This is an interesting question about life. As we all know, no one lives forever. Nor does anyone stay the same age forever. And especially for females, no one is capable of reproduction forever, nor does anyone keep their looks forever.
So reproduction for HUMANS is not a life goal we must/are programed achieve. Humans don't have a defined goal in life. But at the same time, reproduction means a lot to human beings. It is a way of passing down not only genes - that's an important part, but may not be the most important for humans.
Humans had children in the past to pass down culture, tradition, the family name, family VALUES and wealth. These things no longer seem to be as important today, even though I believe that values is an important thing. Nowadays, people have kids to start a family (important here - when you have a kid, you start a family), because they want to be parents, or maybe they felt that something was missing from their life, that they are not fulfilled. Or, they may just love kids.
The time of the average worker is a resource. Indeed, it was revealed that Nike measures the time taken to perform each step of production precisely to 4 decimal places (in seconds). This may sound ridiculous, but in such a fast-paced, money driven world, efficiency is everything. It can mean the difference between winning a contract bid or losing a billion dollar profit.
OK, getting back to kids and reproduction. If time of the average individual is so scarce, where will you get the time to take care of the kid? You don't. So you go off to a daycare center so as to centralize the babies. But what's the fun? Not
Children are also getting more and more expensive to raise. To fund about 20 years of full-time education, the amount of money is very large. Also, with the inflation of currencies over many years, savings is hardly a way to come up with the money. Today, it takes a large chunk out of wages to provide for a kid. And in many situations, it takes two incomes to provide for everything. (depends on where you live)
So, people react in several ways to these problems. They will either not have them, or they will have less(for many, this means the minimum- 1 kid), OR they will invest the money. All these measures show one thing - having kids and coming up with the money to raise and educate the kid is quite a risk.
WHY BOTHER?? The kid could grow up to become a punk anyway.
At the same time, people don't feel that they have anything worthwhile to pass down. Family tradition? You're an ancient fart! Family values? What, are you Catholic?
So, why should one not want to have children? Because of many reasons...
- they hate kids - this reason tends to be rare.
- they are homosexual - they can still adopt, but my simulation tells me that homosexuals may tend to be more polygamous (multiple sexual partners) and less likely to have very long-term commitments.
- they hate the opposite sex.
- they want full sexual freedom, forever. Monogamy is not their thing. They want to have many partners.
- They want to be single.
- Some women seem to believe that because by never reproducing, they will always look as good. Could be true, but it depends what you mean by good. If you mean attractiveness, then one tends to trade it out for a more mature, wise look.
- They hate commitments to anyone.
- They have sworn to be virgins for their entire life. (What a pity, I'm not sure why nature gave you genitalia then...)
- they are ME ME ME and me! They don't want to share. (Put in nicer terms, they want to be financially independent.)
- They feel that they have other things better to do.
- they are not financially capable of providing for the kid.
- they can't find a partner for it.
- They want to live out their political beliefs.
Some of this MAY be attributed to the fact that the new younger generation come from a higher percentage of one-kid-only families. Many of the traits above are very much impossible to carry in a small family with few people. A big family with many siblings allows for a large group of people, and a large group of people may have more things in common. This sets up a basis for faith, religion and value systems, in which children are born to believe in. While people are not deterministic, I think people who grow up having no siblings may in turn choose to have a small family size themselves, partly because they may see no merit in having many kids.
And where does this leave us? It may mean that in a society with people who only have 1 or 2 kids, successive generations may in turn have only 1 or 2 kids, with any number higher being rare. the trend may continue for a few generations to coe, given that there are no incentives or economic or social to encourage having more kids.
But will just a fashionable trend of having kids be enough? People are still rational in the end, in the sense that they will do what they believe is good for them. Taking drugs may be a very irrational thing to do, but it depends on what perspective and how deeply you consider something you look at it. They usually want to have a quick answer to depression or they want to be happy - sounds reasonable. But what about the addiction and the dependence? So you have my rule - people are always rational, from the mal-investors to top CEOs, but the problem is that they are stupid (or put more precisely, they are not perfectly clever), they are lazy-ass and they are not all-knowing. With this in mind, this applies to every human being, regardless of how clever or stupid they are, we are all human- incapable of being always correct! And even if we were perfect, random and chaotic systems will always exist and will always own us. That's the beautiful truth of life.
However, whether this is actually a valid point remains to be seen. The reasons for the current birth rates tend to be other factors.
As a side-note, I would also like to say that when I say have x number of kids, it can include adopted kids. They count too.
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Update Feb 1st, 2009
Geography is supposed to be a free subject. If Einstein was a geography, I'm sure we will have better explanations for many phenomenon.
Higher education, jobs are probably the main reason why someone from the UN said "Economic Development is the best contraceptive".
This update will be mainly about human females. As I said, males are out of the question because men are not time-dependent. They don't lose fertility much as they get older. Their ability to get a mate tends to increase.
This is because higher education and careers take a lot of time to build. And it isn't a part-time job, which means that often, long-term relationships will take the back seat. By the time such a career is built, they will be at least 30 years old. I know this sounds completely crazy and offensive by today's standards of political correctness, but (I'm not a politician) this means that they do become
- less attractive
- less fertile
- more demanding
- will want someone who is higher in status than they are.
So males are less likely to want to have them as mates, and are less likely to be fitting. The women will also find that the men are less likely to be as qualified as they are. This is because the men left over who can't get a mate will tend to have a lower status or be less desirable by female standards.
So what do the men do? They try to get the best younger women, taking their time. What's the hurry anyway?
And as a side-point to the children issue, these women may find it difficult to find a mate, given today's mating trends. And more feminist laws will be passed to punish the men, encourage inter-gender AND intra-gender competition/conflict and put the government in a bad financial situation.
But what are the solutions? I think
the most likely thing that will happen is some will get smart and seek mates earlier. But with the current mindset that many have, it's unlikely. Higher and higher education which leads to the careers, careers mindset will continue. Some demand student loans to get to university, further complexing the financial situation. The bubble will burst in the long term.
But in about 80 years time, the world may find that having children can be profitable. Once there is significantly less labour force around, it will give many reasons to people to have more babies. With the current economic situation, most people may find they become less wealthy, their retirement is less safe and hence to make their life more complete, having two kids is the optimum number.
But there is a problem to this. Will the culture change? Will mating rules change? Will women continue to fall into the "trap"? Will the people around to breed at that time change their mindset? What will this "financial tsunami" do to the economy and to the behavior of its participants?
Sidepoint: Will homosexuality make a difference? Not yet. But if homosexuals are legally allowed to marry and adopt or even have children, it may open up as a choice to some people and especially women.
We are at a very special time in history. There are now be people who will never have offspring, and a society which accepts a variety of sexual and mating behavior.
And Thomas Malthus is wrong. The population won't die out. It will just go into chaotic behavior or simple harmonic motion or the people learn to breed less (doesn't happen), until the problem is fixed.
