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Surely Romania disproves your argument? You claim that contraception caused the fertility crisis, and then point out that Romanian TFR collapsed in spite of contraception being illegal.
Meanwhile, the baby boom happened across the western world while contraceptives were freely available.
Imagine a world where condoms, the contraceptive pill and hormonal implants don't exist, but where credential inflation, atomisation, the internet and social media do exist. In my mind that world would have the same crisis that our current one does. After all, Japan didn't get the pill until 1999 and yet birth rates were barely at replacement in the 1950s and 60s, only to decline below it in the 1970s. Even hunter gatherers have effective methods of birth control that don't require contraception (long periods of breastfeeding, timing, the withdrawal method and infanticide, primarily).
Meanwhile, both the Amish and the Haredi Jews can and do use contraception. They just prefer to have larger families because their cultures assign high status to having a large family.
I don't think this responds to my claim, which are that the default human position on kids is "not worth the trouble" and therefore making contraception cheaper, more effective, or more accessible mechanically reduces fertility.
I agree that there are legal regimes, beliefs, and customs that foster fertility. I'm just annoyed whenever people write about what "caused" the fertility crisis. There's no theory that makes sense or matches history apart from "people don't want kids and will take measures to avoid having them" except "mo' better contraception."
Japan didn't get the pill until 1999 but its TFR fell from 5 to 2 between between 1925 and 1960. What happened?
The article goes on to say "Governmental thinking of population as a marker for national power and international strength, however, remained steadfast and led the Japanese government to ban the sale and use of birth control in the 1930s, considering it harmful to the user." I freely admit that there are innumerable confounding factors, but I'm going to take "the introduction of a new technology did exactly what it promised to" as the null hypothesis. (Also, wow, what shitty prose. Do better, Wikipedia.)
Or read Cremieux's post about Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, "The Fruits of Philosophy". TLDR: family-planning advocates disseminate information out to the English population, fertility craters.
Romania only proves that it's hard to stop people from practicing contraception for long.
The Amish and Haredi communities are interesting and useful, but they don't contradict what I'm saying. In fact, the Amish formally prohibit contraception. People infer that some Amish communities quietly accept contraception use, based on differential fertility rates between communities where more conservative communities have higher fertility rates.
The Haredi might prove me wrong, in some sense, but they are also a world-historical outlier that are not obviously reproducible (pun intended).
At any rate, I'm not saying we shouldn't look at communities and societies that have done better. I'm just pessimistic that we can overcome the default human bias by copying them.
Rad trads ban contraception without quietly using it anyways, and have an overall TFR from our shitty internal data of 3.6. Not 7. There’s lots of different practices that can make big differences in ‘natural’ fertility rate. Female age of marriage, for one thing. Or acceptance of men spending lots of time away from home doing travel jobs; less time with their wives makes a difference at the margins.
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