I don't think I trust the polls about ideal fertility vs. realized fertility to be communicating something meaningful.
In general, I'm leery of polls that ask people how they would behave in hypothetical situations. It just seems rife for social desirability bias.
The most charitible way to interpret these polls is "If I had more options, than I would choose to have more children." But it's precisely the women with the *most* options who are having the *fewest* children!
These are the types of situations where I trust people's revealed preferences more than what they say. The reality is that if you really want to have three kids as a woman, it's pretty straightfoward. You have to (a) marry at a reasonable age (mid-to-late twenties at the latest) and then (b) have three kids with your husband. That's it! If you don't make getting married early a priority, then the natural conclusion to draw is that you don't really value kids all that much.
Agreed. I actively prioritised having kids in my 20s because I wanted 3-4 and wanted to leave room for adequate spacing. But after having two I very much didn't want any more - it was a lot more hard work and a lot less rewarding than I expected it to be.
There’s something to revealed preferences here, but I’ll speak anecdotally to suggest it’s education/career-induced time crunch. Consider three of the smartest women I know, who will remain anonymous:
Doctor: from college directly to med school, where she placed in a highly competitive (read: long) residency that will see her enter the workforce at 32.
Lawyer: from college to law school (graduated at 25) where she is now an associate at a large law firm
Finance: from college to investment banking, where she spent two years before moving to private equity, where she spent two years before getting an MBA, upon graduating she will be 28.
All of these women have expressed a genuine desire to have kids, but when? Outside of the doctor, who has the biggest time commitment, leaving the rat race will permanently set them back in their careers (no demanding firm wants to hire an older person, and especially not one with a child). They all think that in their early 30s, when they are settled, they will have as many kids as possible before 35. While that’s enough time technically, they are incredibly vulnerable to any unexpected obstacles: fertility issues, break ups, medical emergencies, etc. There’s no room for error in the fertility plan of the career-oriented woman, and I fully expect at least one of them to come short of their goals of 2-3 children.
Maybe this IS a revealed preference, that they are not willing to permanently damage their career trajectory in order to increase the odds that they hit fertility goals, but I think they really do hope to have that many kids and run out of time on their biological clock. And many aren’t thinking ahead enough to freeze their eggs or want to use surrogates.
Yeah more of a Catch-22 than revealed preferences. Either forgo wage slavery and trust providence to give you a rich loyal husband and children, or become rich and roll the dice on getting pregnant at crunch time. Wouldn't be as tough of a choice if modern men were more desirable, or if women were conditioned to settle, but alas.
Would such women as the OP describes really choose a rich (and guaranteed loyal) husband over a professionally fulfilling career? I strongly doubt it. The preference surveys don't distinguish "nice to have" from "must have" (i.e., children); I believe the answers are biased toward the former. There's also a "bird in the hand" mentality: for a smart woman, the world is an oyster these days, and professional success is within their grasp. Replacing that with possible future happiness with a large family would be like throwing the dice.
One fundamental fact in the fertility discussion is this: raising children is time-consuming, difficult, and expensive. If people generally don’t feel that it is truly necessary to have children, then they will generally have fewer. All the government subsidies and programs to increase the number of children, especially among the cognitive or social elite, will fail if the potential parents don’t have a felt need to have more children.
I think the point of the article is that cognitively elite women want more children, but due to entropy, they are drifting away from the choices that would lead to a fulfillment of their desired fertility.
If I want grandchildren, I should convince my daughter that careers suck and are soul crushing, college is fake, and that motherhood is the most sure path to joy and fulfillment. But I probably can't directly say this or she might rebel, so will have to just give subtle hints.
The entire shortfall amongst high iq women is amongst high IQ leftist women. High iq conservative women aren’t seeing the same fertility shortfall.
Note that this divergence only happens as you move towards the top. Ideology have no effect on fertility at the bottom. Probably because dulls don’t really have a life philosophy or make active choices. It all “just happens”.
All the other correlates flow downhill. How many conservative women stay in school and live in the big city till their mid 30s before trying to settle down? Is the lifestyle causing the shortfall or is the ideology causing the lifestyle. It’s not that hard to get a man and move to the burbs if you want to.
Anyway, the simplest solution is to give huge tax breaks to parents, especially young parents. Like x10 what they get today. You really want to reward SAHM, especially when the children are young.
Women think that taking a few years off will just “destroy” their career. In reality it’s not as bad as they think, especially if they do it young. Reward those that can get over such neuroticism.
If schools all had earlier opening hours and later closing hours (while not expanding class hours) then child care would be much less of a burden. I know parents who arrive to work later and leaving earlier to drop off and pick up kids. If they have jobs that do not let them do this then I do not know how they manage. Also, not all school districts have busses. Where and when I grew up all the schools around us did. Parents have a hard time juggling work and kids. That's a disincentive for making babies.
Just had first kid (I’m the dad) and have become completely radicalized on maternity leave. Baby brain is real. Maternity should start at week 36. Then I think three months post delivery. Has to be fully paid. That’s not even enough. We need a culture shift. Bosses help “catch up” women who had to take time off to have a kid at work, not just no penalties. Could offer a perk to working moms to subsidize childcare. The economic benefits of keeping the highest achieving women in the workforce are enormous, there’s almost no cost that’s too high.
Policies that make higher education more friendly to those who want early families would help with this, and be palatable - for example mandating that all schools and universities have on-site childcare, and that accommodation be made available to students with partners and children. More contentious, perhaps, would be larger loans or grants for students with families, but it could be argued politically that it is economically efficient to encourage women to reproduce before entering the workforce, rather than after, as this removes a potential gap in their income tax contributions.
There is another solution here: Develop IVG (in-vitro gametogenesis) and aggressively subsidize it, especially for women and even more so for older women, so that their reproductive window can extend for a much longer time period.
That, and aggressive subsidizing egg freezing during one’s youth and IVF later on, I suppose?
BTW, if one wants to raise fertility rates, then it doesn’t seem to make much sense to deny insurance coverage for IVF to people who have previously gotten sterilized, right? Sure, it was their own choice, but at the same time, we still need more babies, especially smart ones.
Women may ideally want 2-3 children, but they also ideally want to date Chris Hemsworth, and they only want 2-3 children in their dream house with their dream husband. Meanwhile women living in sod huts in the 1800s were pumping out five of them.
Education-based problems are similar to obesity. Humanity suffered from lack of foods in the past. There is reverse problem nowadays. But modernity didnt spread everywhere. What is your opinion about 3rd world? For example Taliban banned education(university level) for girls. What should they?
I don't think I trust the polls about ideal fertility vs. realized fertility to be communicating something meaningful.
In general, I'm leery of polls that ask people how they would behave in hypothetical situations. It just seems rife for social desirability bias.
The most charitible way to interpret these polls is "If I had more options, than I would choose to have more children." But it's precisely the women with the *most* options who are having the *fewest* children!
These are the types of situations where I trust people's revealed preferences more than what they say. The reality is that if you really want to have three kids as a woman, it's pretty straightfoward. You have to (a) marry at a reasonable age (mid-to-late twenties at the latest) and then (b) have three kids with your husband. That's it! If you don't make getting married early a priority, then the natural conclusion to draw is that you don't really value kids all that much.
Agreed. I actively prioritised having kids in my 20s because I wanted 3-4 and wanted to leave room for adequate spacing. But after having two I very much didn't want any more - it was a lot more hard work and a lot less rewarding than I expected it to be.
There’s something to revealed preferences here, but I’ll speak anecdotally to suggest it’s education/career-induced time crunch. Consider three of the smartest women I know, who will remain anonymous:
Doctor: from college directly to med school, where she placed in a highly competitive (read: long) residency that will see her enter the workforce at 32.
Lawyer: from college to law school (graduated at 25) where she is now an associate at a large law firm
Finance: from college to investment banking, where she spent two years before moving to private equity, where she spent two years before getting an MBA, upon graduating she will be 28.
All of these women have expressed a genuine desire to have kids, but when? Outside of the doctor, who has the biggest time commitment, leaving the rat race will permanently set them back in their careers (no demanding firm wants to hire an older person, and especially not one with a child). They all think that in their early 30s, when they are settled, they will have as many kids as possible before 35. While that’s enough time technically, they are incredibly vulnerable to any unexpected obstacles: fertility issues, break ups, medical emergencies, etc. There’s no room for error in the fertility plan of the career-oriented woman, and I fully expect at least one of them to come short of their goals of 2-3 children.
Maybe this IS a revealed preference, that they are not willing to permanently damage their career trajectory in order to increase the odds that they hit fertility goals, but I think they really do hope to have that many kids and run out of time on their biological clock. And many aren’t thinking ahead enough to freeze their eggs or want to use surrogates.
Yeah more of a Catch-22 than revealed preferences. Either forgo wage slavery and trust providence to give you a rich loyal husband and children, or become rich and roll the dice on getting pregnant at crunch time. Wouldn't be as tough of a choice if modern men were more desirable, or if women were conditioned to settle, but alas.
Would such women as the OP describes really choose a rich (and guaranteed loyal) husband over a professionally fulfilling career? I strongly doubt it. The preference surveys don't distinguish "nice to have" from "must have" (i.e., children); I believe the answers are biased toward the former. There's also a "bird in the hand" mentality: for a smart woman, the world is an oyster these days, and professional success is within their grasp. Replacing that with possible future happiness with a large family would be like throwing the dice.
So we don’t have a cultural problem. Desires are where they should be. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
One fundamental fact in the fertility discussion is this: raising children is time-consuming, difficult, and expensive. If people generally don’t feel that it is truly necessary to have children, then they will generally have fewer. All the government subsidies and programs to increase the number of children, especially among the cognitive or social elite, will fail if the potential parents don’t have a felt need to have more children.
I think the point of the article is that cognitively elite women want more children, but due to entropy, they are drifting away from the choices that would lead to a fulfillment of their desired fertility.
If I want grandchildren, I should convince my daughter that careers suck and are soul crushing, college is fake, and that motherhood is the most sure path to joy and fulfillment. But I probably can't directly say this or she might rebel, so will have to just give subtle hints.
The big missing piece here is ideology.
The entire shortfall amongst high iq women is amongst high IQ leftist women. High iq conservative women aren’t seeing the same fertility shortfall.
Note that this divergence only happens as you move towards the top. Ideology have no effect on fertility at the bottom. Probably because dulls don’t really have a life philosophy or make active choices. It all “just happens”.
All the other correlates flow downhill. How many conservative women stay in school and live in the big city till their mid 30s before trying to settle down? Is the lifestyle causing the shortfall or is the ideology causing the lifestyle. It’s not that hard to get a man and move to the burbs if you want to.
Anyway, the simplest solution is to give huge tax breaks to parents, especially young parents. Like x10 what they get today. You really want to reward SAHM, especially when the children are young.
Women think that taking a few years off will just “destroy” their career. In reality it’s not as bad as they think, especially if they do it young. Reward those that can get over such neuroticism.
If schools all had earlier opening hours and later closing hours (while not expanding class hours) then child care would be much less of a burden. I know parents who arrive to work later and leaving earlier to drop off and pick up kids. If they have jobs that do not let them do this then I do not know how they manage. Also, not all school districts have busses. Where and when I grew up all the schools around us did. Parents have a hard time juggling work and kids. That's a disincentive for making babies.
Just had first kid (I’m the dad) and have become completely radicalized on maternity leave. Baby brain is real. Maternity should start at week 36. Then I think three months post delivery. Has to be fully paid. That’s not even enough. We need a culture shift. Bosses help “catch up” women who had to take time off to have a kid at work, not just no penalties. Could offer a perk to working moms to subsidize childcare. The economic benefits of keeping the highest achieving women in the workforce are enormous, there’s almost no cost that’s too high.
Policies that make higher education more friendly to those who want early families would help with this, and be palatable - for example mandating that all schools and universities have on-site childcare, and that accommodation be made available to students with partners and children. More contentious, perhaps, would be larger loans or grants for students with families, but it could be argued politically that it is economically efficient to encourage women to reproduce before entering the workforce, rather than after, as this removes a potential gap in their income tax contributions.
There is another solution here: Develop IVG (in-vitro gametogenesis) and aggressively subsidize it, especially for women and even more so for older women, so that their reproductive window can extend for a much longer time period.
That, and aggressive subsidizing egg freezing during one’s youth and IVF later on, I suppose?
BTW, if one wants to raise fertility rates, then it doesn’t seem to make much sense to deny insurance coverage for IVF to people who have previously gotten sterilized, right? Sure, it was their own choice, but at the same time, we still need more babies, especially smart ones.
Women may ideally want 2-3 children, but they also ideally want to date Chris Hemsworth, and they only want 2-3 children in their dream house with their dream husband. Meanwhile women living in sod huts in the 1800s were pumping out five of them.
Have you realized that if every couple have exactly two kids, it is still dysgenics due to mutation accumulation? Read my paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886923000600
What do you think of Robin Hanson's proposal to boost fertility?
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/win-win-babies-as-infrastructurehtml
Education-based problems are similar to obesity. Humanity suffered from lack of foods in the past. There is reverse problem nowadays. But modernity didnt spread everywhere. What is your opinion about 3rd world? For example Taliban banned education(university level) for girls. What should they?