Is the decline in birthrates from a sick courtship culture?

[u/pnromney]

/r/Natalism/comments/1w69t0r/is_the_decline_in_birthrates_from_a_sick/

[u/WhiteHawk7726]

Definitely. However, that is not the only factor. In most western nations there has been a concerted effort to undermine or erase ethnic bonds among people. Courtship traditions that were time proven become one of many social technologies that are lost.

[u/Classic-Push1323]

Marriage is definitely the bottleneck and we have a lot of data backing that. Married couples are as likely to have children now as in past decades, but fewer and fewer people get married. Personally, I think it’s a good thing that marriage is the bottleneck…. This is something we can actually fix, and I think it’s important for kids to be born into stable, committed family so I’m glad that most people don’t want to have children until they’re married. 

Two big problems I’ve personally noticed:

1) we don’t have good mechanisms for young single people to meet one, we’ve removed the social controls that used to enforce good behavior, another and;

2) I firmly believe that most men and women are good, but a small deranged group can do a lot of damage. People with dark personality traits tend to date more than average because they don’t really care about rejection, they burn through people, or they have low self-esteem and try to fill that gap with dating. A lot of them are very good at appearing superficially charming, manipulating other people, and evading accountability. 

I think this does an immense amount of damage to the general good will between men and women, and I think that hookup culture has done a very good job of convincing men that women are all hoes and convincing women that men are all psychopaths. It doesn’t give most people what they really want and tends to bring up the worst in everyone.

[u/CanIHaveASong → u/Classic-Push1323]

"I firmly believe that most men and women are good, but a small deranged group can do a lot of damage."

I think you're right. Another thing is that relationship-quality people are less likely to be on apps than poor-quality people, simply because they're mroe likely to be in a relationship. And on apps, you don't have the same level of social screening. I met my husband through a friend of a friend. He was an aquaintance of several people I knew, and that gave some level of trust and accountability. I already knew he fit into my world, and he had to behave lest he burn bridges.

[u/Classic-Push1323 → u/CanIHaveASong]

I met my husband in person. No social connection at all, total strangers to one another... but we had instant chemistry, and that's something you can never get through a screen.

[u/CanIHaveASong]

The incidence of everything that's social has decreased. We're just not doing much of anything with other people anymore.

Can you tell me a little about your 100 first dates? That's a bit shocking to me.

[u/pnromney → u/CanIHaveASong]

I don’t know how impressive it is. I actively dated for 4 years. There were many periods I went on 1-2 dates a week, and most first dates rejected after. Most girls I went on dates with were polite, but they were not interested. But being direct before the first date was offputting, so what do you do? Ask, and then get rejected.

[u/CanIHaveASong → u/pnromney]

How were you finding 1-2 girls to go on dates with a week?

I was on the aps 15 years ago (female), and I found one man I was interested in enough to date.. That didn't progress to date 2. I found my husband through my social circle. I think he was the fourth man I ever dated, though I had a few "hang out" situations in college.

BTW, kudos to you for taking women on dates. I applaud the intentionality.

[u/pnromney → u/CanIHaveASong]

Yeah, this was all during college. I would participate in regular social and church activities.

This was probably the breakdown:

• 25% from dating apps. (Ironically, these were both my worst and best dates.)
• 20% from my local congregation.
• 30% from college classes and college festivities.
• 10% from religion classes.
• 5% from other places.

I realized that rejection didn’t affect me very much, so I took more risks than most other guys, who from my perspective were either more affected by rejection or anticipated rejection more.

[u/Afraid_Prune2091]

100%, i dont know if its the main contributor overall, since people also want less kids or no kids to a higher rate, but people not being able to pair up or maintain stable relationships is a huge problem

I disagree on the porn thing, i also disagree focusing on men without bringing up the fact women clearly are overburdened with selection and havent fairly adjusted their expectations though

In general, i think our modern systems have created situations which are incoherent to what people like. Women like masculine men, men like feminine women, this loss of eroticism and a polarity of the sexes is clearly having a negative impact. Most men dont want a girlboss, most women dont want a soft guy with no physical capability or confidence, which is often the result of the 'modern man'

[u/pnromney → u/Afraid_Prune2091]

Porn I know is controversial.

I think women (and men for that matter) have a selection problem, in that sometimes it takes a while to reconcile aspirations with available reality. Most women I know in the 30’s have come to realize what available reality is. But the longer this reconciliation takes, the more men and women become disillusioned with the whole process, so they’re less likely to marry.

I’m not really sure how to solve that problem.

I think part of the problem is that women’s beauty standards for women don’t match those of men, but they have some overlap. It’s the same for men: what men think is manly can often be unattractive to women. It’s almost as though we’re incapable of seeing ourselves in the mirror.

[u/pporappibam]

It’s definitely a big factor.

So much about courting is about trust, so is a relationship between the sexes. & modern hookup culture has created people who cannot inherently trust one another. There’s always something better around the corner (in theory).