Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!mtxinu!unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5!szabo
From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Human Population Growth/Decline
Message-ID: <21532@crg5.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 91 09:11:08 GMT
References: <1991Feb22.164032.16901@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Mar13.091441.2840@desire.wright.edu> <7860@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <21376@crg5.UUCP> <1991Apr9.094513.3914@ducvax.auburn.edu>
Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc
Lines: 50

In article <1991Apr9.094513.3914@ducvax.auburn.edu> dr@ducvax.auburn.edu writes:
>
>In article <21376@crg5.UUCP>, szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
>[No evidence that humans have innate desire to have children]

>What constitutes evidence?  The desire to have children, particularly one's
>*own* children, is the most consistently occurring, most strongly stated goal 
>of adults throughout society.  

More than love, job, money, status, religion, even cars, houses, vacations?  
I don't think so.  It would be interesting to see polls on this topic, 
though even a cultural desire to have children, or a cultural norm that 
assumes one should want to have children, does not necessarily imply an 
innate desire.  The decline of birth rates with effective birth control, 
well below the maximization of offspring and even below replacement 
levels, is strong evidence that there is no such innate instinct.  In 
the non-birth-control environment in which our species evolved, there 
was no need for such an instinct.  What we know about the genetics and 
embryology of behavior indicates that the simplest solutions to a 
problem will evolve, without foresight, rather than the more complex, 
genetically improbable structures an abstract child-desire instinct 
would require.  The desire for sex, up until this century for most 
people, was sufficient for procreation.  It no longer is.


>This desire is so pervasive, so inescapably 
>self-evident that it is absolutely overwhelming. 

A pre-birth-control cultural assumption, actually based on
emotions and behaviors that come _after_ a child has been born.  
The desire seems to be rather underwhelming when birth control enters 
the picture.  Where birth control is most available, birth rates have 
dropped to at or below replacement levels.  With fully reliable birth 
control, we reach a rate of -50%/generation.  Hardly overwhelming.

> Writers throughout the ages 
>have addressed this desire; 

Writers and poets have written about sex and romance at least a
thousand times more often then they have written about a desire to 
have children.  At least.  I can't even think of an example 
of the latter.



-- 
Nick Szabo			szabo@sequent.com
"If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty
The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any
organization I may be affiliated with.