Demographic Decline and the Failure to Love
The birth dearth has entered the chat.
This week, philosopher Emma Wood discusses the coming demographic winter, the role of the sexual revolution in bringing it about, and what we can do to return to love.
Demographic Decline and the Failure to Love
Emma Wood
Unfortunately, such a coherent system of sexual ethics has long since been abandoned, and what we are left with is a proliferation of conflicting, incompatible wants. If you’ve been in a monogamous relationship, and your partner wants it to become non-monogamous, is it reasonable to feel deeply upset and betrayed by the request alone? Suppose you want to get married young, and you inform your boyfriend of this. Suppose you wait patiently, planning your life around this eventuality, but then find yourself, eight years down the road, still waiting when your boyfriend finally reveals he never really believed in marriage? Are you entitled to be upset at him for wasting your time?
Without a shared system of sexual morality—a culturally shared understanding of how sexual relationships are meant to work—individuals must resolve divergent sexual expectations couple-by-couple. But, as the increasing vitriol between the sexes seems to indicate, this individualistic strategy doesn’t seem to be working very well.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: A New HHS Report on Youth Gender Transition, AI & the Sex Wars, and Women and Family Life
This week: Jesse Singal on the HHS report on youth gender transition, Leah Libresco Sargeant on AI and the sex wars, and Maria Baer and Brad Wilcox on what's stopping women from embracing family life. Plus: the problem of patriarchy, how algorithms killed romance, helicopter parenting, the progressive man's manosphere—and more!
From the Archives:
Demographer Paul Moreland discusses the importance of a pro-natalism that is distinctly feminist.
Why Feminism Must Be Pro-Natal—and Pro-Human
Paul Moreland
“We can see the contours of a feminism that reacts positively to birth, embraces not only the concept of choice, in theory, but also the choice to have children, in practice, and which calls for society to support women in bearing future generations. Such a feminism should put female autonomy and choice front and centre, but it should not assume that choices around childbearing necessarily mean less childbearing.”