#1229 Nandita Bajaj, Zachary Neal, and Jennifer Neal: Debunking Pronatalist Claims

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricard Lops, and today I'm joined by 3 guests, a repeat guest Nandita Bajaj. She's the executive director of Population Balance, and I'm also joined by Zachary Neal, professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University, and he focuses most of his research on network backbones and child-free individuals and also Jennifer Watling Nell, professor of, uh, in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University, and she's interested in understanding the prevalence, characteristics and experiences of child-free adults. Uh, AND today we're going to talk about child-free choices, a critique of Stephen J. Shaw's documentary Birth Gap and pro-Nalism and some other related topics. So, uh, welcome to all of you. Nandita, you're a return guest. Nice to see you again, and, uh, Zach and Jennifer, nice to meet you.

01:04 Nandita Bajaj: Thank you, Ricardo. Great to see you. Yeah, thanks

01:06 Zachary Neal: for having us on,

01:07 and Jennifer Neal: Ricardo. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation.

01:11 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so Jennifer, perhaps I will start with you. What is it to be child free? Because I guess that when most people hear the term child free, uh, probably they have some misconceptions about what it means, right?

01:28 Zachary Neal: Yeah, that's a great question, Ricardo. So people who are child free are people who Don't have any children and more importantly they don't want any children, so they don't have the desire to have children and that makes them pretty different from other types of nonparents. So you have some people out there that I would kind of call not yet parents. Those are folks that don't have any children yet, but they want to have children in the future. There's also people who don't have any children but really, really wanted to have children. Those people oftentimes we would refer to as childless, so child-free people, the thing that differentiates them is that they don't have the desire to ever have children.

02:11 Ricardo Lopes: So child free is always voluntary,

02:14 Zachary Neal: right? It is a voluntary state, yes,

02:17 Ricardo Lopes: OK. And childless is the term you would use to refer to people who are involuntarily childless,

02:26 Zachary Neal: is that? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So sometimes in the academic literature you'll even see child-free people referred to as voluntarily childless and childless people referred to as involuntarily childless.

02:40 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so uh just to dispel some perhaps misconceptions, you know, that people might have, does child-free have anything to do with being anti-children? I mean, is it that people who are child-free just don't like children? I mean, does it have anything to do with that or

03:00 Zachary Neal: not? No, so being childfree doesn't actually necessarily mean that people don't like children, so that's sort of a myth about child-free people. In fact, there's a lot of child-free people out there that are in jobs that are related to children, so Childre teachers, child-free pediatricians, right? So actually being child free, I, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that you hate children. It just means that you don't want to have children personally for yourself.

03:33 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so, uh, Zach, perhaps I will ask you this question. Is a child free choice something that people advocate for or try to impose on others, or is it simply a decision that they make for themselves?

03:51 and Jennifer Neal: Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think it's, it varies by individual. The vast majority of people that we've encountered that are child-free or identify as child-free simply see it as a personal choice they've made for themselves. Now there may be some people out there who identify as child free and advocate or identify some of the advantages of a life without children, but being child-free itself is not an advocacy position. Certainly there's no agenda on behalf of child-free people that are attempting to impose or cause other people to not have children. For the majority of child-free people, this is just a personal choice that they've made for themselves, and they're perfectly happy that, you know, some other people may be child-free, some other people may want to have children, some other people are parents, and they're, they're perfectly OK with, with others, you know, living the reproductive lifestyle that they've chosen for themselves. So it's, it's really an individual choice.

04:57 Ricardo Lopes: I mean, I guess that no one's out there doing activism to try to create policies to prohibit people from from procreating.

05:09 and Jennifer Neal: Certainly it's it's it's certainly not something that we've seen.

05:13 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, me, me neither. So, um, I mean, I, I don't know which of you wants to answer this question, but I would like to ask you about, um, are most people without children as, as Stephen J. Shaw argues or makes or tries to. Make the case for in his documentary Birth Gap childless by circumstance, and I mean, are they, do, do they or do they really not want children? And I, I mean, basically the the claim in the documentary is, and I'm going to cite it here. A 2010 meta-analysis by Professor Renke Kaiser would suggest that 10% of women who are childless are child-free, having chosen not to become mothers, and 10% are childless for medical reasons, including infertility. So that leaves a whopping 80% of women without children childless by circumstance. I mean, is there evidence to back that claim?

06:16 and Jennifer Neal: It's, it's certainly a claim that that we're familiar with and that we're aware that that Mr. Shaw and others have made. We've not been able to locate the 2010 meta-analysis that he refers to in his film, and we've asked him to point us toward this, this study, and he's been unable to do so. We're very familiar with Dr. Kaiser's work on child-free and childless populations. And we've been unable even in conversation with her to find anything to support this claim. In fact, Dr. Kaiser's own work suggests that among people who do not have children, the majority are voluntarily childless or child-free, and the set of people who are childless by circumstance or childless for biological reasons is much, much smaller. Our own work using data on adults in the United States supports this. We find that among people who permanently are without children, The vast majority are in that situation voluntarily while relatively small numbers are biologically childless or are what we might call socially childless, childless because they've not been able to find a partner or can't afford to have children. The vast majority who permanently do not have children are in that situation because they've chosen not to have children. So you know, to answer your question, you know, we've We've been unable to find any support for Mr. Shaw's claim in our own data. We've been unable to find any support for that claim in Dr. Kaiser's research, and, you know, attempts at asking him for, you know, pointing us to the data that supports it have come up empty handed. So we really don't see any evidence to support that claim.

08:12 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and another claim that he makes in the documentary is there is no trend towards smaller families. People who do become parents are just as likely to go on to have 234 or more children as decades as decades ago. It's all about having the first, the first child with childlessness having exploded. I mean, it is. Is child uh childlessness the cause of declining fertility rates as he argues that?

08:47 Zachary Neal: I don't think that there is evidence that it's just childlessness, right, so certainly folks who are child free are not contributing to increasing fertility rates, we know that. However, we also are still seeing trends towards smaller families in a lot of places, and Nanda, I know that you also have did some work on the fact sheet for this. I don't know if you want to jump in here as well.

09:13 Nandita Bajaj: Yeah, definitely. Thanks, uh, thanks for that question. Yeah, the evidence actually shows that there's a strong trend towards smaller families, uh, not necessarily driven by childlessness. But, uh, in, um, most countries that belong to the OECD, which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, what we see is, um, there is More and more people are delaying childbirth, so they're having children later, uh, and often fewer children. So, um, there has been, for example, a decline in teenage pregnancies within the US that has been a really huge, uh, contributor to declining fertility rates. But also, there's been a huge decline in the number of people having 4 or more children. Um, INSTEAD, we are seeing a rise in one-child families, two-child families, um, as kind of being more normal. And, uh, definitely, as Jenna said, there are more people who are child-free by choice, um, but they're not that strongly contributing to the declining fertility rates. It's more the delayed parenthood and fewer children.

10:37 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Uh, BUT people who are child free, people who decide, uh, consciously, uh, that uh that they do not want to have children, do we have a good, a good understanding of the reasons behind that decision? I mean, what, what leads them to make that decision?

10:57 Zachary Neal: I can jump in here. So our own research really hasn't asked people why they don't want to have children, but other research has examined that, and people tend to give a really wide range of reasons. So some people might talk about the high cost of having children. Some people talk about restrictions on freedom or career growth. Some people talk about medical risks, and in some places there's restrictions on reproductive freedom that may make people cautious about having children. And there's climate change, there's political forces, but at least in the United States, a Pew survey that came out in 2021 found that the majority of child-free adults said that the reason for not wanting to have children is that they just didn't want to have children. So for the most part it's just a strong desire not to have children that's that's driving it and not something specific.

11:52 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah, that that's interesting, and I mean one claim that we hear from many people who are pro-Nalists is that er people with children are happier than people without children. Um, IS there any evidence to support that?

12:10 Zachary Neal: And so there isn't any evidence to support that, and that's sort of a myth that's out there about child-free people and about parents, that being a parent is going to make you a happier person than somebody who doesn't have kids. But in our own work we've looked at the life satisfaction of parents and of child-free people, and we've found absolutely no difference in life satisfaction. We've also looked at late life regret. And so child-free people, especially women, are often told they'll regret their decision later in life, but there's very little evidence that that actually happens. In some of our own work we compared the amount of life regret that older parents and child-free people experience over the age of 70, and we Didn't observe any differences, so older child-free people had no more life regret than older parents. So there's not a whole lot of evidence that parents are somehow happier than child-free people, that they have more life satisfaction, that they have less regret. Um, REALLY, what seems to make people happy is doing what they want to do. So if you want to have children, that and you become a parent, that would make you happy. If you don't want to have children and want to remain childfree, that will make you happy.

13:25 Ricardo Lopes: You know, it's very interesting because it's always easy for people to find a few cases, a few stories of people who regret not having children, uh, and to put in documentaries and then try to extrapolate from those specific cases to the broader population and try to make a case that, oh, because, particularly women, because they are told that they can dedicate themselves. Helps to their career, to professional development, and they can wait until their late 30s or 40s to have children. I mean that that's the reason why they end up not having children and then they regret it, but I mean that's not really a trend or is it, or that's not really one of the reasons that leads people to not having children.

14:21 Zachary Neal: Yeah, there's not really evidence of that, at least in the data that we've looked at, and generally speaking, if that were the case, if women were sort of delaying childbirth to, you know, focus on their careers, for example, we'd expect to see a lot. More of those childless people in our data, right, the prevalence of childless people would be much higher, and Zach spoke about that earlier, but what we see is actually the prevalence of child-free people tends to be higher among permanently child, permanently childless people, so we're not really seeing evidence of that.

14:59 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh this is uh an interesting one, I mean, I'm, I'm very er curious uh about hearing from you. I mean, what do you think about this question specifically? Have humans really evolved an instinct to reproduce or simply an instinct to have sex, because I mean, one thing is different from the other,

15:24 Nandita Bajaj: right? Yeah. And I would say, you know, in looking at the research from anthropologists and biologists, is, uh, there's a difference between the word instinct, which is something that we cannot control. It's just something naturally that happens. So, uh, compared to a drive, like a biological drive, so, we may have the drive to have sex, and that's not even universal. Uh, BUT there's no kind of instinct that we cannot live without it, uh, that it's so natural that we cannot control it. So, in that way, uh, neither the desire to have sex nor reproduce could be considered an instinct. Um, BUT to go further, uh, in terms of the drive, you could say that the capacity and urge for sexual activity could be or often is deeply rooted in evolutionary traits that facilitate reproduction. Uh, BUT the specific conscious desire to rear children is heavily influenced by social, cultural, environmental, and individual factors rather than like a single universal biological drive that everyone has. Uh, EVEN the fact that for, uh, throughout history, we have had people who have, uh, chosen to not have children. Uh, EVEN though it was not as easily accepted, the choice, people always found ways to avoid having children, uh, tells you that not everybody's wired to want children. And also you see cases of people who have had children who um Do not engage in parental or nurturing or, you know, maternal types of behaviors. Um, SO, uh, it would be also wrong to just assume that people who do have children naturally have some kind of a biological drive to nurture. That's, that's not always the case either. Um, DRIVES like nurturing drives can be cultivated. Uh, BUT for the most part, the, Uh, there's sufficient research to support that not everyone has even a biological drive to have sex or to have children. Sex definitely facilitates reproduction, but for millennia, people have also found ways to avoid that through, um, you know, herbs and abortifacient and Um, contraceptives, natural contraceptives. Uh, BUT the social bias, and this is my area of research, the prenatalism, the social bias to have children is so strong that we're often made to believe that, um, we all are meant to have children. We hear cultural notions of things like the biological clock or the maternal instinct, or even for men, this kind of notion that virility or, you know, manliness or masculinity tied to how many children you have, that often, uh, drives people to have children, um, not from a liberated or an authentic place, but rather from societal pressures.

18:53 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, we certainly live in societies that have a pro-Natalist bias, correct?

19:01 Nandita Bajaj: Definitely. Yeah, I mean, pro-natalist bias is extremely strong across all cultures, across all political, uh, you know, across the political spectrum, across all types of religions, um, whether you're progressive or conservative, pro-natalism is extremely, uh, strong. And really, the roots of pro-natalism can be seen to have institutionalized. Uh, WITH the start of, um, empires and city-states about 5000 years ago, when, uh, elites needed to strengthen states by having large populations. And that's when you see a very strong delineation between the, in terms of the gender roles, where women were expected to produce lots of children. Uh, AND men were expected to participate in war and be strong, etc. So, a lot of the gender norms came about then. And, uh, journalist and author, Angela Saney, her research also shows that in hunter-gatherer societies, women actually didn't have as many kids as they did, did after the rise of civilizations. Um, SO, pro-natalism really became institutionalized through religion, through laws, through policies, through media, through cultural norms, and, uh, different punishments that were put into place for people who didn't have children or large families, and rewards and even medals, or, you know, honorary types of, uh, reputation or comments that were, Uh, rewarded to people who had children and large families.

20:53 Ricardo Lopes: Which is interesting because sometimes we even hear from people who make arguments like Stephen J. Shaw makes in his documentary that one of the reasons why people nowadays or there are more people nowadays who are Uh, childless or child-free than before is because people are exposed to ideas like anti-atalism or something like that, as if antenatalism is or ever was popular in society, right?

21:29 Nandita Bajaj: That's another really huge misconception is that when people, um, who are interested in promoting reproductive rights and reproductive autonomy and challenging pro-natalism, that they are automatically advocating antenatalism. Which is not true at all. An tenonatalism can be seen as a philosophical or ideological position that sees having children as unethical, uh, and, Um, that is not the case for most people who are child-free. Um, LIKE, uh, uh, Zach spoke about earlier, most people who are child-free simply want that choice to be available to everyone. Um, AND, um, nobody really is going around and saying that because I don't have children, I want other people to not have children. There may be some antenatalists who do do that, who actively promote. Um, NON-PROCREATION, but most people who are challenging pro-natalism are challenging the coercive pressures that make it difficult for people to make liberated choices. Uh, WE should be living in societies where, um, whether you become a parent or not, are equally valid and legitimate and acceptable choices in society.

22:55 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So I, I guess we've already ended up addressing this question to a large extent, but do people who reproduce really tend to want large families because that's another kind of uh claim that uh Stephen Shaw makes in his documentary.

23:17 Nandita Bajaj: No, not only do we not have any evidence to support that, we actually have evidence that supports the opposite. Uh, THE evidence suggests that as soon as people, especially women, have the choice to control their fertility, they tend to have fewer or no children. Uh, AND we have been seeing that in the last 70 years, uh, fertility rates have been declining from what used to be 5 children on average per woman in her lifetime to now around 2.3. And that is happening across, you know, all situations, all countries, all religious settings, all political settings. Uh, IT'S really about choice. As soon as people have choice, they tend to have fewer children. And, uh, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, um, there are all these politicians and economists and religious leaders who are really panicking about fertility rates declining. And a big reason for that is all of those institutions for 5000 years kind of have relied on a growing population to keep their institutions strong. And now that we are seeing this decline happen, really for the first time in history, uh, through choice, the institutions that have relied on population growth are being threatened. And so they are trying all sorts of things in terms of pro-natalist policies. Well, either they are trying to bribe people by giving tax credits and baby bonuses, uh, to encourage them to have large families, or they are going to the other end of the spectrum by instituting coercive types of policies like abortion bans and contraceptive, um, restrictions, so that people don't have a choice to not have children, they're forced to have kids. Um, AND in both cases, whether it's coercive or it's, um, You know, supportive pro-natalist policies, they are not working. Um, EVEN in the most progressive, most generous Nordic countries where we have very generous parental leave policies, childcare, uh, subsidies, healthcare subsidies, um, great gender equality, you know, shared care work between partners, you are not seeing that trend of declining fertility reverse. Uh, AND that just shows that once people have choice, uh, no amount of government intervention is going to really reverse that because people are not having kids for the state.

26:18 Ricardo Lopes: You know, yeah, I think, oh yeah, go ahead, sorry. Well,

26:21 and Jennifer Neal: yeah, so I was just going to add to Nandita's point. So she was just speaking about, you know, the case of Nordic countries which are very wealthy, very highly developed countries that have lots and lots of, you know, supports for potential parents, and we don't see those supports reverse a trend toward lower levels of fertility. We also see that, so Jenna and I have just completed a study. Of developing countries largely throughout sub-Saharan Africa but really throughout the world and so looking at sort of the other end of the spectrum and one of the things we see even in these developing countries that tend to be much poorer, have many fewer resources. One of the strongest predictors of whether or not an individual will be child free, will choose not to have children, is the country's level of human development, that is the level of access that individuals have to things like education and healthcare. And so even among these much poorer countries we see that as access to healthcare increases, as access to education increases, The the likelihood that an individual will choose voluntarily to not have children also increases. And so this is a trend that we see among the highly developed world in these sort of Nordic countries that have lots of wealth and lots of support, but also in much poorer countries, you know, when people have education, when people have access to healthcare, more broadly, when people have an opportunity to choose whether or not to have children. Increasingly they choose not to have children, and so much of this comes down to the ability to make a choice.

28:04 Ricardo Lopes: And I would imagine that having access to education also implies having access specifically to sex education and in the case of healthcare, having access to Planned Parenthood. I mean, would those things be included there as well or not?

28:22 and Jennifer Neal: Certainly, so access to healthcare could include access to things like contraception, to fertility planning. Access to education could include access to sex education. But it also more broadly and especially in developing countries for women, access to education represents an opportunity for self-actualization, the ability to, you know, have a career, to have a job, to do fulfilling work, and so as, you know, people gain access to these things that allow them to be the person they want to be. It gives them the choice to have children or to not have children, and when people have the choice about whether to become parents, increasingly they choose not to become parents. So much of this boils down to the extent to which people have that choice, and maybe even more importantly, the extent to which people recognize they have that choice, that they, they are not required to have children. They can choose to have children, perfectly OK, but they can also choose not to have children. So, so much of this has to do with with choice.

29:35 Nandita Bajaj: And I can, if I can add one more thing to, to actually bolster that point is there is another study that shows, uh, it's a Swedish study that looked at 136 countries, uh, and the fertility data for those countries, and it shows that one of the greatest determinants of declining fertility rates, uh, even ahead of education is access to modern contraception. Uh, EVEN in settings where people do not, uh, have the ability to go to school or, you know, get higher education, which we believe should be universal human rights, um, It doesn't need to be a precursor to choice. Uh, AS soon as people have access to, um, fertility control, regardless of education level, fertility rates start declining across all education settings.

30:38 Ricardo Lopes: Which is interesting, right, because conservatives and, uh, I mean, not conservatives necessarily, but pro-Natalists and particularly the religious pro-Natalists, not all of them necessarily, but at least some of them also tend to be against contraception, right?

30:58 Nandita Bajaj: Yes, it's, it's true and it's often the case, and you are seeing that in. Nation states that have a combination of, you know, state and religion, um, a lot of restrictions on contraception or abortion are being driven by a combination of nationalist and religious, uh, forces.

31:26 Ricardo Lopes: So let me address another argument that Stephen Shaw makes in his documentary and that we very, very commonly hear from. I guess all pro-natalists and particularly the ones that worry about declining fertility rates. So is there any evidence that we are headed toward population collapse, and I mean what would population collapse even mean here?

31:55 Nandita Bajaj: Uh, NO, there is no evidence that we're headed toward population collapse. Human beings have been around for at least 250,000 years, and for most of that history, for over 95% of that history, our population did not go above 10 million. Uh, TODAY, we are at 8 billion and counting, and, um, really the, one of the biggest, uh, determinants of population growth has been, um, pro-natalist pressures through patriarchal control over women, uh, but also the exponential growth, uh, because of access to fossil fuels and industrialization. Um, AND so, my point is that our current population is the largest population we've ever had in the history of human Homo sapiens. And we are expected, according to all, um, you know, uh, projections, uh, to, to be heading toward either 9 or 10 billion people this century. Um, POPULATION is going to continue to grow until the 2080s, and then we might start to see some decline, but very, very slow decline. Uh, AND demographers are not comfortable projecting past 30 to 40 years. After that, information becomes extremely unpredictable. And so, Um, we don't know what's going to happen after that, but our, um, population is not headed toward collapse. Uh, IF anything, we are seeing signs of ecological collapse in terms of our biodiversity, uh, plummeting and our ecosystems, um, really crashing, um, because of the Human activity and presence and what we are doing in terms of climate change and other um ecological crises we're facing. Um, BUT in terms of population collapses the way most People like Stephen Shaw are claiming there is no evidence to support that we are going to go extinct anytime soon.

34:22 Ricardo Lopes: And I mean, even if people are a little bit worried and as you said there, I don't think that there's good reasons for people to be worried about even uh population, the global population reducing a little bit after it gets to 10, 9 or 10 billion. Isn't 9 or 10 billion humans more than enough to keep the, like the standards of living we have now?

34:55 Nandita Bajaj: It's actually, um, having that many people is uh is actually interferes with people having all people having a good standard of living because we currently, even at 8 billion and counting, are using 80% more. Uh, RESOURCES and producing more waste than Earth can handle. And there is great inequality in terms of how those, uh, resources are distributed and how the impacts of these ecological crises are distributed, where, um, some of the countries with the highest fertility rates often are also the countries that are going to suffer the most from migration and uh death because of these issues. And so, currently, we don't have enough at this level of population to uh allow everyone to live a good standard of living. And so, a declining population actually enables us not just to have a more habitable planet, but also to be able to distribute resources, uh, and wealth more equitably across all populations.

36:09 Ricardo Lopes: Do do you think that there's evidence to claim that, um, I mean, because people are worried about, or some people are worried about declining fertility rates, particularly in the more developed countries, do you think that if we have enough people in the world. That perhaps some of these people are anti-immigration because what they really want is for the right people, the right people in their mind to have babies and not just people in general.

36:52 Nandita Bajaj: I think it's fair to say that in many cases, that is true. A lot of the current pro-natalism, uh, within in these indus industrialized countries is being driven by anti-migrant, uh, rhetoric and behaviors, um, and sentiments. Um, WHERE, yeah, there's a concern that we don't have enough of the right kind of people, so we don't want to, to bring other people into our countries. Uh, YOU can see that in Hungary, you know, Orban, um, President Orban made the statement that for Hungary, uh, we need more Hungarian babies. For us, migration is a form of surrender. You're seeing that current rhetoric in the United States, where uh there is, while at the same time, President Trump is pushing for a lot of coercive pro-natalist policies, he calls himself the fertilization president, uh, and pushing for all sorts of um pro-natalism, there's also, uh, a real, um, anti-migrant sentiment there. Um, SO it is true for many countries, but it's, uh, not necessary for pro-natalism to be alive and well. Even countries that are pro-immigration can be very pro-natalist. They just want more people. It doesn't matter who they are, and they are often driven by economic reasons. They just want to keep the economy growing. And I can speak to that more later if you like, the economic growth.

38:30 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, I mean, I was just trying to say that certainly at least in some cases there's a link between a pro-NATalist narrative and a far right racist, xenophobic narrative,

38:46 Nandita Bajaj: right? Very much so, yes.

38:48 and Jennifer Neal: Now, one thing I might add is, um, this, this link between pro-natalism and far-right ideology, you know, may occur in some places, it may be tenuous in other cases, but there's also a subtle link when we think about the metrics that get invoked in these conversations. So, on the one hand, the focus is often on a country's total population. And the concern is often expressed in terms of a falling total population. And the implications of that for the country's economic and social well-being. On the other hand, the focus is often on things like fertility rates, which are only focused on the number of births in a country. And by focusing on those two metrics, it sets up a dialogue in which we think or the speaker, you know, sort of implies the only way to increase a country's population size is by increasing its fertility rate by having more native births, and obviously that's that's not necessarily the case. A country's total population could increase by having, you know, higher levels of migration, but very rarely does migration. You know, feature into that conversation. And so by focusing on the one hand total population size and on the other hand fertility rates, it implies and sets up this this impression that the only way to boost a country's population is by boosting fertility. But that's, that's simply not the case. There are lots of different factors that influence a country's total population size. Fertility is really just one of those pieces. So some of this link between pro-natalism and immigration is baked right into the metrics that are used in these sorts of conversations.

40:41 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Uh, ANOTHER issue, or, I mean, yeah, another issue that we haven't tackled yet has to do with aging populations. I mean, is it really the case that aging populations necessarily need more babies, and I, that's another claim made by Steven Shaw in his argument, so what do we know about that?

41:07 Nandita Bajaj: Yeah, so that is probably one of the most common arguments that is being brought forth when it's not driven by religious or nationalist reasons to, to grow fertility. Um, MANY progressive countries are concerned about falling birth rates because of economic reasons, uh, primarily being this notion that we will not have enough people, working-age people, to support the Social Security or pensions and healthcare for an aging population. And that is based on Um, a metric called the, uh, old age dependency ratio, which was developed about 75 years ago, that looks at how many people there are working age, uh, if you can believe it, uh, UN still uses, uh, 15 to 69 or 64 as their working age population and 65 and above, and 15 and below as dependents that are, you know, people, uh, young people and old people that are dependent on the working age population. Um, NUMBER one, the metric is quite old, and, um, it, it, you know, a lot of people who are still using that metric are failing to see the, uh, dramatic shifts that have happened in the last 75 years. Um, NUMBER one, people are living longer and healthier lives. So a 65-year-old today is likely to be active and working and wanting to stay active in some kind of employment. Um, AND, you know, like my parents are in their late 70s, early 80s, and they're still active, and, and my, my father still wants, you know, they both are kind of working in different ways. And I, it's, it's true for many people that, um, depending on, um, the, their health, most people want to remain employed in meaningful work, um, and are employed beyond 65. Um, THE other issue here is the, as fertility rates have gone down in the last 70 to 75 years, we have seen female labor participation rates go up significantly. Um, SO, um, that number of the working age population, that people are just thinking, well, it's, it's going down. That is missing is more older people are working, more females are working, but also, there are fewer dependents under 15 because there people are having fewer children. So, the weight of dependence from the lower end of the age group is, you know, shifting more toward the higher age group. Um, And the, the third part is that, uh, since people are living healthier lives and longer lives in, in most industrialized countries, They do not require health support, serious health support until the last several years of their lives. So, this notion that as soon as you turn 65, suddenly your health bills and suddenly, you know, your pension and all of those things are, are going to skyrocket are based on an outdated metric, which is not representative of today's, um, Data. Um, AND the other thing that's often not talked about is the Extreme chronic degree of joblessness among people who are jobless, not by choice, but because of discrimination. Um, BUT it could be ageism, it could be sexism, it could be ableism. So, people with disabilities, people who are seniors, Uh, people of color, people who are foreign born migrant workers often are unable to find work because of discrimination. So, there are so many opportunities for policies to actually become more caring and more inclusive, if you really wanted to solve that issue of having a greater working age population. Um, BUT in my work, we also really challenge this notion that we need to just keep feeding the machine, basically to keep, you know, our labor inputs high so that we get money to support the, the elderly. We need to really shift our economic structure so it's not constantly dependent on this. Input of growth. We just need more people, whether it's children or migrants to, to keep that, um, formulation going. Um, WE need to shift our economic structures. There are lots of different econo economic, economic models that are out there that talk about well-being and caring economies rather than growth economies. Um, AND so, There's no shortage of, of ideas here. There's, you know, lots of different things. You know, another thing to discuss would be, why are people like Stephen Shaw and others not challenging the extreme inequality in wealth distribution. The fact that the top 1% has more wealth, uh, than the bottom 50%. Um, WHY there is such an immense opportunity there to, um, uh, apply appropriate progressive taxes there to help with redistribution that can then go toward social safety nets like retirement, pension and healthcare for older and younger people alike. Um, IT'S just a really old and outdated and kind of sexist and ageist argument. That we need to keep producing more babies to help elderly people who are seen as burdens.

47:26 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, I, uh, that's that last point you made there was, uh, you made, uh, I, I was actually going to say that I mean we can tax the rich, of course, but then there's also the thing that many of these people do not consider in their projections when it comes to social security in the future and so on, that has to do with uh over time productivity. TENDS to increase and so if productivity increases, we need actually fewer people to sustain the same number of retirees, right? So I mean that's another thing and it probably will go on increasing due to new technological developments and so on and people having higher and higher education, so. That's, it's to be expected that it will go on increasing and that will also contribute to us needing fewer people to sustain the same number of dependent people, right? And the and the other thing as well that I would add is that we tend to think that just because we pay pensions to older people, that that's just so. Social spending, but actually those people also contribute to the economy because they have to spend their pensions in different kinds of services and products. So it's not that we're just spending that money that at the end of the day it's uh the account is negative because of we're giving that money to dependent people,

49:07 Nandita Bajaj: right? Yes, that's right, yes.

49:12 Ricardo Lopes: So, uh, about the growing population, I mean, uh, Nandita, you've already mentioned that of course it's bad for the environment, the climate for us to have more and more and more people consuming and polluting and so on, uh, but I, I guess that the other thing here as well that many times people do not consider is that having uh Fewer people also has benefits in terms of accessing social services and better wages because when there's fewer workers, usually wages go up, for example, and it's easier for the state to provide good quality social services to fewer people as well,

49:59 Nandita Bajaj: right. Definitely, and that's a great point that you bring up is, um, for all of the panic around declining fertility rates and not having enough people in the workforce, um, Part of that is, um, you know, by a constantly growing, growing population allows companies and industries to keep wages low because it keeps competition high, uh, which means the benefits and the working conditions, uh, that are being provided for people are often quite poor because they are seen as easily disposable. Someone else will work for cheaper if you don't want to work. Whereas if you have, uh, tighter markets, labor markets, uh, it does provide opportunity to provide greater wages, greater working conditions, greater benefits, but also to make the workplace more inclusive, uh, toward people who are unable to find work because of discrimination, as I mentioned before. Uh, SO, I agree with you that fewer people provides not just better working opportunities, but also greater, uh, as, as Zach talked about, you know, human development index goes up because, um, you don't require, All that money to go toward building more things and more infrastructure and more, um, hospitals and schools, etc. BUT you can put that money toward better social services for the people who are currently there. In many countries where population is still growing really quickly, The services and infrastructure is not able to keep up with the growth in population. And so you see the human, uh, development index quality is very, very poor, um, because there are just not enough, there's not enough, uh, services and money available to support the people.

52:13 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm, um, SO a different kind of question now, um, about women's reproductive rights because as we've already mentioned here, uh, many pro-Natalists tend to support policies that uh. ARE for example, anti-abortion, anti-access to contraception, and so on. So would you guys say that pro-natalism generally speaking also represents a threat to women's reproductive rights?

52:48 Nandita Bajaj: Jenna, did you want to say it, and I can also add later.

52:51 Zachary Neal: Yeah, I think it can, right? So we have seen in some cases pronatalist policies that roll back reproductive rights in the US, the right to abortion had been protected by the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. But in 2022 that decision was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson, for example, and after that decision, abortion and other reproductive rights varied by the state. And what's interesting about it though is that we also know that when reproductive rights are rolled back or when there's threats to reproductive. Rights that might actually backfire in terms of doing what prenatalists want, so prenatalists want that to lead to having more births, but we kind of studied this in Michigan. So in Michigan there was significant confusion after Dobbs v. Jackson. There was a zombie law on the books that made abortion. Illegal. And so when Dobbs v. Jackson came out, that law was there and then there were multiple conflicting court decisions during that period where things kind of went back and forth whether women had the right to an abortion, and we actually studied the child-free prevalence during this confusion. During that period of confusion, we observed that the number of Michigan adults identifying as child-free rose from 21% before the decision to nearly 26% right after. And so these policies, even though they're sometimes rolling back women's rights to rep reproductive access, reproductive care, they can actually lead to more women deciding, oh, I'm just not going to have children because I don't have, you know, the reproductive health care, for example, available to me, and Mandada, you probably also have thoughts about those as well.

54:44 Nandita Bajaj: Yeah, thank you for that, uh, a specific example in the US because I think it's, it's so helpful to, to see that. Uh, AND I think pro-natalism in general is very harmful to people, all people in general, because it, Um, really prevents authentic, liberated decision making, if, whether it's subtle pressures coming from parents, you know, to give them grandchildren, or it's messaging in the media that is, you know, looking at, um, gender reveal parties or, you know, baby bumps and uh in terms of celebrity gossip. It's this notion that everybody wants to have children, everybody should have children. It's like romanticization of parenthood when in reality, um, it's not the case for most parents. Uh, THAT is not what it looks like the way we see it in movies, but to Answer your question more directly about a threat to reproductive rights, uh, pro-natalism is so pervasive across, um, the globe that, uh, people who are unable to have children or don't want children are often are ostracized or marginalized or punished in society,

56:06 Ricardo Lopes: particularly women,

56:07 Nandita Bajaj: right, particularly women. And if you look at, you know, what are the drivers of population growth today, it is heavily, uh, coercive pro-natalism. So, I'll give you some statistics. Uh, TODAY, across the globe, including progressive countries with, you know, strong, uh, gender equal laws, we see 50% of all pregnancies are unintended. Um, AND that's because of, uh, prenatalism. There's even internalized, um, you know, notions of people not wanting to have an abortion because there's so much stigma attached to that, uh, or lack of, you know, access to contraception. But then, um, 640 million women and girls that are alive today were married as children. So, child brides who then went on to have lots of children while they're still young and, and youthful, um, is one of the greater reasons for population growing, and that's a form of pro-natalism. And if you look across the globe, especially in lower and middle-income countries, there are over 250 million women who want to avoid the next pregnancy, who don't want to have a child or another child, but they cannot make that decision. And that sometimes is a problem with access. They cannot access healthcare services, but more often than not, it's these religious and, um, cultural messages that prevent women from actually exercising that choice. Um, MYTHS that, uh, using contraceptives will make you permanently infertile, or it'll give you cancer. Um, YOU know, or it's a sin. So, and same goes with men, like not producing enough children or not having any children means you are not a virile man, means you're not a masculine man. And, and men will get punished in their own ways by being pushed out of communities and societies if they, if they don't have children. So, yes, pro-natalism of any kind prevents liberated choices, but especially the coercive kind is a direct threat to reproductive rights because, um, people, You know, are getting illegal abortions and dying from those because legal abortions and legal contraceptives are not available.

58:54 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, YES, earlier when I asked you directly about women's reproductive rights, it was not because I was trying to imply that men cannot be victims of discrimination for being child-free, of course they can be and they are. It's just that since it's women or females that, uh, basically get pregnant, right, they are usually. The ones that tend to get the most discrimination from society, right? They are the ones that are discriminated the most for being child-free, not wanting children, and so on, uh, and, um, I mean, when it comes to abortion specifically, it's interesting because actually many people argue and even the Uh, uh, the, uh, the, um, uh, uh, I mean, doctors and people who are associated with healthcare argue, and I think rightly so, that abortion is a healthcare issue because, uh, women, who, who don't want to have children, I mean, they're going to do, uh, to do abortions anyway. It's just that they're going to do them in. Uh, ENVIRONMENTS that are not safe, that are not in the clinic or a hospital. Uh, AND so, I mean, it's a, it's a matter of healthcare and also the other thing is that, uh, Anti-abortion policies actually tend to er promote uh abortion because the, the number of abortions go higher when there's not a legal access to abortion because this has been studied for example in Nordic Nordic countries in here in Europe which have the most progressive uh policies that are the most gender equal and so on. Um, uh, ABORTION, the number of abortions actually will go, goes down, uh, by it being legal and, uh, accessible in the healthcare system,

1:01:00 Nandita Bajaj: right. Yes, that's, uh, an excellent point, Ricardo, and, um, Guttmacher Institute is another great research, uh, think tank that provides a lot of data on what you just said is, uh, countries, nation states that don't have strong reproductive healthcare access, uh, tend to see, um, increase in illegal abortions because, like I said, You know, 50% of all pregnancies around the world are unplanned, meaning contraceptives, even if you are using contraceptives, no contraceptive is fail-safe. Um, AND so, these accidents happen, and so abortion should not be seen as a, some kind of a last resort. It should be, uh, you know, availability to legal abortion should really be part of reproductive healthcare. Um, BECAUSE so much, so many pregnancies are unwanted and unplanned.

1:02:02 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm, YEAH, so, I mean, is there anything else you would like to add some final message just before we go? I mean, anything else about, uh, topics that we've discussed here like child free choices or pro-natalism that you would like for people to know?

1:02:22 and Jennifer Neal: You know, Ricardo, I guess 11 closing point, and this is something that we've heard from others as we've we've shared some of our research on child-free adults, but just to remind your viewers that, you know, much of this is about choice and for those that have children or are maybe considering having children, want to have children. If that's what they want to do, that's fantastic, and they should, and you know, I think everyone would wish them the best. But for those of you, your viewers who don't want children, our research is increasingly finding that that's a very large population. If they choose not to have children, they'll be joining a very large group of others who have also chosen not to have children, and that choice is OK too. I think that the message that You know, one of the messages we're trying to get out in our research is not to advocate that people have children or advocate that people don't have children, but to advocate choice and to encourage people to follow the reproductive life course that makes sense for them and for some people that's having children and for other people that's not having children, and both paths are OK. Both paths are normative. They'll find themselves in good company no matter which direction they choose. And so really just to remind your viewers that all of these are, are acceptable ways of living and going about your life and are increasingly common.

1:03:59 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So, Nandi, uh, Zach, Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really love your website, by the way, the Birth gap Facts website. So I'm going to leave a link to it in the description and also to your, uh, uh, to the other places where people can find you on the internet and, uh, thank you so much for doing this. It's been great fun to talk with you.

1:04:23 Nandita Bajaj: Thank you so much, Ricardo. It was great to talk to you. Thanks, Ricardo.

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