I think it all very worrying. It is clearly a question of ethics. The world overall seems to have lost its way…for human beings that is. I feel so sad about the rest of life forms on this plant. For those who might wish to explore the issues of demographics, watch this:
A good read is Asimov’s The nNaked Sun to see the two extremes of society, which one will we become I wonder.
Indeed it is.
Tomorrow is the third international conference on genome editing (The Observer view on the coming revolution in the prevention of disease and how Britain can’t afford to ignore it | Observer editorial | The Guardian).
There was, quite rightly, uproar when Dominic Cummings’s interest in eugenics was revealed.
No such uproar from the Guardian/Observer this time 
A rather alarming report. I will look up and watch Part 2.
It is surely, as the researcher states, not mere coincidence that so many countries’ populations are now in decline. Although there are many and completely different situations globally, there must be a common denominator.
I wonder if it isn’t, at least in part, because the plethora of ‘news’ that we are daily bombarded with, is overwhelmingly negative. Does this, maybe subliminally, make many young people feel less confident about bringing into and raising a child in this world?
Seems far more likely that there is no longer an expectation to strive, to conform, to know that you’re a boy and would like to meet a girl and have a home and family.
Now there’s much more wealth with all sorts of interesting possibilities and diversions available. There’s social pressure to not conform to the standard heterosexual modes, and recreational sex is now ordinary, common, loosening the connection to the normal life paths.
Far from bad news making people hold off having children, it’s affluence and a liberal society. Of course there will still be many normal, hardworking and conventional people around who will see the value in a conventional relationship and be willing to invest in having a traditional family, but they were only ever a proportion of the population .
FWIW, of the guys I know through work with young families, the kids were made at the wife’s insistence, the fathers not wanting to have children. They love their kids, but would not have had them if the choice was theirs.
Don’t you know any women at work with young families? What puts a lot of women off having babies is the hit your career takes, the fact that the onus invariably falls on you if a child is ill or whatever and the very very common assumption that having a baby makes one stupid.
Hi Vero, yes, I know plenty with families. My point - possibly not well made - was that wanting children seems much more 1-sided than I recall from my younger adulthood, where staring a family together was eagerly anticipated instead of it being a female-chosen project as in these cases.
As for the husbands of the women with children I know through work, I can’t tell you what their views are. I do see quite a bit of husband involvement in childcare and managing sickness, based on conversations, but couldn’t tell you about how fairly it’s shared out.
Oh I see, thank you. One thing I notice is many people, particularly men, simply can’t accept that having a child means life changes for everyone.
I think (I hope) fewer and fewer women are willing to put up with the notion that everything child- or house- or food-connected is somehow their job.
Perhaps ‘normal’ is not the right word to use in this context 
I wondered how long it would be before someone commented on that.
The demographic problem for us - people in the West having fewer children - is unargable, of course. I doubt it’s simply the result of bad news: if that were the case, then you’d expect the birthrate to decline during wartime, whereas the opposite is true.
The global birth rate is falling, but the global population is still growing.
The highest birthrates are found in African countries: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/birth-rate/country-comparison
But it’s a fascinating question: why are people in the West not breeding as much?
I suspect it’s because we’ve been conditioned to want more material possessions, and that is incompatible with having children. But I think more is going on.
and us too poor
They do cost a lot to run… 
Wasn’t helped by some official covid communication I saw in France that mentioned the mother of the child being responsible for care of the child if they were removed from school due to having covid… which I found quite shocking it didn’t just say parent rather than mother.
Surprising as we don’t have that language in school and haven’t for some time. Parents are called responsable légal 1 and responsable légal 2. I expect some fossil drafted that communication 
Libé on point here
I wish my French were up to understanding the subtleties of the point Libération is making in that article.
Seems the genes are really out of the bottle now
All I can think is what a horrible, useless torture of poor little mice.
Quite. Awful. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.