Interestingly, this has a different subtitle and is missing the "Why" that is present in the title element of the current version. Presumably subtle SEO optimization was applied after the fact.
Speculatively, sports were almost exclusively a masculine pastime until feminine participation rose above 10%, and somewhere around that threshold it may have had a cascading effect?
Boys generally don't aspire to do the things girls do, and so it's plausible it's the effect of them switching away from sports and activities where girls' participation rises above 10%.
If there were predictive power in that, we could assess in a few years whether things like BJJ, and weight lifting at gyms, golf, and maybe camping go the same way. I'd offer other examples to test but there aren't really any male activities left that aren't considered too low status to attract that 10% threshold.
Ping pong and badminton are immensely enjoyable and played by both boys and girls without regard for the other's level of participation.
Female participation in track hasn't reduced male participation. The US female running team is incredible - with the level of flash and charisma that's on par with the the best men in history (I'm thinking Usain Bolt).
Other sports such as surfing have seen much higher participation from women - their skills and quality has improved considerably, but that doesn't seem to be making the boys avoid surfing.
I think many boys just want to play with someone that's close to or better than their skill level. I think this is also true of many girls. Then there are people that want to just play "for fun", but things get ugly when one person's fun is another person's utter boredom.
Track and field is an interesting control case as men and women don't compete against one another or practice together in it, where these other sports that are increasingly mixed would be the ones to watch for this 10% rule change dynamic. I was referring to audience, but it's a general "space," thing, where Korean baseball games may have crossed that threshold and then become more feminine spaces as a conseqeunce.
Is there some correlation here with the world lowest fertility rate?
Edit: Legitimate question, not insinuating anything. If questions are off limits, that’s pretty sad for inquiry, understanding and knowledge.
It’s a legitimate question as the article points out such a male/female inversion of fans is unique. Maybe women choosing different lifestyles, which is 100% their choice. But can still be correlated. Or other factors at play?
The article doesn’t have answers. So questions are what we are left with.
“Choose” is a strong word, as we simply don’t value parenthood (monetarily or culturally) as much as previous generations. And I can’t blame women in this scenario - rationally speaking, why would you sacrifice multiple years of your life, then go back to the work force to be inferior because of those missed years, and lose out on your youth at the same time? The usual answer of “because having children is eternal happiness” just doesn’t hold water anymore, because the opportunity loss of having a child has grown dramatically.
Fortunately, you can have a fairly fulfilling life without having children as of today. And as the time goes, more childless people grow up which somewhat paves the way to the younger people without children. So, the spiral of low fertility continues, because again, we say we care about having a society full of children, but in reality, we don’t.
>The usual answer of “because having children is eternal happiness” just doesn’t hold water anymore, because the opportunity loss of having a child has grown dramatically.
This sentence doesn't make sense to me. How can the opportunity loss outweigh eternal happiness?
I meant that quote to be tongue-in-cheek, and out of reality. Should’ve been a bit more clear, my bad.
When I was a kid, that’s how older people around me described what parenthood gives you (eternal happiness). Later on, as sad as it sounds, I realized that line can be used as a cope for people for whom parenthood didn’t work out for a lot of different reasons (loss of a child, kids not meeting your expectations, work stress, problems in your partnership, societal priorities and etc.). So you start weighing your risks, and some come to conclusion that having no children or just one is good enough.
Then again, you get “you’ll never know until you experience it!” statements, and that still doesn’t cut it. Because, it’s really, genuinely good enough for some people, since you avoided most of the risks and enjoyed your life. Also as childless/small families age, they become a proof of concept to others how you really don’t need 3+ children (basically a requirement to be at the replacement level of the society).
There’s also a huge underlying “everyone wants others to have children, but only care about their own children” issue. And as we’ve gotten more competitive in the society, the best way to play the game is not playing it. But that’s a different topic.
Sorry for being a bit of a downer, but we talk about this with my friends quite often (late 20s-30s groups). And that’s generally how everyone feels - both men and women.
I relate heavily. I (Japanese-American male, if that matters) do not ever plan on marrying and thusly having children, life is far too short to deal with that literal bullshit when I have so many bigger fish to fry.
According to whomst, exactly? Do you remember the works of great artists or authors because they have children? Is the work of Nikola Tesla worthless because he didn't fulfil the human biological imperative?
Sex is but one of many hedonistic pleasures, one which I personally value around the bottom of my list of fish to fry because relationships carry far too much fucking (pun intended) baggage.
This is a good question; if somebody tells you that something promises eternal happiness, how could you (or any person) compel yourself to not do that thing? The sheer amount of willpower it must take to overcome the unassailable truth of a statement phrased in that way boggles the mind of a low brow such as myself
I’ve never heard of this phrase and I find it confusing. How could someone arrive at such a negative outlook when faced with infinite and undeniable proof of eternal happiness everywhere in the world?
I've seen enough families clearly miserable with each other to know that anyone who calls marriage and children "eternal happiness" is a fucking snake oil peddler trying to sell me a bridge.
Why negative? Not believing that there’s eternal happiness waiting in a corner doesn’t mean someone (well, me in this case) lives a depressing life. Quite the opposite, I’m genuinely satisfied with where I am right now. Everyone’s choices are subjective and involve different calculations. After all, happiness is subjective.
Today the "fulfilling life" is on the verge of disappearing. When most people don't have kids, like South Korea, when you get 60 years old you realize that there will be nobody to support you because there are not enough people left of working age. At 70 you can die of hunger not because you don't have the money for food, but there is nobody there to sell you the ingredients or deliver the order. You can import food, but it will not distribute itself. Electricity is not produced without people, drinking water need people, these people are your potential kids and grandkids when your are 70 years old and they are not there because you did not have any.
The standard of living will go down for sure, but I don't think it's reasonable to predict people starving to death due to not enough workers producing food. More likely, we won't be going on vacations abroad, we'll be driving our cars for 20+ years, will be living in small houses or apartments.
We regularly get the labour shortage argument to push retirement age later and later. There's just one problem: if there's a labour shortage, where does the 10+% unemployment comes from? Can't be explained by unfulfilled positions either, we counted in France, there's one open position for 10 unemployed worker.
And bloody hell, if push comes to shove, we can give up on optional niceties and reallocate labour to the more important stuff.
In Romania we have a crisis of workers in highway constructions and at the same time people living on benefits. The jobs are paying above the average, most are for operators of heavy machinery (trucks, bulldozers), don't require high skills, but people prefer to not work. Statistics are showing unemployment in areas where candidates want jobs that don't exist (wrong studies, wrong expectations), in the meanwhile there are plans to import 100,000 temporary workers from Sri Lanka.
People having unrealistic expectations are mostly explaining the high unemployment and high vacancy of some positions. It is a mismatch and the numbers are cooked, France is importing workforce from abroad (including Romania) for positions that French natives don't want.
How many unemployed? And how many opened positions? Your wording suggests that the number of opened positions exceeds half of the number of unemployed workers, but what’s your actual numeric estimation?
Yes, the number of open positions exceeds even the total number of people looking for a job. The number of unemployed people (they are not "workers", some did not work a day in their life) and the number of people looking for a job are very disconnected around here, living on benefits is preferred by way too many.
1. In some rural areas it is economically more profitable not to work than working a low wage job. You raise some chicken and a pig or cow, grow some food for self-consumption, get benefits, gg
2. Some people go for work in Western Europe for 3 to 6 months, then spend the rest of the year at home doing nothing. Or go to work in the season on the seaside and "rest" for the rest of the year.
According to our own government, the number of unemployed people in France at the end of last year is estimated at 2.3 millions (7.5% of the active population). the number of open positions for private companies of more than 10 employees (excluding agriculture) is 331,700.
I don’t believe for a second that including agriculture and smaller companies would raise this number even close to 1M, let alone 2.3M. The total number is most likely well below 500K. So it looks like in France, there is there is at most 1 open position for every 4 unemployed people able to work. Likely less. Given these numbers, if all the unemployed French people filled every open position overnight, at least 75% of them would remain unemployed.
I really, really have a hard time believing your numbers now that I have checked the official numbers for my country. I suggest you check for yours.
Sorry, I missed that part. I'm not sure where to find the official numbers there, but the sources I could find suggest the vacancy rates there are still easily less than half the unemployment rates.
Supporting yet again that there are much fewer open jobs than unemployed people. Now I don't know how trustworthy the sources I just linked to are, but from what I've seen so far your current model of unemployment and vacancies seems to be wrong.
I don't necessarily blame them, it's the logical conclusion to being told "Go to college and get a degree if you don't want to end up flipping burgers at McDonald's." their entire life.
Don’t miss the part where there is only 1 vacancy for 10 workers.
Lowering standards would not solve anything here, even if everyone accepted any job and relocate accordingly to fill every single vacancy, unemployment would hardly go down.
That argument only works for people who care how they’ll live in their 60s/70s. There’s a morbid reality check in my circles (late 20s/30s) that the way our parents are living right now will never be obtainable for us (this includes friends with children as well). So might as well squeeze out life right now, at least have stories to tell to each other when we’re “dying of hunger in our 70s”. It’s not a scientific data point or anything, just bunch of friends shooting the shit and talking at the bar kind of stuff.
I’m not saying it’s all doom and gloom in the future, but it’s simply a risk assessment. The usual semi-paradox of “if others don’t care about it, why should I”, but apply that to everyone in the world.
There's risk for men as well, without much reward. Why would you risk becoming a father and being subjected to what many would feel is an unfair and costly family court system. I'm not sure what the benefit would be in a society that looks at you funny (as a threat) if you're the one taking your kid to playground, assuming your wife takes care of you (increasingly rare), etc. The expectations for men have changed and probably increased, the downsides have increased, but the stereotypes remain.
"we say we care about having a society full of children, but in reality, we don’t."
We only care that we have an increasing population to drive our consumer economy.
I think women will choose to have children if they can do it on their own terms. The problem is systematic gender roles and the (word hate ahead) patriarchy still score a bullseye when it comes to motherhood.
You mean the rulers don't value parenthood. Of course not, because they need to squeeze as much productivity and profit from the younger generations they can before they (the rulers) die. Parenthood gets in the way for that, when the only priority should be to generate as much taxes and corporate profits as possible, and not snot-ridden kids.
The reason for this is that all real estate value, 401K value and stock value gets transferred to the corresponding accounts in the afterlife, so you can understand why the older generation is in a hurry to get as much as they can.
"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."
Matthew 13:12
Not really. For example, one could outsource childcare to varying degrees depending on wealth. There may be other reasons, perhaps even correlated ones, but I don't see any obvious link between women pursuing careers completely killing cultures.
Look at the first chart, "Ratio of female to male labor force participation rates, 1990 to 2021". Switch to Table view and sort by 2021 rates. You will find plenty of countries there with +80% rates which are all growing in population. You can see those numbers here [1].
But presumably you mean rich countries only. Just go down to the second chart on the same page, "Female labor force participation rates by national per capita income". This shows there is no or little correlation between GDP/capita and female participation.
Israel's population growth is disproportionately drive by the Haredi/ultra-orthodox Jewish communities where their women seek employment quite alright, but often stick to sedentary occupations that give them more time for the home.
The parent comment might have been somewhat aggressive, but the West needs t figure this out: once women enter the workforce en masse, birth rates tend to slide down from there. And with the welfare state most Western democracies have built, there's a continuous need for warm bodies to pay taxes and fuel the state's long-term obligations (social security, medicare, etc.).
With the way the stance around immigration is changing, importing immigrants won't work as a strategy for very long.
Still a positive natural population growth (2022 Revision of World Population Prospects).
Meanwhile Iran, where women make up about 17% of the total labor force, has only a slightly higher natural population growth and a fertility rate of 1.69.
You can temporarily maintain natural population growth with a fertility rate below replacement, e.g. due to past baby booms. In the long run (50-100 years) it means the population is shrinking.
He’s not wrong, my man is simply advocating for the cultural model of the Sentinelese.
The only cultures that have existed untouched for 200 years are uncontacted tribes, so the retvrn guys are advocating that we get women out of the work force, abandon industry, eliminate language entirely until a new one grows in its place, make American great again (at thatching and the tanning of hides by hand)
That's what unemployment insurance is there to take care of, the idea being that there is another job to be had. Of course I'm speaking from a European - Swedish and Dutch specifically - perspective so things may not be as 'easy' in countries where there is no such thing.
Do mind though that unemployment insurance should be time-limited and there should be incentives to find alternative employment to avoid the system becoming a replacement for paid employment which leads both to dependency on the side of the unemployed as well as eventual insolvency of the insurance system.
Women equality destroyed marriage. Before women could work in attractive jobs, a marriage was often only way for a woman to a middle class lifestyle. The husband was a neccessity. Now, women can just get a job that provides such lifestyle, so they marry for love and not for money.
"marry for love" does not last. It makes the marriage a chronometer for infatuation. Not saying marrying for money is better, marrying for long term family partnership is neither of these.
That’s a very sexist take, and not supported at all by the data. There are plenty of very successful women raising families. I have a relative where both the father and mother are very successful engineers working full time. Their two girls are doing amazing and going to top schools.
Raising children is full time, but both parents can and should be a part of it.
Although it is pretty sexist by itself, that statement contains interesting points to talk about.
Motherhood by itself can be a full time job, if the partner and the society doesn't help. Like enough (and affordable) daycare centers, kindgartens, schools that take care of children after school hours, i.e. offer all-day care or activities.
And as you said "very successful engineers". What's about not so successful people, making good money but not being able to afford the options around them?
Yeah! So you are totally right, that statement was pretty sexist, but to really help couples raising children there is still a lot of work do to.
Fair point, I was talking about the statement that "Motherhood is a full time job" not the other point you made about women choosing careers over motherhood.
You are right that there are studies showing that especially in Northern European countries where women receive more support in raising children have lower birth rates. But there was no statement as to why this is so (at least that was the last time I was interested in the topic, maybe there is something new?).
So yeah, I didn't feel confident enough to tackle that point of yours, sorry.
There is no passing the buck. Raising children is a full time job, mother or father aside. And it is a rewarding job, unlike many middle management paper pushing “bullshit” jobs talked about here frequently.
Someone has to raise children. I believe a loving, caring parent would want to do that themselves and or with their immediate family structure. I would not want strangers raising my children.
Two girls. 2.1 is replacement rate. Some do manage to have 2-3 kids! But many do not. And the cultures that do not push women into careers are more able to grow their population.
Is there any country on earth with a neutral or positive population growth where women are encouraged to pursue careers? As far as I know, not a single country that has a significant female career participation rate has a 2.1+ child rate per family outside of immigration.
Okay, well I did a little googling and came across this data.. it does seem having 3 or more children equates with negative effects on women being able to have a career.
But it seems to me the issue is not that women are choosing to have careers, but that the work/career culture is not supporting women choosing to have children. So things like better maternity and paternity leave, allowing women to take years off, or part time without consequence to career, etc.
So takeaway should be, support our population by better supporting working mothers.
> But it seems to me the issue is not that women are choosing to have careers, but that the work/career culture is not supporting women choosing to have children. So things like better maternity and paternity leave, allowing women to take years off, or part time without consequence to career, etc.
Countries that did all of those things as much as possible still fall below replacement rates, so no that isn't a sexist take that is just reality.
I'm not saying we should force women to not have careers, just that the women who have careers will eventually go extinct, which is their choice and I fully support that. I don't see a reason to force people to spread their genes. Instead of forcing career women to be unhappy at home with children, the women who are happy at home with children will eventually replace them.
"So things like better maternity and paternity leave, allowing women to take years off, or part time without consequence to career, etc."
A lot of these have been implemented in some European countries. They don't seem to be that effective on fertility rate given they are still below replacement.
I have seen a few cases of successful women at work. But what surprised me was to find out that most of them took a break of 10-15 years to raise the kids, then returned to the workforce with full focus. I have a friend that did that after 14 years and found that Project Management is the same as before she left, so ramping up to full speed was very easy. She was promoted (again) less than 1 year after her return to work.
There is no industrialized society at replacement fertility.
So far the west is getting by on immigrants from countries it has destroyed. What happens when all of Africa falls below replacement rates in the next 15 years?
Keep in mind that _you_ will need doctors and nurses to keep you alive once you're past 60. At this point soylent green is the only retirement policy people with less than 10 million in the bank can expect.
Not really, it just means that the majority of women will be dead ends and the few who are happy (and able) to have 12 kids will the be the ones who populate the future.
The genetic effects of this are going to be interesting because until the 1970s a woman had a much better chance than a man of having some average number of children survive.
>The genetic effects of this are going to be interesting because until the 1970s a woman had a much better chance than a man of having some average number of children survive.
How does that math work out? Every child has a mom and a dad. Are you referring to widowhood and remarriage? Divorce and remarriage? Polygamy? Were those so significant in the 1920 that it caused a "much better chance"?
That's an interesting point I hadn't though of, thanks. However, I don't think it really backs up the previous comment. The link say's it's been even until recently:
>In humans, this balance has been remarkably even, but the past few decades have seen a substantial shift towards men, notably in some Asian countries
Yes there's an imbalance at birth:
>around 103–107 male babies for every 100 female ones.
However, 2 things about that imbalance:
* I don't think 100:103 or 100:107 is big enough for "a much better chance than a man of having some average number of children survive". I would think "slightly better chance" would be more accurate.
* The imbalance only exists as babys/kids. By reproductive age (the previous comment said "a woman had a much better chance than a man" not "a baby girl has a much better chance than a baby boy"), it evens out:
>the initial surplus of boys decreases to roughly equal number of males and females during the all-important reproductive years in most populations.
I've also wondered similar things. For example, fertility rate is higher with lower wealth. Lower wealth is also correlated to many things. Similar wealth and education levels have been shown to be a large mate selection factor as well. Will that lead to implicitly selectively breeding for those traits over generations?
It's the poor and the rich that are having children.
The middle class has decided to have a hysterectomy for some odd reason.
At any rate, I just need to outlive the people not having children today, not too hard since they won't have a family safety net or enough to retire on, and I'll stop hearing these arguments since the people who believed them will be dead and the people who didn't listen to them are the only ones who will be around to talk.
The middle is in an awkward position of higher quality everything for their children being within reach, yet not accessible without taking on significant financial risk – e.g. the kids might have excellent food, housing, schooling, etc but as a result the family would financially be walking a tightrope from which it can be easily knocked off should an unfortunate chain of events befall them.
To try to work around this awkwardness and provide the best for their family while mitigating risk, this group is likely to wait as long as possible to accumulate resources to act as padding. Unfortunately it’s not a given that these goals can be met before time runs out on the biological clock.
Nah, the culture where 90% of people are gay work-aholics and 10% of people are employed as full time breeders is optimal. The final stage of capitalism is a human ant colony.
>The article mentions family-friedliness. That indicates a non-vanishing number of women at the events have kids and are likley in a relationship.
I don't have kids but I would nonetheless appreciate family friendliness. It's a public event in a public space, after all. Sex and implications of such should be left within the walls of your bedroom, or at least a love hotel.
>Would men in other societies accept their significant other rooting for other men with corny phrases? I'm reading "horny" here, but nontheless.
>Would the female partner accept that the male one brings his cameras for photos of cheerleaders only?
Why not? If anything, demanding someone not do something for no reason besides "I am offended." is a flagrant violation of human rights.
I'm not married and never plan to, but hypothetically if I had a wife and she wanted to cheer for a man besides me? More power to her, I say. It's none of my business. I too would cheer for a woman besides her if I felt like it.
"Root for" someone means to cheer for someone or look forward to someone's success. You root for sports teams, your kid to do well on their test, or for your candidate to win an election.
Barrack in British English can mean to jeer or boo someone. That's the opposite of root. I've never heard the word barrack used like this in America.
Also the somewhat old fashioned phrase “Up the [magpies or other team]” also would have the opposite meaning in the US than it does in Aus. In fact I hear the US meaning more and more, probably due to TV
The downvote is surprising: e-sports is big in South Korea, so there's an obvious question: what's the female to male ratio in e-sport stadium? I personally wouldn't use the regular sports stadium as evidence of anything before I know more about South Korea.
