We're Not Having Enough Kids - It's A Disaster - Stephen J. Shaw

28:09Sure, I can empathize with some unfortunate people where that would be a preferred choice. I remember flying back to Tokyo and sitting beside two young Japanese students, girls in their early 20s. And if you end up sitting beside me in a plane, we're going to be talking about birth rates, you know, that's for sure. But the young woman sitting beside me was on her way back home after studying, I think, in the UK. And I explained she was on her way back to her house, excited to see her parents. And I said, oh, you know, the brother, sister, yeah. And then she mentioned her grandparents. and she said oh yeah my grandparents still live with us well that's good you've got community and then she kind of welled up in tears and she said why are they still here about their own grandparents

29:05and obviously she was doing chores obviously she was studying obviously she was imagining all the things she would have to do to take care of her grandparents but to verbalize those words to me in some way what stuck with me those words may not often be spoken but they might be thought or they might even be hinted at to a point where elderly people in nations where assisted suicide is possible start feeling guilty I'm a burden, why am I here? I can sense it and then communities building this expectation well you shouldn't be a burden and we all think when we get to that age that that's the done thing now what does that do to any civilization any society where you know that becomes the end so this whole area of I call these communities and it's not just Japan I went to one in Germany as well they're everywhere you don't see them in the center of the city you know You know, go out of cities in many countries and you'll find them.

30:12I call them the Esther lands, like lands built for yesterday. And they're too big now. There's too many vacant houses. Sure, not in the trendy places. You know, that's where the house prices go up, but not in the rural areas or even the suburbs. You know, I worry about that a lot. And, I mean, like I said, the dock is brilliant and incredibly powerful. And that was one of the moments that really hit home with me. The other one that hit home with me particularly was the amount of schools that were closed. As somebody who used to teach and you're being surrounded by kids and the energy that kids bring and the liveliness and just seeing you in a deserted playground.

30:58And then you said that school closed in 2006 and you showed the photograph of a boy being taught on his own. it made me feel an almost visceral pain yeah yeah so we talk a lot about Japan it's the bleeding age but the rest of us are not so far behind already in the UK schools are closing in some areas it's becoming more and more on the radar but yeah I mean that one photo to me you're right the last student in this elementary school and you know so Japan something on average, every day, two schools close in Japan. And that's been going on for 15 years. It's 5 ,000, 6 ,000 now. Schools aren't just schools.

31:47They're hubs of the community. Like you say, the energy is not just within the classroom. It's all around the classroom. And you take a school away from a community. I've seen that happen. So let's say you have two towns, maybe 5, 10 miles apart, 5, 10 kilometers. and there's only enough children for one school so a decision's made okay we're going to keep this school we can just bust these kids solution no what happens slowly the families start to buy houses in this town or move there suddenly fewer people want to live here and you end up with elderly people left here and maybe a few kids still getting that school bus meanwhile this town's still got a bank and somewhere to repair your car and buy groceries, this one ends up with nothing.

32:36I went to such a town, pretty central Japan, last year. There's one cafe, so one cafe. Maybe a town that would have had 200, 300 people. Not big, but one cafe. The cafe opens once per month. They have a day to all go to the cafe. so these fading societies um you know it's it's it's it's it's terrible and we talk about fading societies and obviously japan because japan seems to be at the kind of the forefront of this as does south korea the part of the doctor i found shocking as someone with a latin american background is you were talking about south america you were talking about brazil i think what was the start Is it 1.64 replacement in Brazil?

33:31I mean, I found that mind-boggling. This is a Catholic country where fertility is celebrated. And, you know, when I spent a lot of time, not in Brazil but in Venezuela, it seemed to me that I was surrounded by children and, you know, young people, and it was a vibrant, energetic society. Yeah, I think that shocks most people. I actually spent three weeks filming in six countries just because I had to see it, because I knew people wouldn't believe it.

34:01And yet, if you go back to Italy 40, 50 years ago, it would have been the same. No one would have believed that Italians would stop having big families and birth rates would crash. Now it's happening in Latin America, and it's about to happen. It's already well underway in India, particularly southern India. It just takes us time to notice. You don't really notice that people aren't having kids. What changes? Nothing from a tent, a few schools closed, but not a big deal in the initial phases. It takes time for us to notice, which is part of the problem. But yeah, Latin America, Latin America has a bigger problem than the West, much bigger problem, because the West and the Far East got wealthy before they got old.

34:43Japan's got reserves, huge national debt, but it's got reserves for a while. And perhaps they can use those reserves to help re-engineer society. Brazil doesn't have reserves. still today in these countries the pension systems are geared up for very large families compared to the number of retirees and the experts I interviewed there including one a doctor who's now into looking gerontology care of older people and the fear in his eyes and voice talking about the future of elderly people in Brazil. So what's happening in Latin America is what happened in Europe and the Far East 20 plus years ago.

35:36It's popping up in the numbers now. The real impact will be 20 plus years time. And India is on the exact same path. So this being a worldwide problem, let's come back to the conversation we started with, which is, I guess, implicit in what you're saying to some extent is the idea that the way we got here is not necessarily the way we'll come out of it. Even if we address some of the reasons that this has happened, that won't take us to where we want to go. Can you talk about why that is, first of all? Yeah. So we have this central tendency, this vitality curve, and it's there, 1 ,539 data sets.

36:17So a year in a country put together massive. Which shows that as the average age of parenthood gets older, people have fewer kids. That's basically what it shows. Overall. Overall. Overall, in a very predictable way. Okay. So that's equivalent to tossing a coin 1 ,539 times and it coming up heads every time. Okay. Don't bet on the next one being a tail. So we have to assume whatever the reason for this curve. I've got my theories. I think it's linked to pair bonding, matching up. But it's there. Now, if you take, let's say, average age 30 is common in many nations right now. South Korea, 32, 29, 30 is common.

37:00If you were to do things like put more money in young parents' pockets, if you do things that open more daycare, baby bonuses, all sorts of things that people think of, gender, men doing more at the home, more paternity leave. Let's say we solve all those things. We're now living in a perfect world. That central age is anchored at that point. If you were to pull it forward, so you're at that peak point now at 30. We've got to move the peak earlier. But you're already 30, so you need to create some new bubbles. A solution can only emerge if a new bubble emerges that allows the people older than 30 to continue doing things as they would have for a time while something new, a new blossom, if you like, emerges.

37:52Now, I don't know if people actually really will choose to have children younger. If they don't, we've got a real problem. This is a civilization ending, but that curve is so locked in with no examples of really how to move it other than hoping for a second bubble at a younger age. Give me one minute to tell you about Senalytics and why they're being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime. As a middle-aged man... Middle-aged man? Who wrote this script? Look, we all have big goals, but let's be honest. The aging process isn't our frame when it comes to endless energy and productivity.

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40:43And I have a lot of friends in America now who are in their 20s who are all married and about to have kids because that's kind of part of their worldview. But they are kind of the exception, at least globally. But, you know, in the 70s, you still had, to some extent, the one-earner household where the man, stereotypically speaking, would go out to work. He could feed the entire family off his income. His wife could afford to be at home with the kids. And now that is just much more difficult to attain for people. So I would say that probably quite a lot of young people that would be happy to have kids if that vision was available to them, which it isn't.

41:26So wouldn't solving that problem, not that I know how to solve it, but if we solve that, wouldn't that turn this all around? I'm not saying that these things aren't important, but I am saying there's no evidence they'll affect birth rates. Well, we've not seen that economic reality be reversed. It's only getting worse. It's only getting harder for people to get on the housing ladder. It's only getting harder for people to survive on a one income, right? Yes, but if you go back to, you know, 70s, 80s, there was a time when things were getting better. And you can look at different recessions. Oh, here it's getting – does it affect birth rates?

42:01No. More people weren't having kids in the Reagan-Thatcher boom years? So Reagan-Thatcher boom years, so we're talking now the 80s, I think, really. the average family size in the uk was the same in america it was 2.4 so it's actually gone up childlessness was lower in america at that time um but no this is something really quite locked in but if i could i understand i have this conversation i think my my eldest son won't mind mentioning him he got married recently and living in central london he and his wife focused on careers, you know, they tell me similarly, that people, if they had more money.

42:43But what seems to happen is that when people do have that bit more money, they think, great, let's go enjoy it for a year or two, and let's have kids later. And there are many examples, counterpoints. So you'll take somewhere like southeast of the UK, where house prices are going through the roof right now. And that's the problem. Well, you look at Scotland, and Scotland's got one of the lowest birth rates in the entire UK. Scotland doesn't have this in the rear. So there's imbalances in logic. We all know Occam's razor, is that the saying where I think the most simple reason is probably the right one.

43:26I've got maybe something to pair with that in subsets here, which is the common grievance razor, you might call it. So I go around the world talking about this, lecturing about this. And when I'm in Japan, people are certain if men did more at home, birth rates would go up. Really? Oh, certain. I gave a talk to a technology conference there recently, and this lady came up and thanked me and said, but really, you do know if men did more at home, that would solve the problem here. And I come to the UK, and it's house pricing. And at different places I go, they've got local grievances. So the raise are really...

44:04But the trend is the same everywhere. Everywhere. But that little razor is, if you're blaming local grievances for things you're unsure of, they're probably not the right answer. Okay. In that case, what do we do? Right. How do you get, in your analogy, the fish back upstream? Yeah. Thanks for continuing the analogy. Yeah. Reinvent things. In fact, reinvent everything.

44:34Education. How about taking a year out of high school and focusing on what's important? How about taking a year out of college, focusing on what's important? How about switching to lifelong learning? So a 20-year-old can realistically expect to be graduating first stage of education and getting out into the workforce, choosing a career earlier, and maybe having time to actually readjust that career based on lifelong learning, saying that didn't work out. What about long-term career sabbaticals? What about joining a company and becoming an employee, but being able to take a five, seven year sabbatical, but you're still an employee, you still get a little bit of a salary.

45:11Yeah, some simplifying the economics here for sure. But imagine you still are attached to that company, still the business card, the email address, you go to the Christmas parties, the training sessions, you might even do half a day a week. The condition would be that after that sabbatical, maybe you've had one, two, three kids. Maybe not, but you have that sabbatical. The condition is you have to come back for three years. So, just an idea. And then we have some accelerator programs. You know, parents, particularly mothers, I would say, are incredibly efficient. Good at timekeeping, conflict resolution, organization.

45:46Hire young mothers. 27, 30, 33. That's possible now, but it's a huge vulnerability for any young person to assume, okay, I'm going to have that family first, and then I'm going to cross everything and try and have my career. So that's what's disjointed at the moment. The idea that we have to complete our education, in effect, training, whatever it is. Start a career, but get onto that ladder at a certain point that the vulnerability, particularly for women, of stepping back. is, you know, right now it's not minimized, but we need to minimize that risk. I think blending everything together is the only possibility.

46:26And the one hope I do see is, you know, if I can go back briefly to Hungary, I get asked a lot about Hungary. I go there a lot. I work with the former president, Ketlin Novak, on a nonprofit, XY Worldwide, and we're doing all sorts of advisory work and awareness programs around the world on this topic. So policy there is fascinating.

46:49There's so many policies. But the one I think that may have had the most traction was if you said as a young person, I want to have a kid, you would get a mortgage deposit depending on the size of house you wanted. Now, why didn't everybody go for big houses? Well, the overall risk is still higher and you don't need that space. But if you end up having those number of children, two, three, or four, the deposit's basically cancelled. You don't ever pay that back. And if you don't, you pay a portion of it. And if you don't have any kids, well, you have to pay it back like you would have had done anyway.

47:23I think a lot of young people thought, well, how do we can get a house? Now, does that sound coercive? Oh my gosh, let's get married, have kids, have a house. People don't do that. It means, I think we know, I mean, family policies have failed so much worldwide generally that people aren't taking$5 ,000 and saying, great, let's go and let's go to the bar tonight and find someone to kind of deposit at that check with nine months from now. That doesn't happen. This is too important. So I think enabling younger people who want children and become more aware of unplanned childlessness and this curve.

47:58And one final thing, education itself. People need to be taught. Young people are taught often what's called comprehensive sex ed. Not just in developed nations, but you go to parts of Africa, Southeast Asia. There are non-profits there teaching, but it stops at how not to get pregnant. That's what it's all. It's not comprehensive. It's that and that alone. No one's saying, oh, and by the way, here are some risks. And if you really do want four children, the spacing thing about delaying them three, four years might not be for you if you really want. Those conversations need to enter into our education system.

48:37Well, you use the term that you use often, which is unplanned childlessness. And I think that's really a big portion of this conversation because I think the overwhelming majority of people, and I include myself in this, just fundamentally do not understand fertility even remotely. So can you talk to us a little bit about some of the facts and myths about that? Yeah. And of course, there's so many people proposing theories that sperm counts are falling and that that's a factor and that women's biology isn't quite as, it happens younger than people might think. And those all may be true. what I'm saying is that before biology becomes a factor so biology is a big big thing there's another more important factor that's like a filter if you like I'll try this why is the water in the river becoming less and less and less it's something upstream is causing so trying to focus on that itself is an issue but to summarize childlessness We have voluntary childlessness.

49:45It's about 10 % of people never have the desire to have children. In my experience, we'll have no regrets and possibly won't understand those who do have that desire and vice versa. And we need to respect that. Those people have big roles to play in society and are playing big roles. Non-profits, I think, are the biggest contingent in some senses. So that's voluntary. You then have involuntary childlessness, which is quite tightly defined as either a medical reason Maybe there's an illness, a hysterectomy. Something happened to one of the couple. Or biological. Basically, you've tried and tried and tried and IVF and it hasn't worked.

50:21There was no formal category for circumstantial childlessness. Biggest factor, not finding a partner. That's not involved in childlessness. Other factors, socioeconomic concerns. So that's why I coined unplanned childlessness. It's now in my published paper. And it's now in an international declaration, 57 nations in Porto two weeks ago. I worked with an Austrian MP, Gudrun Kugler, who included this term, unplanned childlessness. And I was there in person to see politicians from the UK, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative, times 57 nations in a clean recession of 300 people unanimously vote to support that resolution, which includes these definitions.

51:05So childlessness is not about, I think people, someone said to me, this is not my analogy, so I'm going to get a cop out if people don't like this. It's not like buying a pet. It's not like, okay, now is the time for a child. I'm going to go down to the pet store. A lot of things have to line up at the right time. And finding a partner is the biggest one. Or not going through a breakup. So many people break up, you know, dating for seven years. You know, sure, we're going to have kids together, 32, breakup, or something happens. So unplanned childlessness is the big factor here. For the UK, I recently updated my analysis.

51:46A woman turning 28 in the UK has a 50-50 % chance of ever becoming a mother at 28. Most countries are below 30, and the US is lower than that. But the US, again, as Asian Americans are a little bit different to other groups, so it's a little bit more complicated in the US. But I think simply letting young people know, sure, get as much education as you can. Sure, establish yourself on your career path. But by the way, you better think about this curve because it's there and like they're not, you can't cheat the curve. It's there. And I think, you know, look, men are ignorant about fertility, absolutely.

52:27But I also find it shocking how ignorant women are about their own fertility. They seem to think that you're going to be able to have kids senior 38, 39. Now, some people may be able to, and obviously that's great, and some people are able to in their early 40s. But that's really the exception that proves the rule, isn't it? The amount of information on this, to be honest with you, I can see it. It's been a one-way street, controlled. the message, a one-way street controlled by groups of antinatalists. Going back to the likes of Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s, the book The Population Bomb, that way of thinking got into the education system.

53:15Education materials only talk about population explosions still. You know, they cut off this year, and they point to the year 1800, and they're like, oh, look at the increase. They don't then tell you, oh, yeah, by the way, it's going to flatten out. And then when I do point out that we are going to peak total population, that's not far away now. Yeah, but U2100, they will say, there's still going to be around 8, 9 billion people. Yeah, but they're all old people needing care. It's not the same as it is now. So there are people out there trying to block messages. And one of the messages that they're trying to block is educating women about fertility.

53:52So they're very happy to confuse. I've seen it. I was invited to Doha Debates two years ago. It never aired, because unfortunately, that series coincided with October 7th. And the tone of it, the host was a comedian. And once you get comedians involved in things, it was too serious an event, I think. And sadly, it was pulled. But I was debating against a lady who runs a population organization. For me, she's a population denier because she would not talk about low birth rates even in her own home country of India. But it seems to be that young people are engaged to this message, particularly young women.

54:39They want to hear, yeah, you can have a career. Do it. You're free to whatever. There's no downside to this. Don't listen to Stephen, who represents the patriarchy. so people like me in the past were blamed as being anti-environmental now the patriarchy now the next wave of confusion is coming in I've heard some politicians pick up on messages which is it's too late anyway let's not even think about what can we do now I think that's another anti-natalist message creeping in so you're talking about women awareness and I'm broadening it there's an anti-natalist message driving many things And I've been, you know, I've had it in my face more than once.

55:18And we're talking about an Anthony Natalist message. I haven't seen it so much over here, but I've seen it certainly in the States, particularly in places like New York, where bringing children into the world is seen as an act of grotesque selfishness. Because, number one, the planet is already dying, is their narrative. And then you're just going to bring children in. That's going to accelerate its demise. and also as well I hear people going well you know the world is so terrible why would I bring children into it that is you know that's awful they're going to suffer yeah um and I I mean I I get that I get it in comments I get it in attacks I got it in a classroom university classroom in Tokyo uh this year doing a lecture to young Japanese students when at the end a British lecturer came in and sat at the back and then got up and started heckling me, basically saying the things.

56:17Why are you here talking to these young students? Why are you trying to tell the environment's burning? The oceans are boiling. People shouldn't and wouldn't let me speak. So these voices are there trying to, I think, poison young people's minds. I do think it's a poison because why can we not at least talk about this topic? Like, why can't we not debate this? It's perhaps the most topic. There's a lot of toxic topics out there. But usually you can get a decent debate about most things. I feel in this space, in the same way when I was cancelled at Cambridge, and there's a fake website that's been put up trying to discredit the documentary.

57:01The UNFPA is now basically saying, the message I've been sharing is right. The report titled in the past two months was the real fertility crisis about people not having the children they want to have. The world is shifting. So I am hopeful when in very few years, all those rogue voices will die down because they'll just be seen as the idiots and people want to talk about this. Most of us know what it feels like to go to bed exhausted, only to toss and turn and wake up groggy. That's why so many people are turning to Beam Dream, a luxurious all-natural sleep beverage that has already improved over 18.5 million nights of sleep.

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58:32It's not about a quick fix. It's about building a routine that helps you fall asleep faster, sleep more deeply, and wake up refreshed. Go to shopbeam.com slash trigger and get up to 35 % off with code TRIGGERPOD. That's shopbeam.com slash trigger, code TRIGGERPOD. but to me it's not an anti-child message to me it's an anti-human message it's putting forward a narrative that human beings are evil and that we are a scourge on the planet yeah so and where does that come from now that's quite an extreme viewpoint but it's there um i've interacted online with some people with this view some people have you know made pods from that community you know reviewing the documentary.

59:21So I've seen it, I can listen to it. There are some people who literally want humanity to die and are happy to say it. Most of them don't say it is what I've figured out. Most of them know if they come out and say, I want humanity to die, a lot of people are going to switch off to that message. So they find more subtle ways, maybe through writing books called the population bomb. I don't know. But those voices, but there are people. And what's really interesting, if you go back in history, who funded a lot of the nonprofits in the space? Population Connection used to be called Zero Population Growth, going back to Paul Ehrlich in the 60s.

1:00:02Who's funding them? Not them specifically, but a lot of money went into this. Well, you look at the Ford Foundation. This is on record. Don't worry, you're not going to get sued. I mean, it's been written about a lot. The Rockefeller Foundation. Rockefeller Foundation funded a lot of the India campaigns on low fertility, which directly or indirectly, some say directly, led to forced sterilizations of something like 8 million people, literally people taken off trains. so there are voices out there some quite wealthy who to me

1:00:41their motives at least have to be questioned as to whether they really care about humanity but definitely some people don't and the more I look into this and this is going to sound like a provocative question and it really doesn't mean to isn't this just a natural byproduct of of women becoming more educated, having more rights, having control of their reproductive rights. Most women, if we're being honest, and you showed yourself in the doc, they don't want five or six kids. They don't want four kids. They'll be like, two's enough. Two is just enough. That's what I can cope with. That's what I'll be happy with.

1:01:21I also don't just want to be a homemaker. I also want my own life. And you're looking at these women, you go, I mean, fair enough. No. Sure. So I would never want to be associated with anything that would take away any women's rights. In fact, I don't even want to get involved in conversations about abortion. As a man, it's like, okay, that's so delicate. And will it affect me personally? In a relationship, yes. that I try to be agnostic on all of those things. I want to say that first. And I'll get to your point about women, but let's talk about men for a second. So this Gaussian curve, that's everywhere.

1:02:04We have some data for the US for men at a granular level. It's very hard to find. And guess what? The same Gaussian curve is there for men too, just a little bit later. And as they stretch, it's like a coordinated stretch. So men and women are interlinked. so it's not just about women focusing on education and focusing on other things men are too we're all in this race together and what's happened with double incomes well property prices in case we've got double incomes so it's no longer an option or choice for most for only one of us to work so hence everything's interlinked so if we start blaming women are thinking well you know that's The solution lies with women.

1:02:48We're going to miss out again. You can't move one of these curves without moving the other. So I think it's a dead end going down, you know, what happened in the past. We can't change it. For me, I wouldn't want to change it. And men and women are completely linked to each other. But isn't that, forgive me, but that's kind of where the problem is. Because if the reality is that, as you say, the double incomes have made everything more expensive, it then makes it very difficult for people to survive on one income. And that makes it very difficult for people to have kids in the way that they would want to.

1:03:26And unless we address that in some way, we aren't going to really get anywhere. Yeah. And I come back to the Hungarian housing scheme again. I think government has to do something at that level. to, I mean, if you're thinking of this in terms of pure economics, I read this morning the UK is going to be the fastest growing country population-wise in Europe. And it's because of immigration, of course. Well, the issue there is immigrants get old too. So it means if that's your policy or non-policy, you're going to have effectively the same number or an increasing number of older people to take care of forever for as long as you can find immigrants.

1:04:09And with birth rates going down in India and soon Africa too, that's a risky strategy, but not to get onto that too much. The point is here that unless we have new people coming through a system, we won't be able to support our entire infrastructure for those who do have kids and don't have kids. So how do we get back to that age? is, can we? I don't know. Can we put enough incentives to create such a bubble that enough younger people will have children and maybe even possibly have more children than they would have otherwise to support the entire system? So it's a conversation we all need to be having.

1:04:50I'm not sitting here saying I've confidently found the solution. I'm not. I'm saying, I think this is our best chance by far. And by the way, it means reinventing just about everything. Well, Francis wants to end the education of women. Yeah. Well, what's controversial about that? Why don't we try that? And then if that doesn't work, we'll try it. No, no. But this is kind of the issue, really, isn't it? Because on the one hand, we all are very happy for women to be educated. Speak for yourself. And I don't think anybody would want to hold anyone back from having a career, male or female, if that's what they'd like to do.

1:05:25I can only speak from my experience. I know quite a lot of women who fill different types of templates. I know women who love having a career and several kids and they manage it great. And I know some people who feel like, well, actually, I had a career and it was on reflection now that I've had kids, a bit of a waste of time, actually. And so there's that full spectrum. And it comes back to what are the societal expectations? What are the cultural norms? What are you seeing around you? What are you being told by your female friends and relatives, etc., about parenthood, about children, etc.? And I think it'd be difficult to deny that we have lived for some time now in an environment, in the West at least, I can't speak for other places, where, you know, children are kind of seen as a burden more than they are seen as a joy and as a thing that you...

1:06:22Even when we know from surveys that actually most women would really like to have kids. Yeah. Certainly, it's absolutely true that most women want kids. And there's this conundrum that comes back to vulnerability. Do I do it now or do I wait another year? And a partner may be saying the same thing. There's some incentive to wait a little bit longer. And that's where unplanned childlessness kicks in. And it's the ones that you're meeting who have had the career and the largest family took the plunge at some point when someone else may have delayed a little bit. And then other things happen in life.

1:07:04So, for example, in the U.S. right now, for every 10 women, 35 and below, one approximately never wants kids. Nine do. Of the nine, three will not have kids. Six will, based on current fertility patterns. If you look at fertility last year. So for the nine who do, one third of intending mothers will remain childless. And it's lack of awareness or lack of understanding of the complex factors like breakups, like your partner not being this, that just creep in. and then the moment drifts away. And this timing curve, it put me in a bad mood that day in Kyoto and I'm still in a bit of a bad mood because I wanted to think that we had more autonomy to choose the timing ourselves.

1:07:56But you can see it in the data. This is to do with synchronization forces that just get harder and harder and harder. If you imagine today you're an 18, 20-year-old with your first girlfriend, boyfriend, that's getting a little serious. You're probably not thinking, this is the woman I'm going to have kids with when I get to 35, because that's too far away. You're just not even thinking that. So you're thinking about, well, this is fun. And then maybe there's a breakup, and then you're a partner at 23, 24. You're still not thinking that way. And I think a lot of people drift through relationships without taking them seriously enough.

1:08:38Because that might be the best relationship you were ever going to have. It's just you weren't on the same page as society, which is telling you, wait, wait, wait. And I think this has caused a lot of other issues. The whole issue with young men, sexless young men, I know they exist. I've certainly met them in Japan. I think they're just zoning out and playing in their mother's basement, playing games. Because I think we're meant to form relationships sooner. And that means something to us biologically and psychologically. And by knowing, well, I've got to wait for 15 years before I even can start to think about parenthood, I think it's part of a broader societal issue.

1:09:20And one of the things you explore are these people who want kids and then don't have them. And I've actually met a lady at a party in New York, and she represents one of these organizations. I mean, it was haunting talking to her. There was just a profound sense of sadness there. Profound. And again, my heart goes out to even listeners of this because it's such a difficult topic. And we all might assume that our aunt or our colleague, they must have never wanted kids. They seem quite happy. And it's a private thing. I read a poem by one of these people. I'll not remember it, but it was just heartbreaking about being in the office when a new mother comes in with her baby to show everybody in the office and all the women flock.

1:10:12And she's locked, trapped in her desk, just frozen, unable to escape because she can't get past but just wanting to get out of there. Not all feel like that. And some people, I've been told by this community, I should say that later in life, you can find other purposes. But for many years, decades, or maybe forever, There's a grief, and that's what people in that category call it, men and women. I've seen men cry as much as women about not having the kids that they intended to have. And it's just like, what happened? Timing. And because that's the thing that I found surprising, because I always thought, you know, for blokes, you know, well, you can have kids at any age.

1:10:59Mick Jagger seems to be popping them out at a rate that is just quite frankly staggering, considering he's in his early 80s. But that's kind of an illusion, isn't it? We're stupid. We're stupid. I mean, if you think about it. No, I mean, biology is a factor, sure. So we got that one, in theory. But you've got to find a partner. and unless you're you know super famous super rich for the listeners he's pointing us for answers yeah exactly not

1:11:38so right

1:11:43we forget that we're actually competing against younger versions of ourself I learned that divorced at 42 wasn't exactly planned but there we are I thought well I might meet someone plenty of time yet and you know you realise that person over there who's now X years younger than me X plus 5 years younger than me X plus 10 years younger who's able to have a child that young woman you know why would she choose me compared to everyone else so biology we've been fooling ourselves it doesn't even come into it and for that one 80 year old who has 8 kids All that's happening is the woman he's having kids with, which are probably almost certainly under 40, under 35, they would have been having kids with somebody else.

1:12:30So there aren't more children overall. So the overall thing, it's just really, yeah. But that ties into the fact that, and it's actually a lot of what we talk about here at Trigonometry, which is we live in a society where we're fundamentally dishonest, not only with our children, not only with our peers, not only when we're at work, but also fundamentally with ourselves. We are in denial of our own biology. Lying to ourselves or biology generally, trying to believe we're younger than we actually are. All of it. All of it. I think, and this is what it comes down to with this conversation, is a fundamental lack of honesty.

1:13:12Yeah. And because we think, and look, maybe push back on this if you think this is untrue, But because we think being honest and being direct is unpleasant, it's rude, and it can be seen to be cruel. But actually, to me, the cruelest thing that you can do is be dishonest, particularly with a woman, and say, look, your most fertile years are between X and Y. You can run the risk if you want and try and have it later. that if this is what you really want, then this is what you need to optimize for and prioritize for. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, we all relish, I think, in the idea of longevity, that 30 is the new 20, that 40 is the new 30.

1:14:00But biology hasn't reset itself at all. And again, from this curve, there's no uptick from IVF. So all this idea about IVF, you've got egg freezing, it doesn't actually look particularly good for likelihood. OK, some will benefit, but overall it causes more people to delay just because you can do that. And many of those fall into unplanned childlessness, so it washes out. So it is a lie. So that promise that you can delay parenthood incentivizes people to attempt it. And then many of them are actually then unable to have the children that they wanted to have. Yeah. I see. That really is what I think Francis is talking about, which is we're just lying to people, basically.

1:14:42We're just telling them things are going to be possible, which are for many of them not going to be possible. And if they had known that, they would have made a whole set of different choices quite possibly in the run up to it. Stephen, it's great to have you back on the show. Before we head on over to Substack and ask you questions from our supporters, what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be? The next humanitarian crisis, which will be aging people in countries like Brazil, but more particularly, I'm so worried about old people in India. We haven't got our head around the idea that these are nations that are going to age very rapidly without any support systems.

1:15:22I just want people to start to think a bit longer term, particularly when they criticize countries like India for high birth rates, which was a thing of the past. that actually the real crisis there is being baked in right now. Old people. Stephen, thanks for coming on. Head on over to Substack where we get to ask him your questions. The usual explanations for the fall of the birth rate in the West involve the economic cost of childbearing. So why is the birth rate falling in Cuba and in North Korea where childbirth and childcare are free and supported by the government?

1:16:29We'll see you next time. shipping black friday in july ends july 27th shop today at wayfair.com wayfair every style every home