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In addition to childcare, I also think of how caring for aging, elderly parents is predominantly taken up by women rather than men in our society (all societies?), and how that impacts careers and earnings.

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> Why else do you think fertility is in decline?

Marriage is in decline (and age at first marriage is increasing), and the married have significantly higher fertility than the unmarried. Most people aren't academics, so an explanation for a general decline in fertility should not focus on things specific to academia.

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author

The motherhood penalty holds across all sectors.

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James Matthew Harris: Is there any data showing that employment is more precarious than in the past?

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It's somewhat obvious that the decline in fertility is due to a lot of things, but that was a rather good quip from Alice.

Both the decline in marriage and fertility can be partially explained by how precarious work has become. Commitment between spouces, as well as between employer-employee, has dropped. People hop between romatic partners as well as jobs, neither of which offering much security. Without stability its difficult to have children. Financial issues are one of the leading causes of divorce as well.

Nearly everyone I know back in Canada says they arent having children due to the cost of living. The curious thing to me is that the wealthiest countries seemingly can't afford kids, while poorer countries are able to afford multiple. I left Canada 4 years ago and managed to have a child relatively stress-free within a couple years.

Various studies also say that female education is the leading cause for declining fertility. However, this paints having kids as something for "uneducated" folks. It might be more apt to say that women locked in schools till the age of 25, and having to repay debts till death, lack the time and energy needed to raise kids and also be educated in how to raise a family. Men could also definitely pick up the slack.

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>Why else do you think fertility is in decline?

Assuming this isn't a rhetorical question, understudied explanations are 1) Women's continued pursuit of hypergamy despite closing the wage gap with men and 2) many women not understanding how rapidly fertility declines in their 30s (https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(13)03425-0/fulltext).

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Well, how are we defining equality. This is definitely equality from one point of view: people with similar levels of productivity are rewarded to the same degree. Maybe the term equality itself is the problem here: what do we want our society to look like? If it's similar rewards based on productivity, that's one model for society. If it's putting our thumb on the scale so mothers can achieve the same level of reward while being less productive, that's another measure. If it's trying to modify society so mothers can be equally productive by moving more of the burden to men or paid childcare, that's another model.

The language of equality itself is becoming a barrier to talking about what we want society to look like.

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author

You appear to have missed the point. I specifically said that academia is 'impartial', it rewards productivity. This post is not normative. And I have zero interest in definitions.

Others can decide what values and policies they want.

They may worry about

1) 'Lost Einsteins' (women leaving science and thereby reducing innovation)

2) Falling fertility.

3) A predominance of men at the top.

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