It’s not terrifying because it has been happening since the 1950s. One theory is that as countries industrialize, their males become less fertile over subsequent generations. (This theory accounts for socioeconomic changes like abortion and being too poor to afford children.) It’s not too surprising given chemicals like BPA aka synthetic estrogen is so pervasive that now it’s in clothes and paper receipts. Almost no country is safe except for a few in central Africa
They account for socioeconomic changes like abortion and birth control ie these trends started long before the sexual revolution and long before abortion was even legal. It is not a “deeply wrong conclusion” unless no one bother to read any of it. Completely ignoring the endocrine disrupter pollution just shows you completely ignored my comment.
I know, declining male fertility is such a nice talking point, you know men being less manly and all that.
Funny so, that while micro plastics and whatnot sure are ugly and cannot be ignored, all other studies do not mention male fertility as a root cause, but rather:
- urbanization and changes in lifestyle
- women pursuing a life other than being a mother
- birth control (the reason why birth control reduces the number of kids per couple should be obvious...)
- economic incentives change from large families (old style, labour intensive farming) to smaller families (industrial labour and office work in cities)
That’s a moot point. Yes, socioeconomic factors do negatively affect birth rates, but what you don't understand is that even before those socioeconomic factors were in play, male fertility was already on the decline. A good example is Canada. Before contraceptives were popular, before abortion was legal, and before economic incentives for having nuclear families disappeared; they already lost the ability to replenish their population in 1972 (birthrates fell below 2.1), meaning their birthrates were already declining during decades of an optimal socioeconomic environment. ie that’s what it means when the male infertility studies accounted for socioeconomic factors.
1972? So, after the sexual revolution, the pill, emancipaction, the beginning of urbanization (which really started in the early 60s), the rise of automated agriculture, the beginning of women having real career opportunities as part of the work force and both, a rise of the industrial and service sectors of the economy.
All of which, across the globe, drive birth rates down. But sure, it was male fertility that caused all of that...
Thats when the sexual revolution happened in the US. As I’ve already mentioned in my previous comment, in Canada it started later than 1972. Even then, the effects of the sexual revolution shouldn’t be immediate, so it’s obvious that something else was at play since birthrates actually started to go down in the early 1950s. It just came to an irreversible head in 1972
> All of which, across the globe, drive birth rates down.
There are still a lot of places where abortion and contraception are both frowned upon and aren’t even legal, yet they still experienced lower birth rates. Again, socioeconomic factors have been accounted for
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/25/world-popu...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/22/ageing-planet-...