<than someone using contraception just because they don't want to have a child right now (or have decided that they never want a child).>
But what if the reason for not wanting a child right now, or ever, is because the prospect of finding a man with the right stuff such as loads of money, responsibility, care and attention is too low?
If the woman had the choice, in many cases they would in fact go for the baby immediately.
So, I still think that's largely a matter of sexual selection. The blokes lacking the goods are good enough to play with, but not good enough to breed with and the bloke's genes are ditched, along with hers, at that time anyway.
Contraception is the biggest driver of sexual selection! No longer are women cornered by their sexual drives into bearing children to a "near enough is good enough and there aren't many around anyway" guy. There's the normal eons-old sexual selection process, but now overlaid with the turbo-charging of contraceptive choice.
In the past, the surplus of babies were dealt with by survival of the fittest, with genocidal war a normal part of inter-tribal conflict. Now, there aren't many spare babies to act as cannon fodder when they are old enough. The young guys also want something more to life than killing or being killed.
Sexual selection is rampant, with blokes' DNA being ditched in droves, faster than they were eliminated in WWI and WWII.
Mqurice |
