Louise Perry
3.3K posts
Louise Perry
@Louise_m_perry
Columnist at @WSJopinion and host of the Maiden Mother Matriarch Podcast
London, UK Katılım Kasım 2019
2.4K Takip Edilen51.4K Takipçiler
@Louise_m_perry @CarterSkeel I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "biological." Do you mean a decline in individual fecundity? Because that seems to be false.
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Rare miss from Louise.
I share her aversion to silver bullet explanations.
But "boosting marriage is hard" ≠ "declining marriage isn't a primary driver of falling fertility."
It is. Understanding this descriptively is important and the necessary basis for finding solutions.
John J. Miller@heymiller
"The truth is that we don’t really know what is going on, and we certainly don’t know when the fertility decline might end." @Louise_m_perry: Falling Birth Rates Are a Mystery wsj.com/opinion/free-e… via @WSJFreeEx
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@darelmass @CarterSkeel My hunch is that this is a biological phenomenon, not an ideological one, because it’s so widespread. And that might explain both decline in patriarchy and decline in fertility rates
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@Louise_m_perry @CarterSkeel Men are not inherently patriarchal. Men can be feminists too. Or devoted to philosophy or war or 100 other typically male pursuits.
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Just one study of one province, but (just as elsewhere) it seems that Iranian men aren’t more eager to have more children than Iranian women. If men were eager to have children but were being stymied by female reluctance then the patriarchy argument would be more convincing. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC55…
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@Louise_m_perry @CarterSkeel Must young women marry? That is the #1 measure of patriarchy. And even in Iran, the answer is increasingly "no."
iranintl.com/en/202409039941
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@darelmass @CarterSkeel Iran is a challenge to that theory, they’re below replacement and have compulsory veiling
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@Louise_m_perry @CarterSkeel The global rise in singleness is intertwined with the global retreat of patriarchy. Patriarchy says every (young) woman must have a husband. And patriarchy is waning in the Middle East as in India as in China. But not Afghanistan!
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Be wary of claims today of a British brain drain causing the fall in net migration. That’s not what the numbers show 👇
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@CarterSkeel One can obviously still support marriage as an institution (as I do)
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The marriage explanation begs the question. If people were more motivated to have children, they would prioritise finding partners with whom to have them. As I’m sure you know, in cross-country surveys of single people the most popular reasons for remaining single are “I haven’t found the right person” or “I like being single”, I.e. they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to secure a partner and then have children. That’s the mystery that demands explanation.
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@DrCalumMiller @PTBwrites Then how to explain low birth rates in the Middle East?
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I generally am a fan of epistemological humility, which @Louise_m_perry's piece offers in spades -- perhaps too much so. While it doesn't explain 100% of the variation across the globe, the decline in birth rates are largely a function of declining marriage/partnership...
John J. Miller@heymiller
"The truth is that we don’t really know what is going on, and we certainly don’t know when the fertility decline might end." @Louise_m_perry: Falling Birth Rates Are a Mystery wsj.com/opinion/free-e… via @WSJFreeEx
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@PTBwrites @CarterSkeel @janecoaston I think this explanation begs the question - if people were more motivated to have children, they would find partners with whom to have them. The central mystery is why people are not more motivated to have children.
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@CarterSkeel @Louise_m_perry I obv take her point (@janecoaston's, originally) that a lot of Birth Rate Discourse is premised on just-so stories allowing people to be mad about things they were already mad about. But we actually do know that the decline in fertility is downstream from declining partnership!
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Louise Perry retweetledi
Whatever the reason turns out to be for falling fertility rates, it won’t fit neatly into any mainstream political ideology, writes @Louise_m_perry
on.wsj.com/4umybns
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Louise Perry retweetledi
The data on falling fertility rates tend to function as a Rorschach test. Everyone has an explanation that supports a pre-existing political agenda, writes @Louise_m_perry
on.wsj.com/4tQfZBM
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Louise Perry retweetledi
"The truth is that we don’t really know what is going on, and we certainly don’t know when the fertility decline might end."
@Louise_m_perry: Falling Birth Rates Are a Mystery wsj.com/opinion/free-e… via @WSJFreeEx
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Louise Perry retweetledi
From @WSJFreeEx: The data on falling fertility rates tend to function as a Rorschach test. Everyone has an explanation that supports a pre-existing political agenda, writes @Louise_m_perry
on.wsj.com/4nHY7Yr
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Louise Perry retweetledi
The data on falling fertility rates tend to function as a Rorschach test. Everyone has an explanation that supports a pre-existing political agenda, writes @Louise_m_perry
on.wsj.com/4ug7L6S
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@s8mb @TanyaSzendeffy Don’t forget the tumbleweeds of fake hair that always accumulate in the gutters because the hair shops sweep their refuse out into the street - memorable!
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I live nearby now (and have for years) and it is squalid. There's usually rubbish piled up on the street, there is graffiti everywhere, it's dirty, the air is filled with traffic fumes, and the shops are cheap and crappy.
You fought to protect that awful, neglected shopping centre, while living in St Leonards-on-Sea? You should be ashamed of yourself.
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Peckham is 20 mins from Shoreditch by rail and includes some of south London's loveliest streets and parks. It is baffling that some people think that the squalid Rye Lane, below, is something to try to preserve instead of trying to bring up to the standard of its surroundings.
Jeremy Driver@J_D_89
As someone that used to live in Peckham, but moved away in part due to affordability, I've written for @CityAM on why I think the decision to reject the Aylesham development was the wrong one: cityam.com/rejecting-affo…
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Something I’d be curious to know is if people are more likely to choose chidlessness if they have siblings with children. In evolutionary terms it would make sense in conditions of super low child mortality, but with the costs of pregnancy and childbearing still substantial, for some people to (unconsciously) try and piggyback off their siblings’ energy expenditure while still passing on a portion of their own genes
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US birth rates have had no meaningful trend over time between 1920 and 2007, oscillating around replacement rate-ish, this take is nonsense.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown@ENBrown
Birth rates have been declining for hundreds of years. Blaming smart phones for recent declines is nothing more than moral panic at its finest
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“I will not tolerate anyone exploiting a crisis to make a quick buck off the back of hard-working people who are already struggling with the cost of living” is the sort of phrase that would set off alarm bells en masse if schools gave the history of communism as much attention as the history of nazism
Michael Simmons@Simmons__
Reeves in the Times again saying she'll clamp down on price gouging by naming and shaming 👇 Never are any examples provided of this gouging actually happening. Because it's 99% a myth!
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@darelmass @lymanstoneky My theory is that evolutionary mismatch is causing psychosocial dysfunction. And we know (for pretty sure) that the first demographic transition was caused by falling child mortality so the link is established
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@Louise_m_perry @lymanstoneky Child mortality rates can fall to (nearly) zero, but I can't think of a mortality-based theory that would suggest fertility rates should then follow to (nearly) zero.
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