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Comment by derektank | Hacker News Reader

Male hypergamy and polygyny has been practiced by many cultures historically. They had many problems, but low birth rates wasn’t among them. I don’t think dating apps are a sufficient causal explanation alone for low birth rates

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Back then you could have 10 wives and start a population of people named Khan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_City%2C_Arizona

>you could

Could you? Are you part of the 1%?

Humans are naturally polygamous like the other great apes and mammals. When men (as in, male humans) realised this, they concluded that women were entirely to blame for it and sought to control their behaviour. This eventually got woven into their religions and for some time women's behaviour was controlled, or at least became shameful and taboo. Many things have happened more recently:

* Feminism,

* Decline of religion,

* Rise of state and law, particularly around male responsibilities towards children,

* Effective contraception,

* Dating apps.

Take all of this together and we're basically reverting back to our natural polygamy, but without all the pregnancies.

The second factor is access to birth control, most women just dont want to have children unless in very specific circumstances

Historically they were compelled

This explains the drop from 50s not the 2000s.

perhaps religious and moral pressure not to excersize the choice available has decreased between 50s and 2000s

Cell-phones. Noone’s having sex because they’d rather watch Tik-Tok; it’s got lower friction than going outside.

Most of the drop occurred in the late 50s to mid 60s. Fertility in the US peaked at over 3.5 births per woman in the 50s before falling below 2 by the late 60s. It then stabilized for 40 years and even recovered to the low to mid 2s in the 90s and 2000s before falling post-2008 from 2.2 to 1.7.

I too have the same skepticism here. If you're using dating apps then you're at least motivated to seek physical relations.

However, I'm surprised nobody has bought up porn yet (and other equally addicting digital habits).

It was practiced by the literal 1% of men, unless we talking about Khan specifically, it's a insignificant number.

Like which cultures?

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