alt.hn

7/5/2026 at 5:16:00 PM

Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-57582-3

by paulpauper

7/5/2026 at 6:19:40 PM

The left reproduces indirectly, so this isn't as much of a problem as they might think. In fact, I'd say it's the opposite of the surface conclusion.

If the left reproduces via external means (e.g., media), then they've effectively outsourced biological reproduction and all its costs to the right. The right will successfully reproduce their political alignment sometimes, of course, but they also effectively act as the breeder population for the left. The right expends the resources bootstrapping civilization into their biological offspring, Oedipalizing them into the world as linguistic subject, which ends up being the vector for the brood parasitism of their own socio-cultural opponents. So, if you're the right, you're the host of this parasitism, and should be looking for some kind of antiparasitic social solution in the form of impenetrable cultural barriers.

by bm3719

7/5/2026 at 8:26:08 PM

How do these conversion numbers compare to changing demographics via immigration? The problem with this view in my eyes is that you can get minority/interest groups to vote left in a host country by advocating for them, while these same people vote for ethnonationalists in their home country. See: Erdogan polling very well with Turks abroad, Isreal, to name 2.

by ieatcandlewax

7/5/2026 at 7:54:46 PM

I think this makes a lot of sense. The parents of my generation (I am in my 40s) saw no danger in sending their kids to a university where every professor and student peer was super-left.

A lot of their kids (my peers) ended up unmarried and childless as per this article. So in a way those parents got punished by evolutionary forces for not being careful enough about their kids. I can guarantee you that those of my generation who "made it" through that filter are vigilant to ensure it doesn't happen to our kids.

by xyzelement

7/5/2026 at 7:54:16 PM

An insane thesis of the terminally online. If you go out into the real world the lines between “left” and “right” are far more blurry than you seem to think.

by nkrisc

7/5/2026 at 8:08:21 PM

> The right will successfully reproduce their political alignment sometimes, of course, but they also effectively act as the breeder population for the left.

I think the right has been evolving higher memetic immunity, which is causing this strategy to become less effective over time.

Increases in homeschooling and private religious schools – school vouchers in the US really help with that. Reduced rates of cross-political friendship, dating and marriage. Increased geographic sorting based on ideology. Social media echo chambers. The "right-wing media ecosystem" (see e.g. Libs of Tiktok) is a lot more engaging than it was 40 years ago. Internet filtering (some religious groups pressure even adults to install it.) Increasing political pressure on universities to moderate their politics reduces their effectiveness at transmitting left-wing politics to students, meanwhile right-leaning alternative tertiary institutions are growing.

Also, odds of political defection is partially determined by personality traits, which are partially genetic. This creates selective pressure to reduce the frequency of defection-promoting alleles in right-leaning populations across generations, which is a genetic rather than memetic factor predicting that conservative retention rates will rise over decades to come. See https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3125629/ which discusses this with respect to genes for religiosity, which is heavily overlapping with (albeit not quite the same as) political conservatism.

by skissane

7/5/2026 at 7:54:28 PM

> If the left reproduces via external means (e.g., media), then they've effectively outsourced biological reproduction and all its costs

Ahh. Brood parasitism. Very tricky.

by nullc

7/5/2026 at 6:39:58 PM

It remains to be seen if the indirect strategy of converting people originating from different backgrounds holds or fails in the 21st century. All that we can say is that it used to work against some traditional Christian churches and more liberal Jewish groups.

That does not mean that it will work against all of them. Some high-fertility groups of today don't seem to be particularly prone to losing their members to left-wing or even just generic secular persuasion: there are very few ex-Amish or ex-Haredi leftists, and some, but not very many, ex-Muslim and ex-Mormon leftists.

by inglor_cz

7/5/2026 at 7:02:41 PM

I think the way the left's exterior reproduction's been successful is by leveraging the market more effectively. By that, I mean that global capital has already done a great job of mapping and stratifying our desires. If you like, say, passive media consumption combined with power fantasies (e.g., the superhero movie), the market will figure that out pretty quick. The left then only has figure out how to inject their social reproduction program into this pre-existing channel, then reap the rewards.

Your counterexamples are indeed the succesful defenders, the ones the right could learn from. The Amish (the only successful resisters of brood parasitism I'm directly familiar with), don't have to worry about capital mapping their offspring's desire because they have created an effective cultural barrier from it. No doubt many young Amish would find superhero media alluring, but movies, TV, and phones need electricity, which they have forbidden from their personal lives. More generally, the hierarchy of God, family, work, then finally self is fundamental and encoded into the child's being. To electrify your bedroom is to no longer be Amish, which has a lot more friction than drifting from your parents' mainstream conservatism.

by bm3719

7/5/2026 at 8:03:21 PM

That's a really funny way of looking at "Some right wingers end up repelling their children through sheer bigotry or just being terrible parents, and as a result, these poor children will find solace and friendship in an ideology opposite from their parents' one."

by yongjik

7/5/2026 at 7:01:16 PM

>Oedipalizing them into the world as linguistic subject

I don’t think this means what you think it means

by jrflowers

7/5/2026 at 7:14:49 PM

I mean that in the Lacanian sense. This is the symbolic Oedipal, not the Freudian familial romance. Reductively, transistion through the Lacanian Oedpial creates the linguistic subject, structuring the unconscious as a language with a relation to the master signifier. Entry into the symbolic register provides the semiotic pathway for linguistic media to be effectuating.

by bm3719

7/5/2026 at 7:52:06 PM

Very sophomoric reading of Lacan.

by Fraterkes

7/5/2026 at 8:18:28 PM

I kind of meant more broadly.

Your notion of “the left” as some sort of… swirl of evil linguistic specters that prey on the good and civilized flesh-and-bone right is better suited to post-OT III Scientology than Lacan. If you want a philosophy that your ideological detractors are literal evil ghosts they have recruiting offices in most major cities.

by jrflowers

7/5/2026 at 8:36:42 PM

No ethical position on the message itself is taken here. Brood parasitism is an ecological niche. The right could do this as well, if they can capture the levers to do so, and as another reply pointed out, perhaps they're getting better at exactly that.

In fact, that's a very real threat if you're the left, since if this mechanism reverses, now you've got a real reproduction problem.

by bm3719

7/5/2026 at 7:53:44 PM

[flagged]

by vixen99

7/5/2026 at 7:57:26 PM

[dead]

by seibelj

7/5/2026 at 7:07:56 PM

Every time this sort of news pops up, I think "why aren't they incentivising and subsidizing fertility treatment"?

You want to raise the fertility rate, yes?

You could convince an entire population to have more babies the hard way (social or economic pressure).

Or literally just let the people who are already trying, but can't for some physiological reason, have one. They already want children, if they're pursuing fertility treatment, they're already decently well off, too.

To me it seems like a very obvious, targeted solution!

by julianlam

7/5/2026 at 7:35:59 PM

It makes sense, but it's probably pretty far down on the list of "what could we put money towards in order to increase birthrate". Could probably get a lot more result for the money by funding efforts to pair people together, make them want to have kids, make them more financially equipped to have kids, etc.

by thegrim33

7/5/2026 at 8:31:12 PM

It's fairly obvious that to raise the birthrate, all you have to do is get rid of proper sex education and promote abstinence-only education to teenagers (because it doesn't work), and get rid of social media for them. Prohibit them from buying alcohol but give them plenty of ways to acquire it. Use teenage rebellious nature to socially engineer them getting drunk together. Teenage pregnancy is how to get them.

Of course this is absolutely abhorrent to the left, but the article is discussing the left's lowered birth rates, and giving teenagers, especially women, sex education that works can't be ignored. It's some Handmaiden's Tale shit to dupe teenage women into having kids so they're beholden to a man and their family, so they don't get an opportunity to have their own lives, and are instead merely baby making factories, but this is the future of the human race we're talking about here!

No one would ever admit to this being the plan out loud, but it's pretty obvious if you look at it from a societal standpoint, on the level of Dune or the Foundation series of sci-fi writing. Or Idiocracy.

by fragmede

7/5/2026 at 7:43:49 PM

thats the problem, it should be at the top of the list (all the way at the top) and nothing else should be close 100th

by bdangubic

7/5/2026 at 8:28:13 PM

Because it encourages society to delay childbirth further. If two groups have kids at 20 and another society has them at 30, over those two generations the first would be twice as large as the second.

We know how to raise the birth rates: give money to men, discourage parental co-habitation.

by polski-g

7/5/2026 at 7:14:55 PM

don’t non-US countries already do this?

by nielsbot

7/5/2026 at 7:37:21 PM

Yes, and it's not working, birthrates are still declining. The one factor that more than anything triggers declining birthrates are the level of education among women.

We're going to have to adjust to smaller populations, unless we wish to devolve as a society.

by mrweasel

7/5/2026 at 7:52:22 PM

Fertility treatments have a small impact.

For example, Israel has universal fertility benefiots and this is predicted to contribute ~0.03 TFR. The US and would need a an effect 2,000% (20x) larger to reach replacment. Many EU countries would need an effect 30X stronger.

The bigger challenge is the people wanting to have children in the first place. This is driven by social values, preceived preconditions, and when in life those conditions are met.

I was just hanging out with some friends for the 4th of July. Their immigrant parents chose to have a child while in college working on their Phds and residing in the US on student visas.

I dont know any of my peers that would intentionally make that choice due to the percarious and unstable position.

by s1artibartfast

7/5/2026 at 7:38:58 PM

Fertility treatment isn't a guarantee. My brother and his wife ended up adopting after treatment failed.

The government paying for it also doesn't make it cheaper, it just moves the costs around.

A fairer, more effective strategy would be subsidizing the first year or so of the child's care- diapers, food, clothes, cribs, vaccines and such. That would benefit a lot more people.

by zdragnar

7/5/2026 at 7:47:42 PM

no one (I mean this, not one person on Earth) will be swayed to have a baby given your offer.

by bdangubic

7/5/2026 at 7:51:36 PM

Sure, why not.

And, there were 1,126,000 abortions were provided by US clinicians in 2025.

Ban abortions.

by tryagainian

7/5/2026 at 7:55:12 PM

* citation needed

by uncletammy

7/5/2026 at 8:13:21 PM

[flagged]

by tryagainian

7/5/2026 at 8:11:34 PM

[dead]

by OutOfHere

7/5/2026 at 5:55:42 PM

Captain Planet literally told children who cared about environmentalism to "keep families small" to save our planet.

https://youtu.be/tZCg9HsDntY

It's not difficult to take that to the next logical conclusion, no children means less resources used.

by novia

7/5/2026 at 7:49:19 PM

That's why people shouldn't take life advice from cartoons and celebrities

by coldtea

7/5/2026 at 8:14:51 PM

I mean, I probably saw this when I was 4 or so, and I don't have any children now. I can't really blame my four year old self for being impressionable. I'd say this is probably more of an example of why people should be cautious of the kind of content they put in front of their kids.

by novia

7/5/2026 at 7:01:01 PM

Okay but if other groups aren’t doing it, the planet is still doomed and now your group is worse off. Congratulations, you have accomplished nothing!

by pfannkuchen

7/5/2026 at 7:22:35 PM

The environment is doomed either way without action. Is the issue that some demographics will become more dominant?

by Ysx

7/5/2026 at 7:31:22 PM

Is it not an issue if your group becomes less powerful than other groups? You are then putting yourself at their mercy, and we cannot assume that everyone has the same values (they don't).

by pfannkuchen

7/5/2026 at 7:37:11 PM

We can't also assume that your offspring will have the same values as you.

by Gualdrapo

7/5/2026 at 7:50:45 PM

You shouldn't be OK with them having any random values, either.

If you have a civilization, you have a vision about life, and what's good and what's bad, and you want to see it to continue.

That some of them will inevitable change over time is not the same as you preactively having no preference and guidance for your offspring whatsoever, and thinking "no problem, anything goes".

by coldtea

7/5/2026 at 7:39:20 PM

A group having more power has little to do with numbers. If that was the case the rich would be more numerous than the poor, and India would be the most powerful country in the world.

by coliveira

7/5/2026 at 7:47:40 PM

The "power" of a country, however you define it, lags the population growth. China was the biggest country for decades, its power only really started exploding some 10 or 15 years ago.

by throw-the-towel

7/5/2026 at 7:57:39 PM

Likewise in the 90s the idea of fearing unintentional pregnancy was intentionally infused into teen oriented TV shows and PSA. It created the idea that pregnancy is something to avoid unless you are super ready which is understood to have moved the needle.

There's something beyond idiotic about a society that frames it's own reproduction as a negative.

by xyzelement

7/5/2026 at 8:00:18 PM

It seems the paper conflates "fertility" and "reproductive rate". Which is akin to conflating "soil fertility" and gross yields. It also seems many comments here have not picked up on that.

by _8L34K

7/5/2026 at 6:20:40 PM

seems like an odd choice to so emphatically phrase this as a quality of "the left" when there are so clearly many plausible confounding factors (education, wealth, employment status, do you live in a small city apartment, etc.)

by postflopclarity

7/5/2026 at 7:02:06 PM

I feel like the obvious answer this topic is circling is that the left expresses more empathy to those outside their immediate circles (caring for the planet), while the right focuses their empathy inwardly (family values.)

I think this is bait because it's the sort of thinking that 'feels right' without thinking too hard about it.

by seff

7/5/2026 at 7:18:53 PM

> while the right focuses their empathy inwardly (family values.)

Not true. Right idea of family valuea is not about empathy and does not have much elements of empathy. It is more about establishing hierarchy and punishing you if you step put of it.

It is not even like they would be more emphatic toward disabled close ones. They dont extend empathy toward abused or sexually harassed female familly member or kid. Or to gay familly member.

Inward focus of the right is toward the members of they political and social group.

> left expresses more empathy to those outside their immediate circles (caring for the planet)

Left do cares more about planet, but also toward close ones that need help. A lot of leftist activism is motivated by personal experiences and experiences of close ones.

by watwut

7/5/2026 at 6:45:57 PM

Agreed, although one thing I'll grant is that these days it seems like extremely large families in the US are almost always evangelicals, who obviously skew conservative, and there's not really a counterpart to that on the left. So even if families are getting smaller in general across the political spectrum, could it be that the outliers are imbalanced?

by cryzinger

7/5/2026 at 7:32:07 PM

> it seems like extremely large families in the US are almost always evangelicals

It's possible this has changed but I would name Catholics and Mormons as topping the large family demographics in the US (although in 2015, Pew disagreed¹ with my assertions about Catholics).

Does this challenge your overall point about conservatives? I'm not sure.

It is my experience that a rise in Evangelicals' political power is eventually followed by returns to their historical disregard/animosity for Catholics² and Mormons³. Being on the receiving end of serial demonization can shove folks away from the ideologies that generate it.

¹ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/americas-cha...

² https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/peter-thiel-antichrist-remarks-pop...

³ https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/07/02/how-pete-hegseths...

by WarOnPrivacy

7/5/2026 at 7:59:44 PM

My take on this as someone who swings left is that desire for children isn’t meaningfully lower among the left, but would-be parents want to provide quality of life that is as good or preferably significantly better than that of their own childhoods. This rolls in several other assumptions, such as reasonable assurance of financial stability, low housing and relationship drama, capacity to take unexpected disaster in stride, all while having enough headroom for occasional travel and vacation.

If clearing that bar isn’t feasible, starting a family is delayed until it is.

The problem is that many will never achieve that before aging out of the opportunity, due to it becoming increasingly difficult to climb that ladder. Many millennials for example only got to a point where they felt like they could stand on their own two feet in their 30s, which is the starting line for providing the desired quality of life for children.

I don’t think this is a bad thing to desire. People like this tend to be good, thoughtful parents if they manage to endure the marathon and reach the finish line in time. It’s just out of reach for many, and nobody cares to even try to fix that.

by cosmic_cheese

7/5/2026 at 6:21:39 PM

One thing that appears to be missing is any mention of non-heterosexual couples, some of which are biologically incapable of having their own children and it's unclear how adoption or surrogacy gets counted in here.

And I think it's fair to say that in the US non-heterosexual people are overwhelmingly on the left, for fairly obvious reasons.

by _aavaa_

7/5/2026 at 8:14:31 PM

Isn't this simply because the political realignment in US resulted in an arrangement where higher incomes generally correlate with left-wing political views? And it's not exactly a new thing that higher incomes also correlate with fewer children.

Indeed, they also point out that the finding only holds true for US whites but not for blacks. Which is also consistent with this being just a reflection of economic status.

by int_19h

7/5/2026 at 7:16:21 PM

Just like there's a natural selection to those with religious beliefs (and active killing of those without) there's probably active selection to those with conservative beliefs like raiding a family, a desire to teach their values to their children, producing as many children as possible - values that correlate with conservatives.

by comrade1234

7/5/2026 at 7:48:03 PM

I think the atheist experiment of the last century or so is starting to yield clear evidence of what is and isn't "fit" in the Darwinian sense. Exactly as you are saying.

by xyzelement

7/5/2026 at 5:54:46 PM

Oh great, Idiocracy as a scientific paper.

by pkulak

7/5/2026 at 6:05:19 PM

[flagged]

by Leonard_of_Q

7/5/2026 at 7:35:12 PM

I’ve also noticed fertility is high among certain immigrant demographic groups. Near me, it’s refugee groups (asylum applicants) where families very typically have 4 or more kids. In a couple decades I can see the demographics being very different in America, but especially Europe. It’ll probably look more brown, more Islamic relative to today.

What’s interesting to me is that these groups are very effective at making use of programs we have to help families and subsidize costs. But I feel like Americans generally are less aware of these programs or decide they can’t afford children without considering this help.

by SilverElfin

7/5/2026 at 8:14:49 PM

Left-wing women wait till they're 40, and then it's too late. They're not as sensible they pretend to be.

The left has culturally brainwashed itself into believing that having children later is okay, but it's not. Muslims are the only exception.

by OutOfHere

7/5/2026 at 6:40:59 PM

Everything about this thread is weird and woefully online.

As an n of 1, we are surrounded by so many births that we just trade baby gear since we are either a handful of months ahead or behind many other parents. Our assumption was that we were in a stealth baby boom. Truly everyone we know has a minimum of one very young child with a high number of parents with between 2 and 4.

It certainly runs counter to many online discussions but reality often does.

by homeonthemtn

7/5/2026 at 8:12:00 PM

Just a thought, based on my own experience. If you have children, or is about to have a baby, you start being around more parents or "parents to be". Either as part of parenting groups, in conjunction with daycare, schools or parents of your children's friends. Because this centers around your child, the children around you tends to be roughly the same age, plus or minus a few months.

by mrweasel

7/5/2026 at 7:50:43 PM

After putting it off for many years, many millenials are finally settling down and starting the families that perhaps more traditionally we began 15 years earlier - but outside ones with fertility issues, we are getting on with it. Im in the same boat as you, left leaning with left leaning friends, mostly late 30s and we're all getting on with having or raising young kids at this point - so n=2 from real life observations

by bad_haircut72

7/5/2026 at 8:22:49 PM

You might be interested in the link I provided in a sibling post.

A larger percentage of births are to older women, but total number of births are still dropping accross all ages.

by s1artibartfast

7/5/2026 at 8:16:41 PM

> Our assumption was that we were in a stealth baby boom.

That somehow evaded fertility statistics?

by balfirevic

7/5/2026 at 7:48:57 PM

Where are you and what percentage of your neighbors go to church and similar.

by xyzelement

7/5/2026 at 8:17:36 PM

This still runs contrary to national statistics, which would include these births unless there is a wave of children/births unregisted with the state. There is good public data on this, for example here:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr74/nvsr74-3.pdf

That said, I think there is a perspective issue at play. It may seem like lots of people are having kids. A lot of our friends are too. However, I dint live through the 70s or 40's to have a comparison for what that seemed like when the fertility rate was higher.

by s1artibartfast

7/5/2026 at 6:14:15 PM

[dead]

by draw_down