Shame only has utility for steering behavior. You don’t shame someone who can no longer modify their behavior (40 and no children), you shame them only when their behavior is malleable. For this problem, it is prosocial to shame young people who don’t settle down, so that they modify their behavior in the relevantly prosocial way.
These seem related to each other. Young people who don't settle down eventually become 40 years old, and many of them don't have children due to not settling down. If such people are shamed, then young people have an incentive to avoid growing up to become one of those people.
You’re imagining something like “24yo woman witnesses 40yo being shamed and doesn’t want that to happen to them”, but there’s a better and more accurate reinforcement structure to put in place. 24yo woman don’t put themselves in social contexts where they see the social shame of 40yos because of how age-specific social contexts are, and humans are bad at making 15-year plans, so even if we enacted that plan it wouldn’t work, and that’s implying “shame every older childless woman always” is an acceptable amount of pain administration for prosocial result. We can just shame the 24yos whose lifestyle deters them from fertility, which winds up promoting a lifestyle which is pro-fertility. We don’t have to shame the 40yo at all; when they turn 40, we can completely stop promoting the fertility behavior with shame, because by that point it’s too late. People care most about immediate social pride, rather than what happens when they are 40.
It’s like with shaming bad students. You can shame a bad student because you want to promote study habits so they get the best job they can. Shaming their poor habits is beneficial and for their greater good. But shaming people whose occupation you deem inferior would be sociopathic, even if it had the byproduct of (in theory) promoting good study habits among poor students. This relates broadly to the concept of forgiveness and mercy, which I suppose is very apropos the article…
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Notes -
These seem related to each other. Young people who don't settle down eventually become 40 years old, and many of them don't have children due to not settling down. If such people are shamed, then young people have an incentive to avoid growing up to become one of those people.
You’re imagining something like “24yo woman witnesses 40yo being shamed and doesn’t want that to happen to them”, but there’s a better and more accurate reinforcement structure to put in place. 24yo woman don’t put themselves in social contexts where they see the social shame of 40yos because of how age-specific social contexts are, and humans are bad at making 15-year plans, so even if we enacted that plan it wouldn’t work, and that’s implying “shame every older childless woman always” is an acceptable amount of pain administration for prosocial result. We can just shame the 24yos whose lifestyle deters them from fertility, which winds up promoting a lifestyle which is pro-fertility. We don’t have to shame the 40yo at all; when they turn 40, we can completely stop promoting the fertility behavior with shame, because by that point it’s too late. People care most about immediate social pride, rather than what happens when they are 40.
It’s like with shaming bad students. You can shame a bad student because you want to promote study habits so they get the best job they can. Shaming their poor habits is beneficial and for their greater good. But shaming people whose occupation you deem inferior would be sociopathic, even if it had the byproduct of (in theory) promoting good study habits among poor students. This relates broadly to the concept of forgiveness and mercy, which I suppose is very apropos the article…
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