Latest news with #procreation
Times
7 days ago
- Politics
- Times
We're in a ‘global fertility crisis'. Does this woman have a solution?
Worrying about the decline in fertility used to be a fringe issue: the reserve of religious leaders, tweedy conservatives and cranky pronatalists. No longer. Last week the United Nations issued a report declaring a 'global fertility crisis'. According to Natalia Kanem, head of the UN Population Fund, which published the report, the world has 'begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates'. The figures are stark, the consequences potentially grave. In 1950s Britain, for example, the average woman had 2.2 children. Now that figure is 1.44. We are not replacing ourselves. The question is why? The will to procreate is our most primal evolutionary urge, but something is dulling it. What's going on? • Britain needs babies! And PM should find the right words to say so The UN report cites many of the usual suspects: lack of childcare and job security, housing costs, fears about the future. One in five people surveyed in 14 countries said fears about climate change, war and pandemics held them back from reproducing. Thirty-nine per cent pointed to financial constraints. But what if there is something else going on too? One woman with a different answer is Alice Evans, a senior lecturer in the social science of development at King's College London. Evans, a brusque yet charming 38-year-old from Sevenoaks, Kent, has spent much of her professional life travelling round the world, speaking to people from Zambia to the Americas about children: why they want them, why they don't, and what is stopping them from having the family they might want. Evans acknowledges that the factors highlighted by the UN all play a role in the fertility crisis. Yet, she argues, none fully explain why this is happening everywhere, all at once — in countries with vastly different living standards, gender norms, parental leave policies and working practices. Could it be, Evans suggests, that we are spending so much time on the internet that we've stopped falling in love, stopped reproducing? Are we entertaining ourselves into oblivion? At first, this might seem outlandish. But dig into the data and it becomes surprisingly persuasive. 'Looking around the world, we see one really big change which coincides with the fall in fertility,' Evans says. Over the past 15 years or so, smartphones have become ubiquitous, and we have seen the rise of an astonishing array of online entertainment — from online sports gambling to pornography to television streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. 'It's really only some parts of sub-Saharan Africa that have replacement fertility, which means that each woman would have over two kids in her lifetime,' Evans explains. 'In every other population in the world, we'd expect a contraction of the young working-age population.' What's so different about sub-Saharan Africa? Few people have smartphones. Evans fears that 'hyperengaging media' may be outcompeting the real-world interactions that lead to babies. We spend more time on screens and consequently more time alone. 'Young men in their twenties in the UK are spending as much time alone as men in their sixties and seventies,' she says. In today's Deliveroo and Netflix economy, we socialise less, meet fewer people, and are less likely to find the person with whom we want to have children. Dating apps are struggling to fill the gap. 'Looking both at marriage and cohabiting,' Evans says, 'both of those indicators are down. They are plummeting in Hong Kong, South Korea, across Southeast Asia, across South America.' She's just returned from Costa Rica, where the average age of marriage is 38 for men and 35 for women. In America, up to 55 per cent of under-34s have been estimated to be single. 'We know that half aren't even in a rush to get into a relationship, they aren't bothered about it,' she says. ● The nation's birthrate has plummeted. How did we get here? That fewer people feel rushed into relationships can, of course, be seen as a good thing: a sign of empowerment and freedom, particularly for women. But it's also the case that across the developed world, about a third of men say they are lonely. There is something of a vicious cycle at play too. As we socialise less, we become less charming, less interesting, less confident. 'If I spend every night scrolling or watching Bridgerton, then I'm not necessarily finessing my social skills,' Evans says. 'Maybe I don't have the confidence to just go up to a group of guys, or maybe I don't have a ready group of people to go out with.' Men and women also experience the internet in different ways. Social media algorithms show them different news, different opinions, amplifying the gender divide. It means that across many western countries, the political and cultural gap between young women (who tend to be on the left) and young men (on the right) is growing. Data from Gallup last year showed that American women are 30 percentage points more liberal than American men. In this country, many point to the exorbitant cost of childcare as an inhibiting factor for starting a family. Yet Sweden, with its abundant parental leave and universal childcare, has a birthrate very slightly lower than the UK's. Housing is expensive in many places, yes. But if housing was the major friction, Evans argues, 'we might expect young people to do the cheaper thing and live communally. Across Europe we've seen a massive increase in young men living by themselves.' Evans argues that declining fertility is a threat to our way of life. Without massive migration or some sort of boost from technology such as artificial intelligence, our working-age population will go into decline, our tax base will shrink, our welfare bill will balloon and our towns and villages will begin to resemble parts of rural Italy or Spain, which have begun to empty out. 'If you want to maintain our current standard of living and if you want to maintain economic growth, this is something we should take extremely seriously,' she says. It may also change our political leanings, with religious conservatives having more children than liberal progressives. Even the steps required to tackle climate change will be difficult without a large working population to pay the bill. So what can we do about it? There is no fix-all cure, Evans says. She herself has no children. She was born with Rokitansky syndrome, which means that she has no womb and only one ovary. For a small group of women, including her, improvements in IVF and other fertility technologies could be very important. • How do we get our babies back? More broadly, Evans suggests that if we want to see birthrates increase, and maintain our current standards of living, the government might consider providing serious tax incentives for those who have children. More youth clubs and more community groups might help, she suggests, as would making our culture more family-friendly. Evans would love to see more (and better) rom coms made, with plots celebrating finding love and having a family. She also suggests that we need a serious conversation about tech, and how we make it work for us. 'We need to tackle all these issues at once,' she says. 'No one policy, no one sledgehammer is going to fix everything.' In the midst of all this worrying news, however, there is one thing to celebrate. On Friday Evans married her partner, Usama Polani, a macroeconomist. Now, it's over to the rest of us to pair off.
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Fringe Movement
The attack on a Palm Springs, Calif., fertility clinic last week surfaced some unsettling ideas. Guy Edward Bartkus, the 25-year-old suspect, had posted an audio clip explaining why he wanted to blow up a place that makes babies. 'I would be considered a pro-mortalist,' he said before detonating his Ford Fusion, killing himself and injuring four others. 'Let's make the death thing happen sooner rather than later in life.' Investigators called it 'terrorism' and 'nihilistic ideation.' Trump administration officials called it 'anti-pro-life.' Bartkus was indeed espousing an extreme ideology. But it belongs to a larger intellectual movement, still fringe for now, that is slowly gaining adherents. My colleagues Jill Cowan, Aric Toler, Jesus Jiménez and I have spent the past week reporting on what experts call 'anti-natalism.' Hundreds of thousands follow accounts and podcasts about it. It holds that procreation is immoral because the inevitability of death and suffering outweighs the odds of happiness. Today's newsletter explains. The idea The calculus is ancient — to be or not to be? A South African philosopher's 2006 treatise, 'Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence,' popularized the idea in its modern form. 'You're stuck between having been born, which was a harm, but also not being able to end the harm by taking your own life, because that is another kind of harm,' the author, David Benatar, told us. This perspective draws partly on utilitarianism, a discipline of philosophy that asks how to achieve the most good for the greatest number. But even there, anti-natalism is seen as marginal. Besides Benatar, 'I don't know any other philosophers who share it,' said Peter Singer, an influential utilitarian. Online, however, anxieties including climate change and artificial intelligence have given it traction — as has the yearning for connection, even among people with antisocial tendencies. Scores of anti-natalist discussion boards, influencers and podcasts now debate whether all creatures should stop reproducing, or just humans. The concepts have bled into pop culture. Thanos, the supervillain in two films from Marvel's 'Avengers' franchise, wants to eradicate half of the universe's living beings because there are 'too many mouths to feed.' The number of Americans who don't want kids is rising, with many young people saying they don't want to hurt the environment. A few variants are even more extreme. An offshoot known as 'efilists' — that's 'life' spelled backward — argues that DNA should also be destroyed. Pro-mortalism, the position Bartkus staked out, is less well defined. But it suggests that birth should be followed as soon as possible by a quick, consensual death. Bartkus was a vegan from a small town in the California desert whose estranged father called him 'a follower, not a leader.' As a child, the father said, he loved rockets and once nearly burned the house down. As an adult, he set off explosions in the barren wilderness. Online, he had grown close to a woman who died last month in an apparent assisted suicide. Taking action That woman, Sophie Tinney, 27, was shot three times in the head on Easter Sunday near Seattle, according to court records. Officials have charged her roommate with second-degree murder. But Bartkus's manifesto says she was a suicidal anti-natalist — and may have persuaded the roommate, an Eagle Scout who liked to play Dungeons & Dragons, to shoot her in her sleep. (He has pleaded not guilty.) Bartkus said online that Tinney's death might have prompted the clinic bombing. 'I don't think I really knew how much it was going to affect me,' said a manifesto posted with the audio on a pro-mortalism website. Social media posts tied to him indicate that he had attempted suicide at least twice since she died. Then he videotaped a dry run for the bombing, mixing chemicals in the desert that could blow up his car. An F.A.Q. appended to his manifesto includes a list of pro-mortalist and efilist figures; at least two of them have killed themselves in recent years. This week, the moderator of an anti-natalism Reddit forum with nearly a quarter-million members called the bombing 'unjustifiable, incoherent, immoral and disgusting.' Benatar, the author, said that his philosophy explicitly abhors violence, the restriction of reproductive rights and, in almost all cases, suicide. But ideas have a way of twisting and transforming online. One such adaptation seems to have found a young man who loved pyrotechnics and hated life. War in Ukraine Democrats Trump Administration Five Years Since Floyd Other Big Stories Republicans want to add work requirements to Medicaid. Is that a good idea? No. Work requirements bury eligible people under paperwork to prove that they meet the new requirements. 'The most vulnerable will be made worse off, all to fund a tax cut that most benefits the rich,' Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan write for The Times. Yes. Work requirements improved the economy in the Clinton years, when people left welfare and went back to work. 'More workers in the economy will mean more people paying into Social Security and Medicare, preserving those programs for years to come,' Stewart Whitson writes for U.S. News & World Report. Zombie apocalypses are appealing because there's no better distraction from whatever currently ails you than something worse, Rachel Feintzeig writes. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on Trump's crypto gala and Lydia Polgreen on the Oval Office meeting with South Africa's president. Believing: After childbirth put a woman into a coma, she forgot her husband and her faith. Read how she recovered. Wrecked: With an underwater drone, archaeologists are capturing images of sunken vessels in the Great Lakes. Roommate tales: Stories of New Yorkers living alongside slobs, witches and eventual lifelong friends. Summer vacation: Staffing cuts could make national parks a mess this summer. Here are five great state parks to visit instead. Divorcing? There's a coach for that. The Gecko Gallery: A tiny Brooklyn zoo is host to dozens of species from across the globe. See inside. Vows: Their friend rigged the gala seating chart. It worked. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday showed 15 looks from the Cannes red carpet. Trending: The soccer team Real Madrid. The coach Carlo Ancelotti is leaving the club this weekend to become head coach of Brazil, the BBC reports. Lives Lived: Susan Brownmiller was a feminist author and activist who helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence. She died at 90. Read this week's magazine. Try a soul-nourishing Filipino chicken soup. Workout in 20 minutes. Watch these comedy specials over the long weekend. Know your charcoal before you start grilling this summer. In this week's Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making a recipe she will have on repeat this spring: Melissa Clark's miso-chile asparagus with tofu. She also recommends lemon-pepper chicken breasts, a Somali coconut fish curry, and salmon and couscous salad. Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was expunging. Can you put eight historical events — including the creation of the laser, Mickey Mouse and Godzilla — in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. P.S. The Interview is off this weekend. It will be back next weekend. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@
Washington Post
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Don't let doomsday birth rates stop you from celebrating motherhood
When I was in my fecund 20s, if Donald Trump had offered me $5,000 to procreate, I'd probably have scheduled an emergency hysterectomy. Not that I couldn't have used the dough, but any reader of history might justly recoil from government incentives to have — or not have — babies.
