Is birth control ultimately self-defeating?

[Learjeff]

@Spatial_Rift_47

@Lumpy

(2). The desire to have children is at least partially biologically based; that is, the decision to have a baby is in part determined by genetically inherited personality factors, and is not purely a psychological or cultural phenomenon.

is flat out wrong. The only relevant biological factor is a hardwired endorphin release attached to sex. That’s it. Every other desire that people experience associated with sex and babies and parenthood is cultural. There is no “biological desire to have children,” and as such a woman could take all the birth control pills she wanted, or none, and her child’s desire to have children would not be affected one whit.

Your argument proves his point.

Without birth control, procreation is driven by the extremely strong desire for sex. With birth control, that is no longer the principal reason.

The fact that the sex drive is SO strong is a clue about how important it is for “fitness”. However, with easy access to birth control, sex drive becomes far less important, and the drive to have children emerges as much more important (that is, to the extent that most births are planned – which would be the case if birth control were perfect.)

I think the OP has an excellent point, and haven’t seen a compelling argument against it. The drive to have children may well increase in the population, thanks to birth control.

Of course, that assumes that the drive to have children has a genetic component. No doubt there is a huge social component as well. But if there is a mutation that makes it easy for one to ignore the social pressures … I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

The arguments about birth control existing for ages is weak, because it hasn’t been terribly effective until The Pill. AIDS and the concomitant increase in use of condoms might be another watershed in the practice of birth control.

@Trinopus

There is no evidence that behavior, at the level he describes, is genetic. There is, meanwhile, tons of evidence that it is societal.

Cite?

I suspect that there are and can be genetic factors that affect the tendency to want children. But, I’m a bit of a sociobiologist: I believe that evolutionary pressures can affect complex behaviors and proclivities (though not as specifically as many sociobiologists seem to think.)

There are definitely some mistakes in the OP, but if we look for the germ of truth, I think it’s clear.

So, to rephrase it: “Universal access to effective birth control is likely to produce a greater desire for offspring in the population.”

I haven’t done the math, but I suspect this would be true regardless of whether the population is growth-limited by resources (i.e., “Malthusian”).

BTW, there are other reasons Malthus has been wrong – so far. The main one is technology. His argument was that land cultivation was growing polynomially, whereas population was growing exponentially. Even if cultivation were growing polynomially, yield was increasing (or, started increasing just about that time) exponentially, thanks to technology. Technology has avoided every limit to growth, so far. We’ll have to see about that carbon footprint stuff. Fingers crossed!

[Learjeff]

Another thought – since sex is no longer the prime motivator for procreation, maybe sex drive in humans will diminish as well. Not because it’ll be selected out, but perhaps there won’t be as strong a selection pressure for it to remain, and it will be allowed to degrade.

[Lumpy]

Rereading this thread, I get a better understanding of the objections to the premise of the OP (and Brin’s version). If I understand correctly, the objection is that the desire to have children is so dependent on complex environmental factors that it’s essentially random, and thus there’s simply no way for selection to act on it, short of a fundamental change in human neurology.

This might be the case; I doubt anyone can say with any certainty. But I did want to rebut the objections based on purely biological selection. Perhaps the desire for childbirth and motherhood is entirely culturally based. If some cultures develop a meme for childbearing that resists alteration and is successfully taught to the next generation, wouldn’t that accomplish the same thing? Breeders would end up dominating over non-breeders. Or perhaps it is an unknowably complex combination of nature and nurture. The only criteria is if whatever causes the desire for having children isn’t completely random, if there’s some straightforward cause and effect that is transmissible- then presumably it will be transmitted.