The main problem of most developed societies is horribly low fertility rates. Lot of women pick very long education path and then career thinking about having children only in their mid 30s… When their fertility is mostly gone.
I think education system for women should be tailored towards different things than men. Teenage girls should have better knowledge of psychology (especially child psychology) health, childcare ect. so they are well prepared to build strong stable relationships and start families when they’re actually fertile. I’m not talking here about giving up on career of course, it’s a personal choice, but I wish the education was complementary for both genders (so couples benefit from different specializations of each other) rather than uniform.
If women have a power that men don’t have, and it’s the key to solving society’s problems, would they not leverage that power to gain a survival advantage so their offspring are the ones leading the way? They would spend time getting educated and starting businesses before having children. They would become more selective of who they choose as mating partners. <- we are here.
By essentializing women as baby-makers, men have created a power differential against themselves! They have become scared and depressed and would rather goon to clavicular videos than provide women with what’s needed to start families. Women have accepted the responsibility, and you’re noticing the upheaval this shift in roles creates.
Men are collectively disempowered because none of them are thinking about what they should be doing in life. They sit around talking about what women should be studying. Men should be studying women.
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Considering that some people here advocate for abolishing capitalism in favor of communism, I think my take on education is pretty mild in comparison. I expected the negative response, no regrets.
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Capitalism is as failed of an economic model as what is coloquially called “communism”
You’re telling this to person who was born in the transformation period, whose parents were born in it, and whose grandparents lived through it all. You have no idea what you’re talking about. This horrible communist system was voted away in my country in 1989 in first fair democratic elections since ww2 and since then I saw nothing but insane progress and wealth creation. Claim that capitalism failed, is asinine. Your argument is incomprehensibly invalid.
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It doesn’t go back on civilization achievements. It simply turns a blind eye to the main socioeconomic issues stopping women from having children. It also comically removes any and all responsibility on relationship building from men. It’s an odd take for sure
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Why shouldn’t men also have better knowledge of psychology, health, childcare…?
It takes two to build a strong and stable relationship, let alone a family.
lol. main problem is low fertility.
The reason for low fertility rates is in large parts due to capitalism. I want at least one more child, but it is too expensive. We need to get a bigger apartment, which is prohibitably expensive. Want to stay home with the child? Too bad, both parents have to work to make the economy work. If you want higher fertility rates we just have to make it easier to become a parent through systemic changes, and lots and lots of reforms helping parents
I’m not saying you’re wrong - there are always people who have financial constraints. I’m just saying that there’s also a lot of people who could absolutely afford larger family but for some reason they choose not to.
Then the solution is still to make those that actually want to able to. This is anecdotal, but I know several people that delay or do not get children due to their finances. That is in Norway, with the best or close to the best support and security net for families. Society is not made to have children, and if you dare go above two children, then you will have a lot of disadvantages. So the practical maximum for most people is two, unless you live where there is almost no jobs, on top of that not everyone gets children. The practical maximum is due to car size, home size, budgets etc. Do you want your child to own a home some day? Then you have to pretty much make sure they are able to financially and start straight away, which is not something they will be able to themselves. All these reasons contribute to there being born less than two children per woman.
Society has a few choices to maintain the population
- Make it a lot easier to have children and give them the best possible life. Make it an obvious choice. Free childcare, free healthcare, parental leave, financial support, etc.
- Force, direct or indirect (economical, loss of rights, anti abortion, etc)
- Immigration
The problem of low fertility rates ends up not being that women choose to be educated but rather that education was designed to be a trap for people who were very smart but weren’t actually powerful leaders commanding wealth and militaries. The solution is not gender-based education but the destruction of the patriarchy and its institutions, including the university. When patriarchy is destroyed, fertility rates will be where they need to be, in ecological terms.
Smash the patriarchy to solve all the problems you think exist on this topic. Smash it. Destroy it. Dismantle it. Join with men to help us tear it down and rebuild society anew.
As a man I have to say. WHAT THE FUCK!
This post was definitely written by a man. Let’s take it a few steps further though.
Women should be taught finances to take care of the family’s money since the man doesn’t need to know or worry about this. Men should take courses in child rearing and safety to raise the children while their wives go to brunch and hang out with their friends. Men should learn women’s anatomy to please their wife correctly so that she stays with him and the family unit increases cohesion. Men need to take courses in construction, electrical and plumbing so that they can fix things around their house and keep their family happy.
Women should be the ones that learn how to drive bc they are the ones that need to pick up groceries for their family. A wife can drive her husband to his job and back if she needs to. A man learning how to drive is just a distraction for him focusing on generating income and resources for his family and keeping his family house well maintained
Funny, before things got as bad as they are now, I used to think the main problem with society was overpopulation. It’s no longer the main problem, but it’s up there.
Both extremes are horrible.
We’re at 8 billion now.
If we’re being honest, the world would probably be better off a fair bit lower. How to get their through peace, equality, and justice is the tricky part.
For sure, so when we get to, say, 2 billion people (which was the global population just 100 years ago) we can worry about the risks of the lower extreme.
Are you a woman? Just curious
Reasons women say they don’t have children: 1) They can hardly sustain themselves economically and 2) They can’t find a partner
No amount of psychology training will get you to magically earn x3 or will give you the power to change adults behavior. No amount of education will fix your own shortcomings as a person either.
You want fertility rates up ? Fix your economy, get rid of corruption, make housing affordable, promote better role models, invest in actual community strengthening so people can build healthy relationships (and also crime rates go down). And affordable quality healthcare would probably help too.
Nah, I’m dude.
If the last few years are any indication providing benefits for the poorest doesn’t improve fertility. Where I live government spends tons of money on subsidies for young people for housing, childcare, and even pays for each child directly, and these policies didn’t improve anything fertility is even worse than in US. Looks like finances aren’t the main factor.
The problem with subsidies is that they don’t fix anything. They’re a bandaid measure. It’s better than nothing, in my opinion, but I don’t consider it a fix. Note also my answer wasn’t only limited to finances.
You’re definitely posting in the right place. I’ll give you that.
I think women, on average, already “know enough” to raise kids. IMO, it’s more of a sociocultural problem stemming from consumerism, hedonism, extreme individualism and “prolonged adolescence”, all in a cultural context that disregards the value of family and deeper human connections and sees childrearing as a burden that has to be scheduled around/after more important things like travelling and partying. This is also fueled by negative, often traumatic experiences in childhood, which will often kill one’s hope in the future and one’s perceived competence in successfully raising a family. It’s hard to consider it a purely/mostly economic problem as significantly poorer societies and comparatively poorer immigrants in Western societies still have more children and at earlier ages.
I think you nailed most of the reasons, at least from my day to day observations.
I think women, on average, already “know enough” to raise kids.
I’d add they are afraid of responsibility, while at the same time they don’t know how rewarding building a family can be. Education system could help with that.
It’s a mixture of fear and immature dislike for it. To be an adult is to welcome responsibility, to take care of more than just yourself, and idk if that is concentrated more in women (I’d argue the opposite actually, the biological clock kinda pushes women at some point, successfully or not, to mentally grow up). 👍
You could just as well train the boys to be the primary caregivers.
You think women choose to not have babies because they don’t know enough about psychology…???
This post makes you sound like you think a woman’s purpose is to have babies.
I think only women can give birth to children. Am I wrong? System should be adjusted accordingly
I won’t disagree that there may be some benefits to how we prepare young girls and boys for adulthood, but basing how we do that for girls around being a mother is extreme. Not every woman wants to be or is even able to become a mother. I won’t pretend that I have an answer for what the meaning of life is, but I reject the idea that the answer for women is to have babies. If you want to do right by young women in the education system, help them find
ourout what they want to do with their life and find a way to help them achieve that.If you want to do right by young women in the education system, help them find ourout what they want to do with their life and find a way to help them achieve that.
This is correct reasoning from ethical and philosophical standpoint. The issue is that we have a ticking bomb here and we need to disarm it somehow.
Kurzgesagt made amazing video about birthrates topic
I won’t lie, the issue of fertility rates is not one I have any prior knowledge of, and I made it about a quarter of the way through that video before I had too many questions to be able to continue. The video says some reasons of low fertility rates is because of poor handling of pensions and high healthcare costs for retirees. Are these not things that can be addressed and fixed before putting the expectation of having more babies onto women?
I feel like putting that kind of burden on women, especially young girls in school is like some form of slavery. Black schools in the US were underfunded by design so that black Americans wouldn’t be qualified for higher paying jobs and had less opportunities for a higher quality of life. The proposal in your post doesn’t sound very different for women.
Different profile of education doesn’t mean worse. Just different. I don’t know where “slavery” interpretation comes from.
Different tracks for different sorts of people, but ultimately similar in outcomes. Separate but equal, right?
different profile of education doesn’t mean worse. Just different.
I can’t tell if you’re trolling me here. That’s literally how whites sold the idea of segregation. And the word “different” in that context is what I was saying about opportunity. When you provide different education to different demographics of people, the levels of opportunity are vastly different for each group. You’re idea of curating a young girl’s education to prepare her for having babies does exactly that.
I’m not tolling.
That’s literally how whites sold the idea of segregation
And they were lying. I’m not.
When you provide different education to different demographics of people, the levels of opportunity are vastly different for each group
Since women can have children, their opportunities are bigger than opportunities of man. Building a family and childcare is an opportunity. Different one than professional career, but it isn’t worse in any way. Many people feel lonely and want a child after decades of work, except the biological clock is ticking unequally faster for women, and it might be too late for some. Somehow you people treat children like an unnecessary burden. This is wrong on so many levels. Promoting and educating women in that direction isn’t a disservice - it opens completely new path… And benefits whole society in current context.
Let’s assume it’s a ticking time bomb. The solution is to destroy the system that brought us here, which is patriarchy.
