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RE: What caused the fertility decline? It's not smartphones. There is a much simpler explanation.
It's something I've been thinking about a long time. And everything you said, I agree with. Not to mention that in many households, women still do a lot more of the work (emotional and house-related). It's too much to handle and we don't know how to change that.
I would also point to the oft-quoted fact that the more anxious and unhappy we feel about the future, the less we tend to reproduce. That's the theory I'm working with at the moment, at least. It's dystopic to me, as a young woman, that we live in such uncertain times, are aware of the possibility of oncoming crisis (be it another pandemic, war, migration-related societal change in Europe or other such), yet are expected to still bring kids into that future. I'm stocking up supplies in case of a crisis, yet my body is supposed to feel safe enough to reproduce. that's nuts.
On the other hand, there's literally no better way to avoid that future than reproduction. If we stop reproducing, we might as well be culling the forces of good ourselves. What better way to ensure that your values, your goodness, and all these other gifts you hope to see preserved in the future, will be preserved?
Don´t forget that the government-controlled media are exaggerating the threats (climate, invasion by the evil Putin, pandemic, in Germany threat of the "extreme right"), because people in fear are better controllable, as was seen clearly in the "pandemic". People were doing everything, even the most ridiculous things without protest (e.g. putting a piece of dangerous plastic in front of your nose instead of breathing freely).
Against other threats you can self defend (you can minimize your risk of being stabbed or raped).
So for a self-thinking human no reason to not reproduce. By denying this most natural process women will give the final death kiss to Europe.
I am afraid so! (no pun intended)
I'm quite aware of the exaggeration of fear. It's astounding to me more people are not, since it's rather obvious. Every day, there's a new crisis, new disease, new threat or reason to panic. I've been taking the courses of Peterson Academy (Jordan Peterson's pretty cool brain-child) and one thing I loved is that they focused some courses on reminding you that actually, there is also abundance in our world. The threats are blown out of proportion. There is reason to reproduce and hope for the future. Very important message, if you ask me.
Interesting, I think there is and never was the perfect time to have children, it just happend naturally, then in the 1960-ies and 1970-ies extremely effective birth control was invented or became widely available, which made it possible to delay or abort births at a large scale, which led to significantly fewer children than before. But you can debate cause and effect of course. The many uncertainties and the economic situation (inflation, stagflation) make it extremely hard to start a family nowadays.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/birth-rate
I don't think there's a perfect time either, and it seems to be confirmed by my older friends who are already parents. The Pill certainly liberated many women from reproductive slavery (essentially) but I do wonder why the leap from "you can decide when and how many kids to have" to never having kids happened. Personally, I see it as beneficial that I am able to have sex without fearing pregnancy each time or having something like 20 kids in my life. But that doesn't make me feel like I should just not have them.
But don't you think there were always economic uncertainties? Of course, we tend to think ours is the worst time and it seems like it, surely. At the same time, people were pregnant during WW2 and after Hiroshima. During plagues and other such. Of course, they had little choice, and that's probably the true differentiator. The stress and uncertainty was there always. You just had to suck it up and brave life, anyway.
I 100% agree. All of the issues related to economics/cost of living, environmental concerns, war, disease and ultimately quality of life which will only get worse with increased population.