Advantages: Nearer to the US, more similar time zone, the language is much easier, and culturally very similar, too.
I know of Ecuador, that in the Andean highlands (sierra) the people are much more conservative than at the coast. And a "gringo", especially with blue eyes, will have a lot of exotic charm.
Yeah, one my very best friends is an expat in Colombia for a lot of those reasons, and he just loves it there. I think Central and South America can be a pretty solid choice, and it’s much easier to go back and forth on flights.
Ironically, given fertility rates (Colombia at 1.6, most of Asia between .7 - 1.2), he seems to be having trouble finding a partner who is high quality AND willing to have at least 3 kids, which I seem to have had an easier time of in Asia, but that could definitely be contingent and not an overall trend.
> Do you have any evidence that more feminist equals fewer children within a county? Or do you have other objections?
I thought it was pretty uncontroversial that as female education and workforce participation go up, fertility rate goes down, in basically every country in the world?
This meta-analysis looks at a bunch of studies in the developing world and finds:
"Overall, empowerment was inversely associated with number of children in the majority of studies, although many studies also found no association between some indicators of women’s empowerment and number of children. Studies that used multiple and multidimensional measures of empowerment were more likely to find consistent associations, highlighting the importance of choosing appropriate measures that better approximate women’s empowerment.
Empowerment was also demonstrated to be positively associated with fertility preferences, such as the ideal number of children and desire for no more children. When empowerment was measured as higher spousal communication around fertility and women’s reported fertility decision-making ability, they were more likely to be associated with the desire for fewer children."
But overall, I think Bryan's advice is probably pretty solid, and that it's fairly likely that on average, men will be happier in relationships where the wife does not self-identify as a feminist.
And just personally, I'm aiming for 6 kids, and all of the women I've dated that have been okay with that have not identified as feminists, and I think this is probably a general trend for men that want to have a large family.
I can't argue with the personal experience, but I can quibble with some of the specific claims. I have sources and citations for all these, but on mobile; will follow up with links later (kids napping).
1.0) Within Europe, traditional values (e.g. "A woman's place is in the home) are mildly negatively correlated with fertility, and controlling for more liberal societies being more open to immigration doesn't change this (excluding immigrants only has a 0.1 TFR difference for France, and in Denmark and Iceland immigrants have lower TFR than the native born population).
1.1) This trend very much continues if we extend the analysis to east Asia; modernity + traditional values seems to be absolutely terrible for fertility, with as you know Japan, China, S. Korea, Taiwan having rock bottom TFRs.
1.2) The part where my personal experience and the developped cross country data align is with regards to *religiosity*; that does seem solidly pro natal. Although this is clearly hard to control, devoutness in particular seems the most strongly pro natal, rather than the traditionalism of the religion, but they are of course almost hopelessly intertwined. Anecdotally, the people I know who have filled the religion-shaped hole in their lives (such as with in-person effective altruism, which provides meaning outside of oneself and a sense of community) have more children than equivalents who don't have that
2)) The empowerment explanation does a pretty bad job describing historical fertility changes over time in now-developped countries. not only the more or less continuous decrease over time since about the 18th century, but it also does a pretty bad job explaining the occasional baby booms. I would argue (in line with the article I'll link) that material improvements in quality of life, maternal health, and ease of raising children were the main drivers of the western baby boom. If that's true it's quite an optimistic take, but I'm not fully confident.
2.1) On a fuzzier note, maybe we're imagining empowerment differently here, but you seem like a smart guy who enjoys intellectual conversations; wouldn't you *want* your life partner and the mother of you children to be of your caliber and your equal? Sure, the least empowered women in the UK do indeed have the most kids; I heard recently about a local woman who had her tenth child taken into custody. But, uh, that's not who I would want to raise and shape my children? (Slightly tongue in cheek of course, one can have respectable non-empowerment, but it doesn't seem conducive to good dinner table chat). I may have been outrageously lucky here, but I don't see why it should be a priori so difficult to accomplish. It *does* involve the man doing a lot more childcare and housework, admittedly, but I *like* looking after my kids (I'm currently at the tail end of taking a year off work with my youngest).
You're making some great points, and I'll read your cites and baby boom article with interest - particularly on the baby boom, I didn't think we really had a great theory or model of why it happened in the ~30 countries it happened in, beyond the typical post-war fertility bump that we've seen many times historically.
I still think on the balance, going "non feminist" is probably the right move for most men though, for the following reasons:
1) I think that "number of kids" is a pretty individual thing that people negotiate over time, and these small trends one way or the other are probably lost in the noise relative to that individual partner choice and negotiation in their actual life outcomes.
And I think certainly if you're a weirdo way out on the tail like myself, you're just sort of stuck with whatever correlations you have in your mate pool (like religiousness, as you point out).
2) 70% of divorces are initiated by women in the US, and I would bet that identifying as a feminist correlates with higher likelihood of initiating divorce. I asked G4, and it said that surveys of feminist-identified individuals sometimes report higher rates of independence-driven relationship terminations, but that the overall issue is complicated and nuanced, and I haven't had a chance to dive into the literature yet.
But looking at the correlations in the post (women with higher education and income than their husband are at more risk of divorce), if women who identify as feminist are more likely to have higher educations or incomes than their husbands, it certainly seems like it could shake out as a higher risk population in that respect.
3) On your intellectual question, I don't actually think that IQ is strongly correlated with identifying as a feminist at all, within education-controlled populations? As in, I think if you're looking at "college degree havers," it would be roughly as easy to find non-feminist-identifying women of a given IQ as feminist-identifying-women? If you have cites saying otherwise on this, happy to be proven wrong, but it doesn't really seem terribly skewed one way or the other, at least judging by my own experience.
And I've worked in finance and with lots of FAANG and Ivy people, so it's not like I'm not exposed to high human capital populations.
It does seem to me that your internal model is something like "if you want a competent, smart woman, you're basically looking in feminist pools," given your point about dinner conversations and smarts, but I don't actually think that's true - even in the US, it was only "31% identify as feminist." I'll certainly buy that it's higher in bachelor, masters, and Phd holders, but much higher than 50%? So your odds are probably close to 50/50 in the worst case, even if you're trying to match on your own degree attainment.
Yes, those are good points both with regards to (2) higher female incomes correlated with divorce and probably also feminism and (3) yes, I can imagine that once you filter for education that the correlation becomes dramatically less strong.
It's probably important to note that I'm not American here so probably don't have a good grasp of what American women are thinking when they call themselves a feminist or not; if the term has become strongly associated with a strand of anti-ties leftism I see online (anti marriage, anti children, treat yourself, flakiness is ok, etc etc) then I wouldn't be surprised that those who embrace it aren't top choice to be partners or mothers.
As a perhaps specific example, I would consider Leah Libresco Sargent (she writes an excellent Substack) a feminist but I'm not sure she would apply the label to herself. An issue I certainly have with much contemporary/ corporate feminism is that it seems to consist entirely of telling women to be more like men, which is not only often unhelpful but also ignores the ways that men are hurt by being pushed away from female coded behaviours and domains (with the primary example being childcare, I write as my youngest baby is snuggling into my chest asleep, with a sense of satisfaction that is almost inexpressible if one hasn't done it).
First, citations! This has finally got me to start a file with my various fertility links in one place. If it's unclear where the data is in the link just ask.
Gradual tfr decline not clearly linked to feminism/birth control: France's birthrate declined in the 18th century, and Europe's fertility rate overall started falling well before the Pill; you would not be able to guess when the pill was invented by a graph of TFR over time, it's pretty continuous. Here's Germany's, for example: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033102/fertility-rate-germany-1800-2020/
In Denmark in 2022, the fertility rate for all women was 1.55, for Danish women it was 1.61, for immigrant women from Western countries it was 1.22, and for immigrant women from non-Western countries it was 1.52
How about Latin America in comparison with Asia?
Advantages: Nearer to the US, more similar time zone, the language is much easier, and culturally very similar, too.
I know of Ecuador, that in the Andean highlands (sierra) the people are much more conservative than at the coast. And a "gringo", especially with blue eyes, will have a lot of exotic charm.
Yeah, one my very best friends is an expat in Colombia for a lot of those reasons, and he just loves it there. I think Central and South America can be a pretty solid choice, and it’s much easier to go back and forth on flights.
Ironically, given fertility rates (Colombia at 1.6, most of Asia between .7 - 1.2), he seems to be having trouble finding a partner who is high quality AND willing to have at least 3 kids, which I seem to have had an easier time of in Asia, but that could definitely be contingent and not an overall trend.
The median US marriage lasts until death do them part
Do you have any evidence that more feminist equals fewer children within a county? Or do you have other objections?
> Do you have any evidence that more feminist equals fewer children within a county? Or do you have other objections?
I thought it was pretty uncontroversial that as female education and workforce participation go up, fertility rate goes down, in basically every country in the world?
This meta-analysis looks at a bunch of studies in the developing world and finds:
"Overall, empowerment was inversely associated with number of children in the majority of studies, although many studies also found no association between some indicators of women’s empowerment and number of children. Studies that used multiple and multidimensional measures of empowerment were more likely to find consistent associations, highlighting the importance of choosing appropriate measures that better approximate women’s empowerment.
Empowerment was also demonstrated to be positively associated with fertility preferences, such as the ideal number of children and desire for no more children. When empowerment was measured as higher spousal communication around fertility and women’s reported fertility decision-making ability, they were more likely to be associated with the desire for fewer children."
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4096045/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
But overall, I think Bryan's advice is probably pretty solid, and that it's fairly likely that on average, men will be happier in relationships where the wife does not self-identify as a feminist.
And just personally, I'm aiming for 6 kids, and all of the women I've dated that have been okay with that have not identified as feminists, and I think this is probably a general trend for men that want to have a large family.
I can't argue with the personal experience, but I can quibble with some of the specific claims. I have sources and citations for all these, but on mobile; will follow up with links later (kids napping).
1.0) Within Europe, traditional values (e.g. "A woman's place is in the home) are mildly negatively correlated with fertility, and controlling for more liberal societies being more open to immigration doesn't change this (excluding immigrants only has a 0.1 TFR difference for France, and in Denmark and Iceland immigrants have lower TFR than the native born population).
1.1) This trend very much continues if we extend the analysis to east Asia; modernity + traditional values seems to be absolutely terrible for fertility, with as you know Japan, China, S. Korea, Taiwan having rock bottom TFRs.
1.2) The part where my personal experience and the developped cross country data align is with regards to *religiosity*; that does seem solidly pro natal. Although this is clearly hard to control, devoutness in particular seems the most strongly pro natal, rather than the traditionalism of the religion, but they are of course almost hopelessly intertwined. Anecdotally, the people I know who have filled the religion-shaped hole in their lives (such as with in-person effective altruism, which provides meaning outside of oneself and a sense of community) have more children than equivalents who don't have that
2)) The empowerment explanation does a pretty bad job describing historical fertility changes over time in now-developped countries. not only the more or less continuous decrease over time since about the 18th century, but it also does a pretty bad job explaining the occasional baby booms. I would argue (in line with the article I'll link) that material improvements in quality of life, maternal health, and ease of raising children were the main drivers of the western baby boom. If that's true it's quite an optimistic take, but I'm not fully confident.
2.1) On a fuzzier note, maybe we're imagining empowerment differently here, but you seem like a smart guy who enjoys intellectual conversations; wouldn't you *want* your life partner and the mother of you children to be of your caliber and your equal? Sure, the least empowered women in the UK do indeed have the most kids; I heard recently about a local woman who had her tenth child taken into custody. But, uh, that's not who I would want to raise and shape my children? (Slightly tongue in cheek of course, one can have respectable non-empowerment, but it doesn't seem conducive to good dinner table chat). I may have been outrageously lucky here, but I don't see why it should be a priori so difficult to accomplish. It *does* involve the man doing a lot more childcare and housework, admittedly, but I *like* looking after my kids (I'm currently at the tail end of taking a year off work with my youngest).
You're making some great points, and I'll read your cites and baby boom article with interest - particularly on the baby boom, I didn't think we really had a great theory or model of why it happened in the ~30 countries it happened in, beyond the typical post-war fertility bump that we've seen many times historically.
I still think on the balance, going "non feminist" is probably the right move for most men though, for the following reasons:
1) I think that "number of kids" is a pretty individual thing that people negotiate over time, and these small trends one way or the other are probably lost in the noise relative to that individual partner choice and negotiation in their actual life outcomes.
And I think certainly if you're a weirdo way out on the tail like myself, you're just sort of stuck with whatever correlations you have in your mate pool (like religiousness, as you point out).
2) 70% of divorces are initiated by women in the US, and I would bet that identifying as a feminist correlates with higher likelihood of initiating divorce. I asked G4, and it said that surveys of feminist-identified individuals sometimes report higher rates of independence-driven relationship terminations, but that the overall issue is complicated and nuanced, and I haven't had a chance to dive into the literature yet.
But looking at the correlations in the post (women with higher education and income than their husband are at more risk of divorce), if women who identify as feminist are more likely to have higher educations or incomes than their husbands, it certainly seems like it could shake out as a higher risk population in that respect.
3) On your intellectual question, I don't actually think that IQ is strongly correlated with identifying as a feminist at all, within education-controlled populations? As in, I think if you're looking at "college degree havers," it would be roughly as easy to find non-feminist-identifying women of a given IQ as feminist-identifying-women? If you have cites saying otherwise on this, happy to be proven wrong, but it doesn't really seem terribly skewed one way or the other, at least judging by my own experience.
And I've worked in finance and with lots of FAANG and Ivy people, so it's not like I'm not exposed to high human capital populations.
It does seem to me that your internal model is something like "if you want a competent, smart woman, you're basically looking in feminist pools," given your point about dinner conversations and smarts, but I don't actually think that's true - even in the US, it was only "31% identify as feminist." I'll certainly buy that it's higher in bachelor, masters, and Phd holders, but much higher than 50%? So your odds are probably close to 50/50 in the worst case, even if you're trying to match on your own degree attainment.
Yes, those are good points both with regards to (2) higher female incomes correlated with divorce and probably also feminism and (3) yes, I can imagine that once you filter for education that the correlation becomes dramatically less strong.
It's probably important to note that I'm not American here so probably don't have a good grasp of what American women are thinking when they call themselves a feminist or not; if the term has become strongly associated with a strand of anti-ties leftism I see online (anti marriage, anti children, treat yourself, flakiness is ok, etc etc) then I wouldn't be surprised that those who embrace it aren't top choice to be partners or mothers.
As a perhaps specific example, I would consider Leah Libresco Sargent (she writes an excellent Substack) a feminist but I'm not sure she would apply the label to herself. An issue I certainly have with much contemporary/ corporate feminism is that it seems to consist entirely of telling women to be more like men, which is not only often unhelpful but also ignores the ways that men are hurt by being pushed away from female coded behaviours and domains (with the primary example being childcare, I write as my youngest baby is snuggling into my chest asleep, with a sense of satisfaction that is almost inexpressible if one hasn't done it).
First, citations! This has finally got me to start a file with my various fertility links in one place. If it's unclear where the data is in the link just ask.
Baby boom driven by material factors: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/understanding-the-baby-boom/
Gradual tfr decline not clearly linked to feminism/birth control: France's birthrate declined in the 18th century, and Europe's fertility rate overall started falling well before the Pill; you would not be able to guess when the pill was invented by a graph of TFR over time, it's pretty continuous. Here's Germany's, for example: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033102/fertility-rate-germany-1800-2020/
France: high tfr remains after accounting for immigrants https://www.ined.fr/fichier/s_rubrique/29430/population.and.societies.568.2019.fertility.france.immigrants.en.pdf
Nordics have taken in proportially more immigrants than other countries in Europe and are seeing fertility decline at least as quickly.
https://unric.org/en/family-day-nordic-fertility-rates-in-steady-decline/
In Denmark in 2022, the fertility rate for all women was 1.55, for Danish women it was 1.61, for immigrant women from Western countries it was 1.22, and for immigrant women from non-Western countries it was 1.52
https://pub.nordregio.org/r-2024-13-state-of-the-nordic-region-2024/chapter-2-fertility-decline-in-the-nordic-region.html
Traditional values in Europe mildly anticorrelated with fertility:
https://open.substack.com/pub/worksinprogress/p/the-value-of-family?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=gbrga