Comments on Demographers Say the Darndest Things

Actually, on a genetic level, women are bred to die in childbirth ... up until very very recently this is what happened.

Oh my. Though to be fair, boys ARE more vulnerable to developmental disorders like autism, ADHD, Tourettes, etc., and they tend to get schizophrenia earlier and be more difficult to treat with meds, for reasons we don't completely understand (just like we don't understand why women are more vulnerable to depression and anxiety in adult life).

So Will, why would those mothers who survive childbirth then go on to live longer lives than men? That makes no sense - on a genetic level.

Will must have read that in the special version of the Wall Street Journal with the extra pages only he gets.

Will must have read that in the special version of the Wall Street Journal with the extra pages only he gets.

Will, you have noticed that women have breasts, right?  And... you understand what they're used for, right?

I do think he has a point about humans evolved for a much more rigorous and shorter life. We are just barely out of the trees after all. "Civil society" puts stress on us we are not naturally evolved for. For example, I believe instinct plays a much greater roll in the things we do than our society allows for or recognizes.

"People managed rambunctious kids for centuries—just take them out to do stuff."

Amen to this, though.

Will pulls another 'fact' out of thin air.

Um, how exactly does that theory fit into the idea of natural selection, Will? A woman who died in childbirth would only be able to have one baby to pass on her genes, while one who didn't would have been able to have many babies.

This is what I love about evolutionary psychology. So many tirades, so few facts.

A little too facile understanding of Natural Selection. There are constraints and there are accidents. If things were as simple and straightforward as suggested our species wouldn't exist - there'd just be the "simplest" form of life reproducing in the shortest"possible amount of time. But, I get the idea.

Anyway, we live in the world we live in and we live in the society we live in. If a kid can't function in this society without drugs but can function in this society with drugs give the kid the damned drugs.

@1 Seriously, what the fuck? And what @6 said.

Gahhh, you pull some weird shit out of your ass and fling it at us without defending it, but this fecal matter definitely needs some facts attached to it.

I have no scientific data to back up my theory, but I think there are environmental/chemical factors that didn't exist in previous times that lead to more of the ADHD, autism, tourette's sort of things. There are rambunctious kids and then there are kids that hurt themselves and others and probably need something to help them -- not sedate them or make them more convenient to deal with.

Just a thought

@3 - if you could survive having kids - remember, most of them died before they were 5 - then you had good genes for survival in the first place.

Don't believe me? Go to an old cemetery sometime and look how young the women were who died and the kids.

Survival in terms of ADHD, diabetes, etc increases as we survive other things that used to kill us off - influenza, scarlet fever, yellow fever, you name it. There's always something out there with your name on it.

Now, you can all be in denial about this all you want, but this is also one of the stronger arguments in favor of birth control - it led to women living more often. Sadly, until fairly recently, pregnancy was a very risky thing. It's still way up there, mind you.

@10 - I didn't say they died with the first child - as an example, my grandfather had eight kids - seven with his first wife who died in childbirth (the seventh, who survived) and one with my grandmother. As the century progressed (20th), the survival rate of children increased, fewer women died in childbirth, fewer children worked at the tender age of 8, automobiles crossed the land, and more people died from disease during war than died from combat (including bombing of civilian populations).

Does nobody read anymore?

I read very closely, Will. You said "women are bred to die in childbirth." "Bred to" means that they were designed or intended to die. Which is an idiotic howler.

"People managed rambunctious kids for centuries—just take them out to do stuff."

I continually have trouble grasping why so many parents can't figure that out. It's like "Oh, my kid is so out of control, I've got to give him drugs", but the problem is that they get their kids sitting around watching TV and playing video games all day. My parents' generation had it right - march the kids out the front door and say "go out and play, I'll call you when dinner's ready."

Will, I can't get over how dumb your comments on this are. Of course childbirth was more dangerous and women used to die more often giving birth. Everybody fucking knows that. But, you said, "women are bred to die in childbirth", by which, I presume you meant that natural selection favored women who died in childbirth. Which is dumb.

Will, there's an enormous difference between saying "childbirth is potentially dangerous, and some women die during it" and saying "women are bred to die in childbirth." You said the latter.

What elenchos @17 said.  Will's assertion that "women are bred to die in childbirth" ignores the fact that humans are born fully dependent, and it sure as shit isn't the male evolutionarily predisposed to nurturing.

And no, Will, your point @16 about dying in pregnancy n>1 is not a rebuttal to this point.

Natural selection reacts to the local environment, quite frankly. My point is that most women did die in childbirth, and by only selecting those who lived for a long time, you end up with a fraction of women who either:

a. didn't have children (classic spinster or widow)

b. were hardy enough to survive multiple childbirths

or c. practiced what limited forms of birth control existed at the time.

That's like assuming that because Greek Senators during the Greek Empire were fairly old, Greeks lived a long time - most were slaves, the rest died fairly young (30s), and only the very top of the elitist food chain survived to that age.

Which, given they were the ones writing about things, gives you a distorted and highly inaccurate view of what life was like.

You know, I always thought that people picked on Will in Seattle a bit too unfairly. I mean, sure, his "@x for the win" thing is a little weird sometimes, but he didn't seem that bad.

I stand corrected.

Will, could you at least admit that all you really know is that childbirth used to be very risky, which is not more than everybody else already knew?

im actually more surprised that anyone would find it outrageous that we use pharmaceuticals technology to give people better chances at being competitive in the world.

speaking as someone with terrible ADD, I can assure you, without pharma, I'd probably be homeless and no amount of "will power" or "finding myself" or my parents "taking me outside" is going to change the biological set back that I have.

I don't think that most women died in childbirth -- ever. Infant mortality was much higher, as was maternal death, but I don't think it's accurate to say that most women died.

will, you are simply wrong here. women haven't been designed to die in childbirth, in fact women weren't designed at all. evolutionary science isn't a series of blueprints and design concepts that have been pre-thought out, all organisms tend to gravitate genetically towards functioning systems that ensure survival. childbirth in humans, while risky and unpleasant, has preformed well and thus is still with us today. no one "bred" women to do anything specific, and especially not to die while procreating.

What Bellevue Ave @25 said.  All of it.

Or I could just admit that you all think if we cure cancer that people would suddenly stop dying - when everybody with actual knowledge knows that is not the case.

Bet you don't know what the top five causes of death worldwide are - without googling or wiki ... or other crutches that make it sound like you know how the world actually has or is working ...

Look, we're biological organisms. Demographers are limited by the questions they ask and the statistics that are gathered - they reflect the bias inherent in the system and the prior and current perceptions you operate under.

What do most people eat?

If you're an American, your answer will be different than someone who realizes most people eat rice.

What Bellevue Ave @25 said.  All of it.

Will, it is much better to look up what you don't know than to pretend you know something you don't. You're not fooling anybody by bluffing.

Will @29:

... you all think if we cure cancer that people would suddenly stop dying ...

Mischaracterization doesn't begin to cover this.  This is truly bizarre.

If you're an American, your answer will be different than someone who realizes most people eat rice.

Which makes you... not an American, Will?

This certainly has no relevance to women dying in childbirth or natural selection.  Does the rice line have any point at all besides expressing its considerable arrogance?

Go visit Europe sometime and go to an old cemetery.

But stop being falsely upset just because someone pointed out the world doesn't work the way people in their comfy history-disconnected US homes think it does.

Or that, until this past century, it was a lot rougher than you and your video-game-inspired fantasies like to pretend it is.

Heck, until a couple of hundred years ago, most kids didn't even get past 3rd grade.

Boys are actually doing quite well in school and elsewhere, which I would expect a (social) demographer to know. Maybe the Ritalin is working?

Will, the argument you think you're having is not the argument you are actually having.

If we look at boys worldwide - or girls worldwide - we have to realize that girls worldwide right now are dying from China's one-child policy and India and nearby countries pro-boy policies.

Do they not count as women?

Whatever, you insular Americans disgust me with your parochial The Whole World Is Like America attitudes and your spouting of US-centric statistics that usually don't mean what you think they mean ...

we all know this stuff will, its not the fact that childbirth was/is dangerous that some of us object to, its your misunderstanding of evolution and your inability to admit that your initial comment was retarded that everyone is referring to in all these comments. no one is claiming that childbirth is easy, or that women have never died in the process. your comments make you sound like such a snag...

Go jump in a lake.

Preferably one fed by glaciers - if you can find any.

I believe we have reached a new low in the history of the "just go to Europe and see" argument.

It's really rude of you, Will, calling everybody else is so ignorant. Who made any of the straw man claims you are accusing us of? Nobody.

It's even more rude that the only reason you're putting up this smokescreen is to avoid admitting that women are NOT "bred to die in childbirth," and that evolution does not "breed" people anyway, as if it had some conscious plan. That's Intelligent Design, truth be told.

And then to insult those who have the intellectual honesty to look up data? Triply rude.

It's really rude of you, Will, calling everybody else ignorant. Who made any of the straw man claims you are accusing us of? Nobody.

It's even more rude that the only reason you're putting up this smokescreen is to avoid admitting that women are NOT "bred to die in childbirth," and that evolution does not "breed" people anyway, as if it had some conscious plan. That's Intelligent Design, truth be told.

And then to insult those who have the intellectual honesty to look up data? Triply rude.

May I suggest a song by Dana Lyons, "Run Billy Run" from his 2002 album "Ride the Lawn"?

This thread reached a level of stupid that I didn't think was possible. There should be some kind of Slog Awards -- I nominate WiS's performance here for the Best Avoidance of Logic by a Commenter award.

and why do men get stuck in offices? so they can earn money to support the women and the children they raise.

the cubicle was a male invention but you gotta wonder how it go to where it is, all about putting men in boxes!

men don't want to raise children they want to go out and fuck. who thinks theres anything wrong with that, oh right.