A leading Italian nationalist, Roberto Fiori, supports the aim of raising fertility rates but has offered a good criticism of the government's strategy:
The president of Alliance for Peace and Freedom, Roberto Fiore, who is also the chairman of the Italian nationalist party, Forza Nuova, is not very impressed by the campaign.
-The campaign is too little too late. More than that it examines the issue at a medical level or nearly zoological level, he says to europa-terra-nostra.com.
The veteran nationalist, and father of eleven, believes that the state needs to tackle this from another angle.
— For a decent campaign we need the involvement of the state with serious and strong help to young couples and investment in children. But let’s not forget that the highest birth growth in the world is Gaza where there is no welfare, but just the will to preserve a people. So a campaign has to hit the heart of people with the idea of preservation of civilization and tradition, says Fiore.
And yet Italy's in crisis because so many young Italians are emigrating away at a great rate of knots and the majority of immigrants into Italy are Muslims.
ReplyDeleteA possible outcome of the campaign is that Italian women will have their one child a few years earlier. Actually, it isn't a bad idea to teach girls about their fertility clock as a lot don't know.
ReplyDeleteGaza receives all of its water, electricity, telecom service from Israel. The unemployment rate among young men is 50%. It is incorrect to say they do not receive welfare. If Israel cut them off we would see a painful population collapse.
But I agree the west needs to want to have babies out of love for family, culture and religion. Not pure biological necessity.
Actually, it isn't a bad idea to teach girls about their fertility clock as a lot don't know.
DeleteGood point. I remember talking to an Australian man some years ago, who was talking about dating a woman who was in her early 40s. I asked him if he didn't want children and he said he wanted a large family. I then raised the issue of the woman's age and he clearly didn't understand the biological clock at all, which surprised me. So there are men as well who are still ignorant of these matters.
Having said that, I think one of the main reasons for low fertility rates is that young women are being brought up to believe that the main component of a good life is a freedom to do your own thing, which means having money, and not being tied down in any way. It's a view of the good life which is incompatible with family commitments. The smarter women who want to do their own thing never have children, others get married and have kids and then realise what they have gotten themselves into and don't like it/feel resentments.
Family life requires people to see other things as important, e.g. wanting to reproduce (a future orientation), wanting to sustain your own culture, tradition, people, a pride in family lineage, an ideal of family as a loving community, an instinct to fulfil one's own created being as a man or woman by fulfilling the offices of father or mother and so on.
There have been several surveys showing that large numbers of people are misinformed (in the direction of being overly optimistic) about women's fertility, both consistently underestimating the degree to which fertility declines with age, and overestimating the effectiveness of fertility treatments.
DeleteHere's a couple of articles about it, along with a money quote:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/the-clock-is-ticking-female-fertility-declines-earlier-than-you-think/article4223161/
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/01/142725547/many-women-underestimate-fertility-clocks-clang
When she was nearly 41, Nail and her husband went to a fertility doctor, who laid out the stark stats for someone her age.
"They put them out on a piece of paper on the desk right in front of me and I was like, whoa. It just seemed so fashionable to have kids in your 40s, these days," she says.
...
What's the chance a 30-year-old can get pregnant in one try? Many thought up to 80 percent, while in reality it's less than 30 percent. For a 40-year-old, many assumed up to a 40 percent success rate. It's actually less than 10 percent. And when you keep trying? The survey finds many think you can get pregnant more quickly than it actually happens. It also shows many women underestimate how successful fertility treatments are. Nail has now had six unsuccessful rounds of in vitro fertilization.
Unfortunately, I have no doubt that any efforts to educate adolescent girls and early-twenties women about this would be viciously attacks as sexist, and/or, given our sexually permissive culture, would simply result in a rise in illegitimate births, as young women's realization that they have far less time than they thought to have babies would not be accompanied by any urge to get married in order to make that happen.
Dangerous territory for sure, but if there's ever an issue that will bring all the multicultists out from under their rocks to froth and rage ignobly at the idea of a healthy Italian people, this is it...
ReplyDeleteHaving children in this day and age is just too much of a risk, with nations being dismantled and with civil wars likely to happen before the children grow up.
ReplyDeleteSo, you'd surrender before the war even starts? And if the civil wars start a little later than you anticipate won't you be down a little in manpower?
DeleteI agree that anon is being too defeatist.
DeleteSeems like a mgtow type who see society as inevitably heading toward disaster whereupon women will realise men were right all along and come crawling back to them...
DeleteNo offense to anon, but this is the kind of defeatist dreck one might see in the 'manosphere'
I'm not associated with any of the "manosphere" nonsense, but I do realize that one needs to be tremendously resourceful in order to manage once the s*** starts hitting the fan. And let's face it, most people are not prepared for the coming war, so the end result will be a lot of suffering. Why would anyone want to bring children into this new reality?
DeleteAnon, the problem I see with your position is that it assumes that things can't change, i.e. that intelligent Westerners will always be caught in the trap of liberalism, so that the only possible outcome is the train wreck one. Once a break is made, things start to become possible.
DeleteI don't see how you see that as my position, because my point is exactly that things may change, I only think that it's likely to change for the worse. But that's not really the issue.
DeleteThe question here is, how do parents (or potential parents) ensure that they are able to shield their children from the gruesome reality of the war and destruction that (given our current societal developments) is likely to manifest itself? Nobody has ever given me a proper response to that question. What would be your suggestions? Because the implicit assumption here seems to be that one should just go ahead and have children, all consequences be damned, and from my point of view that's just not good enough.
My conclusion, as unfortunate as it is, is that only a select few people have the ability and the resources to shield their children from the brutal reality that may await us. For the rest, bringing children into this world is an enormous gamble, it's the children that will suffer if things go wrong (which is likely), and the only way to avoid that is to not have the children in the first place. That's sad, of course, but it is what it is.
Anon, what I would conclude is that the parents, rather than avoiding having children, should be working assiduously toward a future for their children.
DeleteIf the human race had taken 'anon's' view in just about any point in it's history it would be long extinct.
DeleteSo what specifically should parents do when "working assiduously toward a future for their children"? Why would doing this work? And how should they ensure their children's safety and well-being in the all-too likely event of a civil war? In this day and age, good intentions alone are not enough, yet that's pretty much all you're proposing.
DeletePeople need to believe that their society has a future. If they don't believe that they're not going to have kids. A degree of optimism is required. If the Italian government wants Italians to have children they need to convince the Italian people that their government is going to secure that future for them.
ReplyDeleteGaza is not an argument against this - no matter how bad things might seem there the people in Gaza believe in the future because they have religion. Religious people believe in the future.
Part of the equation is whether people still think of themselves as part of an enduring tradition that stretches from the past into the future. Once people lose this, and instead see themselves as an atomised individual living for their own purposes alone, then the commitment to family and children is likely to be much weaker. Religion does help too as it gives a transcendent meaning to the institutions we love and feel attached to, such as nation and family, as well as a transcendent purpose to completing our offices/duties in life.
DeletePart of the equation is whether people still think of themselves as part of an enduring tradition that stretches from the past into the future.
DeleteThat's a good point. It's difficult to have a sense of the future if you have no sense of the past. It certainly makes it difficult to care about the future.
"Religious people believe in the future."
ReplyDeleteIn general, I think that is correct. But there are also some contrary signs. The case of Iran is maybe one of them. Now, I am not at all well read on the subject, but Iran is a theocracy and as religious as it gets. Still, they have had what may be the fastest and most dramatic decline in fertility ever.
"Births in Iran dropped to 1.6 children per woman in 2012 from 6.4 three decades earlier, UN data shows."
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1447267/irans-plunging-birth-rate-causes-serious-concerns-economic-future
As far as I can see, the main driver for falling fertility rates is access to higher education for women. This is of course not a popular observation but from what I have read on the topic, it seem the most likely.
I have seen some other material that makes this link in the case of Iran and the number of university students have exploded there:
"After the Iran–Iraq War, some new universities were founded and doctoral programs were developed in the previous universities. The number of university students is now more than six times as many as in 1979 (when Shah was overthrown)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_Iran
Now, I could be wrong, but it is hard to see that providing higher education for women can lead to anything but fewer kids or wasted investment in education, or some mix thereof.
If you study until you are 25, you more or less have to start working for the whole thing not to have been a waste. Then you need 3-5 years just to get established in the labor market. Then a woman has already wasted her prime fertility years! If you start having kids after 30, it will be hard to have more than 2 and many women will end up with one or zero.
Interesting, thanks. I can add something to this. In Germany, it used to be the case that those who went to an academic high school (Gymnasium) were there until Year 13 and that university courses went much longer than they do here in Australia (3 years here, I believe 5 or more in Germany). Since then a year has been cut from the high school course. Even so, it helps to explain Germany's dramatically low birth rate. A significant number of German women would still have been at uni after the age of 25, which, as you point out, means then working for a period of time to actually use their qualifications, which means family gets delayed until at least their 30s - which then tends to lock in small families.
DeleteIt might also be the case that such a long investment in the pursuit of education and career might lead some women to put more of their sense of identity, status and life meaning into career, for which children would be seen as a potential hindrance, rather than as a fulfilment.
I'm just brainstorming here, but maybe women could be encouraged to do a short generalist course at university (2-3 years), then have their families, and then if they are still keen for a professional career, go back to do a diploma. A woman even at age 38 could do a two year diploma course and still have 25 years of employment.
EuroSwede you are mostly right about Iran. Remember also that there are lots of mothers who did not get the opportunity to study the way their daughters do now (eg married at 16) and they may overcompensate by pushing them into STEM masters and pHD programs. Of course there is a class factor at play here, but the sentiment is one of education providing for life and for liberation from traditions they see as unfair.
DeleteI've been to Iran, and it is more 'liberal' than some may imagine; although in the countryside where people are hopelessly poor things are quite different. Even so, the attitudes to male responsibility remain relatively unchanged, a crucial flaw of women's lib generally. A wife may be a opthamologist with her own surgery, but the husband is still expected to pay for absolutely everything from his own wages (true story btw, and they only had one child).Further, the idea that an iranian wife cannot divorce her muslim husband is bogus; there are a variety of reasons they can divorce that might surprise westerns.
As far as I can see, the main driver for falling fertility rates is access to higher education for women.
DeleteTo be honest there's way too much higher education for both men and women. Most countries could close down three-quarters of their universities without any ill effects. In fact it would be all benefit.