#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?

26:45I interviewed Andrea Heinz recently who is a USP in Sex and History. Really interesting. Is that the lady that you looped me in with? Different lady. I was also very interesting. The specific thing that Andrea talks about is how being in the Sex and History like to be more explicit, like being in prostitution, right, not just camming or whatever. Um, he's a bit like being in an abusive relationship, except you're in an abusive relationship with a hundreds of men. So it's not, um, it's clearly different, but in terms of the psychological effect, it's very similar. And she talks about the sort of, um, the psychological cycles you end up in, which are very similar to his massive violence, like he say, that feeling of, I'm not, I can't do anything else, I'm not good enough for anything else.

27:37But equally, you do also have the highs. We are like, wow, I'm earning so much money, or I've got out of whatever bad situation I was in, which led me to try prostitution. Like, there are ups and downs, but the risk is that you end up in this kind of rut. And one of the things that she's talked about, and I've heard other women talk about as well, is how actually you can earn really quite a lot of money. I mean, prostitution definitely pays more per hour than almost anything else. And definitely more than the realistic other jobs that many of these women could have. But often the money sort of disappears, because often one, you're gonna wanna spend money to feel better, because you feel really dreadful and you feel worse as time goes by, and so you might spend money on drugs.

28:21You know, that's one obvious alcohol. But also you might spend money on expensive stuff, you don't need or care. Crouching holidays, clothing. Exactly, because you wanna feel like it's worth it, and just putting it in a savings account doesn't make you feel like that. There's also a feeling, which a lot of women speak about, that the money is sort of dirty, particularly if it's cash, because you know what it's for, like you know where you've got it, and it has, there's almost that compulsion to like just get rid of it, which is why, I mean, Lily Phillips is clearly making loads of money, one in blue is making loads of money.

28:50I don't necessarily think though that means they're set up for life, because one, HMRC is going to take half of it. assuming that they're paying their taxes, which I'm sure they are. Two, think how much money you actually need to earn in a two or three year period in order to spend your whole life. Yeah, that's actually massive, massive sums. And I'd be really surprised if they've been up. Talking about nine figures to be able to not have to do it again. Yeah. You've got to, it's going to have to be a lot more men than a thousand to be able to get there. Yeah, I mean, we've only heard of them for the last like a few months, they haven't been earning that much money for that long.

29:26I think people who say, oh, whatever, like this is amazing for them because they just get to do this for a little bit and then this has a for life. I think that's probably not the case, actually. And it will cause lots of problems down the track, not least in those relationships. Yeah, I remember my first ever job, I was a room service boy at Tall Trees Hotel in Yarm, which had a nightclub attached to it. So I would go and deliver the drug dealers their breakfast on a morning, move, literally move huge, big pillows of pills aside and weed and all the rest of the stuff and pop it down and they would give me £1 .50 in change.

30:01Do whatever. And I remember that I really hated this job but I just didn't, I wanted to be proud of the fact that I had a job and this is when the internet was just about coming online and you'd be able to get through some weird browser hack for a Nokia phone, you'd be able to get MSN Messenger or you'd be able to get MySpace or something like that on your phone. In order to be able to connect to the internet, I actually worked this out. I didn't like the job so much that I was distracting myself by using buying internet packages so that I could go on MSN and talk to my friends who were all out having fun.

30:32But I realized that I was being paid four pounds 50 an hour, but to connect to the internet it was nine pounds an hour. So I was netting a loss of four pounds 50 an hour to go to work in order to sedate myself from having to be at a job that I didn't like and that is the same sense I get from your sex worker lady friend. Yeah, also generally people, as we've talked about, only fans isn't a very good life decision, right? Generally, people, women who are going to take the long term risk of going on only fans are not going to be that good at managing their money, like to be blunt, because managing your money actually requires you to be very forward -thinking and to win the marshmallow test repeatedly throughout the day.

31:25That's probably not what. The idea that you get from the only fans industry or from sex positive feminists that this is great for women because this is a source of easy cash, I just think that I think it's is missing what's really going on here, which is actually a lot of women setting their lives on fire for not that much benefit. At least in part, the observable metrics and hidden metrics are two things that people often make the wrong trades for. And this is another example of that. That an observable metric is how nice is the car that you're driving, how high the heels the airwearing, how big the bank accounts, etc.

32:06But what you're trading that for is a sense of self -worth and security and future and psychological pain and all of the other things and even for yourself You know like I hop on about this hidden observable metrics trade all the time, but It's not even that easy to work out yourself because you go well where is my bank balance of sanity? This relationship is really is really hurting me But it gives me a sense of belonging or it gives me a sense of camaraderie or I've got someone who's really hot or I've got someone who's out of my league or whatever it might be. And you think, well, fine, like that's something that you can parade around in many ways.

32:45But what does it mean that you're in psychological pain because they're mistreating you? Like what? Well, how much is that? Show me where that is. You can show other people got dude. Dude, you're a new girlfriend's heart. You can see that register somewhere, but you having a sleep was night. That doesn't register. So it's an interesting trade that the girls are making here as well, which is observable metric of fame and attention and money and things that money can buy for stuff that even they actually aren't able to necessarily see about themselves. Yeah. Talk to me about the declining rates for marriage because this is a trend that's been going on for a while.

33:29I think we've got whatever is 38 % of Gen Z saying they're not having sex. We've got sex recession and all the rest of it. But I do get the sense that more worrying than that is like casual sex coming and going unless it no precedes more meaningful relationships happening. I don't know what the sort of heritage is there, but the marriage thing I think seems to be a little bit more concerning. So have you had a look at this, have you thought about what's going on here, modern marriage trends? Can I just repeat the take of a different modern wisdom guest who is limestone because I interviewed him the other day.

34:07And he had a view on this which I found so interesting and actually really like pull together a lot of the things I've been confused about when looking at marriage rates and fertility and all this stuff, I'm right about. He doesn't think that actually, he basically thinks the only thing that is wrong with fertility rates in the West is, and he's looking at America, but this applies to Britain as well, is people getting married late. He thinks that's the only problem because actually once people are married, they tend to have kids. Like, you know, it's almost like you get married and you're like, well, what else are we going to do?

34:50Right. He says that actually the number of people who are married and are deliberately not having children, like the dinks, they're quite culturally prominent, but they're actually rare. There aren't very many people who do that. Most people get married and if they can, they will have some children, right? But when people are getting married into, like, I think the average age of first marriage an hour is over 30 definitely. And the average age of marriage in general is quite old because people get married multiple times account for the first marriage so they drag it up. But, you know, during the baby boom, the average age of first marriage was so young, it was like 22 or something, really young.

35:29And even in the 80s, I got married when I was 25, which is basically child bride and my peer group. In the 80s that was average, right? So people are basically just skipping the whole of their 20s during which they could have been having children because they're not actually coupling up until later or they're not coupling up at all. So Lyman's take and I think it's actually a really interesting one. It's not to do, it's not well sorry. People often say it's just to do with housing, it's just because housing is expensive or it's just to do with the availability of contraception, or it's just to do with feminism, telling women that like their girl bosses and they don't need to have kids, whatever.

36:09He says, no, it's actually just a coordination problem, it's actually just that people are not getting married sufficiently early so that they then have their whole of their reproductive lives ahead of them and can have, you know, 2 .5 kids. But that is linked to the other stuff in the sense that he thinks, and I think this is really persuasive, that the reason people aren't getting married younger is because men in their 20s are not able to for various reasons signal their suitability at husbands. In a way they used to. Because what women are looking for when they're looking for a husband is someone who they know is going to be reliable during moments of difficulty when they have children.

36:53Because when you're pregnant and when you're nursing and you've got young children, you simultaneously need more resources and also have less ability to get those resources for yourself. So you're in a real pickle. And like the person or people who can provide that for you, like, you, I mean, you need them, you need someone, you need someone, and the obvious person is the father of your children. And that's what monogamous marriage is, basically like, legally obliging men to step up during those moments. And so women are looking for a man who will do that, and who is capable of providing those resources in that difficult moment.

37:30And they look for signals in men that they're up to that, you know, and wealth is one of them. But there are other ways of showing it as well, like going to an elite university, that's pretty good. Or running your own business or military service, that's an interesting example. Down to about 3 % I think compared with 50 % in the 1940s. Yeah. I asked Lyman this and he was like, yeah, he thought it was true. Is it possible that part of the reason there was a post -war baby boom particularly in America is because so many men had military service and had this opportunity to demonstrate their suitability as far as I'm concerned?

38:10See how reliable I am. Exactly. I just went to war. I can raise your child. Exactly. Like, we don't, it is hard now for young men to do that costly signal and to say that it's harder to buy property, it's depending on where you are, but it is generally harder to buy property when you're younger. The nature of everyone going to university actually is kind of not everyone, but when lots of people go to university, it actually devalues the signal and it also basically extends your adolescence in that you don't, you can't start your business, buy your property, you do whatever until you've graduated and then there's just like pushes further and further into your 20s.

38:48Yeah, military service, as you say, much less common. Basically the ways that men could demonstrate there that they are up to being fathers and husbands have become scarcer. And it's no good if you start, like, if you gain those costly signals in your 50s, right? Because at that point, like, you're outside of the reproductive window, it has to be really in your 20s. or maybe in your early 30s. And that is exactly what we are missing right now. And maybe that's the key thing. Maybe that's why, but it's a full enough of a cliff. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about element before and that's because frankly, I'm dependent on it.

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40:12Best of all, I've got no questions asked, refund policy with an unlimited duration, so you can buy it totally risk -free. If you don't like it, you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with any purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things going on, but certainly comparatively, if you were to roll in whatever a Malcolm Collins is or a Stephen J. Shores idea around this that as females who seem to be much better at All types of education, so so you know, socioeconomic success in the modern world is pretty much laid at their feet until they pay the motherhood tax in their 30s or whatever.

41:02They are more conscientious on average, they're better at handing in homework. I saw Alex date psych post something this morning about how they can do better sort of long term planning about when they need to revise for tests. And so like every different part of education, when the breaks get taken off for women, for girls, it seems to be, they're pretty good at it. And they're flourishing. And then I think if you have that, which sets, well look, this is how much I can look after me. If you at the very least can't look after me as well as I can look after me, how much faith can I have in you?

41:34Being able to step up the bare minimum should be that you can do what I can do and it seems like you maybe can't and then on top of that I think the exposure that we have to Life expectations of other people online getting to see the best of everyone's life while we get to see the worst of our own Creates this lifestyle inflation expectation, you know intergenerational competition theory look at where my parents were when they were my age they had this house and they had this thing and they had this that. I'm never going to be able to get this. Despite when economists do every different type of analysis that you fucking can, adjusted for inflation, Gen Z are better off than every other generation that came before them, economically, they feel like they're not.

42:11And the way that you feel is reality when it comes to this. Because you're not looking at, you're not doing an economist, you don't have a spreadsheet to work out what's actually going on. What you're doing is saying, well, how do I feel about this? You go, I feel poor and unprepared and like the world is about to burn because it's filled with carbon. That's what I'm concerned about. Yeah. And also, young, for all of these years, you described about women being great highlight of girls, basically, women earn more than men do in their 20s. And that's a catastrophe, actually. That's actually a catastrophe because they're precisely what women do not want and a partner, someone who earns less than them.

42:48So unless those women are then coupling with significantly older men, which most people don't actually do, I mean, I think that the average age gap between couples is only like two years, it's not that big. A lot of women are just going to be like, why would I saddle myself to some guy who I don't think can actually be relied upon? I'm just not going to do that. And the overwhelmingly most common reason that women give when they when asked why don't you have children is not because I'm a girl boss or because I don't own my house or whatever it's actually I can't find the right man. Just haven't found the right partner.

43:23Yeah, yeah, that was the GSS survey just haven't found the right partner. Every time that I'm around, you know, my favorite place to do evolutionary psychology mating research is the Soho House pool here in Austin. So it's like just replete with university educated 60 to 100 grand earning attractive girls. And you know, there's all of these cabanas around the outside of this pool and the music's at a level where everybody can hear and no one's really got much going on. It's kind of a bit boring, but it's sort of interesting to talk. And I just sit and go, so go like, who's single and talk to me like, what is it that you're finding about the girls that you date invariably?

44:01It's they're not mature, they don't have their life together. I'm like, okay, so what do you mean when you say that? Like talk to me about what you mean. And sometimes they can come up with, you know, the emotionally they can't really get on the same level as me. They don't seem to be prepared to commit. You know, like the classic kind of lethario guys, especially if you're going a little bit more, quote, unquote, high value. But a lot of the time it's a bit more, amorphous than that. It's kind of blobby. I think to myself, I reckon you out earn most of the guys that you're trying to date. And so, okay, so who is it that you're dating at the moment?

44:28You're a 26, Lydia. Who is it that you're dating at the moment? Oh, my last boyfriend was 35 and the guy that I'm seeing at the moment's 38. I'm like, these are big, big age gaps. And yeah, that was really surprising to me. It's one of the reasons why do you remember Princeton, Princeton mom? No. This is this woman who wrote, this was quite a few years ago now, who wrote in the Princeton student magazine or the alumni magazine maybe, a vice to women at Princeton, which which is you will never be around so many eligible men ever in the rest of your life. The most important thing you can do at Princeton is find a husband, not get your degree.

45:10And this used to be the old phrase that women used to use is everyone used to use as women would go to universities to get their MRS, right? And actually, it's quite a lot to be said for it. If you do go to university, one of the advantages of just marrying your university boyfriend, which is what I did is that you neither of you have had any career success yet, right? Like you've been selected for your suitability for that institution, but you can't do this like fine -grained stressing about who earns more, whatever, because they want to lose anything. Oh, I see. You're just picking someone at the start of the race as opposed to the end of it.

45:51Yeah, and obviously you want to be making a pretty good bet, but I can see how you could get into a real problem if you're one of these so -called girls, women's, or I should say, who has quite a lot of career success, absolutely does not want to date down. And you probably also get to that point where you're like, I've waited this long, I've got to find a perfect person. Look at how much effort I've put into myself. Look at how much sweat and blood and tears I've crafted. And I think one of the things that might help this at least a little bit in terms of reducing the need for hypergamy because it does seem like high performing women desire more hypergamous mates than non -high performing women.

46:30So this is as women earn and educate themselves more effectively, further up the socioeconomic ladder, they don't reduce down their desire for a partner who's better than them. Proportionally, they want even more, even as they are in absolute terms more effective. So you go, oh my god, as you are a rarefied, if you stand atop your undominant hierarchy, you're looking above and across one to like, like who is it that's left? It's like, again, it's Lebron James, you know what I mean? is like every all roads back lead back to LeBron James. But the comparison I've heard as well, which I like, is with buying a lamp for your house.

47:06So if you have just bought a house and there's nothing in it and you need a bi -bunch of stuff, you need a bi -a lamp, you can be like, oh yeah cool, I'll just get whatever lamp looks sort of nice. If however, you have perfectly designed your house, like it is every element of it has been really carefully thought through in touch of decor And then you need to find a lamp that just like perfectly fits that house. It's going to be much harder to find a lamp because you're going to have much more picky criteria. You also can't build the house around the lamp. Indeed, right. That is kind of what it's like when you're looking for a spouse later in life.

47:40You've already kind of set up your life. You know where you're living, you know, your career is, you have really strong preferences, you've probably kind of structured your daily schedule around exactly what you like and whatever. Like all of your life is designed around you. And then you have to find someone who fits into that. Whereas if you get married young, you kind of just develop it together and you end up, your lives as a joint thing are formed around each other. And obviously that does sometimes go wrong. But I think that is part of the reason why there's this age. Basically, if you get married somewhere in the medium kind of age range, between like 20 and 35, maybe something like that, like not too young, not too old, you're less likely to get divorced.

48:26And I think it probably is something to do with that. It's that sweet spot in terms of, you're not so young that you make really stupid decisions, but also you form your life around your partner and not the other way around. That's so interesting. Why do you think it is that any time anybody wants to bring up declining birth rates and marriage that it's seen as a right wing or fascist talking point.

48:53Well, I could say that they shouldn't think that because basically all societies are like interested in the fertility of their people and there are loads of examples of definitely not fascist at all countries having pronatal policies like South Korea would be an example, France has had also some pronated policies for years, whatever. I think that would be slightly dodging the question though, because I think what people mean there is like,

49:24why does it matter if countries die out? Like, why do you care so much? It's kind of the question that's been invited there. Pushback against nationalism in a way. Yeah, I think so. And to push back against any kind of in -group preference, which is, yeah, I mean, that's like a fundamental difference between right and left. Like, do you think, you know, the concentric circles, heat map thing? I'm sure you've seen that shed on line. I've seen it, I've seen it shed online and I've never actually understood what it was. So it's one of those memes that just when kept going over my head and I pretend I was so grend in the corner.

50:03I was like, yeah, sure, heat map. So I'm talking to get Mr. Represented as people on the left literally care more about trance plants and trees and they do about their own families, which I don't think is true. And doesn't sort of pass the sniff test does it? But what it does describe is that people on the right tend to be quite happy and confident in just saying, like, yeah, I care most about my family. And then and then about my extended family and then my community and then my country and then whatever find like I don't I'm not embarrassed to say that that's my preference whereas people on the left are not to do that and to say no actually I have like universalist aspirations I should care just as much about a child on the other side of the world as a child in my own neighborhood and this can lead to some quite perverse preferences I think that in practice people actually normally don't really behave like that I don't think that anyone really does care as much about people on the other side of the world as people close to them, but it is a sort of problem within leftist thought that you're sort of not allowed to care more about people close to you.

51:14You're not universalism is the ideal. Even if that doesn't appear in practice, it appears in rhetoric. And that's what you're able to espouse online. Yeah. I think also what often happens in practice is actually this moving a bit cynical, but I think sometimes commitment to the far out group, as Scott Alexander is called there, can be a stick with which to beat the near out group. So if say you're an American Democrat and actually the people that you feel the most animosity towards are American Republicans, right, they're your near out group, they're the people who you actually are most preoccupied with in terms of the people that you dislike.

51:59Whereas your far out group might be, I don't know, people who live in China who actually don't really think about very much and sometimes expressing, China is really bad example, Haiti, okay? Sometimes expressing a really, really like fierce loyalty with the people of Haiti might be a little bit insincere and might actually just be a stick with which to be the redneck down the street that you don't like. The narcissism of small differences, the bigotry of small differences, sounds a little bit like that. Yeah, I think that might be part of it. I think there's also an element of like, these are just status competitions and people will use all sorts of tools in their status competitions.

52:40Because they're deeply important to us. There was a well -done video about the sort of right wing support of population collapse or the right wing concern about population collapse. I featured quite prominently. It was really well done, actually. I thought it was a really, really good video. This guy, they put it together. I've watched some of his stuff before. He's done some really great videos. And I think maybe I was part of the manosphere. Again, the manosphere fucking hate me. So I'm sure that they were very insulted to have me use, like given their moniker in the chapters and the timestamps and all the rest of the stuff.

53:17But what I found was that kind of interesting with that video was a lot of the quotes votes that at least I was taking as saying, would these sort of very milk toast as far as I could say, me saying things like, well, I'm not saying that climate change isn't something that we should be bothered about. In fact, I think that should be more attention paid to climate change properly than there is already, but climate change isn't going to cause an issue within the next 100 years, and I think that birth rate decline is. I'm like, I can't see within that sentence, I can't see what's supposed to be so fucking controversial, unless you believe that I don't actually believe the thing that I'm just playing lip service to the climate change discussion so that I can sneak my white supremacist, pronatalist policy in underneath it, which is obviously not what I'm doing.

54:00Another question that I asked was, well, how do we know that it's not women's standards being too high and that men's standards aren't meeting what it is that women should do? I'm like, is that not the entire sort of leftist discussion around the pro -feminist, third -wave feminist entire thing? So when it comes to even like I say this video was really well done and I commented on it and said well done not just because I was in it Even this left leaning assessment of these issues In many ways seems to not really be able to fully square the circle It's like well, you're trying to find some nefarious at least in me That's not I'm not to say the all pronatalists like this.

54:44I'm sure there's many pronatalists that are oscill and and bigots and stuff as there are people that are anti -nadilists. But at least with the sections that I was looking at, I was like, well, I know, at least I think I know the place that I'm coming from when it comes to this. And this isn't the Chris Williamson, like, fucking DEF CON1, I -and -Dome Defense thing, but a bunch of, it's the first conversation I've had about birthright decline since I keep getting popped for random clips. This one was old. This was a really, really old one. And this is a Carl Benjamin take who says, is he was adamant, you have a duty to produce children so that someone, you contribute to the pool of people to look after old people, given that you're going to be a person that's going to be old at some point in future.

55:28First time I ever heard it, I was like, fucking hell, Carl, that's a bit strong. And then after a little bit more thought, I was like, oh, I can kind of see the logic, I understand where you're coming from. And I said something not too dissimilar when we were talking about birthright decline exclusively in the service of countries and economic future. And I'm like, well, look, who do you think is going to keep the GDP going when you get old? Because it's not going to be you. And this was somebody I think on the right that was saying, oh, yeah, this is the only reason that anybody should have kids so that you can continue to drive the GDP.

56:00I'm like, yeah, no, fucking obviously I'm not that retarded to not think that it's the most meaningful, loving, caring thing that you can ever do for your genetic progeny. And it's going to be the single most important part of your life when you look back from your death. But like, I'm taking that as a given. And then on top of that, there are these other things that people don't talk about all that much. So it just seems that the entire discussion, no matter whether you're coming from the right or coming from the left, is largely just not that thoughtful. And a lot of the time people have either problems with or sort of problems for that they really struggle to articulate.

56:33And I, as far as I can see, no one has put together the definitive sort of thesis on birth rate decline, why it's a problem, why it's happening, et cetera, et cetera. It's all being pulled together. There's a pro -nator that's happening here in Austin. And when you've still got conferences going about stuff, it basically means that the science isn't settled about what the fuck's going on, because people have still got so much shit to discuss. So yeah, that's a long rambling diatribe about how I don't think that people from either side of the fence fully understand what they're talking about when it comes to population collapse?

57:08It's a really big interesting topic. And yeah, I mean, you're right. The reason we have conferences is because actually there's a lot of contestation about what's going on. I'm trying to write a book about this and I keep having kids, which is like pushing. I'm getting in the way in my cronies and book. I'm walking the walk so effectively that I can't talk to the talk. Look, I think that I find it tiresome. obviously when people are really silly about this and have, I mean sometimes people can be like really really, like antenatalists to the extent of being like really anti -children, like really hostile to mothers and families.

57:49I mean like there's a whole there's a whole world of political objections to antenatalism that are basically disgusting. They don't worry me that much because you know what they're not going to be selected for within the coming decades. I actually don't get that worried about kind of crazy progressivism, the sort of really outlandish blue -haired sort of stuff, because honestly I think it's kind of self -limiting in the sense that the people who are most committed to that kind of politics, they don't have children, they don't want to have children, they don't like, if you and similarly, I mean a culture that thinks that you have no obligation to look after the elderly.

58:28Another thing I love from Lime and Stone recently, the average Americans spends more time looking after pets and they do looking out to elderly relatives, right? I mean, the whole point of pets is to like simulate that like caring relationship with children. It's like not to replace it. Sorry to say an anti -pet, but like that's the point. This is a line in the sand that I'm prepared to absolutely stand up. If we get pushed back against the golden retriever population, that's an issue for me. Look, I mean, that's a, yeah, dogs are great, but I can't say great, whatever, but they're like, they are, like the reason people are attracted to them is because it's their mimicking human relationships, right?

59:08And the fact that we're using them as, I mean, Malcolm Collins is much harder on this. He says that having a dog as like your baby replacement is like using pornography, like it's it really is like that's social, sorry, yeah, it's like socially acceptable pornography for use, but it's simulating. That's funny. I haven't had that take before, but it doesn't surprise me. In a fake way. Yeah. So getting away from that, that's like that is going to get clipped and it's going to get you to. It's going to get clipped by Mary Harrington, and she's going to be so. Yeah. But I don't worry too much about this, like, runaway progressivism, because it is self -limiting.

59:44Like the people genetically and culturally who are currently being selected for are people who are basically capable of forming societies which are pronatal, right? Like one way or another, we're going to come out of this the other ends with whether that be people who just have the genes for thinking babies are really, really adorable or people who are just really good at forming like cohesive cultures that are really good at supporting young families. That's what's getting selected for and it might be that getting there is painful, like the welfare state is definitely going to die. Democracy might die as well, like there are all sorts of really, really difficult list challenges presented by this problem, But I'm not a doomer about it.

1:00:22I don't think that the human race is going to die out. I think what's happening is we're going through this almighty bottle neck. This episode is brought to you by Woop. I've won Woop for over five years now, since way before they were a partner on the show, and it's the only wearable I've ever stuck with because it is the best. I've actually tracked over 1600 days of my life with it, according to the app, which is pretty crazy. Woop is super innocuous. You don't even remember that you've got it on. and yet it tracks everything 24, 7 via a little device on your wrist. It tracks your heart rate, your sleep, your recovery, all of your workouts, your resting heart rate, heart rate variability, how much you're breathing throughout the night and now can even track your steps.

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1:01:36Yeah, that's exactly what I had in my - this is the first time I've heard anyone put words so it makes complete sense. It's natal fatalism. Right? We are on this particular set of rollercoaster tracks. Just to call it out for the people that maybe aren't behavioural genetics -pilled, your political ideology, the positions that you tend to take on lots of issues, is highly predisposed by your personality and your personality is highly predisposed by, it's heritable, it's disposed by your parents. If you are part of an ideological group, which is less likely to have children, that means that that groups genes, the ideology genes are less likely to be passed on, which means that that ideology gets less predisposed to over time and dies out.

1:02:18So you end up with over time, you should do basically people who have kids have kids, and those kids are more likely to be the kid having type of kids, which means that they continue. But if you've got this squeeze that we're going through at the moment, it may end up looking a lot like an hourglass where you have sort of wide, lots of people liberated, created, everyone can do it. You get some technologies and some environmental changes, which causes this to stop. And then you select out and then come through on the other side when you have a critical mass of people who are the children of kid -havours even in the new environment.

1:02:49And then you get through that. But you're right. I mean, the next 300 years, probably I don't know. Has anyone done far out, like real far out projections, like centuries a way projections to see when this sort of thing would rebound. If anyone has, it's probably Malcolm and Simone Collins. I mean, Dave's definitely spoken about the risk actually of having a J curve in terms of population explosion, where the very fertile people are selected for so aggressively, which is I think what's happening right now, that actually you see this massive explosion when they get to the generation. Population boom, which was an issue, population bust, which is an issue, and then population double boom, which is a big ratio.

1:03:33Yeah, I mean the big question there though, I wrote an essay about this recent etch for first things is Is whether or not modernity can survive that such because if you look at the groups right now that are doing really well in terms of fertility It's people that are mesh, it's older orthodox Jews. It's people who actually have not embraced modernity really I mean, they're living within modern societies and to some extent they get to piggyback off some of, for instance, the health infrastructure of modern societies. Like, the army should actually have very low infant mortality rate, even though they basically have 19th century technology, but they don't have 19th century infant mortality.

1:04:10And I think that must be because they live in America, which has low infant mortality. And so there isn't a lot of communicable diseases that they're vulnerable to. I don't know if they vaccinate, but, you know, they're not at risk of waves of small pox and bbonic plague and stuff because the rest of America is keeping a check on that. However, are the armies actually capable of maintaining that kind of medical infrastructure long -term? If the entire country, just not because of their intelligence or whatever, but just because that's not what they're minded to do. If the entire country was composed of Amish people, would America still have great health in the infrastructure and would you still have do low child mortality, I don't know.

1:04:48So it might be that the thing that the two things that keep a little population explosion, one is mortality, the other is fertility. The magic combo is the group that can do both, right, that can be highly fertile and keep their children alive because we like, we must not forget that in most times and places, the child mortality rate is almost 50%. So, and that's the great miracle of the modern world and as a month that is the thing I do not want to let go of like sometimes people will be very flipping to about tech and say oh you know smartphones or rubbish oh you know like yes there are all sorts of things about tech that we don't really like you know what no one wants to get rid of and that's c -sections and antibiotics and all of this immoraculous I mean I would be dead my son would be dead if we hadn't had modern medical technology my most recent my most recent pregnancy like this is serious stuff and that's the thing of all the stuff that worries me about the fertility crash.

1:05:50It's not, it's not losing the welfare state. It's not the numbers, it's the technology that, yeah, it's whether the people who come out of this bottleneck are capable of maintaining the type of medical tech, which I really want to be maintained. That's, that's my biggest worry about this. That's scary and that's something that I hadn't considered and you've now given me another thing to be worried about. Sorry. It's fine. It's fine. It's added to the list. Although on the plus side, right, like if there is a group, at the moment, Israel is probably in the lead for this, right? If there is a group that can manage to be both first -hand, unhitech, they will dominate the world.

1:06:23They will have the world at their feet. My housemate, his sister recently had her first child and he drove to go and see her and this kids, you know, weeks old. And he said that he held this baby in his arms and sort of looked down and realized that it was his genetic progeny and felt this genetic relative, felt this sort of surge of meaning go through him that he hadn't felt before. This is the first nephew on these that he's ever held, first baby that's kind of his in his vicinity of genes that he's ever held. And he said, he's got a contrarian opinion that he doesn't want to have kids until he's 50.

1:07:03He's just going to like loan ranger, solo pranur it, make all of the money, have all of the life experiences and then lock in at 50 and just go to town. I think a bunch of our friends start, I know. Of course I can. So envy. Yeah. That's like, man. However, he basically said he sort of felt this surge of genetic dynasty sort of go through him. And it got me thinking we both had a long conversation about this. The sort of desire to be a parent being mimetic, not only in close friend groups, that you see friends have kids, which makes you think about having kids. Or you don't see friends having kids, which makes you less likely to have kids.

1:07:43Also, if family size is a reducing, I know that it seems like the date is kind of mixed on this. Like, if you have one kid, one child, it's likely that you're blah, blah, blah. But if you have fewer siblings to show you what it's like to have children, maybe that sort of mimetic desire to become a parent gets turned down and you have this kind of recursive loop of fewer mothers, bigot, fewer role models showing other non -mother women how it, what it's like to be a mother and extoling the virtues, like the best advertising campaign. However, the thin end of the wedge is your friend that's just had a kid and is loving it.

1:08:16But if you don't have any friends that have had kids yet, then nobody wants to be the first mover unless you've got the Elon Musk of women that's going to go and be agentic or Bonnie Blue I suppose. So yeah, well, memetic desire to be apparent when you're reckon that. I think that's a massive factor and that is really interesting about nieces and nephews I hadn't really thought about in that way because yeah, it is, it's hard to overstate how magic it is. When you have a baby, you don't just have a baby, you have your baby, right? And like, your baby is different from all other babies because your baby looks like you.

1:08:50And it's the most amazing thing to let my eldest has my eyes exactly. And it's such a strange and amazing feeling to look at this person that you love more than anything. And they have your eyes, right? Like, there's just nothing like it. And I can see how if you can get like an echo of that through having nieces and nephews or cousins or whatever, which could be very motivating. or indeed your friends have children as well. I think there probably is a kind of vicious cycle where, and a virtuous cycle, where when you live in a low fertility culture, it becomes harder to have children because nothing is really set up for children and the expectation is that you won't have them.

1:09:30Just things like, I'm taking my kids on a plane for the first time. I'm not just on a plane, but on a plane to Australia. In like two weeks, and I am one of the reasons I'm nervous is not because I actually think they'll be quite good, but the thing that makes me nervous is actually other people on the plane being unpleasant to us because they don't think children belong there and they're not used to seeing children in public spaces, let alone airplanes. And yeah, you just, there are so many, there are so many issues you encounter when you have children and very few other people do, where people are just not even necessarily hostile but just clueless and it just makes life more difficult in all sorts of ways.

1:10:18And I think the flip side, so I hear from people who live in very fertile societies, is it becomes super normal and the infrastructure is there and there's always kind of waiting pair of hands to hold your baby if you need you need them to. And yeah I think that there's definitely a sense in which what other people are doing makes a massive impact on what you do and what's easy for you to do. Given that you're now a mother of two, what have you learned about optimal parenting and the perils of the pressure of trying to be an optimal parent and how resilient children are and stuff like that? Optimal parenting.

1:10:56I think, so going back actually interestingly to the doom riser about say environmentalists who don't want to have kids because they're massive dooms. I've been thinking recently about the role of neuroticism in parenting because you know, you'll know that women are more neurotic than men, like quite a lot, and that difference only comes on at puberty. And it seems likely that the reason women are more neurotic than men is mostly to do with the fact that women and mothers who are primarily responsible for this children and actually John Peterson likes to talk about this painting. I can't remember the name of the painter, which is of the version mother holding the infant Christ.

1:11:41Michael Angelo's PA to sculpture. Is it with the snake on the floor? Oh, interesting. Maybe or maybe not. I think this is a painting mother sculpture, but I can't remember the artist. She's holding the infant Christ as a snake on the floor and she's like, got her foot on the snake. and basically protecting her infant from the snake. And he always holds this up as like the archetypal image of the protected mother. And it can confirm you get super neurotic when you're, you know, a friend of mine warned me prior to my first, you will behave in ways as a new mother that would have you diagnosed as OCD in any other circumstance, but in this instance, it's actually fine and it's normal and you'll get over it.

1:12:21But the neuroticism is adapted, it's not very pleasant, but it is adapted because neurotic mothers Historically, were the ones who spotted the snake on the ground or took whatever protective measures necessary in order to protect their children. I now, ones that even neuroticism might be doing the opposite. I wonder if actually neuroticism might be discouraging people from having children. Either the super neurotic people who are so worried about climate apocalypse that they don't have children at all. But also even, I mean, I notice in myself, I'm quite a neurotic person and I just worry about things.

1:12:54One of the differences between me and Mum's I know who have lots of kids close together is that they are generally much more chill and much more willing to just kind of let their kids get on with it and not be constantly following them around and not be just not worrying too much, just kind of being not being helicopter parents, just being chill. And I recognize in myself that I find that really difficult to do and I would really struggle to have say three under three because you just have to like in reality if you've got three kids under three and you don't have loads of nannies or whatever You just have to let the kids go on with it and just and not fast too much and and certainly not be too worried about your House being too tidy and you know like actually the sort of personality that I wonder if is now being selected for in terms of people who are willing to have kids, are people who are actually quite chill and quite...

1:13:51Ah, well just do it. You know what we... Exactly. ...is about the state of the economy. Who cares about the carbon parts per million? Exactly. Who don't get themselves all so wrapped up that they're too... that they're too worried to just go ahead and do it. And then when they do have children, they're like, Oh, we'll have another one. We'll make it work. Whatever. Want it back? Yeah, exactly. I wonder if neuroticism is now being selected against. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, it's just my hypothesis, and my impression from looking around at people. I mean, I would be fascinated to see whether the children of neurotic parents have higher or lower infant mortality.

1:14:27They probably have higher, but I mean, I, I, like every crazy neurotic mother, I read every news story that crosses my eye about something terrible happening to a child. And I got to say, like, the vast majority of cases So we read about some terrible accident that's happened to a child. I'm like, I would never let that happen. Like the, the, the, the, the negligence. Like lack of supervision. Yeah, I mean, often it's just people being just silly. And I, and I read that and I'm like, I would literally never do that. This is not that, that's what crazy. But then I think the chance of your child dying is still really, really low, right?

1:15:08Even, even properly, quite negligent parents, the chance of their child dying in some kind of accident is still really low. It's probably still in the case therefore that neuroticism has been selected against. Because actually you're moving from like one in a 10 million chance to one in a million chance kind of thing and so it's probably actually fine. Like if you live in a really safe environment like we do with vaccines and all this good stuff, whereas being like, let's just have another baby, that makes a pretty big impact on how much genetic material you live behind when you're when you're gone?

1:15:40Yeah. How much gender neutrality can there be in parenting? Now that you've got a full two split tests to be able to compare, what have you learned about gender neutrality? I think that male children are. I definitely do different female children. I mean, I don't have a go. I've got two boys right, so I don't have a go yet. I have definitely learnt that I can completely see why little boys are diagnosed more with ADHD than little girls are, because actually the normal way that little boys behave is much further towards the ADHD type of behaviour than the normal way that little girls behave. I'm amazed when friends bring around their little girls, like two of our girls who just sit at the table that quietly coloring.

1:16:32My son does not do that. Other son, other little boys I know do not do that. They are much, much more around Mulcas. And actually it is really difficult sometimes fitting the character of little boys around the demands of modern life. I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that ADHD diagnoses go up at the same time that that we're expecting to the boys to sit quietly on the Mattel Dane school and be in our eyes. It's just not what they look, it's not what they wanna do. It's so fascinating, right? I don't know, I certainly know that ADHD diagnoses are increasing, but I don't know whether the DSM criteria with which ADHD is diagnosed has remained stable across time, or whether there is just, well, this new, more peaceful, more brains less brawn style world, it's kind of just inconvenient for these boys to be the way that they are.

1:17:33And you know, you have, you could argue perhaps that apart from being a huge step change, anything that's within sort of the 95th to the 5th percentile of any trait is like just, that's just normal. Like all of that is normal. Even out to pretty close to the that's just pretty normal. But as soon as it begins to get inconvenient, it's kind of simpler to just register that as a thing, some sort of pathology, something that needs treating, something that needs therapy or medication. And yeah, I can just see how you go, well, look at the gold standard. They're just, they sit there, they color in, they clean up after themselves, you know, the dolls, and then I look over the far side, and there's a hole in the door.

1:18:18And you always that come from you're not even you way ten kilos. How do you put a hole in the door and? Yes Yeah, I mean basically we kind of cut I don't know what portion Boys are diagnosed very it's pretty high though. I think it's like no it's non trivial. It's like 20 % something like that I've read What we are basically done is we just cut off the like most round bunch is 20 % of the male bell curve and just given drugs and And I don't think it's very good for the boys. I think it'd be much better if we had an education system that was better suited to boys who boys in all behavior. But it's kind of difficult.

1:18:59I mean, a lot of what's being done at school is crowd control, which is why I used to think maybe I should homeschool the children. And now I actually don't think I have the personality to do that for multiple reasons, because it's incredibly hard work actually. Like because the problem is it's a coordination problem. If we all lived like people used to live for, you know, most human history, where you live around your extended kin and you live in a walkable environment and you're constantly hanging out with other people who have children and, you know, that would be one thing. But the reality of living in a low fertility society where everyone sends their kids to school is who the kids gonna hang out with during the day.

1:19:46And I know that there are homeschooling co -ops, but in reality it can be quite hard to actually to get over to Texas. Get over to Texas, there's commumes everywhere. He's a little... You'll teach them to whittle a flute out of a stick. They'll learn to do archery by age four. I mean, they can't count, but they can skin an elk in five minutes flat. Yeah, so yeah, the really high age you'd see a thing to do would be like, I'm just gonna move to Texas and I'm gonna find my people and I'm going to, you know, educate children exactly, I want them to be educated. All right, maybe we'll end up doing that.

1:20:19But you can't really, I always, I think if this as being as unilashable, sad life, when you're like, I'm just going to go and live in the woods, and I'm going to homeschool my children, and I'm going, you know, and it's like, yeah, except that it's actually very difficult to do that on your own. Yeah, to love. life involves other people. You know, that's what proper proper trad life is, pan generational housing. Yeah. You've got a friend who is a teacher and you help out a little bit some days and you take the class another day. That's proper trad life. And you have a dozen cousins around you who all have kids at the same age, right?

1:20:55That's actual trad life. And you've always and you can't read and you all live in the same place. As opposed to this so well -pronored trad life, yeah, yeah. It's like what am I a friend Irish Catholic friend, she was like to say that actual tradcats, right? They don't go to Latin Mass every time today. They go to mass twice a year. They can't read and they believe in fairies, right? Similarly, actual trad life does not look like Instagram trad life, right? Because you know, that's not plural, plural prints and baking cakes. Yeah, I mean, not just that, but it's the loneliness actually of it. I think that I think you know, lateral trad life is actually a lot more like frontier life.

1:21:32I think that's part of what's being recreated. It's the little house on the prairie kind of lifestyle where you go out as the nuclear fuck unit and you live in difficult conditions in the middle of nowhere. I think actually that's the sort of cultural memory that has been appealed to. And actually frontier life was very very difficult, particularly for women, which is why there was this contagious mental illness called prairie madness if you ever heard of this. where women living in the, on the Western frontier would literally go completely crazy through loneliness and stress. Like unilateral trad life is hardcore and most people are not suited to it.

1:22:12But the problem is that trying to recreate non unilateral trad life requires the involvement of other people. It's a coordination problem. You have got to be, yeah. God's eye view of this. Well, I have a bunch of friends who've tried to do So, bilateral, trad life, or whatever the polylateral trad life, whatever the other word would be. And this is a funny story. So maybe, how many? It's probably 10 couples, I would say, something like that. And they had this plan. Some of them had kids, some of them were about to have kids. All of them quite wealthy. Many of them are dad exits from companies, late 20s, early 30s, highly agentic, very white, very middle -up -class people from all over the country living in Austin, Texas.

1:22:55And they decided that they were going to do the commune thing. They were going to homeschool the kids, but that one of them was a teacher. The intention was at some point in the next five to ten years, we buy a hundred acres of land between us all, and we do the polylateral tradlife thing. They tried to do a couple of pet projects. I think one of them was to revamp a ranch out in Bastrop, out toward Bastrop, sort of out East from Austin. There was a couple of other projects. They don't see how they would get like a test project, right? You know, it's like a job interview for everybody to interview each other, to see how they would get on and you know, whether the group would work like this.

1:23:38And I don't think it's happening. I don't think it worked, just the coordination problem of track, because again, what people are doing there is they're lapping as tradlife people, which causes you to be as selective as the girl that's 27 earns 100 grand and has got two degrees, as opposed to what actual tradlife was, which was an imposition that was placed upon you, that you just had to make it fucking work. Like, you don't get to, you don't get to test run it and go, I don't actually really like the way that that homeschooler did the history stuff, because I really want it to be done. It's like, no, you just get what you get.

1:24:19And yeah, I think I wonder whether elective trad life with the expectations that the people who have the ability to do trad life have. I wonder whether that's just incompatible, because you want the five star service. You want the business class flights and you want the, you know, Uber, Black XL. Well, I don't think that that's realistic unless you sort of keep rolling the dice and really come up lucky. I think it's a hard way not related to each other because to some extent when you're related to each other as you would be in a natural multi -generational setup, you are genetically invested in each other and also you can't really opt out.

1:25:04Like only in extreme circumstances can you just ditch your family. Like you sort of have to make those relationships work, whereas the issue with these chosen connections, everyone knows you can kind of opt out, and no one really has that much genetic investment in each other's lives, children, or whatever. So interestingly, I have a friend, Elizabeth Oldfield, who she has written about doing this. It's not really, it's not a commune, but she and her husband bought a house with another couple. And Elizabeth and her husband have children, the other couple intend to have children. And they are facing loans and property prices, you know, nightmare.

1:25:44And so they did economy of scale by buying this one house together and they share the kitchen but then they have other separate areas and whatever. I've been to the house loads of times. And they've done really well. I mean, it solves a lot of problems. And when more children come along, they'll be like childcare sharing and there's like, there's a lot of sense to it. But they also went into it really, really clearied about the problems. And they do all sorts of stuff to try and smooth issues. Like they have a weekly house meeting where they talk about any issues people are having. They have like carefully mapped out exoplanes that anyone wants to get out of the situation.

1:26:22Like it takes actually so much work to make these relationships function. And it's what really jumps out to me is that when you're not related to people, is much harder to make these things work than if you are related to people and you sort of have to, which is not to say that you don't have issues with families. But yeah, I mean, there's sort of a reason that people have historically grown these households and communities around actual genetic relationships. The only way that you can bear to put up with someone that you're in that close proximity to is if you're genetically related. You know, the real nightmare scenario actually in really traditional cultures, I'm really interested in some of the differences between patchy local and matri local societies, which is a very nerdy anthropology thing, but patchy local societies, when a couple gets married, they move to where the husband is from, like they move into his family's house or just to be nearby them.

1:27:22Matri local is the other flip side, so that's when you move to the mothers. Good to guess that the battery local is rarer. Well, not necessarily. So interestingly, English working class culture is traditionally matri local. And one of the consequences of that is that you'll be familiar with all these like old style comics who complain about mothers -in -law. Like often the reason they complain about mothers -in -law is because they actually live with their mothers -in -law because it's a matri local society. And when you've just got married and you don't have enough money to set up your own house, you're going to have to live with your, the woman's parents for a bit.

1:28:02And there's also sort of stereotypes around cockney women in particular being very like brassy. I mean, that's that's the that's the traditional term like being quite like strong willed, like mom the mom being actually quite a dominant figure in the family. Like there's lots of ways actually in which English working class culture, British working class culture is actually in powers, women quite a lot, women have quite a lot of power, whereas patchy local societies tend to be the opposite because you end up with the new bride moving into her husband's family and often getting dominated by them, like being actually in a very weak position and having to be very subservient to them, and often patchy local cultures tend to have norms were women are more demure and more quiet and more willing to be tossed around by other people.

1:28:56Well, you have a, that's certainly one of the concerns, I think, in David Buses book, Bad Men, about how women become socially isolated from brothers and uncles and fathers and grandfathers. Yeah. Who would have been able to step in if there was an abusive partner in the ex or if she was a financial prisoner in one way or another. So in many ways, I can say actually why it would be more adaptive for it to be matri -local, because, you know, the guy should be a little bit more robust at being able to deal with the slightly overbearing mother -in -law than the wife would be able to deal with a potentially abusive partner and a bunch of uncles and brothers who aren't her genetic, part of a genetic lineage that are turning a blind eye to it.

1:29:40So, yeah, I imagine that's a... Yeah, I choose match and local every time. Yeah, I'm sure you do. But then maybe I would say that. Yeah, of course you would. Louise, you're great. I love every time that we get to speak. Where should people go? They want to check out the things you write and things you say and whatever else you got going on. So my podcast is called Main Money Matriarch. It's on all podcast platforms, YouTube, etc. I mostly talk about sexual politics. Although I'm increasing, I've been thinking to myself, what are the things that I'm generally interested in? And I've decided that what I'm interested in is birth, sex, violence and death.

1:30:15So if you want to hear about any of those themes. Nice. Great place. That's the bug, guys. Great place. And my first book was The Case Against Sexual Revolution and I actually have a new edition of that book coming out, which is a young adult edition. So it's been edited down to be shorter and simpler and less grim for young adults. So it's intended for sort of 14, 15, 16, 16, 17 year olds ish. And that's called? Also, oh no, that one's actually called a new guy to sex in the 21st century, but it's the young adult edition of the case against sexual evolution. And it is basically the same book.

1:30:51That would be, I can't wait to see what sort of response you get for that one. Like whether it's this, you know, right wing mother trying to color the thoughts of our impressionable, meanwhile, Bonnie Blue and fucking Lily Phillips are just like, like, yes, queen, over the far side. So far, I've had like 95 % positive responses, actually, to my book. I thought I was going to get canceled, and I didn't. Hopefully the same thing will happen to the young adult edition, although I think that some of the young adults themselves might be a bit. We did run, we did run it past, and we did an editing process.

1:31:28We got some teenagers to read it and give anonymous feedback. And there was more than one that was absolutely scandal by my gender -exclusive language. So some of them were getting involved. We didn't even get chance to get around to being cis English today. We could talk about that next time. Louise, you're so great. Everyone should go and check out your stuff. Case against sexual revolutions are seminal buck. People refer to being peri -pilled now. Young women refer to being peri -pilled. If nothing else, your legacy will live on as a meme in New York, like college checks. And until next time, I hope that you survive all of the children and the craziness.

1:32:08Thank you Chris.