What do you think would happen if all women just suddenly decided to stop having babies?

[FortunesFave]

Some would still be born through rape but if the entire world population of women said "No" to procreation...what would happen to the world?

www.newshub.co.nz/home/lifestyle/2020/08/expert-urges-kiwis-to-have-children-before-falling-fertility-rate-leads-to-unbalanced-population.html

Immigration, then incentives, then ?

South Korea is probably the most analogous. Fertility fell off a cliff in the 2000s. The TFR was 0.92 babies per woman in 2019. I think 47% of the population will be over 65 by 2065. It's not going great on women's rights but it also sucks for men so at least everyone is miserable.

Japan is the most aged society. They have some cool approaches...and a lot of people dying alone.

Maybe we'll come to respect and value older people and take a proactive approach to health and social connection. When were down to the last of us maybe we wouldn't give a stuff about superficial differences and find a way to get over racism, sexism, classism.

Planet Earth would breathe a long, sweet sigh of relief..

@Zilla1 I dont think they'd want babies as such but I think partly because they'd not want us to be able to make that decision ourselves. Like a control dominance thing. And also because they'd be afraid of us as nations and a species being weaker with less people.
We dominate the planet because theres just so many of us. America and china have power because of how many of them there are.

If it led to the value of labour going up so you couldn't treat people like dirt then the creeping realisation would make the monied classes shit themselves.

However it could never happen. Luckily the social narrative is driven by the monied classes, so they would just make sure than any hint of reducing their pool of feudal workers would never get a fair airing in the media.

Can people imagine the chaos of a shrinking population where labour becomes more expensive and workers more valuable ?

Capitalism would fail.

I'm a little puzzled by the notion in the UK that it's men who would want babies. Do PPs really think it's generally the men in couples pushing for procreation

Not at all, but no way would the male world allow women to choose something. If women decided not to have kids, they'd force them to have them.

Just as in China, when they wanted more than one child, they put measures in place to make it as difficult as possible ( I doubt many, if any, of those decision-makers were women).

You can look at Twitter too - women having an opinion? How dare she - lets send her rape threats.

There'd be mass redundancies in the midwife community....

I am not sure about that picsinred I was born in the early 1950s and had children c1980. For my generation anyone not married by 25 was considered on the shelf and a bit inferior. I think pressure on women who were childless by choice was probably about the same as now. We were encouraged to work outside the home more than the previous generation but the infrastructure for childcare was less developed and government policy was still formed on the basis of 2 parents, the woman staying at home. The newspapers were full of vitriol about single parentsand latck-key kids. Things slowly improved but you are probably right that it's starting to go backwards again.

Religions have long promoted motherhood as the feminine ideal in order to control women and keep them in their place.

Robotics, automation and AI would be a huge part of our lives

DGR, I expect you're already aware but I found it interesting what happened after one of the Black Death events - where Western European population may have reduced by c 1/3 - 1/2 with radical effects on the feudal economy and leading to greater freedom and relative wealth for the workers.

I wonder whether the effects of AI/self driving cars on driving jobs, office jobs and even entry-level professional jobs might approximate the reverse. The trajectory of Amazon on retail, automation on agricultural factory employment might be just the start - cue economist talking about buggy whip manufacturers and rising wealth from innovation and productivity but remaining quiet on distribution.

Have you read Lysistrata, OP?

@Zhampagne

Have you read Lysistrata, OP?

Or "The Time Machine" ...

We are already scientifically speaking quite close to being able to grow a child outside of the womb. That research would be speeded up. In fact unless we blow ourselves up or the suchlike I think that manner of procreation will be well used in affluent countries 100 years from now.

It will never happen. There will always be a large supply of women who will have baby after baby to "keep" man after man and never learn.

DGR, I expect you're already aware but I found it interesting what happened after one of the Black Death events - where Western European population may have reduced by c 1/3 - 1/2 with radical effects on the feudal economy and leading to greater freedom and relative wealth for the workers.

What is more interesting - and needs to be borne in mind - is the total and utter failure of the feudal system to buck the markets. In England Edward III tried miserably to pass a law making it illegal to pay more than pre Black Death rates to labourers, and his own nobles said "up yours Eddy !*" and within an incredibly short time - 5, 10 years, that was that. Centuries of finely tuned oppression gone effectively overnight.

If you know that, then the past 5 months might make a little bit more sense. Your lack of knowledge of history is their way of making sure they can fool you twice.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Labourers_1349

*Only in Anglo Norman French. "Monter ce vous, Eddy !"

@choli

It will never happen. There will always be a large supply of women who will have baby after baby to "keep" man after man and never learn.

Really? Where?

Any statistics to back that up? Given that birth rates are falling where are all this large number of women?

Not to mention that at population level, Mary having 12 kids is just a drop in the ocean.

@Mypathtriedtokillme GFC? Probably not Gillingham Football Club...

You're proposing a situation where women unilaterally decide to make humans extinct

And there we have it! The male mentality that will lead to the creation of rape factories. Well that didn't take long.

Do people really have kids to keep men? From my observation it is more likely to cause a certain type of man to piss off and leave. Reading this thread you would think no woman wanted children or enjoyed them and that they were somehow forced into motherhood.

In fact unless we blow ourselves up or the suchlike I think that manner of procreation will be well used in affluent countries 100 years from now

That will be terrible for children. Women are not just walking jars with babies growing inside. The relationship between mother and child starts in the womb. The child's development and learning starts inside the womb.

At first there would be be incentives offered for women who had children. The world would suddenly become a really nice place to live in for mothers. Maybe they'd get paid a big salary for staying at home raising children?

After a while though, if the population was falling and the powers that be were getting seriously worried then they'd start doing it by force. Taking away the rights of women who remained childless.

Are you writing a novel op?

are Women still sexually available in this scenario? If so, I think most men would be thrilled to be able to have sex and not have any responsibility for children.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in countries with very low birth rates like South Korea. They have around half the fertility rate needed to keep the population size stable.