Animals don't breed in captivity
A mother's instinct is survival mode
Why do we have to artificially inseminate tigers in zoos if we want them to produce cubs? Because the motivation to have sex and the fertility that accompanies it is dampened by stress from unnatural environments, lack of privacy, and the disruption of natural behaviours and instincts. A failure to replicate the stimuli, space, and autonomy animals evolved to be required to chase reproduction. Reminds you of anyone?
The very well-off or the worse-off still feel compelled to have multiple kids. Many people in the middle, when given a choice, are reluctant. The very rich because they feel unrestrained and the poor because their survival instinct is still kicking. This would explain, for example, why Israel is the only Westernised country to maintain high birth rates- their survival instinct is heightened.
I have a couple very close to me who grew up being comfortably middle class. One part of the couple is very comfortable, the other less but still does very well. They could 100% afford to have kids. But they both work in corporate jobs in affluent countries where the demands on their life are very high. They go skiing every other weekend during the winter. When they go on holidays with their friends from work, they bleed thousands off their savings. Their career trajectories mean they will soon make even more money.
Yet, they recently announced to me that they are simply not interested in having kids.
I was shocked because I grew up with the guy, and I always thought that his emotional constitution and philosophy on life and family was close to my own. Yet, he said he never saw himself becoming a father?
He is a very intelligent man with a singular passion whose natural ability and talent was evident to everyone willing to pay attention from a very young age. He is highly competent in his field but suffers from chronic impostor syndrome. He went to an unknown university and, after graduating with a PhD from his hometown, was picked up by a headhunter to work in tech in a city where the best of the best butt heads to become billionaires. His new workplace was filled with cutthroat McKinsey and Oxbridge/Ivy League grads who see themselves as future Unicorn founders. He was living with his parents till then, and quite possibly, his most pressing instinct was to pay off his father’s debt, who was bankrupt and disabled.
I have often heard people working for big companies that provide great amenities and advancement opportunities (e.g. Meta, Google, etc.) describe them as golden handcuffs. Once you are in, it is hard to get out. Like a stray bobkitten that’s been snatched from nature’s fangs, who would exchange the security of a full belly every day for the Russian roulette of one day leading your own wild pack?
You put up with your psychopathic boss, your conniving colleagues, your hysterical family members, your judgmental community back home, your red-pilled online friends, your stuck superego.
In the process, you find things the dampen the animal insticts that led the human species to greatness and which no doubt, since your genes survived and you were born, still live in you, sleeping cells in a graceless and ungrateful host.
Everyone seems to be on drugs in the big cities. Everyone is trying to get an Adderall prescription and if they fail, they go on the dark web. Most graduate on harder stimulants. The more cautious types stick to industrial quantities of caffeine and alcohol. Bingeing on food is also a popular choice- even if not one chosen consciously. Ambitious maximisers will find ways to get over it- mostly through sheer self-hatred and metamedical pursuits. Most will dabble in one point or another with extreme types of exercise and diet. Fasting, ironman, ice baths. Anything to make the primal part of your brain shut off.
The new feminist and conservative alliance of natalists will tell them, not having enough financial security is not your problem. We have the data to show that people in poor countries have more kids and the moment people obtain a middle class life style they start having less or none! So you are just not willing enough to put up with a non-extravagant lifestyle (i.e. you are vain and spoilled not a warrior King like your forefathers!).
There is a lot of truth in that. I have many rich friends who complain about not being able to have kids because they can’t give them the same level of comfort they grew up in. When I query what that is, their expectations are things that are not important for me (because I am the embodiment of survival instinct). They want a big house in a good neighbourhood. Holidays with five-star hotels. A decked-out wardrobe. To feast only on platters of sashimi, to never need to order a side of rice to fill up.