dating apps, you can go on there and you can get potentially whatever it is that you like and to a very fine degree. 0.75

00:20:13.580 But we're having less sex than ever before.

00:20:16.200 Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? 0.68

00:20:17.060 The sex recession. 0.73

00:20:18.220 Yeah.

00:20:18.400 Yeah, I mean, my theory, although I don't really have any proof for it, it's just vibes, is that it's that those things might be linked.

00:20:25.460 It might be that when you have this sort of copious availability of sexual stimuli, you don't feel the need to go out and actually do the hard work of building a relationship with a real person, that maybe sex has less mystique.

00:20:38.460 I mean, I think that's definitely, I think it's definitely the case that when men are not allowed to have sex before marriage and when they can only get married when they have done various adult things, like you've got a job, you've got a house, you earn X amount, whatever, they are going to be extremely motivated to do those things.

00:20:58.740 Whereas if men can get sex just by being good looking or even not, like why, that motivation is removed.

00:21:07.340 So I think there's definitely, I think sexual frustration, I think good societies know how to harness sexual frustration to productive ends.

00:21:16.880 And it's also interesting as well is that so many people on SSRIs, and one of the things that SSRIs do, particularly women, is it kills libido. 0.53

00:21:26.260 So what you have is just so many people in society who literally have no sex, right?

00:21:31.800 Yeah, and also the pill does weird things to people's sexuality, to women's sexuality. 0.94

00:21:35.220 Like women are more, women are more attracted to less masculine men when they're on the pill. 0.73

00:21:40.560 You've probably heard this.

00:21:41.640 And so there's this phenomenon of women who've been on the pill their entire lives or their entire adult lives, and then they get off the pill to have a baby, and they suddenly find that they don't fancy their partner anymore.

00:21:53.460 I know, and it causes, you know, obviously a lot of personal tragedy.

00:21:58.280 But yeah, we're meddling with a lot of weird psychoactive drugs as a standard thing that we give, particularly teenage girls.

00:22:08.260 We just put them on the pill, we put them on SSRIs, we don't really think about it.

00:22:11.020 But obviously they are going to have quite serious effects on the developing brain.

00:22:15.880 Absolutely, and then if you think about it as well, you talk about the sex recession, that leads to some very dire consequences when it comes to population.

00:22:28.400 Yeah.

00:22:28.880 I mean, in general, I think, is the birth rate dropping because people are having less sex?

00:22:37.320 There's this kind of fashionable view that you'll hear among some demographers that actually the pill doesn't really have anything to do with birth rate decline.

00:22:51.300 Because birth rates were declining before the pill was invented.

00:22:55.120 In countries like France, for instance, birth rates started declining quite early in the 19th century.

00:22:59.100 And people are able to limit how many children they have through, like, crude versions of fertility tracking and things like that.

00:23:09.980 True.

00:23:11.600 But I just don't buy it.

00:23:13.620 I think that, I mean, one, because birth rates really fall off a cliff post-1960s.

00:23:18.440 I mean, in the UK, it's like 1971, I think, is when we fell below, we really started falling below replacement.

00:23:25.160 And I think also that the thing that the pill does, it's not just about limiting your fertility in the moment.

00:23:32.280 It changes social norms.

00:23:34.020 It does things like, for instance, means that getting married becomes less necessary because if you can have premarital sex without the expectation of getting pregnant, because it normalizes premarital sex, basically.

00:23:46.340 And then the drive to get married is reduced.

00:23:48.400 And, you know, one of the, of all the policies that the Hungarian government has introduced to try and encourage natalism, the one that has been most effective has actually been the marriage incentives.

00:24:00.900 Weirdly, because they also do things like they'll give you a massive sum of money towards a house.

00:24:04.160 And you do have to be married to get it.

00:24:05.440 But, like, there are various policies available which are much more financially impactful.

00:24:09.080 And yet the one that actually seems to be, or is thought to be the most effective, is the one encouraging younger people to get married.

00:24:15.240 Because it seems like people get married and they're like, oh, okay, this is the next, the next thing we do is have kids.

00:24:20.160 It's like a psychological intervention.

00:24:24.020 And, yeah, I, it's not just the pill.

00:24:27.140 There are obviously other things.

00:24:28.800 But to me, that does seem like the really watershed moment in terms of producing low fertility.

00:24:34.800 There are a lot of writers that I see now, yourself included, obviously, talking about the pill as something that you may not necessarily want to take.

00:24:42.980 Certainly as an automatic thing, as a rite of passage into womanhood. 0.98

00:24:46.900 Right.

00:24:47.680 Can you talk a little bit more about that?

00:24:49.540 So I, I'm not completely anti-pill.

00:24:51.840 I actually think that, you know, when the pill was first introduced in Britain and America, and I think most countries, to my knowledge, it was only available to married women.

00:24:59.320 And then there was a gap of some years and then it was made available to unmarried women.

00:25:02.760 I think that using the pill within marriage to space your births is a very good use of it because it's really bad for your body basically to have 10 kids in most instances.

00:25:17.420 There are some women who are super women and who can do it, you know. 1.00

00:25:20.800 But you, you read these accounts of women, you know, in the days before reliable contraception was, were, was available.

00:25:30.660 And they're just, they're made so unwell by just being constantly pregnant or nursing and, and really just feeling like powerless to, you know.

00:25:40.280 So I, I, I, that's even more the case if you have a caesarean, for instance, you need to take a break before you have another baby to, to prevent things like uterine rupture.

00:25:48.180 So I think the pill has a place and other kinds of reliable contraception have a place.

00:25:54.680 What I don't think is a good thing though, is the kind of mass effects.

00:25:59.180 I mean, it's going back to that thing again, right?

00:26:00.560 Individual cases, it can be great, but the, these, a culture is more than the sum of its parts.

00:26:06.540 And the, the mass social effects of the pill, I think, have generally been negative.

00:26:13.320 And the population conversation is fascinating to me because if you look into it for about three seconds, you instantly get, like, you, you can be shown one graph and you suddenly like get everything, right?

00:26:25.280 Our population in, particularly in Western countries, but not just in Western countries, is just way below replacement.

00:26:30.660 And, you know, Francis was talking, we were having lunch and he was talking about the fact that teachers are getting fired from schools now because there's not enough kids.

00:26:42.140 Restructuring.

00:26:42.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:43.260 Particularly in central London, there's loads of schools closing down.

00:26:45.940 So, you've got that going on and yet, whenever I see any politician who, who's like, maybe like Miriam Cates says, you know, whatever you think about the rest of her politics or whatever, she just says, we need, we need to talk about babies.

00:26:58.940 And suddenly, like, the swarm of rage descends upon them.

00:27:02.620 The same with, look, I don't know much about Viktor Orban.

00:27:05.340 I read bad things about him in the papers.

00:27:07.280 Okay, let's assume that they're all true.

00:27:08.680 So, but still, like, why, why is this such a, like, a controversial subject to say we, we, we're not having enough children and maybe we should think about ways of encouraging people to reproduce the society in which they live?

00:27:22.540 Why do people think it's inherently fascist?

00:27:24.680 Yeah.

00:27:25.180 I mean, it's worth saying that basically every country cares about this up until five minutes ago.

00:27:31.660 There used to be this line in Australia, encouraging people to have more children, that it was, you have one for mum, one for dad, and one for Australia, encouraging people to have three kids.

00:27:40.940 So, it's, it's, it's definitely not, I mean, it's also the case, like, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and so on encourages high fertility.

00:27:48.740 That doesn't mean that, that.

00:27:50.880 Among certain groups.

00:27:52.680 Yes.

00:27:53.240 That doesn't mean that natalism is unique to authoritarian regimes by any means.

00:27:58.020 It's basically a normal position for, for governments up until, um, very recently.

00:28:05.360 And, uh, yeah, I mean, people, I mean, cause not least, like, the geopolitical implications are just so blindingly obvious.

00:28:11.460 Wow.

00:28:11.760 Yes.

00:28:12.300 Like, if you, if you're, if your country has a shrinking population, you don't have enough young men to form an army, obviously you're incredibly vulnerable.

00:28:21.240 I mean, this just seems sort of, it's like 101 stuff and yet, yes, I mean, I mean, I love Miriam, but yeah, she stands up and talks about natalism and people just, people on the left lose their minds.

00:28:32.340 Well, why is that, Louise?

00:28:33.340 Why is the, I, that, because natalism is like a clever word, like intellectually used, but like the idea that people in a country ought to replenish the population by having children.

00:28:45.440 Yeah, the families are good, the babies are good.

00:28:47.780 Yeah.

00:28:48.100 Like, why, why is this coded?

00:28:50.300 Like, we have this, by the way, this is another thing that pisses me off, which is like, we have this term now, something as coded as right wing, which basically means it's not right wing.

00:28:58.700 It's just a bunch of dickheads in the media think that you shouldn't talk about this issue.

00:29:02.080 It gives right wing vibes. 0.97

00:29:03.180 Right.

00:29:03.660 Yeah.

00:29:04.060 Which, like, so why is this coded as right wing?

00:29:08.020 Yeah, I mean, it's a really fascinating question.

00:29:10.280 Like, why would, why would the most affluent people and comfortable people who have ever lived in the history of the world, besides that actually having babies is bad and is onerous?

00:29:22.760 And is, I mean, because what you'll hear so often, right, there's like a little bit of truth to it, but I think it really misses the mark, is that old people can't afford to have children. 0.99

00:29:30.240 Which means, like, translates as people can't afford to maintain the lifestyle associated with having two incomes and no kids when they have kids, which is absolutely true.

00:29:41.960 And it's also the case that obviously house prices in many urban centers are incredibly high and there is downward mobility.

00:29:47.580 Like, the baby boomers were pretty much the peak in terms of affluence and comfort.

00:29:51.720 That's true.

00:29:52.620 But it's also kind of crazy because it's literally the opposite trend globally.

00:29:57.120 The poorest countries have the most kids.

00:29:58.820 The richest countries have the fewest kids.

00:30:00.240 And actually, that is the single best predictor of people having children, is crossing the certain threshold in terms of GDP per capita.

00:30:07.680 It's somewhere like 5,000 to 10,000 US dollars per person per year, which is not very much, right?

00:30:13.420 Like, like countries that are below replacement now include countries like, like Nepal, like Sri Lanka, like much of the Middle East, much of South America.

00:30:21.920 You know, we're not talking just the rich countries.

00:30:24.040 This is now increasingly a global phenomenon.

00:30:26.160 And, yeah, I mean, so the big mystery, and I'm not sure if I have, it's sort of, I think you've reached the point where you have to, you can't just think of it in materialist or economic terms.

00:30:38.240 You have to start thinking in almost spiritual terms.

00:30:40.100 Like, people in rich countries have just lost the will to reproduce themselves and to reproduce their cultures.

00:30:47.060 And in fact, often think that doing so is a bad thing.

00:30:50.020 They think that there's something suspect about their cultures, about their genetic line, whatever, like there's this, it's obviously not everyone by any means, but there is a kind of elite faction that has this incredible, like, drive to suicide almost, like cultural suicide.

00:31:06.300 And, yeah, I mean, it's quite hard to explain that without thinking of it in spiritual terms.

00:31:14.640 I mean, I, I'm, the thing I'm driven to think, which isn't very a happy thought, is that maybe, you know, the, I think when I last came on the show, we talked about why the progress model of history is really silly, right?

00:31:26.500 To think that everything gets better all the time, a model of history, which is, um, obviously simplifies, but which probably has a lot more truth to it than the progress model is a civilizational cycles model.

00:31:38.380 So the idea that civilizations rise, they, they peak, they fall.

00:31:42.080 And the, a, a common feature of civilizations at their decline phase is this complete loss of confidence.

00:31:51.180 And this complete, I mean, you, you, in the, in the final centuries of Rome, you, you will read people complaining about how the elites have all stopped having kids.

00:32:02.280 Like, the, the, there was a tax brought in on childless men to try and encourage elite childless men to, to reproduce.

00:32:09.300 You know, they had exactly the same phenomenon.

00:32:11.000 And the Romans, of course, were using more primitive forms of contraception and abortion and, and obviously used infanticide. 0.97

00:32:15.920 So they had different means of controlling their fertility, but it was the same phenomenon.

00:32:20.840 And people were saying the same things.

00:32:23.080 And there does just seem to be a point where a civilization, yeah, reaches this, this like spiritual malaise and maybe we're just there.

00:32:32.760 I know it's not a very happy answer, but I think that's, that's from, from doing all my research on this subject, I can't really help but reach that conclusion.

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00:33:12.400 Do you know what's interesting?

00:33:14.280 That would explain about what's going on when we talk about the climate.

00:33:18.160 Because to me, when you talk, it seems to be more prevalent in America, actually, where people say they're not going to have kids because they're worried about the climate.

00:33:27.940 Yeah.

00:33:28.500 Therefore, that means that having kids is an immoral decision.

00:33:32.700 Yeah.

00:33:32.940 And you go, how have you come to this really bizarre conclusion?

00:33:38.480 Because they're, it sounds over the top, because it's an anti-human position.

00:33:42.780 Yes.

00:33:43.020 I mean, it's true.

00:33:44.860 Like, if your priority was preserving other species and natural environment and so on, then, like, reducing the number of humans in the world would be obviously your goal.

00:33:54.440 And that's where you reach the point where you almost can't, it becomes almost impossible to have a debate with someone.

00:34:02.120 Like, if we don't share those premises, if you don't think that humans are good, if you don't think that having kids is good, if you don't think that being alive is good, you know?

00:34:09.160 Like, I joke, I'm not joking, like, there are anti-nationalists sometimes who think that it is, it is better not to, better, better to have never been born, right?

00:34:18.320 It's the David Benatar book.

00:34:21.260 There are people who think that, not very many of them, but there are some, and there's just a point where you can't, you can't really have a conversation, like, because those priors, they're not rational priors, they're, like, deeply, deeply felt profound priors.

00:34:36.220 And if you don't share them with someone, then there's not really anything that you can agree on.

00:34:39.440 So, on this point about, because, I don't know, I've been talking about this for a long time, this feeling of, like, civilizational decay.

00:34:49.380 Yeah.

00:34:49.840 Sort of, there's a whiff of it in the air.

00:34:53.240 And it's interesting, I know you read my piece about Australia, because you go to Australia and it's sort of like, you feel like you've gone ten years into the past, but, like, in a good way.

00:35:02.620 Yeah.

00:35:02.880 You know what I mean? So, they're still on the way towards that, whereas he, and to compare and contrast is very interesting.

00:35:10.600 Do you think that once, do you think where the past event horizon, the point of no return, where you just go, you've gone so far down this path now that you're just, there's no coming back?

00:35:25.340 Yeah. I mean, I think the thing to, you know that meme a little while ago about how men think about Rome every day?

00:35:33.020 Yeah.

00:35:33.340 Or whatever in women. So, I think about the fall of Rome every day. 0.92

00:35:37.740 Whatever that says about me, okay.

00:35:39.360 And I think that the fall of Rome is really instructive. I mean, it's obviously not the only example of a civilizational decline, but it's probably the most, the one we think about most often is the forefront of our minds when we think about this thing.

00:35:50.820 And, you know, the thing to know about the fall of Rome is it took centuries. And even though there are obviously, you know, you'll, you'll, a lot of people will think of artistic representations of barbarians sacking Rome or whatever.

00:36:02.440 That doesn't really actually represent what it was like to live through, except in some cases. For most people living in the Roman Empire, it would have felt just like kind of slow decline with occasional speeding up, right?

00:36:18.800 And you just would have less connection with the center of empire. You would become poorer. Technology that was previously available to you wasn't available anymore. I mean, we didn't, Rome didn't really completely collapse, right? I mean, to some extent, it retreated to Byzantium. It morphed into the Roman Catholic Church. You know, it's not like Latin is still with us. It's not like it was a complete collapse. It was just a fall from that peak.

00:36:42.220 And, you know, that's probably what's going to happen in some way over the coming centuries to the West and people on the edges of empire, which kind of includes us. I mean, obviously, Britain used to be at the center of empire, but now we're very much a vassal of Washington. We're just going to have less. We'll become poorer. Technology we once had will no longer be available. Communications that we once seemed normal to us will kind of.

00:37:08.420 But do you know the more-

00:37:11.200 Francis, I'm sorry.

00:37:11.780 Sorry, go for it, go for it.

00:37:12.740 I just want to press you on this point, though, ladies.

00:37:16.000 The question I was asking is, do you think there's a way to stop the decline?

00:37:19.760 Oh, no, probably not. But I also don't want to be completely- the term my husband uses for this is he calls me a collapsed hard.

00:37:29.100 And if I talk too much about collapse, he's like, no, you can't be a collapsed hard in my house. I'm actually not being- I'm not saying that, like, I'm not-

00:37:38.420 I'm not prophesying apocalypse. I'm not saying there's going to be- I'm not saying go prep with your, you know, tins of beans and guns, right?

00:37:46.080 But you're also saying that- you're saying the decline is not going to be overnight, and it's not going to be explosive all the time, and it's not necessarily going to be chaos and violence.

00:37:55.640 And that we're not going to lose everything.

00:37:56.940 Yes.

00:37:57.500 Like, we're going- probably what will happen, right, is that sites of technological sophistication will just kind of shrink and entrench, that they'll be, like, new Byzantiums.

00:38:06.160 My point is, there's a big difference between being a Roman and an Italian who sells ice cream on the ruins of what used to be a real civilisation. 0.86

00:38:16.080 No offence to Italians, whom I love. But do you see what I'm saying?

00:38:20.800 Not really.

00:38:21.900 Okay. What I'm saying is, yes, it will be slow and maybe not as painful and is not awful and is not straight away and blah, blah, blah, as some people might like to imagine.

00:38:34.020 But there's a big difference between being a great civilisation and living on the ruins of one, feeding off whatever remnants are still around.

00:38:41.980 Oh, yeah, it's bad.

00:38:42.880 Yeah.

00:38:43.120 Yeah, no, no, no. I'm not pretending it's not bad.

00:38:45.160 And you don't think there's any way to stop that process?

00:38:49.540 We've yet to find- no one has ever reversed the birth rate decline. It doesn't mean it can't happen, I guess, in theory, but, like, no one has ever done so.

00:38:59.300 And much as I support a lot of pro-Natalist policy, if nothing else for selfish reasons, like, I would love a tax break, it doesn't actually work really very well.

00:39:11.500 Like, the Hungarians have nudged their birth rate up a little bit, they're never close to replacement, though. 0.99

00:39:14.920 I mean, what's very likely to happen, maybe sooner rather than later, is that very fertile subpopulations are obviously going to flourish, you know, and generally very fertile subpopulations are the very religious and the very conservative.

00:39:28.200 So, to some extent, we've already seen this in Israel, you know, that Israeli politics has moved to the right, is widely remarked upon that it's moved to the right quite significantly in recent decades.

00:39:40.000 And probably the reason for that is it's because the most liberal Israelis have been having the fewest kids and the most conservative and religious Israelis have been having the most, and that's starting to show. 0.81

00:39:51.100 And so that will probably happen everywhere.

00:39:53.400 There are these projections about what portion of the American population is going to be Amish in, like, 200 years.

00:39:58.680 I know it sounds funny, but, like, they have a lot of kids, and they're pretty good at retaining their, they're pretty good at sustaining that fertility.

00:40:08.220 So that's going to be the big thing.

00:40:10.760 And then, of course, the big question is, like, what would an America run by the Amish be like? 0.99

00:40:17.880 I mean, we can assume less interested in technological progress.

00:40:21.280 I had Robin, the economist Robin Hanson on my podcast a little while ago, because he's very concerned about this issue as an economist.

00:40:28.300 And he, you know, he's very clear about this.

00:40:30.540 He's, like, shrinking populations, low-fetility populations are not innovative populations. 0.99

00:40:36.060 They are not, these are not societies that can create amazing new technologies, you know.

00:40:40.640 Like, he's not, like, again, he's not, like, a massive doomer.

00:40:43.120 He doesn't say, we're not going to have running water, we're not going to have electricity or anything like that.

00:40:47.360 More like, we're going to stagnate, and there's going to, we just won't, I mean, we already have seen that, to be honest.

00:40:52.860 But we're just not going to see the sort of, all the stuff we're imagining, like, robots, AI, whatever, it's just, actually, probably just not going to happen.

00:41:00.780 The thing that he said that really stuck in my mind is, was, Elon has five years to get to Mars, or it's not going to happen.

00:41:06.540 Because we'll reach that point where there just aren't enough, like, bright young engineers to go round, to do all the stuff that he's doing.

00:41:16.380 There just, there just isn't enough human capital to get to Mars when you have a shrinking population.

00:41:21.480 And when, you know, the bright young engineers you do have are being funneled into keeping the electricity network running, and stuff like that.

00:41:29.020 You don't have, like, excess human capital necessary to do things, do crazy things like go to Mars.

00:41:34.660 So, we probably just won't.

00:41:36.980 That's really interesting.

00:41:38.400 I think the one thing that gives me hope around this is, if you look at the other countries, who you could say are rivals, competitors, whatever you want to say, call them.

00:41:51.820 I mean, they're not doing great either.

00:41:54.620 Yeah, true.

00:41:55.180 It would be, it would be, yes, like, the three great superpowers in the world, right, they, they all have declining fertility massively.

00:42:01.400 Imagine if one of them didn't.

00:42:03.320 Imagine if, like, China had incredibly high fertility or something, which, of course, it did not that long ago.

00:42:06.920 I mean, China massively shot itself in the foot with the one-child policy.

00:42:09.620 Yeah.

00:42:10.080 Because it's become even harder now for it to get up, get, get back from where it's got to in terms of low fertility.

00:42:15.840 Yeah, I mean, yeah, think of the geopolitical implications.

00:42:19.040 As it is, of course, that's not the case.

00:42:20.540 It is obviously very, it's very relevant if, say, you're a South Korean.

00:42:24.800 Oh, absolutely.

00:42:25.640 Because what's there, they're 1.4 at the moment, aren't they, or something?

00:42:29.080 No, lower than that.

00:42:29.840 It's, like, 0.8, I want to say.

00:42:32.600 It's really low.

00:42:33.180 So it's the lowest in the world.

00:42:34.980 Now, we're at 1.4.

00:42:36.560 Oh, wow.

00:42:37.180 Yeah.

00:42:37.880 Wow, so they're even lower.

00:42:39.080 Yeah, very low.

00:42:39.660 And whereas North Korea is at 2 or 2.1 or something.

00:42:42.320 Yeah.

00:42:42.580 So not super high, but much higher than South Korea.

00:42:45.120 So it won't be that long until South Korea, even though it has a technological advantage over North Korea, will not have a military advantage because it doesn't have the people. 0.91

00:42:53.660 Louise, is there a biologic element to this in that things like microplastics?

00:42:58.100 Because I've been reading lots of studies that the quality of young men's sperm is in freefall.

00:43:05.160 Might also that be a problem?

00:43:08.300 Yeah, I think probably not, although it is a thing, definitely.

00:43:12.300 And it's not a good thing.

00:43:13.780 And again, it comes back to the pill.

00:43:15.280 Like, the pill has pretty bad effects on the natural environment, which may be implicated in low sperm counts, along with things like microplastics.

00:43:22.480 But as far as I know, the problem is not that people are trying to have kids en masse and not managing it.

00:43:30.960 It's that people are not getting...

00:43:34.460 Mostly the thing that's going wrong is people not getting into relationships within which they want to have children.

00:43:42.380 That seems to be the bit of the sequence that people are faltering at most often.

00:43:47.540 Which is why the Hungarian idea of getting people to marry seems to make a difference.

00:43:51.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:53.440 And yeah, I mean, again, it comes back to things like the pill, like disrupting that sequence.

00:44:00.400 I think there's...

00:44:00.880 I mean, clearly there is also just something about wealth.

00:44:03.160 There's something that, you know, you cross this threshold of whatever, 5,000, 10,000 US dollars a year, GDP per capita.

00:44:08.180 And people just...

00:44:10.620 Just fertility does this. 1.00

00:44:12.080 And that just happens everywhere.

00:44:13.340 And it happens regardless.

00:44:15.040 One of the things about this birth rates phenomenon, as a sociological phenomenon, is that it attracts just so stories.

00:44:22.740 It's very easy.

00:44:23.840 Everyone has an opinion.

00:44:24.800 And it's very easy to be like, oh, it's because of this.

00:44:26.480 It's because of this.

00:44:26.980 It's because of this.

00:44:27.260 I read in the BBC the other week that it's absolutely, definitely low fertility in South Korea because of South Korea being patriarchal.

00:44:35.720 And I thought, lads, when South Korea actually was patriarchal, it had very high fertility.

00:44:45.040 Right.

00:44:45.460 Right.

00:44:45.800 I like every...

00:44:48.040 And I mean, that's also true, you know, I've got to say, for like my hobby horses, like being pro-marriage and stuff, it's also the case that plenty of socially conservative places that love marriage or whatever are still sub-replacement.

00:45:00.760 You know, it's...

00:45:02.080 The big factor is wealth.

00:45:05.500 There's something about wealth that makes people less keen to reproduce.

00:45:08.220 And there's also societies that are openly antenatal, Korea being one of them.

00:45:12.340 You've got all these holiday resorts or restaurants or cafes, which are strictly no children.

00:45:18.140 No children are allowed.

00:45:19.480 So if you're automatically, if you're sending out that message and what you're saying, the kids are undesirable, then why would people want to have kids if they're constantly being told that they're not wanted?

00:45:29.060 Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:29.680 And I think also you just end up in this vicious cycle where if no one around you is having kids, it becomes weird to have kids.

00:45:36.900 It also becomes more difficult.

00:45:38.020 I think another problem that people have, and this is in some senses, I think, the issue with wealth-causing low fertility, is that, you know, I go onto Instagram or whatever, and I see I'm bombarded with images of what a luxurious, comfortable, child-free life looks like, right?

00:45:54.320 The Dink lifestyle. 1.00

00:45:55.400 The Dink lifestyle. 1.00

00:45:56.220 All the travel or the whatever.

00:45:57.160 And if you're, you know, it is just the case that if you have kids, you have less free time and less free money.

00:46:02.920 It's just like, there's just no way around it.

00:46:04.860 And that doesn't seem so bad if everyone else in your peer group is doing the same thing.

00:46:09.920 It seems much more painful if you're the only one who's suffering this cost.

00:46:15.460 And then you can see why people are thinking, like, why am I doing this and that way?

00:46:18.840 I mean, obviously, people, you know, people adore their children.

00:46:22.840 Like, people regretting having children is actually extremely rare.

00:46:27.120 Like, I'm not just a natalist for, like, geopolitical reasons.

00:46:33.080 Like, I also think the children are just wonderful.

00:46:34.300 We must raise an army.

00:46:35.660 Right.

00:46:36.340 I also think the children are just wonderful and it's, like, the most meaningful thing you can do with your life, right?

00:46:41.440 But there's just no getting away from the fact that it does, it has economic implications.

00:46:46.060 And a lot of people, like, when it comes down to it, they're just like, I'd actually rather have a bit more money and only have one or two.

00:46:52.680 Well, this is one of the things about, that I think we increasingly need to talk about in modern society, which is, I think we live in the age of money.

00:47:01.660 And so we've forgotten that money isn't the most important thing.

00:47:05.520 At the same time, as I think it's fair to say, you know, I was having this conversation with somebody last night.

00:47:11.100 Like, I'm a first generation immigrant.

00:47:14.960 So I came here.

00:47:15.860 I didn't have a family network.

00:47:17.320 I spent the first 10 years of my life kind of struggling to make my way.

00:47:21.280 No inheritance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:47:24.180 And I've basically had to create this with Francis and build a pretty successful career in doing what I'm doing to be able to have what baby boomers in America had in the 60s on one income.

00:47:36.080 Yeah, I know.

00:47:36.660 It's terrible.

00:47:37.440 Do you know what I mean?

00:47:38.220 Completely.

00:47:38.460 So basically, all I ever wanted was to have, like, a house and kids and to be comfortable.

00:47:44.820 And that's really it.

00:47:46.480 And nowadays, to do that, you have to, like, if you want to live in London, you basically have to be a millionaire.

00:47:51.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:51.840 No, I agree.

00:47:52.440 And I'm living it as well.

00:47:53.860 Like, I totally get you.

00:47:54.680 The thing that, though, that I always try and remind myself of is, like, it's harder than it was for my parents, for your parents.

00:48:02.700 We're still safer, more comfortable, richer, whatever, than, like, 99.9% of people who have ever lived.

00:48:08.520 Yeah.

00:48:08.700 And it's so hard to remember that, because I think the human mind is so set up to be doing these kind of minute peer comparisons.

00:48:15.820 Interesting.

00:48:16.300 Well, let me ask you another question, then, because you talk about its GDP.

00:48:20.080 And I was wondering whether it's GDP or whether it's urbanization.

00:48:24.660 Yeah, it's both.

00:48:25.660 I mean, yeah, cities shred fertility. 0.95

00:48:29.280 Also true in Rome, right?

00:48:30.680 Yeah.

00:48:30.860 Rome largely shredded fertility because of disease.

00:48:33.260 But it's always been the case that, you know, the villagers are basically, like, little reproduction machines.

00:48:39.760 Like, they're, like, perfectly set up for people, which is a lesson there.

00:48:42.760 Like, there's something in there.

00:48:43.940 You know, if what you're trying to do, if you want to design a fertile culture, it probably has to look something like a village.

00:48:51.860 Because that seems to be, of all sorts of social technology we've ever invented, that seems to be the best one for encouraging people to have children,

00:48:59.780 like, having their extended family around, being in a very settled place, all this kind of stuff.

00:49:03.760 But anyway, so historically, yes, I mean, villages have always, rural areas have always been the engines of fertility.

00:49:09.000 And then people go to the city and either have fewer children or die from plague or, you know, I mean, I mean, this is a point, actually, like, again, worth remembering.

00:49:18.640 When my husband accused me of being a collapsed hard, I saw in the paper recent, I think it was a Lancet, had a piece on low fertility the other week.

00:49:26.540 And it mentioned the fact that the global population has not shrunk since the Black Death and is now set to shrink quite soon, which makes it sound very frightening.

00:49:39.300 It is worth, like, reflecting on the fact that, yes, I mean, normally population only shrinks because of disease, war, famine, some sort of disaster.

00:49:48.740 That's not true for us. Like, the reason that our population is set to shrink is because people have just, like, don't fancy having kids, which is kind of great.

00:49:59.880 I mean, if you have to go through a period of population decline, this is definitely the most pleasant.

00:50:06.360 But it's still, like, it still spells only one thing, which is civilisation decline.

00:50:11.020 Yeah. And with that as well, there's this other phenomenon that has started to bubble up, which is surrogacy, which I find...

00:50:22.020 Smeased.

00:50:22.340 Yeah, I think so.

00:50:23.420 That was an interesting transition.

00:50:24.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:50:25.480 It's like, what can we get Louise to say?

00:50:30.560 But the whole surrogacy movement...

00:50:33.020 I still don't get the connection, by the way.

00:50:34.520 Yeah.

00:50:34.720 You carry on.

00:50:35.280 Yeah, because, well, you get these people now who want children, but don't want to go, sometimes don't want to go through the rigours of an unpleasantness of being pregnant and having a child.

00:50:50.460 Yeah, like, I mean, I'm pregnant right now, I can tell you pregnancy sucks, like, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

00:50:56.700 I actually had a really interesting conversation in my podcast recently with a woman called Catherine Pakulik.

00:51:01.280 He's had eight children and also has, I think, six stepchildren.

00:51:06.040 And she wrote a book about women who... 1.00

00:51:08.680 Anne is an academic.

00:51:10.360 Very unusual, right?

00:51:11.580 And she wrote a book about women who both go to university and have five children or more.

00:51:19.120 And she did interviews with them to basically work out what's going on, because that's such an unusual thing to do, statistically.

00:51:26.140 And the thing she concluded, which I found so interesting, is it's not that these women have suffered fewer trade-offs.

00:51:32.760 It's not, for instance, that they have easier pregnancies.

00:51:35.360 Like, she talks to women who are like, I hate being pregnant. 0.99

00:51:37.980 Like, Catherine said to me herself, like, I hate being pregnant.

00:51:39.820 It's so uncomfortable.

00:51:40.580 It's horrible.

00:51:41.680 It's not that they have loads more money, like, they've got nannies coming out their ears or anything like that.

00:51:46.380 It's not that they have particularly supportive extended families.

00:51:50.660 It's just that they really, really like kids and they just really, really want to do it.

00:51:53.480 And they've just decided that it's worth it.

00:51:57.680 And, yeah, I mean, that's...

00:52:01.140 Whatever drive that is, presumably some genetic component, is presumably being selected for very aggressively at the moment.

00:52:07.680 But, yeah, I mean, so it's, yeah, so the surrogacy thing, I mean, pregnancy is onerous.

00:52:13.660 It's just true.

00:52:14.740 And I can, I get why these celebrity, you know, rich ladies or whatever, rich men, want to farm it out to poorer women. 0.94

00:52:27.420 Although, but then the thing is, as Mary Harrington likes to say, pregnancy doesn't just make a baby, it makes a mother. 0.97

00:52:33.120 There are psychological components to pregnancy, which are essential in terms of priming you to care for this helpless newborn when he or she is born.

00:52:45.620 And we, we can't replicate that, you know, science.

00:52:51.100 It's beyond science to try and imitate that.

00:52:54.020 Louise, in the interest of promoting the natalist message, let me mansplain pregnancy for you. 0.99

00:53:00.560 No, but I, I have heard from some other women that it's a, it's a mixed bag, I think, pregnancy. 1.00

00:53:06.400 Is that fair to say?

00:53:07.500 Yeah. 0.75

00:53:07.680 It's not that it sucks, it's that there are times when it sucks and there are times when it's actually brilliant.

00:53:12.080 Would that be... 0.60

00:53:12.780 Yeah, and it's worth it.

00:53:14.040 Yeah.

00:53:14.620 Yeah, and also you just forget.

00:53:16.180 You're not selling it very well.

00:53:18.040 No, but it's true.

00:53:18.800 I mean, also true of childbirth.

00:53:20.000 Like you, um, I remember vividly, so I've just come to the end of morning sickness and I had the same thought while writing a book about pronatalism, right?

00:53:27.440 And I had the same thought during...

00:53:30.220 This is great.

00:53:31.660 I had the same thought during this pregnancy that I did.

00:53:34.200 I remember having during last pregnancy of like, I never want to do this again.

00:53:37.160 And I've already forgotten that impulse.

00:53:39.100 I'm already like, oh yeah, I'll do it.

00:53:40.560 I'll do it loads more, whatever.

00:53:42.220 Um, and that's also true of childbirth. 0.53

00:53:44.660 You just, you just like get over it.

00:53:46.300 And I think also that's just, it's just life, isn't it?

00:53:49.600 Like, you, like, it's very rare to accomplish anything that's really worthwhile without some hardship.

00:53:54.860 Do you think part of it as well, and I was thinking about this because when I was teaching, people always used to say to me, oh, you know, kids are this, kids are that.

00:54:03.760 Most kids are really lovely and wonderful.

00:54:06.060 You get, you know, the others that you think, you know, you could be put somewhere else and, you know, society would be better for it.

00:54:11.940 But the vast majority of them, uh, chill out, Adolf.

00:54:15.880 Their mums probably don't think so.

00:54:17.460 Yeah, trust me, some of their mums definitely have the smart, long and honest conversation with their mums. 0.97

00:54:24.040 But we, we now see motherhood and being a parent as long, onerous, incredibly unsatisfying.

00:54:33.540 Because most of us don't have encounters with children, the only time we really notice with them is if we're in a plane or in a public space,

00:54:40.680 they're having a meltdown and we're like, oh my God, shut the up.

00:54:45.180 Yeah.

00:54:45.980 And the joys of, I think the joys of parenthood tends to be hidden.

00:54:49.880 Partly because maybe we don't talk about it enough.

00:54:52.120 Because you don't want to be smug, do you?

00:54:53.840 Like, particularly if you've, particularly, I don't know, if you know, if you know that you're talking to people who are struggling with infertility or if you have friends who, you know.

00:55:04.060 But I mean, I should say that anecdotally, by far the most common reason I know for women in my peer group not having kids is because they haven't found the right man.

00:55:12.540 Yeah.

00:55:12.640 Like, the, the sort of girl boss narrative about this, that what's happening is women are just choosing their, like, fancy shoes and handbags and pursuing their careers over having children.

00:55:25.200 So, you know, that ideology absolutely exists.

00:55:27.300 There's a little bit of truth to it.

00:55:28.700 I think overwhelmingly, though, that's not what's going on.

00:55:30.900 Like, I think at least 90% of British women say they want to have children at some point, and yet only 75% of my generation will end up doing so.

00:55:39.540 So, mostly it's circumstantial.

00:55:41.720 So, you don't want to go around being really smug and talking about how wonderful your children are.

00:55:47.540 But it's true, and there's just nothing like it.

00:55:49.420 And I think as well that if you don't have kids, it's very hard to imagine that feeling.

00:55:54.080 It's like a one-way street.

00:55:55.280 I always think that, for fathers as well, but I obviously only know it from the mother's perspective, having children just changes your moral universe.

00:56:05.380 Totally.

00:56:06.040 Because suddenly, it's the number one thing you care about in the whole world forevermore, and you would die for your children without even thinking about it.

00:56:14.160 And not only that, it also means that any time you encounter a child's suffering, like, even in fiction or something, you think of your child.

00:56:21.760 Like, you become so much more acutely sensitive to any harm coming to children and so on.

00:56:27.880 Yeah, and that's just so hard to, it's so hard to directly empathise with that feeling if you've not been through it, and hard also to explain it.

00:56:38.800 Yeah.

00:56:39.200 But at the same time, Francis, like, when my son comes in here, everyone's like, oh my god, he's so cute.

00:56:44.400 You know, so I think having kids around, this is, you were making this point, but can we come back to the urbanisation conversation, actually, Louise, a little bit?

00:56:53.960 Because I guess one of the things I wanted to ask you about is, there was a time when conservatives in particular, but lots of people, banged on about the nuclear family.

00:57:02.920 And I wonder if the nuclear family is actually a big part of why we're here, because it takes more than a nuclear family to raise a child, as I'm rapidly discovering.

00:57:11.480 I mean, do you know what I mean?

00:57:13.000 And is it maybe just particularly the urbanisation of society where you basically have older generations staying put in rural areas, younger generations moving in, you create separation, cities are not exactly encouraging you to have kids anyway.

00:57:27.980 And then that is then, and it's like, then you're going, it's super expensive, I'm surrounded by people who don't have kids, and therefore I've got all these other disincentives, I'm not increasingly living in a safe or comfortable place, I don't have my own home, and I'm not going to get this help that, you know, 100 years would have been expected, which is grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.

00:57:50.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And it's this kind of tragedy, in a sense that, you know, Britain had the first industrial revolution, right, and we also had birth rate decline earlier almost than anyone else.

00:58:04.740 And so we're, you know, with the exception of some of these North East Asian countries, we're further along this road than anyone else.

00:58:12.060 And one theory as to why Britain had the first industrial revolution is because we abandoned clannishness earlier, we basically invented individualism, right, and then exported it, of course, to, you know, America is now, of course, famous for its individualism, America is, was originally a British colony, right, so it's all the same culture.

00:58:30.240 Um, individualism is absolutely amazing for wealth generation, absolutely amazing for encouraging people to be mobile and innovative and entrepreneurial and all the rest of it.

00:58:41.820 Um, and, you know, for a long time, like that allowed British people to dominate the world because we had the combination of individualism and also high fertility. 0.51

00:58:51.080 I mean, for such a long time, Britain was a net exporter of people. We talk so often now about mass, mass, net immigration. We had net emigration for centuries because we were sending, we were, you know, having loads and loads of kids and sending them to Australia, Canada, everywhere.

00:59:05.360 And the problem, though, that we've now found is that eventually individualism eats itself because you have this problem that you describe exactly, that you don't have people move around, they don't have the extended family networks anymore, they're not, they're not settled in one place, they don't, you know.

00:59:26.760 I mean, one of the reasons, right, why people have fewer children when they're not surrounded by extended family is that extended families are constantly telling you to have kids because your grandmother or whoever is constantly sort of prodding you about it.

00:59:37.520 Why would your friends care, really?

00:59:39.660 Mm.

00:59:39.940 Like, your friends, your friends don't have any genetic investment in you having children.

00:59:44.160 They might have some other, it might suit their interests in other ways, but generally they don't have that genetic investment, whereas families do.

00:59:50.600 And families also will drop everything to help their, their children, grandchildren, whatever, who are, of course, their genetic, represent their genetic future.

01:00:02.040 So, yeah, I mean, shredding the family kind of can't help but disincentivise people from having children.

01:00:06.780 All right, well, there you go, it's the last days of growth.

01:00:11.620 I guess the question before we do our last one is, you're pregnant, you want to have more kids, in this declining, dying, collapsed, hard world.

01:00:25.500 I know.

01:00:25.920 Why is that?

01:00:26.600 Well, I guess it comes back to this, like, fundamental priors thing, isn't it?

01:00:29.760 Like, look, actually, I would rather live in the winter of civilisation, if you have to choose.

01:00:39.500 It might be a bit depressing.

01:00:41.440 It might feel like this feeling of loss and sort of cultural malaise isn't very happy.

01:00:46.540 But also, we're getting to live off the fumes of the amazing civilisation that our ancestors built, you know.

01:00:53.900 If you'd lived in the 19th century, say, or earlier, you would have got to feel that sense of, like, confidence and, like, certainty and all of this.

01:01:03.000 You also would have had to worry about your kids dying of cholera.

01:01:05.900 You would have had to worry about...

01:01:07.220 The two world wars.

01:01:07.880 Yeah, exactly.

01:01:09.160 Whereas we actually, we get all the great stuff that our ancestors built for us.

01:01:14.980 And I don't think it's going to just vanish.

01:01:16.880 I mean, I'm not worried about apocalyptic scenarios.

01:01:20.240 And, yes, we also have to feel melancholy about loss.

01:01:23.800 But it's not that bad.

01:01:24.920 It's still the case that I think our children can...

01:01:29.360 I mean, I think particularly, mind you, like, we've got loads of passports.

01:01:32.560 Like, we're, you know, in global terms, we're very well off.

01:01:35.020 Like, I don't actually think that we're facing that kind of level of crisis.

01:01:42.940 You just have to take a punt and, like, invest in the future.

01:01:48.260 So unconvincing.

01:01:49.920 I'm sorry.

01:01:50.720 But again, it's this priors thing.

01:01:52.200 It's like...

01:01:53.420 You're having more children because you think children are good and you enjoy having them.

01:01:56.700 Oh, it's because I love children and they're gorgeous.

01:01:58.080 And, like, I think my son is the best thing in the world.

01:02:00.680 And having more of him is amazing for you.

01:02:03.180 But also, but in a, like, a broader sense, like, you just have to choose.

01:02:07.340 Are you pro-human or aren't you?

01:02:09.400 Yeah.

01:02:09.880 I agree with that.

01:02:10.840 I definitely agree with that.

01:02:12.900 Louise, you should start a party. 0.99

01:02:14.480 Britain, it's not too bad. 0.97

01:02:16.020 Yeah.

01:02:17.060 That would be your slogan.

01:02:18.300 Yeah.

01:02:18.740 Louise, as always, we end with the same question.

01:02:21.220 What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

01:02:23.780 Before Louise answers, once the interview is over, make sure you head on over to Locals

01:02:29.440 using the link in the description to see this.

01:02:32.500 I have reached the conclusion, you know, not via scripture, but via looking at social science

01:02:39.540 data and whatever, that Christian ideas are true.

01:02:44.000 Like, they produce better societies.

01:02:45.240 One percent of young women in the U.S. are on OnlyFans of girls. 0.72

01:02:50.560 No way.

01:02:51.860 One percent.

01:02:52.560 That's very high.

01:02:53.900 OnlyFans is to the marriage market as a criminal record is to the jobs market.

01:02:57.240 Like, it's a very bad long-term thing.

01:02:59.400 What advice would you give to men raising daughters in 2024?

01:03:03.000 It's hard not to just repeat myself because we've been like, because this is this thing

01:03:09.980 that no one's talking about.

01:03:10.860 I mean, I find it crazy that people, you'll still get comments under articles about natalism

01:03:17.760 being like, what about the environment?

01:03:20.040 What about overpopulation?

01:03:21.160 You know, whatever.

01:03:22.600 Yeah.

01:03:22.820 I mean, I think.

01:03:23.380 I, my bet is that people are actually too worried right now about like runaway modernity

01:03:35.260 and runaway technology and not worried enough about how we're going to deal with declining

01:03:41.700 modernity and declining technology.

01:03:43.460 I think that our whole like focus on the future is basically wrong and we should all be making

01:03:50.100 decisions with the expectation that there's not going to be endless growth.

01:03:56.500 And yeah, so I'm just a ray of sunshine.

01:04:00.000 Okay.

01:04:00.700 There we go.

01:04:01.860 All right.

01:04:02.180 Head on over to locals where Louise will say what she really thinks.

01:04:07.260 Do you believe the Jesus stuff or is it just a more ideal way to live regarding sex 0.53

01:04:12.280 and relationships?

01:04:13.180 Do I believe the Jesus stuff?

01:04:20.100 Do you believe the Jesus, Lord Christ after?

01:04:34.080 Yes.

01:04:39.500 It's just a futuro den.

01:04:41.740 That's okay.

01:04:42.960 All right.

01:04:43.160 I mean, I thought I did it on.

01:04:44.260 I think it's a completely that's okay.

01:04:45.060 It's a Thompson, actually.

01:04:45.940 It's okay.

01:04:46.720 We'll do it here.

TRIGGERnometry - April 24, 2024

The Modern Dating Catastrophe, Sex Recession & Population Collapse - Louise Perry

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