> And it is insane to me that I'm now seeing this "oh actually teen pregnancy wasn't so bad" thing pop up all over the place.
The other side of this is insane to me... the "oh actually looming human extinction won't be so bad" thing. Sub-replacement fertility rates are slow-motion extinction. Animal models where they "bounce back" is irrelevant, those animals have their extremely high above-replacement fertility all through their famines, plagues, and predator massacres such that when those pressures relent their population recovers. There's no known precedent for raising fertility rates that fall let alone so low.
You don't have to be an "extinction apologist" or whatever to think that we'll probably solve the problem before we go from 7 BILLION people to not enough humans for healthy genetic diversity. We've rescued animal species from extinction with populations of <100.
>that we'll probably solve the problem before we go from 7 BILLION people to not enough humans for
This just goes to show how little you've ever considered the problem. I don't think you're stupid (probably), so let me get you started...
It's not "from 7 billion to not enough", because right now we don't have 7 billion. We only have the generation(s) that are from 0 to 40 years old... everyone older doesn't even count. 80 yr olds and 55 yr olds aren't potential parents.
We will still have many billions of people even once we become functionally extinct, because you were counting everyone even the octogenarians, when you should've been counting the people who mattered in this regard.
>We've rescued animal species from extinction with populations of <100.
But there's no "us" to rescue us in that manner, and we can't do it ourselves. Why? Because doddering senile geezers don't have the ambition, marbles, or energy to do such a thing and those are the only people who would be left at that point. Not to mention that any such rescue would turn us into franken-people, no thanks. We should all be terrified of the science fiction dreams of artificial wombs and gestation chambers and so forth because just as those might be used for good things, the CCP and North Korea will use them to churn out armies of replicants.
You really are the extinction apologist you think you're not.
I think it's actually quite likely that quite a few "dominant" cultures - both in terms of nations and groups within nations - will effectively die out.
But humanity almost certainly won't? Why? Because there are sub-groups within humanity who have much higher fertility rates. As long as there are groups of people which are large enough to have viable genetic diversity, and recognise that a high birth rate is crucial for the continued existence of their culture, there will be humans.
Realistically, that means the decline of western liberal ideas and the growth of more extreme religious groups.
>>This just goes to show how little you've ever considered the problem
It's not really considered a problem. A real problem is a wellbeing of the old people, that's why it is financed better then wellbeing of future generations.
Cut elderly support and make a free childcare and education, huge tax rebates for each child, etc.
A huge pile of government debt is another indicator that future generations are fucked.
I’m sorry, but calling anything but above-replacement birth rates “slow-motion extinction” is ridiculous. This is the equivalent to expecting babies to be 15 meters tall by the time they’re adults from extrapolating their rate of growth in their infant years.
Below-replacement rate might be an economic issue around retirement, but as far as the human species goes, it’s a nothingburger at this scale. We’re not passenger pigeons.
Any fertility rate below 2.1 isn't reduced population growth. It is the literal, factual opposite of population growth... it is population shrinkage/decline/whatever.
These countries we discuss all have population decline. This is masked by multiple factors including immigration and increased longevity.
This world doesn't have the 500 cultures/civilizations that it had circa 3000 BC. It only has the one culture, it's global, dominant, and ubiquitous. It is the "less natal" culture, it is the only culture. It assimilates any subculture that dares raise its head. When it dies, there won't be another to fill the niche.
This is why, for instance, when immigrants from high-fertility countries (all in central Africa) come here, our culture assimilates them and they're back to low fertility within 2 generations. Not only that, but our culture slowly creeps inward towards the epicenter of that high fertility, damping it down even at its source. The Chinese belt-and-road initiative is likely to murder it entirely within our own lifetime.
This is something different, never seen before. Saying "oh gosh shucks, it happened back in eleventy-twenty-fourven and we survived fine then!" is dismissal, not contemplation. Never before in human history has actual fertility sunk this low (or even really sunk). People didn't ever stop fucking, and they didn't have birth control, or abortion, or a dozen other factors. When population declined historically, it was due to war, disease, and famine. But because fertility remained high, just as soon as those pressures relented, population recovered. When fertility goes below replacement, population can never recover, it can only continue to shrink. When it goes below replacement, every girl growing up learns from the adults around her that low fertility is "normal", and she's not going to grow up and decide to have 8 herself (or even 2). She'll have as many as she saw those adults around her having, or maybe fewer (it acts as a ceiling, but not a floor).
It's not “developed countries have reduced population growth”.
It's: ALL countries have reduced population growth in recent decades compared to their historical baselines. Including in "non-developed" countries, like in Africa.
Many (most) countries have also dropped to sub fertility rates or close above.
On top of cultural and other reasons, there are also objective fertility issues with sperm counts and others emerging (likely due to modern food, climate crisis, microplastics, or some such).
Combine that with looming issues emerging from population shrinkrage causing economic decline, pension collapse and things like that, and then add environmental issues and resource wars into the mix.
It's no consolation if some pockets of humanity here and there carry on the torch, if humanity shrinks down to irrelevance.
If there's no culture, development level, and way of life preferences, for different national states and ethnic groups, and humans are just interchangeable units, sure. Just add as many immigrants as you want, problem solved.
Adding, say, to a country an additional 10%-20% of its current population in people from another culture, to be the younger and more fertile group, in an aging domestic population, would absolutely go without issue.
At least, if we also ignore that immigrant origin countries all see fertility drops, many projected to reach sub-fertility rates themselves soon, of course.
The other side of this is insane to me... the "oh actually looming human extinction won't be so bad" thing. Sub-replacement fertility rates are slow-motion extinction. Animal models where they "bounce back" is irrelevant, those animals have their extremely high above-replacement fertility all through their famines, plagues, and predator massacres such that when those pressures relent their population recovers. There's no known precedent for raising fertility rates that fall let alone so low.