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Which doesn't surprise me because I've known a ton of "Jack Mormons" and ex-Mormons.
I know that the standard thing of internet discussions is to dismiss my points as often anecdotal, and you're not exactly wrong with that, but I do think that links, studies and stats can be found or implied to support almost any position. Frankly I DO tend to trust the evidence of my own eyes, and a variety of current and historical first-hand accounts of life, shared by those living it.
Shelato, I would like a citation for that stat about one's parents' political beliefs passing on to kids.
Because let me tell you, I know a LOT of people who are liberal to extreme leftist (way to the left of my own position for sure) who grew up in conservative households. And of the several adults I've known who came from very large families, not one has gone on to create a large number of kids.
I absolutely do not see humans as being as blindly fated to march to the beat of our genes as any given example of other animal species. We specialize in intelligence, and social cooperation. And our nurture, I believe, is more powerful than our nature.
As such, I would argue that the large family sizes of orthodox or fundamentalist populations may not be the product of some kind of genetic predisposition to desire that life. Rather, they are taught growing up (especially the girls) that any other path is EVIL and subject to not only punishment in the afterlife but wholesale social shunning or worse in this one. When a wife is ruled by her husband, who will have her when he pleases, and she has no access to contraceptive medicine or work to support herself in considering leaving him, as is the case in many traditionalist groups, well she's going to have a bunch of kids.
You, and the collectors of those stats, seem really determined to think that they are happy and blessed with the shape of their lives. But no one offered them any alternative, nor thought to bother to even ask them how they felt about it. But hey, who asks the dogs if they want another litter eh?
My Grandma had 7 kids (that survived, and several who did not, including some who passed under mysterious circumstances.) They lived in desperate rural poverty. Not one of her kids had more than 2 of their own once they grew up, in a world with birth control. Some escaped poverty, some didn't. The prosperous ones are now liberals. The poor ones are conservatives.
The first place where I came across the idea that there is a strong genetic role for political beliefs was in the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. He went into this topic with a fair amount of depth. That is where I came up with 68 percent chance factoid that you will have your parents political party affiliation.
I realize you might not want to read an entire book, So here are other shorter articles that have addressed this issue. Like this in the New York Times.
Now I agree in the past there were a lot of people in the era before reliable birth control and safe and legal abortion who had large families because they had no feasible means to not have large families or no family at all. So even if you weren't born with a real strong inclination to have a large family, you still probably did so in that era
But I am saying reliable contraception and safe and legal abortion has made children totally optional for people who aren't really motivated to have kids. These people can and now do largely opt out of having kids.
But what I think that is also doing is shifting the composition of the gene pool. I think the people who are having kids now are people highly motivated to do so. I recognize that you personally weren't someone with a strong desire to go forth and multiply but some people are and these are the people who I think are much more likely to be passing their genes into the next generation today. I am pretty confident that a strong desire to have kids is likely strongly driven in part by genes in the same way Golden Retrievers retrieve and sheep dogs herd.
As all of the people who are indifferent/hostile to having kids drop out of the gene pool, that is going to change the composition of what remains the gene pool and shift the gene pool more towards people who want kids. The women with stronger maternal desires and the men with a stronger paternal desires are going to be the ones who will pass their genes to the next generation.
Last edited by Mike from back east; 05-09-2024 at 08:11 PM..
Relative to the above comments about religion:
One of the basic items listed that are causing a decrease in TFR is the decline of organized religion. So, even though members of some religions have more children, those children are becoming less and less religious, and are having fewer and fewer children.
Still, there will come a time when world TFR stabilizes at 2.1. It won't happen for a long time, but it'll happen.
Read the NYT article. Interesting. One thing that I paused over multiple times, is the binary presentation of
- This trait is linked to your genetics (and therefore not in your control)
- This trait is not linked to genetics (and therefore is a "personal choice.")
I think that there is a third thing that I believe to be VERY powerful that they just are not really doing much with there. Things that are so culturally saturated in your family & social environment that if you stay among your own people, you never question it much. Even with access to the myriad of ideas on the internet, I've found that people who stay where they grew up tend to hold fast to the ideas of those around them. It isn't really much of a "choice" in how it presents. It is practically unthinkable to stray from the common belief systems.
I mean we have to be real about the fact that for the huge majority of human history, being ostracized from the social/family group could mean a death sentence. People don't do well out in the wilds alone. Everything about how we're put together psychologically incentivizes conformity to our groups...with perhaps the exception of a brief period of rebellion common in teens and very young adults. Which I would assume is meant to get people to reproduce even when it's not exactly practical, and to get people to take risks and innovate and be more adventurous in a limited timeframe that can boost prosperity via intellectual progress that requires some risk.
But I would say that that rebellious period isn't a universal thing. It hits some individuals harder than others. But there is just enough in it that if a given conservative family has 10 kids, and 2 or 3 wander off to liberalism in rebellion against their upbringing, you don't have to solely count on liberals making babies for liberal numbers to remain high. And the more young people go to colleges or move to cities for different opportunities, the more exposure they'll have to liberal ideas and that tends to account for some shift as well.
(I am broadly using these terms as a shorthand for people who might want to lead more traditional lives with more children, versus those who might take a more individualistic path and have fewer or none. I know that this is not as absolute as I'm making it, though. No need to point this out; I get it.)
I just don't know how you distinguish "genetic" from "culturally ingrained" if so often those factors are running parallel. Maybe take a bunch of kids from big, conservative families and send them off to the city and see what happens?
On that note. You mention such groups as Amish and Mormons... But what about the Catholics? They were the ones I always grew up hearing about having enormous families. But Catholicism is on the decline as well, as many are leaving the church or becoming less observant of such things as the moratorium on birth control.
I just really do not see these ethnic or religious groups as being like breeds of dogs, with genetic traits that align with the moral/cultural values they are taught. I still think that the influences that individuals are exposed to (or not) hold a lot more power. The ones most likely to adhere to the ways of their parents and grandparents will be the ones least exposed to alternatives, and taught that anything outside of the community is evil, threatening, and terrifying. The Amish for instance. But the Amish community is considered to be "genetically closed" and inbreeding is a significant thing there. They even have a term for it, the "Founder Effect" because they all claim descent from 500 founders.
I think if you took a baby from one of these groups and raised it in a very different, say, urban and secular community, you would be just as likely to end up with an adult who holds liberal beliefs and who does not want many, or any, kids, as anything else.
Now some aspects could be more genetic/hereditary, and those may play some role. I do think that the predisposition of someone I know to embrace conspiracy theories is linked to hereditary mental illness that tends towards paranoia and ideology of persecution.
I also acknowledge some personal bias here in terms of just how I see the world, for what it's worth. I don't think that I am very similar to either of my parents, or any of my grandparents, in most of the "who I am and what I'm about" stuff. However, I can very easily look at roles I was in, in RELATION to them in a system growing up, and see where I still struggle not to cast myself in those roles. I can understand almost everything about myself best by looking at it through this lens. Rather than growing up to mirror X (X being a parent,) I grew up to be the kind of person who can survive living with X...if Mom is childish, sometimes the child becomes the adult. If parents are prone to emotional outbursts, child may become stoic, they were unreliable, I am intensely reliable, they were chaotic and I am orderly. Etc. Point being we really are not all fated to become our parents "because genetics."
Relative to the above comments about religion:
One of the basic items listed that are causing a decrease in TFR is the decline of organized religion. So, even though members of some religions have more children, those children are becoming less and less religious, and are having fewer and fewer children.
Still, there will come a time when world TFR stabilizes at 2.1. It won't happen for a long time, but it'll happen.
In the weird countries (western educated industrialized rich democracies), religion is in decline. But globally, the share of the population that is religious is increasing because population decline is happening the most acutely in the places that are the least religious with the lowest rates of regular religious attendance, ie Europe, former Soviet countries, Japan and China.
The new atheist movement has some traction in the weird countries but globally it's a rounding error. The projections are that the share of the global population that is religious is projected to go up not down.
The welfare state is a legal ponzi scheme. You need a bunch of currently employed people to pay benefits to the elderly. That social contract though likely falls apart if there are too few working people to tax to pay for benefits to the elderly.
I think the countries that have low fertility rates will be under increasing pressure to expand the labor force by immigration to save the welfare state and reverse population decline. So I could see lot's of Muslim migration to Europe from the middle east and Africa for that reason.
I also think the countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union could be weak enough where they they either are defeated militarily by Muslim countries and fall under their sphere of influence or the government are just too weak, and too incompetent to stop immigrants from moving in. So I could see the stan counties become vassals of Iran or Turkey or just become semi failed states like Afghanistan. There is a long history in Eastern Europe of being conquered by the Ottomans and I could see history repeat itself.
If you replace the current inhabitants of the former Soviet Union with Muslim immigrants you have likely reversed population decline in those areas. Climate change might make this scenario more likely.
In the weird countries (western educated industrialized rich democracies), religion is in decline. But globally, the share of the population that is religious is increasing because population decline is happening the most acutely in the places that are the least religious with the lowest rates of regular religious attendance, ie Europe, former Soviet countries, Japan and China.
The new atheist movement has some traction in the weird countries but globally it's a rounding error. The projections are that the share of the global population that is religious is projected to go up not down.
The welfare state is a legal ponzi scheme. You need a bunch of currently employed people to pay benefits to the elderly. That social contract though likely falls apart if there are too few working people to tax to pay for benefits to the elderly.
I think the countries that have low fertility rates will be under increasing pressure to expand the labor force by immigration to save the welfare state and reverse population decline. So I could see lot's of Muslim migration to Europe from the middle east and Africa for that reason.
I also think the countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union could be weak enough where they they either are defeated militarily by Muslim countries and fall under their sphere of influence or the government are just too weak, and too incompetent to stop immigrants from moving in. So I could see the stan counties become vassals of Iran or Turkey or just become semi failed states like Afghanistan. There is a long history in Eastern Europe of being conquered by the Ottomans and I could see history repeat itself.
If you replace the current inhabitants of the former Soviet Union with Muslim immigrants you have likely reversed population decline in those areas. Climate change might make this scenario more likely.
You seem to be saying Muslim countries are impervious to falling TFR.
Nicholas Eberstadt, who is a leader in this field, says that is not so, even though it is a commonly held belief. He co-authored THIS ARTICLE which contains all the information..
Quote:
Throughout the Ummah, or worldwide Muslim community, fertility levels are falling dramatically for countries and subnational populations — and traditional marriage patterns and living arrangements are undergoing tremendous change. While these trends have not gone entirely unnoticed, no more than a handful of pioneering scholars and observers have as yet drawn attention to them and their potential significance.1 In this essay we will detail the dimensions of these changes in fertility patterns within the Muslim world, examine some of their correlates and possible determinants, and speculate about some of their implications.
One thing I haven't really seen discussed in this thread is behavioral genomics. If you look at Labrador retriever, they are born with a propensity to retrieve and play fetch for hours. Sheepherding dog's are born with a propensity to want to herd animals. These behaviors aren't taught as much as they are inherited. But what is true for dogs is also true for people. We also inherit certain behaviors and traits from our parents. A huge chunk of our personalities is inherited from our parents. Steven Pinker really demonstrated the blank slate idea is just isn't true.
Some people are born with a great paternal or maternal inclination, some people are born with a much less developed desire to replicate themselves or to want to be a parent.
What reliable birth control and easy access to abortion did was make it much easier for people who don't want to be parents or have kids to not actually become parents. But these technologies aren't really stopping the people who really want to have kids from having them.
If you compare Israel to other countries, the two things that real stand out is the birth rate and how much the country has shifted to the right. I suspect these things are related. The Orthodox Jews have fertility rates like Mormons and the Amish. The more secular reformed Jews in Israel had a much lower fertility rate but they also didn't pass their genes on to the next generation like the Orthodox Jews did in Israel. So they have shrunk as a share of the population which has shifted the country to the right politically.
Evolution didn't stop with the invention of the pill and the widespread access to abortion, instead these technologies are likely speeding up evolution. The people who are more likely to have kids are going to pass their genes on to the next generation. Political beliefs seem to be partially heritable. Your parents political beliefs predict around 70 percent of the time what your political beliefs will be.
Secular liberals just aren't having kids at the rate conservative religious people are. They are the ones least likely to marry or have any offspring. That is going to have consequences in the future.
The population will keep failing until those minorities groups like the Mormons, the Amish, the Muslims and the Orthodox Jews that want to have kids start becoming a significant share of the population.That is when the population will rebound like it did in Israel.
This is an interesting point, behavioral genomics. Now of course a sample size of 2 proves nothing, but, I think my parents were exemplary in how they went about raising my sister and I. They never fought or even yelled, they worked together as a team. Still, even as a kid, I sensed how they were denying themselves things that I wanted to have when grown, to be able to prioritize us. I saw that and decided it was not for me. Sister did likewise, although I have never discussed with her the exact reasoning she used to arrive at the same point I did - quite likely we got here by different paths.
So we both got their genes, and we both saw at least an example about how a family with kids might work, and it was a pretty positive example. But we both avoided parenthood, at least in my case very much intentionally.
One point for me personally is I saw quite a few of the long-term locals "having to get married" right out of high school, and the majority of these fathers worked at a semi-local GM assembly plant, and almost without exception they lived in trailer parks, and seemed to me, from a distance, to not have much extra money. That GM plant is long gone, decades, BTW. I decided that I would avoid that fate, as Malcolm X put it in a different context "...by whatever means necessary!" And succeeded.
Read the NYT article. Interesting. One thing that I paused over multiple times, is the binary presentation of
- This trait is linked to your genetics (and therefore not in your control)
- This trait is not linked to genetics (and therefore is a "personal choice.")
I think that there is a third thing that I believe to be VERY powerful that they just are not really doing much with there. Things that are so culturally saturated in your family & social environment that if you stay among your own people, you never question it much. Even with access to the myriad of ideas on the internet, I've found that people who stay where they grew up tend to hold fast to the ideas of those around them. It isn't really much of a "choice" in how it presents. It is practically unthinkable to stray from the common belief systems.
I mean we have to be real about the fact that for the huge majority of human history, being ostracized from the social/family group could mean a death sentence. People don't do well out in the wilds alone. Everything about how we're put together psychologically incentivizes conformity to our groups...with perhaps the exception of a brief period of rebellion common in teens and very young adults. Which I would assume is meant to get people to reproduce even when it's not exactly practical, and to get people to take risks and innovate and be more adventurous in a limited timeframe that can boost prosperity via intellectual progress that requires some risk.
But I would say that that rebellious period isn't a universal thing. It hits some individuals harder than others. But there is just enough in it that if a given conservative family has 10 kids, and 2 or 3 wander off to liberalism in rebellion against their upbringing, you don't have to solely count on liberals making babies for liberal numbers to remain high. And the more young people go to colleges or move to cities for different opportunities, the more exposure they'll have to liberal ideas and that tends to account for some shift as well.
(I am broadly using these terms as a shorthand for people who might want to lead more traditional lives with more children, versus those who might take a more individualistic path and have fewer or none. I know that this is not as absolute as I'm making it, though. No need to point this out; I get it.)
I just don't know how you distinguish "genetic" from "culturally ingrained" if so often those factors are running parallel. Maybe take a bunch of kids from big, conservative families and send them off to the city and see what happens?
On that note. You mention such groups as Amish and Mormons... But what about the Catholics? They were the ones I always grew up hearing about having enormous families. But Catholicism is on the decline as well, as many are leaving the church or becoming less observant of such things as the moratorium on birth control.
I just really do not see these ethnic or religious groups as being like breeds of dogs, with genetic traits that align with the moral/cultural values they are taught. I still think that the influences that individuals are exposed to (or not) hold a lot more power. The ones most likely to adhere to the ways of their parents and grandparents will be the ones least exposed to alternatives, and taught that anything outside of the community is evil, threatening, and terrifying. The Amish for instance. But the Amish community is considered to be "genetically closed" and inbreeding is a significant thing there. They even have a term for it, the "Founder Effect" because they all claim descent from 500 founders.
I think if you took a baby from one of these groups and raised it in a very different, say, urban and secular community, you would be just as likely to end up with an adult who holds liberal beliefs and who does not want many, or any, kids, as anything else.
Now some aspects could be more genetic/hereditary, and those may play some role. I do think that the predisposition of someone I know to embrace conspiracy theories is linked to hereditary mental illness that tends towards paranoia and ideology of persecution.
I also acknowledge some personal bias here in terms of just how I see the world, for what it's worth. I don't think that I am very similar to either of my parents, or any of my grandparents, in most of the "who I am and what I'm about" stuff. However, I can very easily look at roles I was in, in RELATION to them in a system growing up, and see where I still struggle not to cast myself in those roles. I can understand almost everything about myself best by looking at it through this lens. Rather than growing up to mirror X (X being a parent,) I grew up to be the kind of person who can survive living with X...if Mom is childish, sometimes the child becomes the adult. If parents are prone to emotional outbursts, child may become stoic, they were unreliable, I am intensely reliable, they were chaotic and I am orderly. Etc. Point being we really are not all fated to become our parents "because genetics."
I think a lot of people grow up more or less in opposition to their parents' culture. I know I did, although not entirely. I examined their positions on different topics. My parents were fairly frugal, and so am I, even at a quite young age I could see the value. But they were at least somewhat religious, which I am not. They lived unadventurous lives, which I utterly reject.
As to taking a child from one culture and raising it in another - the Russian babies that were adopted in the US are one form of an experiment. I don't have any hard data handy, and sort of doubt anyone has bothered to gather any, but I would not be surprised if young Ivan does not develop a taste for booze in his teens.
I think a lot of people grow up more or less in opposition to their parents' culture. I know I did, although not entirely. I examined their positions on different topics. My parents were fairly frugal, and so am I, even at a quite young age I could see the value. But they were at least somewhat religious, which I am not. They lived unadventurous lives, which I utterly reject.
As to taking a child from one culture and raising it in another - the Russian babies that were adopted in the US are one form of an experiment. I don't have any hard data handy, and sort of doubt anyone has bothered to gather any, but I would not be surprised if young Ivan does not develop a taste for booze in his teens.
There are actually quite a number of instances of people being taken and adopted out of their birth family but I just don't know that we have data about various things (such as number of children in the genetic family's background, versus how many kids the adopted person later has as an adult.)
My father in law was a stolen child. There is a whole story about the Tennessee Children's Home Society and Georgia Tann. He was stolen from an impoverished mother and "sold" (adopted out under false pretenses and for profit) to rich parents from Arizona.
Not surprising, I guess, that someone with an interest in eugenics noticed that poor people were cranking out babies and some of them had "desirable" looks that would appeal to rich families... Well, he was an only child in the family that adopted him, and then he only had one child himself, a son, my husband.
This is an interesting point, behavioral genomics. Now of course a sample size of 2 proves nothing, but, I think my parents were exemplary in how they went about raising my sister and I. They never fought or even yelled, they worked together as a team. Still, even as a kid, I sensed how they were denying themselves things that I wanted to have when grown, to be able to prioritize us. I saw that and decided it was not for me. Sister did likewise, although I have never discussed with her the exact reasoning she used to arrive at the same point I did - quite likely we got here by different paths.
I could have written the bold portion of the above quote about my own nuclear family growing up as well. One exception to the overall quote, my sister did get married and had one kid. Early on she vocalized plans to have three children but life threw obstacles into her plans. She is now of an age where additional children are an unlikely event. Effectively three of us, produced one offspring.
In life I like to differentiate between the terms people and society. Generally I like people and rarely meet anyone I actively dislike but I harbor general disdain for society and it is because I believe that the social constructs that control society (governments, schools, et cetera) are generally abusive to people. Looking at parenthood from the vantage point of an outsider, I conclude that parents make huge sacrifices to raise good children and society reaps all the rewards. As an individual I consider that to be an extremely raw deal so I avoided parenthood like it was the plague.
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