BRONZE AGE PERVERT ON THE FERTILITY CRISIS An article by Bronze Age Pervert titled "Fertility Cult" about the fertility crisis just went viral. The article sounds clever and BAP is a brilliant writer. Unfortunately, BAP gets almost everything wrong about fertility and doesn't seem very interested in what the data actually shows. BAP writes in his opening (see below), "Of all social and political problems the reestablishment of high fertility among a population where birth rate has already fallen below replacement is the most difficult. If there are any solutions, they’re obscure or even occult." BAP ignores the obvious The fertility crisis is clearly a difficult problem, but the solutions are anything but obscure. There are lots of groups that have above replacement fertility, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what matters. > People who marry have above replacement fertility, while people who don't marry are far below replacement. > Those who go to church every week have above replacement fertility while those who never attend have very low fertility. > People who live in suburban single-family homes in the US, Australia or the UK have replacement fertility. People living in urban high-rises have fertility far below replacement. > Those who start in their early twenties have above replacement fertility. Those who start in their mid 30s are far below it. > Republicans in the US are at replacement. Democrats are far below. The fertility difference between right and left-wing people is large. > Those who idealize a large family as a kid usually have a large family in the end and vice-versa. > When men have a higher income, they have more kids. For women, it's complicated. These aren't the only factors, but they are the big ones. The evidence for all of these factors is overwhelming. All over the world, people who marry, are religious, live at lower density, start earlier, are conservative and like the idea of having kids all tend to have a lot more. These factors stack up, and getting to higher fertility is simply a matter of having more of these factors work in your favor. The Amish have the highest fertility because they hit all the notes! What could be simpler? No single solution Pundits always seem to get stuck on fertility because the mind seeks a single solution. It is unsatisfying to think that the fertility crisis might have 5 or 10 different answers that each get you partway there. Ignoring the effect of religion BAP writes, "Modern pundits and influencers know that the solution is to reestablish both high fertility and religiosity at the same time. ... This is to write about turning back the clock on two phenomena that in human history appear nearly irreversible insisting that you do both at the same time, as the solution for each other." BAP is correct that religiosity is associated with higher fertility, but he is wrong to relegate it to the past. Many religious groups large and small have healthy fertility in the present age, and they seem to among the only ones resisting the modern trend of plunging fertility. Nor is it true that religiosity once lost is never regained. America alone had no less than three Great Awakenings in its history, and they are a big part of why America surged demographically while Europe stagnated. Then BAP writes, "the current pitch of the religious conservative natalists is something like, “You should have children. —Why? To save civilization of course. Do it for others. But to do this you need to have religion. —What is the connection? —Because we have sociological correlation studies that tell us that women who have children and are married tend to be religious. So it’s that you can find religion— Why should I be religious? —Because we have studies that show religious people tend to have higher fertility and marriage rates. That could be you." He dismisses the whole religion-fertility nexus as circular, but it isn't circular. There are clear lines of causality. Religious groups have higher fertility because - They link sex with marriage and family in a way that society does not. - They offer dating networks of higher trust and common values. - They literally believe we are called to go forth and have children. - They offer people identity and belonging in a world of anomie. - Religiosity is associated with greater happiness and happy people are more likely to have children. Religion is an enormous cultural driver of fertility, and religious cultures may have been selected in cultural evolution for precisely for that reason. Those groups that got their adherents to have children are with us today while others like the Shakers that didn't have died out. That cultural evolution continues to this today, and those groups that lack religion are being outcompeted by those that do. This is a really big deal, but BAP has long had a bias against religion, and so he is unwilling to see it clearly. Ignoring marriage BAP writes, "A stronger but similarly fruitless argument exists about reestablishing traditional family forms in some way. Essentially this means subjugating or enslaving women, though no one dares to speak this way." This is an absurdly false dichotomy. The primary traditional family form of course is marriage, and usually only rabid feminists would claim it is slavery. It is weird for a supposed right-winger to speak like this. BAP adds, "I don’t think marriage is the cause of fertility: this is a social engineering wish and its factual basis is only a correlation." He offers no evidence of this view, and actually causal connection between marriage and fertility are easy to establish. Millions of people move in and out of marriage every year and fertility is multiples higher while people are in it. In certain conservative societies, marriage is virtually a requirement for having children but even in the most liberal societies, fertility is far higher in marriage. BAP concedes that married white women have a TFR of 2.6 to 2.7. That is a pretty powerful signal in a world of fertility collapse, and more than twice the figure for unmarried women, but saying that marriage is good just isn't very edgy. So, he goes on to make a bunch of handwaving arguments absent actual data claiming high marital fertility is actually low ("I haven’t studied it closely"). But again, we do have the data and for every culture and demographic, fertility is high for the years when people are married. BAP's winding arguments disbelieving the link between marriage and fertility show a special kind of laziness because the data there so abundant. We have marital status and fertility in the gigantic American Community Survey for example. Status and fertility Next BAP dismisses motherhood status, even though it is yet another helpful driver of fertility. He writes, ""promoting fertility" is based on rhetoric about the "dignity of motherhood" and honoring mothers. Modern day natalism in general centers on images of respected women as wives, on motherhood as moral and honorable." He adds, as always without any evidence, "It’s completely useless for actually inspiring women to have babies in a modern situation." But countries that celebrate motherhood, like Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Georgia, do have higher fertility. And all the high-fertility faith groups place high value on motherhood. But BAP ignores the big honking example of celebrating motherhood that is right before our eyes. Republican leaders and influencers in the US venerate motherhood with all the schmaltz they can muster while Democrats are too cool for that, and Republican fertility in the US is now almost twice what it is for Democrats. It turns out that promoting fertility with rhetoric does have an effect, especially for the people on your own team. Sex cults to save the world!? Finally, BAP offers his solution: sex-cults! "What arrived in other places merely as sexual-carousing-drunken wine orgy and frenzy was reborn through the Greeks as timeless myth and poetry: the transfiguration of the satyr into Dionysos, the mirror of the local Apollo cults. This all developed into a vivid mythology and religion addressing suffering, rebirth and the nature of man and the universe. But the underlying phenomenon of sexual license and frenzy was never abandoned, merely sacralized." At least this fits with the BAP m.o., but what does the evidence say? Things like high partner counts, sexual liberation and polyamory are all associated with lower, not higher fertility. He writes, "Quite aside from any other artistic or spiritual consideration, from purely the point of view of survival, it’s not surprising Greek cities, beset so often by the problem of low citizen population, would fixate on this...one such craze every year or two could very well result in a bountiful harvest of venerated pregnancies." Except that we live in an age of birth control. People these days hardly ever get pregnant in "sexual-carousing-drunken wine orgy and frenzy." Aella is still childless and unplanned pregnancies are rarer than ever. Natalism isn't edgy enough Bronze Age Pervert, widely acknowledged to be Costin Alamariu, is (according to Grok) 45, unmarried and childless. He was never going to be a great candidate to reveal what is happening with fertility. But mostly he won't tell us what is happening with fertility because it's kind of boring and doesn't make for an edgy story. Marriage, churchgoing and suburban living, starting early, having conservative values, celebrating babies, and jobs for men -- these are the biggest keys. Does that vanilla answer fit with BAP content? Of course not. The guy recently wrote, "Enemy of God, of pity and of mercy -- let this be your motto." And therein lies the real problem with pronatalism. The things that work aren't hip at all. In fact, they are so painfully uncool that pop influencers don't want to touch them. TLDR: We know the factors that can cause more babies and avert the crisis! But they are all really boring. Does anyone know how to sell pronatalism? Please share! And follow @morebirths for more on the global fertility crisis and its solution.