Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

Patrick Boyle has looked at causes of decline in the total fertility rate around the world and concluded reduction in the formation of couples (married or not) is a major cause.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispyUPqqL1c

See also "The Global Collapse of Coupling and Fertility"

https://www.ggd.world/p/the-global-collapse-of-coupling-and

I wonder if the ultimate cost (in lives never born) of technologies like smartphones and Tinder will be. If a significant part of the entire youth cohort never learns to interact with the other sex in the real world, we might be looking at a pandemics of loneliness - and at subsequent global birth deficits in eight to nine figures.

I've come to a conclusion that the solution may be somewhat radical.

If coupling is reduced, it should become the norm for women to have and raise children alone, or at least without a male partner. This increases the burden on women, so at the same time the number of children they must support would have to decrease.

This could be achieved technologically, by filtering sperm to remove Y chromosome carrying gametes. As a result, the female/male ratio of newborns would dramatically increase. At the US TFR of 1.66, a 2:1 female to male ratio would be more than enough to maintain the population. Even higher ratios could be imagined, leading to an almost entirely female population.

Social engineering to reach this state is left as an exercise to the science fiction writer.

Interesting point. Probably there are many historical case studies of populations with unbalanced sex-ratios. There are many reasons for it to go out of balance. Recent/currently China and Russia are examples. According to wikipedia; the ratio of boys to girls is 1.3:1 in some rural areas in China.

Which makes the situation in China even worse than the TFR would indicate.

You don’t need science fiction to imagine this; simply look at societies that just got through a brutal war that cost them a lot of their young men, although I suppose you could watch Dr. Strangelove for some inspiration.

Raising children is a lot of work. It’s twice as much work without a partner, not to mention not having the extra income. (I don’t imagine men in a 2:1 society will be interested in paying much child support.)

The number of children in advanced societies (particularly in cities) has already plummeted. And I don’t think many women are going to want to sign up to be single mums.

As far as sperm selection goes… that’s already an option popular in China and India, along with sex selective abortions. The preference is for males, though, for various reasons. I am not convinced the end result of this is wholesome.

Perhaps even more interesting in the near-future is the prospect of creating sperm, through technological means, from female cells.

The research to do this seems to be close to succeeding - see e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11601-bone-stem-cells...

When researchers perfect this technique for humans, which they almost certainly will eventually, there will be no need for men at all. Women will be able to obtain lab-grown sperm from other women, and use this for fertilization.

All of these female-originating sperms will be X-chromosomed, and so in the much longer term we will see the eradication of the Y chromosome - and all the problems that arise from it.

But like… why?

> so in the much longer term we will see the eradication of the Y chromosome - and all the problems that arise from it.

Jeez what did my chromies ever do to you?

gawd this is so misogynistic, some women like having men around, for whatever reason. perhaps we can keep a few around for women into that.

cool idea. once we have mandated ivf as the only way of conception we can probably start selecting sperm from populations with higher than average iq too.

It's amazing that we'd rather consider eugenics than change our social norms

In 12,000+ years of anthropological record, there are zero advanced civilizations (defined as having written language, urban centers, and some form of state apparatus) that didn't have the institution of marriage. Zero.

I'm worried a lot about the declining rates of marriage and family formation. I don't see a lot of good that can come from it.

I don't want the human population to asymptotically go to zero.

A mandate would be only one way to reach that state, and I don't think it would be a good way. Better would be a situation where female children become desired over male children, for example because they have better career prospects. In a female dominated society, discrimination against men could be a thing. Today, already, female students on average outperform male students in school and university.

my comment was tounge-in-cheek, pointing out that its essentially eugenics which is a controversial topic. although apparently less so when its applied to "Y chromosome holders" as you can see in a sibling reply where this particular group of people are deemed problematic and something that should be got rid of.

That assumes our behaviors don’t shift in response to our environment though. The main issue with birthrates is the very real incoming demographic collapse, not a complete population collapse.

Not the OP, but biology may be more amenable to change than social norms.

There is an interesting old article on Slate Star Codex touching this:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...

The institutions, plural, of marriage varied wildly over that time.

Dowries vs. free, monogamy vs. polygamy, common law marriage vs. ceremony, wives being property vs. independent people, self-determined vs. marriages arranged by parents, and this biblical passage:

"Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him" (NIV, Matt 22:24)

And it's not like no country has implemented mandatory childcare payments outside wedlock.

Colour blindness, famously. I'd have to google for any other Y-specific issues, don't know them off the top of my head.

"We shouldn't consider your solution because there may be other solutions."

In a mostly-female world where women reproduce by artificial insemination I could see the sperm being marketed with focus on the qualities of the source. This is positive eugenics, albeit being driven by individual decisions, and could include genetic screening. Indeed, selection by women of desirable mates is already a kind of eugenics.

I want the other solutions that will inevitably arise, likely as the sum total of many individuals’ organic actions, because I believe they render your solution unnecessary and would have less unpredictable negative externalities.