The Evolutionary Psychology of What Women Want - updated

20230125

This is a significant revision of an article originally posted on January 4, 2023.  I updated it in the process of making a video.  Most writers face a trade-off between meeting a deadline and making it complete.  Since I am not being paid, I can afford to tinker with things.  Here is a link to that video. The headings in this article more or less correspond to the PowerPoint on the slides in the video.

The question of what women want is key to the survival of society. Women in developed countries increasingly don’t want children. Without children we are dying out.

The question of what women want has vexed men for millennia. One constant has been change – they change their minds both individually and collectively. The way that they decide what they want has been shaped by evolution.

In Western society since the agricultural revolution, women have generally gotten what they want from men.  If men want something they have to come up with a way to earn the money to buy it.   That's a totally different proposition from persuading a man to buy it.  Women evolved, both culturally and biologically, since the rise of patriarchy at the dawn of agriculture, to get what they wanted from men.  For a woman, whom they chose to marry was the biggest factor in their worldly success. 

The situation started changing with the Industrial Revolution.  It celebrated individual accomplishments, individual rights and personal freedom at the expense of society.  It accelerated to the point that with feminism women have convinced themselves that they really don’t want men.

Without men there is no traditional family in which to raise children to pass on a culture. The question of what women want is crucial to our survival as a species.

The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution were products of the genius of European men.  It created an atmosphere in which the individual flourished, even at the expense of society as a whole.  Women, in seeking individual success, abandoned their traditional role of supporting the success of society by raising children to perpetuate it. 

Succinctly put, we white men created the problem that appears likely to doom us.  It should be up to us to see our way out of it.  We need to come to an arrangement whereby our women once again want to bear and raise our children.  This is an analysis of the of how what women want has evolved to our detriment, and how it might evolve back to support the continuation of our culture and civilization.   

We Differ by Evolution

Men and women are equally products of evolution. We evolved to fill different roles. As a result, as in just about every species in existence, there are measurable differences between the two human sexes:

·       Measurable differences in average height, weight, body fat, body proportions, hair, coloration and other physical properties.

·       Measurable differences in average age of sexual maturity, loss of reproductive capability, and death.

·       Measurable differences in the average and standard deviation of the intelligence distribution. Succinctly put, within most populations of people men have a slightly higher average intelligence and a wider distribution of intelligence. More geniuses, more dunces.  Among Europeans and East Asians, at the higher reaches of intelligence (viz, 145) there are maybe four times as many men as women.

·       (though the link is to but a single source, that source is an entire book on the subject by Richard Lynn, the most eminent living intelligence researcher, in which he cites just about every work in the field, including a great number who disagree with his thesis.  This Excel formula applies his figures to compute the ratio at the level of 145: =(1-NORMDIST(145,104,14.9,TRUE))/(1-NORMDIST(145,100,14.1,TRUE))

·       Differences between the sexes in the skills at which people excel.  Men are at their best with mathematical and spatial reasoning, women with verbalization.

·       Statistically significant differences in behavior within a human population at a given point in time. Men are more inclined to take risks, commit criminal acts, engage in fights, work as carpenters, join the military and start companies. Women are more inclined to work in childcare and nursing, sing in church choirs, work in fashion and so on. While it is true that the difference in averages between races and between points in time may at times exceed the difference between the sexes, the direction of observed differences is quite consistent across populations.

·       Different mating behavior between the sexes. As in almost every species, the human male displays his qualities, but the ultimate choice is up to the female. The risks involved in a sexual encounter are vastly different between the sexes. The male may risk a little money and catching a social disease. The female risks being saddled with many years of rearing a child to be raised without the support of a man.

Evolution is the process by which a species adapts to its environment. Since the total environments of men and women (social and physical) have always been different, it is absolutely to be expected that they would evolve to exhibit the differences discussed above. Men evolved to be the warriors, hunters, builders, tool makers and so on. Women evolved to bear and raise children, cook, clean, garden and cement the social ties that held the community together. However much contemporary people may insist that they do not want to conform to these stereotypes, they are nonetheless the activities we are evolved to perform.

The notion that men and women are identical, equal and interchangeable is a dogma without grounding in observable fact. It is true that on any particular measure, height for instance, a certain percentage of women will exceed the average of men, and a certain percentage of men will be below the average for women. Nonetheless the generalizations about differences hold.

This is equally true in behavior. Whereas some of the most successful investors, such as Hetty Greene, “The Witch of Wall Street,” consistently outperformed their male competitors, the overwhelming majority of successful investors have been men.  Likewise, mathematicians, physicists and entrepreneurs.  There are no female equivalents to Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates or Andy Grove.

The lists that circulate of sinister billionaires (Schwab, Gates, Soros) who secretly control the world almost never include women. Should women feel slighted by this omission? (See Roy Baumeister’s Is There Anything Good About Men for an expansion on these themes)

Feminine logic. How women argue for what they want.

Women have evolved to be adept at arguing with men to get what they want. They have superior verbal ability (quickness, vocabulary) and the persistence that comes with historically having had only one ready source for what they wanted.

Men, dealing in the affairs of men, are more inclined to base their arguments on logic. They of course want their arguments to prevail, but they also need to look out for the interests of the tribe, and be perceived as doing so. Women use whatever works – ethos and pathos as well as logos – and the target of their argument is usually just one man.  A guy has a greater need to at least appear to be logical.

Public life provides examples. Greta Thunberg used emotional arguments to sway the argument on global warming. Angela Merkel’s decision to allow a million Middle Eastern migrants into Germany was emotional.  The argument that they would find useful employment, not rob and rape the natives, and become normal Germans was also emotional.  It was certainly not based on historical experience.  Of which, by the way, the Germans had half a century’s worth with the Turks. Jacinda Ardern’s draconian and highly damaging Covid measures in New Zealand were based on fear rather than a rational appraisal of the threat.

Women’s arguments on both sides of the abortion issue are emotional.  Arguments for paying for food and housing for illegal immigrants (also for not hurting their feelings by calling them what they are), and for not stopping bums from pooping on the sidewalks, are emotional.  This is not to say that men don’t also make arguments based on emotion – we do – but not as often, and when we do it is often to appeal to women.

A man will try to use a logical argument to arrive at an optimal solution to a problem. He will try to state the problem to be solved, and the constraints surrounding it, in objective terms.

A characteristic of arguments with women is that the theme constantly changes. Non sequitur follows non sequitur.  It is like playing a whack-a-mole. Establishing the logic of the situation is not the point. Rather, it is to get the man to give in, to do things her way.  Women are more like trial lawyers than logicians.  A guy can counter by asking them to write their arguments down, to make the logic clear.  Usually, they will not. 

Standardized tests, as cited by Richard Lynn in the link above, show that men are superior at mathematical logic. Consistent with that observation, men have been the ones in a position to apply such logic to manage their budgetary affairs. This is of course not absolute – there are many families in which women are the better money managers.

The traditional paradigm for managing a household budget has been that the husband earned the money and gave his wife a portion of it to manage the household. The rest he would keep under his control for investments, home improvements, drinking or philandering. The wife had some control over the expenditure but not the income side of the ledger. She could be a hard bargainer at the market in order to stretch the allowance as far as possible, but she didn’t as often make strategic decisions. She would be the one to decide when the child needs new clothes, and how much to spend. She would decide whether the family can afford packaged cornflakes or should get by with cooked cereal.  He decided on the car.

A man will more often decide based on absolute price: “We can afford about a $900 refrigerator next year.”  A woman will argue “It’s on sale, and the salesman is Kathy’s husband.” 

A bit of evolutionary history.

Monkeys

Most people now agree with Darwin that we are descended from monkeys.  The physical resemblance is clear.  Monkeys are social tree-dwellers.  Males and females alike forage for their own food. Females of course bear, nurture and socialize the young. The males protect the troop with their fierce canine teeth.  They are generally promiscuous, mating as they please.  Lady monkeys have been known to trade sex for food.

Chimps

Chimpanzees evolved to be large enough that they had to swing beneath branches instead of running on top of them, and to spend more time on the ground.  They evolved an appetite for meat, when the guys could catch something, though they remained primarily vegetarian.  Chimpanzees shocked primatologists when it was discovered that the males of one troop would gang up and kill males of a neighboring troop, taking over their females.

Lucy

The hominid line remained in Africa long after it split from chimpanzees seven million years ago. The most complete early fossil, dating halfway back to our split from the chimps,  is Lucy, discovered by the Leakey’s in the Great Rift Valley. 

Lucy’s Mate

From the fossil evidence we conclude that early on we learned to walk upright, use makeshift tools, throw things, and grasp things with our opposable thumbs.  We assume that the males used stick and rocks to hunt animals.  Both sexes certainly scrounged as well for edible tubers, fruits, insects just like today’s bushmen in the Kalahari.

The hemispheres of our brains evolved to follow the right/left specialization of our hands.  We developed shared attention – the ability to have two people focus on the same object at one time with the intent of doing something or sharing knowledge about it.

Fire and Chipped Stone

A couple of million years ago those hands started to chip primitive tools from stone. About the same time, we tamed fire. New species of hominids continued to evolve.  Some such as the Neanderthals and the Denisovans migrated into Eurasia. As their culture became more complex there was an increasing need to pass acquired knowledge down to children by showing them how to chip stones, make fires, make dwellings and the like.

Speech

One hundred and fifty thousand years ago, that is, only 2% of the time since we parted company with the chimpanzees, Homo sapiens evolved speech. Now we were able to communicate verbally about our objects of shared attention.

Mothers were able to ask others in the tribe, sisters, older children and their own mothers,  for help with the children. With the help of others, women were able to bear children every two years instead of the six years’ spacing characteristic of ape mothers. Homo sapiens’ numbers grew. In this was presumably also the time at which the battle between the sexes moved to an oral battleground. Women were able to verbalize what they wanted. (See Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s books Mother Nature and Mothers and Others)

The Frozen North

Our numbers grew. Homo sapiens expanded north out of Africa perhaps 70,000 years ago. We pushed the other species of Eurasian ape men into extinction. About 15,000 years ago we spread from Siberia to Alaska and populated the Western hemisphere. Simultaneously we initiated the new Stone Age, with a much broader stick, stone and bone toolset. We put handles on our axes, stone tips on our spears and arrows, invented bows and harpoons, started to make pottery, invented needles to make clothing and so on.

Our Tribe vs. Enemies

Tribes had been so closely related that relaxed sexual practices of typical of those of today’s tribal Africans, Indians and Eskimos didn’t matter. Our ancestors swapped partners with abandon. Any kid born was welcome to the tribe. Benjamin Franklin ruefully noted that Colonial women abducted by Indians liked the freedom.  When freed from captivity, they were often reluctant to return.

Agriculture

We discovered that it was useful to drop the seeds of fruit trees and edible grasses along the way as we wandered. About 10,000 years ago we had advanced to the point where we could stay put and grow what we needed to eat. We started to settle in villages. This was the dawn of agriculture. We simultaneously learned to herd animals.

Stuff, Fidelity and Patriarchy

With agriculture, paternity became an issue – a man wanted to leave something to his kids, and he wanted to be sure that they were his. There was a significant change in the relationship between men and women. People now came in contact with enough strangers that they became accustomed to dealing with them. Men were no longer interchangeable; not all men around were genetically similar. Society became wealthy enough that there was something to inherit when a man died.

Women were now obliged to stick with one partner. That partner was the biggest choice they made in life – his ability to provide determined her status and her well-being. Whereas tribal women can feed themselves by scratching the ground and growing yams, manioc and taro, women in agricultural communities in colder climes depended on their men for food and protection. It was of course reciprocal. Women played essential roles in growing, preparing, and cooking food, making clothes, tending the children and so on.

The emergence of the patriarchy – a man’s control over his partner’s sexuality and sustenance – meant that women had to persuade men in order to get what they wanted. As every man knows, they have evolved to be quite adept at this. 

Women’s Status

A woman’s status was established primarily by her mate.  If he was of high standing so was she.  Having many children, and successful children, added to her status.  Women as always played a social role, socializing with one another to hold the tribe together.

Social Wants

What women wanted was mostly social.  Society was not rich in material goods.  She wanted a nice house – for her family, and for entertaining.  She wanted warm clothes.  She wanted nice furnishings, table service and such to entertain.  And of course she wanted to present herself as nicely as possible – clothes, jewelry and the like.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution entertainment was usually made by acquaintances. The ability to act out skits, sing or play music was socially esteemed.

Evolution of sexual desire

Human reproduction is a function of culture as well as hormones. Over the 70,000 years since we left Africa, the level of sex hormones and indeed the prominence of human sex organs diminished markedly in Northeast Asian populations and somewhat in European populations.

In the words of Philippe Rushton, who adopted the term from animal biology, Northeast Asians became K (carrying capacity) rather than r (reproductive effort) selected. (See Rushton’s Race, Evolution and Behavior)  They evolved to put less effort into the reproductive act itself and more into raising children.  They are highly intelligent and of even temperament, cooperative in building society rather than competing for women. 

Asian culture evolved to compensate for their diminished appetite for sex.  Forming families and producing children was a cultural expectation.  Whether or not they were strongly inclined, men and women were obliged to honor their parents and support their culture by doing what it took to have children.

The European genotype is midway between African and Asian.  Our sex drive, sex hormones and sex organs likewise.  Indo-European and Christian culture emphasized the importance of having children, but provided institutions such as monasteries for those who didn’t feel like it.

Indo-European marriage equality

Women had more freedom, more status in Indo-European family life than agricultural societies elsewhere in the world. Life on the northern margins of Europe was difficult, and societies could only succeed by eliciting a maximum contribution from women. ( See Kevin MacDonald Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition and my video review of Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization.) The societies could not support harems. The rule was one man, one woman. Marriage partners were chosen carefully, selecting for qualities that would endure for a lifetime. Although they had the benefit of advice from their own families in the community, the choice was ultimately the woman’s own.

The goal of marriage remained the same as elsewhere in the world. It was to raise the next generation, to strengthen the family and the society. An intelligent wife and good mother added to a man’s status, as of course a successful husband added to hers.

This monogamous system of marriage strengthened the society. It allowed most men to have a wife, ensuring that they had a stake in its future. Having a wife, and only one, reduced sexual conflicts between men. The Vikings could be fierce warriors, knowing that they did not have to worry about their wives’ fidelity while they were away making war, and knowing as well that the tribe would look after their widows should they happen to die in the process.

Roman historian Tacitus wrote that Germanic women had a strong incentive to be faithful wives and good mothers.  They were not mere property, but full partners in marriage.  The family was an organic unit, formed within a society with the goal of perpetuating that society rather than fulfilling the personal desires of the individual participants.

Religion - Christianity

Although nothing in the Bible mandates monogamy, Christianity strongly supported it. The religion prospered among the common people, who even prior to its spread in the Roman empire were generally monogamous.  Few could afford multiple wives in any case. Many passages in both the old and New Testament of the Bible are written with the assumption that a man would have one and only one wife. Jesus frowned on divorce.

As among the Indo-Europeans, Christian societies assumed that marriage was a lasting partnership in which the wife’s contribution was far greater than simply bearing and raising children. The goal of marriage was to raise children to serve God. In practical terms that meant serving the society in which they were born, and in turn marrying and bearing their own children.

There were few places in traditional society for an unmarried woman.  In Christian society there were nunneries, brothels and households headed by a male relative or an employer. A widow living alone on an inherited estate was a vulnerable exception to the rule.

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment encouraged individual thinking. The idea of a personal God watching every movement gave way to the notion of a distant divine creator to set things in motion and was content to watch them unravel as they would.

The implication for women was that they should no longer be bound by traditional social roles. God the Creator has endowed them with brains. They should not be ashamed to use them, and to determine for themselves what God, if there was one, wanted for them. They began to question the social expectation that they merely marry and raise families. Women were prominent in the Royal courts of Europe, most notably the mistresses of the French Kings. The opinions of women such as Abigail Adams and Dolly Madison, wives of the second and fourth presidents of the United States, carried a lot of sway.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution made society significantly richer – there were factory produced goods to be bought. The middle class could afford fashion – buying clothes just because they were new, not because the old ones had worn out. Women went to work. There were policemen on the corners, and safe transportation in the form of horse-drawn trams and later tramways.

Working for a salary became a standard procedure, and weekends off and vacations standard expectations. People could travel safely via train and steamship.

There was a significant migration from the countryside to the cities, in which the notion of

clans and families dissolved. Nations became less homogeneous as people migrated from poorer to newly industrial countries. There is no impetus to have children to sustain “our people.” Having children brings little status.

There is not much call for masculine traits such as physical strength, endurance and bravery. Feminine characteristics such as the ability to read other people and to get along and to ingratiate oneself with the powerful serve women well in the workplace. Working women don’t need men to survive. More than that, many are convinced they don’t need men to raise a family. Many don’t want families, and women often decide they can dispose of whatever man they have and go it alone.  Women are now in a position in which they can and often have to satisfy their own wants.

The evolutionary Platform

But this newfound freedom from obligation has been laid upon an evolutionary platform in which the choices were limited by the other party – the man. Women are not well prepared to assess their own needs.

·       They forget the wisdom that grandmothers would have told them in a prior age – that their sexual attractiveness is a fleeting gift to be used to advantage when they are young.

·       They allow their feelings, their compassion for the underdog, to overrule logic. They fall in love with heels and bums whom they think they can save.  They allow unskilled immigrants into their countries, homeless people on the sidewalks, and criminals to escape incarceration.

·       They rely on government promises of health care and old age pensions. They mistakenly believe that government has their interests at heart.

Women are easily swayed by politicians and others claiming to advocate for their interests.  For example, even though abortion is an emotionally and sometimes physically painful experience, modern women emphatically support them.  Even women whose temperament makes them best suited to homemaking and motherhood demand the right to work.

Being easily swayed, and having evolved less libidinal drive, women easily decide that they don’t need men.  Without men, they don’t have family. Without family, they have no concerns beyond themselves and whatever dogmas they have been persuaded to accept.   The pollsters’ acronym SWF no longer means white, but rather single woke female.

19th century Temptations

Travel for pleasure came into being in the 19th century. The workplace had changed – people had salaried jobs with a prescribed amount of time. Trains and steamships made travel faster, cheaper and safer.  Taking a vacation, an idea which had barely existed below the level of the aristocracy, became a middle-class reality.

20th century Temptations

The 20th century brought more of the same. In the realm of entertainment there were movies, electrically lit dance halls, nightclubs and all sorts of entertainments. Fashion blossomed with Coco Chanel. Advertising bloomed in the 1920s. It especially targeted women. The “freedom torch” cigarette ad campaign by the father of advertising, Alfred Bernays, targeted women. It was a forerunner of the Virginia slims ”You’ve come a long way, baby”.

Advertisers promoted solutions to all sorts of theretofore unrecognized needs. In the household there was “ring around the collar” for clothes. In personal hygiene there was halitosis, body odor and deodorants. The most infamous of these was feminine deodorant spray to deodorize woman's private parts. Women were encouraged to want things the need for which they had not been aware. Huge modern industries such as vitamins, beauty aids and cosmetics would scarcely exist without advertising.

Entertainment Messages

People in the 20th century were very influenced by what they saw in movies, heard in music and watched on TV.  These four popular TV shows normalized previous taboos:  homosexuality, unwed motherhood, the singles lifestyle, and female sexual assertiveness.

Social Media Messages

The 21st century has brought social media. Women see what others are doing and they want the same. They all seem to get on board when there is a vacation destination, apparel, diet, vitamin or microbe fad. Many innocent men were destroyed, and many women’s marriages, by the “Me too,” date rape and recovered memory fads.  Psychologists report that Generation Z women, who have been bathed in social media all their lives, are profoundly unhappy.  They want the material things, the beauty and talent they see the women on social media possess.

Social to Personal – Women want tangibles

In the two centuries since the Industrial Revolution what women want has shifted from the social to the personal. The 19th century brought the phonograph, player piano and movies. Restaurants became more widespread. There was money to support a fashion industry.  Doing things – making music, cooking, sewing clothes – gave way to consumption.  Riding on public transportation, every eye seems to be glued to social media, movies and games on handheld devices.  Imagination has been totally outsourced.

As noted above, our reproduction has been driven by culture as much as hormonal urges.  The culture changed.  The influence of Christianity has decreased, recently and rapidly.  The 1950s and 1960s saw a surge in emphasis on the pleasures of sex for its own sake – the sexual revolution. 

Said revolution has petered out.  After a decade or two of attempting to manage their sex lives in the same way that men did, women reverted to more conservative behavior.  They started to find men’s forward nature off-putting, blaming them for unwanted advances, stalking, date rape, off-color remarks and whatever else women didn’t want (See No Campus for White Men, Sexual Utopia in Power).  Murphy Brown had a twenty-year run; Sex in the City just six.

Men are Superfluous.

Women no longer feel they owe anything to society.  They feel no compulsion to have children.  They increasingly find they can get along just fine without men, especially if they have a good job or an adequate dole from the state.

Significant fractions of young Northeast Asian adults, men and especially women, want nothing to do with sex.  Large numbers remain virgin. American and European whites are also having less sex.  The predictable result is fewer children.

The effects are far from random.  Individual people’s inclination to have children is quite variable.  Moreover, it is heritable.  People from large families tend to beget large families.  The people of this generation who are disinclined to have kids will die out.  Those who want kids will sire children who also want kids (See Edward Dutton’s The Past is a Future Country, p341).

Changes brought about by Covid vaccinations

Covid brought a remarkably successful campaign to jab the whole world with injectable biological products called vaccines, a large fraction of them employing the entirely new, experimental mRNA technology.  It has killed a substantial number of people and has ravaged the immune systems of many more, subjecting them to a variety of communicable and non-communicable diseases such as cancer, autoimmune, prion, dementia and others that will shorten lives. 

More than that, it has impacted both male and female fertility.  Births in heavily vaccinated countries dropped by an average of about 10%.  Moreover, the children being born show an elevated tendency to die.  The milk of vaccinated mothers is thought to be partially to blame, as are genetic and other disorders resulting from the mother’s vaccination. 

The effects of the vaccine appear to be largely irreversible.  The prognosis is for an increasing rate of depopulation as people are simply unable to have children.

It is human nature to want what you can’t have.  It seems likely that as people become increasingly aware that they cannot have children, they will want them.

Changing what women want

How can we return to a situation in which women again want children? How do we return to the path of evolutionary sustainability?  For that to happen, women must again want to have families.  They have to find some sort of benefit in them.  That benefit could be:

1)    Necessity – Women once again need men for support and protection

2)    Security – Children are once again needed to provide support in old age

3)    Changes in work opportunities and attractions

4)    Lack of alternative uses for time and money

5)    Social benefits – having a family may once again bring some level of prestige

6)    Government benefits - policy, propaganda and incentives could favor families

Hollow Promises

The developed world is devolving into chaos. As I write this sentence the Arab merchants of Buffalo, New York are shooting marauding black looters. The quality of life in big cities in the United States is deteriorating. They are no longer safe for women.

So far, both sexes’ reaction seems to have been to avoid the extra burden of having children. As ineffective as the police are, few women see having a man around as a greater protection. They have been convinced that guns are dangerous. Rather than defending themselves, women move someplace safer or don’t go out as much.  When total chaos descends, women may once again appreciate having men around.

Government promises with regard to healthcare are threadbare, especially as the ramifications of the Covid vaccines become clearer. There will once again be nobody besides family to take care of a person.

Security – Children are once again needed to provide support in old age

The demographic pyramid is vastly top-heavy, with far too few working people to support retirees. Government pension promises simply cannot be fulfilled. The obligations, and hence the benefits themselves, must be inflated away to nothing. Gen X and Millennials are out of luck if they have not had kids. Generation Z might figure it out that in time – but they face a huge handicap in not having been socialized for the give-and-take of marriage.

Children will enjoy better opportunities in a world in which there are many fewer of them. Fertility rates, which had been falling for decades, plunged another 10% in most developed countries as an aftermath of Covid. Not only have isolation, job loss and fear dampened the desire to have children, the Covid vaccines appear to irreversibly cripple both male and female fertility.

Employment changes

Employers have recently favored women for a number of reasons. It has been both fashionable and mandated by government. Most jobs don’t demand the slight male advantages in brainpower and women are more docile – easier to manage.

Employers hire men for attributes such as physical strength, tolerance of unpleasant working conditions, endurance, and lower susceptibility to headaches and other minor discomforts that would make them miss work. If and when society returns to basics, and manufacturing, distribution and such again enjoy dominance over dot com businesses, it may again become desirable to employ men. They may in turn once again be able to support families.

Conversely, there may be fewer opportunities for women.  The demand for teachers is shrinking.  A less rich society may no longer feel it can afford the luxury of the extensive class in the caring professions – counsellors, psychiatrists, diversity specialists and the like.

The job classifications in which men have always excelled, such as engineering, may come into increased demand as there is less money for frivolous pursuits.

Lack of spending alternatives

Many of the other things that women have been schooled to want are no longer available or desirable. Cruise ship vacations will probably never recover after Covid– they invite disease. Airplane travel is uncomfortable, complicated by Covid tests, masks, vaccination requirements and such, and more expensive. Restaurants and night spots demand masks and other annoying appurtenances.

Cars are no longer as much fun, and not as necessary with Uber and Lyft.  Fashion no longer appeals to woman the way that it did a couple of decades back – women are quite content with practical clothing.

When all is said and done, there are fewer alternative uses for income. Spending money on children may not be such a sacrifice.

Social – having a family once again brings some level of prestige

“Just a housewife” has been a pejorative for half a century.  It is a rare woman who will openly state that the most important thing she can do in life is raise successful children.  Yet, considering what else the average woman accomplishes, one would have to say it is.

Women are highly social animals. For decades they have been hearing the message that the world is overpopulated. They absorbed it. They have been made to feel guilty about global warming. When the world is in the throes of real crises like the upcoming financial collapse and the depopulation, the messages women receive are likely to change.

Women are highly attuned to what other women do. When a single professional woman on TV, Murphy Brown, has a child without being married, others emulate her.  When Angelina Jolie or Mia Farrow makes a transracial adoption, others follow.  The same with lesbian affairs or going transgender.  The time may come when Hollywood trendsetters celebrate a Christian marriage and raise natural kids in holy wedlock.  Who knows?

Government policy, propaganda and incentives

On the positive side, governments currently provide weak tax incentives for having children.  These might be increased, if it becomes clear that taxpayers and soldiers are becoming scarce.

On the minus side, misguided social policy has produced powerful disincentives to having kids.  Schools are bad, neighborhoods iffy and home prices are high.  Much of this is the result of overreaching efforts to eliminate racial disparities such as school busing, low income housing and rent subsidies.  Zoning ordinances often outlaw arrangements that would otherwise make sense, such as unrelated people sharing a house, or people living in a camper parked in the driveway.

In a general economic collapse, when government no longer has the money or the will, it may simply overlook such small things.  When women are no longer preoccupied with inflated crises du jour and focused on more immediate concerns, they may again let local officials take common sense measures to keep bums from shoplifting, sleeping and pooping on sidewalks.

Conclusion

Evolution made society rich enough that it felt it could occupy itself with individual rights at the expense of the health of the overall society. The rights of women have been a paramount concern for the past 50 years. It led to the mistaken view that women and men are equal.   Their contributions to society should be like in kind, and minimal enough not to interfere with their individual pleasures.

This point of view depreciated woman’s essential role as a wife, mother and center of the community. Advertising and the popular culture addressed a woman’s personal needs and desires, ignoring the fact that the society to which she belongs also has needs.

The future of humanity is intimately related to the simple question of what women want. If they don’t want children, we will die out. This is equally true for subsets of humanity, such as the white race. Whether or not white people are allowed to express pride in themselves the same as every other race, and whether they enjoy an equal level of rights as other peoples, is moot if we are not raising children.

If we are to survive, we have to address the question of what women want. More than that, we have to encourage them to answer “Children.”