One striking way to put this concept that I don’t see discussed enough: Births globally have already peaked. 2012, in fact, was the year that saw more births than any other year before or after, likely ever.
In other words, we are already at peak 13-year-old this year. Globally, peak baby and peak child have passed, and peak teenager, peak college-aged person, and peak military-aged-male are all right around the corner, with all the implications those entail. We can roughly track when those will happen by following the 2012 birth cohort as they age.
And births (or conceptions) are the right framing, because that’s the lever we can affect. Decline in the dozen or so cohorts since 2012 has already happened; we can’t go back and have more kids in 2013 or whatever. The question is: How long will that decline last?
I don't think I see any level of planning for a future with fewer children at any level of society around me. I don't even see it where it would be the most directly rational--e.g. in people within my extended family/friends with no children, and who have not forged close relationships with and don't live near their relatives in the younger generation. I genuinely have no idea what these people intend to do when their care needs increase!
I think there's a few narratives, assumptions and blindnesses going on here...
One is that there wasn't going to be help that would come to them from children, anyway! "End up in a nursing home / assisted living" is considered mostly-unavoidable. But, like, one tragedy is that people don't have a vision of the joy of a loyal son/daughter/daughter-in-law/grandkid showing up to visit, or even to care for them. (Or that it would be shameful to "be a burden" to them--which we've talked about here before, of course!)
And another is... "If I pay someone with money, they will do a good job taking care of me." As though the IMPORTANT STUFF you will receive from others when you're old and infirm is entirely encapsulated in things like... the skill of a surgeon's knife, a nurse's practiced clinical eye, an oncologist's mad leet stats skillz. (lol, I actually bet people don't laud that last one enough.)
Anyway... my train of thought here was... that I think our generation is tending to ascribe the value of (unskilled) tender care, love and attention, and presence / _showing up_ at nil. A narrative valorizing excellence in medical care is not a bad thing! (Many even do this work with great love for those they serve.) But it IS an obviously-remunerative thing, and maybe all those advertisements have started to drown out the knowledge of what ELSE there is.
I am seeing the exact same thing and it has gutted me at times. Looking at your bio, you might be interested in Mary Harrington's paywalled post on the "IQ shredder" of high careers producing very few children.
While not everyone has to have a family, given that I was happy to know people as friends, when nearly the whole lot of professional friends of mine are all childless it feels like I knew a bunch of endangered species.
Luckily, there's been a dramatic decline in female infanticide over the past decade! Gender ratios are evening out especially in the countries where it was the worst.
I don't agree, here's why: India is already seeing its fertility rate fall a lot *because* it's richer. More prosperity increases the opportunity cost of children (because women can work more / the household forgoes more in wages).
It's already increasingly common in Uttar Pradesh to aim for 1-2 children, and if you hope for one, and you have a preference for boys, a girl is a much bigger threat to your hopes than if you really want a boy but are up to try repeatedly
Are you aware that in wealthier nations the gender preference for children is actually the inverse of less wealthy nations? In the US, for example, both in the case of IVF and adoption, boys are SIGNIFICANTLY less likely to be selected by prospective parents. How does that fit into your moral calculus?
I think about sex-preferences for kids as kind of a moral vital sign of a society (like pulse rate is for a body). When you get those kinds of systematic skews, there's something else present that's a problem.
I don't think it's immoral for a parent to have a weak preference or hope, but it crosses over to bad when they find the idea of a child of the opposite sex than they desire unacceptable (or believe they could only be a good parent to one kind).
Some of the parents who spoke publicly to Slate about picking only girls through IVF said, essentially, they had no positive views on men and masculinity and they thought parenting a boy would be primarily harm reduction. Wrong! Bad! Even if you don't have kids at all!
I completely agree with you. Unfortunately, your complete moral sanity is seemingly uncommon these days.
“Harm reduction” 🤮
What an absolutely disgusting perspective. People need to learn that nature will have Her revenge in the end, we are not now, and will never be in a position to control the source of our very selves without reaping disastrous consequences.
I think the preference for daughters in the US reflects the quite rational calculation that as parents age, they’ll need more help. Daughters are seen as a better bet if you ever need a caregiver. If you are only having a couple of kids, it makes sense to want daughters.
I look at my mom’s experience as one of six. My grandmother lived to be 93, and was able to be at home until the last couple of months of her life because there was always somebody in the family who was available to stay with her and take care of her. For the most part the siblings worked well together and were able to find grandkids who were between jobs, or at the end my retired uncle-to move in. When our mother needed the same kind of attention, there are just the two of us and it involved a lot more hiring of help and time off of work.
My evidence is the book Cultural Evolution by Inglehart . But I think that that book tells you that this basic trend of less discrimination against women with increased wealth is a general trend and varies from country to country. I’m sure India has its own problems but hopefully things will improve 😎
I agree, but only if women in India start treating their daughters like working moms in the US treat their daughters, as easier projects to slot in next to work and future friends. I said it longer in my reply to Jenn.
It definitely needs to occur and I think India is on the right track. I’m definitely not an expert but I have read a lot of favorable articles about progress there. The book Cultural Evolution by Inglehart is a very exhaustive account of how societies get more culturally liberal with increasing wealth.
One striking way to put this concept that I don’t see discussed enough: Births globally have already peaked. 2012, in fact, was the year that saw more births than any other year before or after, likely ever.
In other words, we are already at peak 13-year-old this year. Globally, peak baby and peak child have passed, and peak teenager, peak college-aged person, and peak military-aged-male are all right around the corner, with all the implications those entail. We can roughly track when those will happen by following the 2012 birth cohort as they age.
And births (or conceptions) are the right framing, because that’s the lever we can affect. Decline in the dozen or so cohorts since 2012 has already happened; we can’t go back and have more kids in 2013 or whatever. The question is: How long will that decline last?
Yes, that’s very well put
I don't think I see any level of planning for a future with fewer children at any level of society around me. I don't even see it where it would be the most directly rational--e.g. in people within my extended family/friends with no children, and who have not forged close relationships with and don't live near their relatives in the younger generation. I genuinely have no idea what these people intend to do when their care needs increase!
Yes, this is really scary/frustrating.
I think there's a few narratives, assumptions and blindnesses going on here...
One is that there wasn't going to be help that would come to them from children, anyway! "End up in a nursing home / assisted living" is considered mostly-unavoidable. But, like, one tragedy is that people don't have a vision of the joy of a loyal son/daughter/daughter-in-law/grandkid showing up to visit, or even to care for them. (Or that it would be shameful to "be a burden" to them--which we've talked about here before, of course!)
And another is... "If I pay someone with money, they will do a good job taking care of me." As though the IMPORTANT STUFF you will receive from others when you're old and infirm is entirely encapsulated in things like... the skill of a surgeon's knife, a nurse's practiced clinical eye, an oncologist's mad leet stats skillz. (lol, I actually bet people don't laud that last one enough.)
Anyway... my train of thought here was... that I think our generation is tending to ascribe the value of (unskilled) tender care, love and attention, and presence / _showing up_ at nil. A narrative valorizing excellence in medical care is not a bad thing! (Many even do this work with great love for those they serve.) But it IS an obviously-remunerative thing, and maybe all those advertisements have started to drown out the knowledge of what ELSE there is.
I am seeing the exact same thing and it has gutted me at times. Looking at your bio, you might be interested in Mary Harrington's paywalled post on the "IQ shredder" of high careers producing very few children.
While not everyone has to have a family, given that I was happy to know people as friends, when nearly the whole lot of professional friends of mine are all childless it feels like I knew a bunch of endangered species.
Luckily, there's been a dramatic decline in female infanticide over the past decade! Gender ratios are evening out especially in the countries where it was the worst.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/06/05/more-and-more-parents-around-the-world-prefer-girls-to-boys
From The Economist
Great reflections from you. Love this.
As countries like India get richer I think they will have less of that discrimination against women
I don't agree, here's why: India is already seeing its fertility rate fall a lot *because* it's richer. More prosperity increases the opportunity cost of children (because women can work more / the household forgoes more in wages).
It's already increasingly common in Uttar Pradesh to aim for 1-2 children, and if you hope for one, and you have a preference for boys, a girl is a much bigger threat to your hopes than if you really want a boy but are up to try repeatedly
Are you aware that in wealthier nations the gender preference for children is actually the inverse of less wealthy nations? In the US, for example, both in the case of IVF and adoption, boys are SIGNIFICANTLY less likely to be selected by prospective parents. How does that fit into your moral calculus?
I think the prevailing cultural preferences in the US are very different than those of India.
Do you regard gender preferences as immoral?
I think about sex-preferences for kids as kind of a moral vital sign of a society (like pulse rate is for a body). When you get those kinds of systematic skews, there's something else present that's a problem.
I don't think it's immoral for a parent to have a weak preference or hope, but it crosses over to bad when they find the idea of a child of the opposite sex than they desire unacceptable (or believe they could only be a good parent to one kind).
Some of the parents who spoke publicly to Slate about picking only girls through IVF said, essentially, they had no positive views on men and masculinity and they thought parenting a boy would be primarily harm reduction. Wrong! Bad! Even if you don't have kids at all!
I completely agree with you. Unfortunately, your complete moral sanity is seemingly uncommon these days.
“Harm reduction” 🤮
What an absolutely disgusting perspective. People need to learn that nature will have Her revenge in the end, we are not now, and will never be in a position to control the source of our very selves without reaping disastrous consequences.
I think the preference for daughters in the US reflects the quite rational calculation that as parents age, they’ll need more help. Daughters are seen as a better bet if you ever need a caregiver. If you are only having a couple of kids, it makes sense to want daughters.
I look at my mom’s experience as one of six. My grandmother lived to be 93, and was able to be at home until the last couple of months of her life because there was always somebody in the family who was available to stay with her and take care of her. For the most part the siblings worked well together and were able to find grandkids who were between jobs, or at the end my retired uncle-to move in. When our mother needed the same kind of attention, there are just the two of us and it involved a lot more hiring of help and time off of work.
My evidence is the book Cultural Evolution by Inglehart . But I think that that book tells you that this basic trend of less discrimination against women with increased wealth is a general trend and varies from country to country. I’m sure India has its own problems but hopefully things will improve 😎
I agree, but only if women in India start treating their daughters like working moms in the US treat their daughters, as easier projects to slot in next to work and future friends. I said it longer in my reply to Jenn.
Totally agree. I think the USA is better in that respect.
And how is that wealth increase going to occur without industrialization to facilitate that growth?
It definitely needs to occur and I think India is on the right track. I’m definitely not an expert but I have read a lot of favorable articles about progress there. The book Cultural Evolution by Inglehart is a very exhaustive account of how societies get more culturally liberal with increasing wealth.