The immediate consequence of industrial and medical progress

It is clear that a rapid improvement in living conditions can encourage couples to have more children. The bigger salary, the more food, the bigger apartment, the less trouble for the end of the month… If the wish is not deliberate, the attention paid to contraceptives will automatically decline if it is known that an additional child will not cause budget problems.

This reasoning, however, poses a danger: it hides other factors that may influence population regulation. It gives the impression that the problem has turned around, while the fertility rate, i.e. the average number of children per woman, depends on a very large number of factors.

The presence of unknowns is evident from the very discourse of the supporters of the demographic transition. According to this theory, the first step towards progress would be a marked increase in the population, followed by an alleged “morrow change” related to progress, which would lead families to limit their offspring. But we are not told what lies behind this “change of manners”…

For example: to what extent can the way we live sexuality in our social context, or in countries with high population growth, influence the fertility rate?

The few studies undertaken on the relationship between sexuality and demography take into account only easily codifiable elements, such as the age of first intercourse, the frequency of divorces, the use of contraceptives. So a very superficial approach.

To master the whole process, it is essential to ask much more fundamental questions. What are the psychosexual mechanisms that determine the frequency of fertilization, including the number of coitus and the tendency to take risks, the unconscious desires of childbearing that would short-circuit the will not to have one, the imprudence that can induce a carnal frenzy, etc.

These points are delicate. They affect people’s intimate lives, which is why researchers prefer to focus on cyclical elements, or on opaque “changes of manners”. However, the problem will only be solved if all the data underlying population growth are taken into account.

Some could have an infinitely greater influence than one imagines at first sight…