by James Wallace Harris, 4/29/25
I suppose because humans have always reproduced like bunnies, we’ve always ignored an essential aspect of sexual reproduction and gender. Statistically, we need every female to have more than two children. Because some women can’t have children, and because some girls die before reaching reproductive age, to keep the population steady during current conditions requires 2,100 babies to be born to every 1,000 women. That number varies depending on the state of medicine and the number of catastrophes.
In 2024, 1,626 babies were born to every 1,000 women in the United States. That’s not enough. If we continued at that rate, we’d eventually become extinct. In many other countries, that number is much smaller than 1,626.
Why aren’t these statistics common knowledge? Why didn’t we learn them when our parents (or peers) taught us about sex? It’s a heavy responsibility to know that we should all have children. My wife and I didn’t have children. Most of my friends didn’t have children. Why did we all start doing our own thing and forget this essential aspect of life?
It’s unfair that the burden of maintaining the species falls on women. To maintain the current population, every woman needs to have two children, and one in ten needs to have three. That’s assuming all women can have children. The practical need is for all women to have three children. Few women want that today.
Males don’t escape responsibility either. The species could get by with fewer males for making babies, but we need males to support the raising of children. I suppose a feminist utopia could get by with an exceedingly small number of males, or even none if women perfected cloning, but the statistics of maintaining the species are the same even if males weren’t needed.
However, we have evolved into a society/culture that doesn’t want enough children. What does that mean? Should we make people have more babies?
I wrote about this yesterday. However, the impact of these numbers didn’t hit me until 3:11 am last night.
For humanity to survive, we must deal with climate change, environmental sustainability, capitalism, inequality in all forms, artificial intelligence, and reproductive stability.
Theoretically, we could solve all these problems, but I doubt we will. The obvious solution is that civilization will collapse, and we’ll fall back into previous kinds of social organizations. It’s a fascinating challenge to imagine a society that can solve all these problems. However, can you imagine any future where all fertile women must have three children, and all men must become dedicated fathers? I can’t.
The human race needs to act radically differently. Is that possible?
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
Sixty years ago one of our big fears was that Earth would become overpopulated, and we wouldn’t be able to produce enough food to keep everyone alive. This was grist for many fun science fiction novels like Robert Silverberg’s To Open the Sky.
But as it turns out, there are powerful forces–some sociological, some chemical, some related to laws of physics– to prevent overpopulation. Humanity and many species of animals have built-in safeguards to ‘right size’ our numbers for current environmental factors and our level of food production technology. The global dip in birthrate right now is likely just a temporary response to external stimuli we may not even recognize.
I recommend Geoffrey West’s book Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies to learn more.
Thanks. Sounds interesting.
Perhaps the only thing that will save human civilization is population decline, until we’re at a small enough number we aren’t completely ravaging the planet anymore. Correcting that decline once necessary is trivial.
I believe that might happen.
What’s worse than not having children, is having children that you’re not capable of adequately raising to adulthood. I always believed that I would suck as a parent, so I resolved early on in life not to subject any potential children to that fate.
I was always afraid of having children. I was never sure I could handle the stress or obligation. My wife never wanted children.
There are too many people on the planet and we need our populations to radically decrease.
That’s what I believe too. But once we get to a environmentally sustainable population the same numbers will apply on maintaining that population.
Why? Our species doesn’t have to exist for ever. What’s the problem with human extinction? Why should people care about whether anyone follows them?
That’s true. But I do believe existence will go on without us. I like to contemplate post-humanity reality. It’s fun to think what the robots might do. Or imagine millions of years of just animals coming and going. And maybe another intelligent species or something different than our kind of intelligence.
That’s why LAST AND FIRST MEN are a favorite.
Off topic..but I know you like SciFi and this post is quite illuminating in a couple of ways
https://open.substack.com/pub/exoprophet/p/we-chose-this-ending?r=n6jt&utm_medium=ios
Thanks