Best Of

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

Most of us cannot even go for a jog as easily in our 30s and 40s as in our 20s, seems pretty common sense that many things come with more physical and other risks.

I was just musing to myself the other day, is there anything, anything at all, physical or otherwise, that I'm getting better at? The answer is no (unless you count musing to myself, which I don't think you can).

You could take up something new, then you'll be better over time.
A new language for instance.
I've taken up bouldering as the kids got into it and in the future, when snowboarding is looking less sensible, I intend to be much better at skiing than I am currently

Ah yes, that's true, and I plan to. A craft, I think. I've been watching Bronowski's Ascent Of Man for the first time, what a beautifully written and presented work, and it made me feel downright unworthy. Need to get these hands working. Owe it to my species.

Beautifully written, but surely somewhat dated now?

It's a history of science. The invention of the wheel and Newton's discoveries haven't changed much in fifty years. I guess you might revise a couple of the later episodes and add a couple to accommodate recent discoveries but the rest holds up fine. What you get with Ascent of Man, which you are much less likely to get today, is a serious imparting of knowledge to viewers who are expected to be intelligent and curious but not to be knowledgeable on the topics, all delivered with a strong moral purpose.

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

Most of us cannot even go for a jog as easily in our 30s and 40s as in our 20s, seems pretty common sense that many things come with more physical and other risks.

I was just musing to myself the other day, is there anything, anything at all, physical or otherwise, that I'm getting better at? The answer is no (unless you count musing to myself, which I don't think you can).

You could take up something new, then you'll be better over time.
A new language for instance.
I've taken up bouldering as the kids got into it and in the future, when snowboarding is looking less sensible, I intend to be much better at skiing than I am currently

Ah yes, that's true, and I plan to. A craft, I think. I've been watching Bronowski's Ascent Of Man for the first time, what a beautifully written and presented work, and it made me feel downright unworthy. Need to get these hands working. Owe it to my species.

Me, I'd like to take up Ancient Greek. My school performance wasn't good enough to get to grips with the middle pluperfect or the stylistic issues of the [edit] men/de dichotomy.

I did 2 or 3 weeks ancient Greek at the end of 5th year at school. I was supposed to be studying it the following year but I didn't go back and went to University instead. I can remember thalssa meant sea and that's about it. I regret not getting a better education before I focused on law.

If you know 'thalassa' you know something worth knowing. One of the most famous of all Greek quotations is 'θάλασσα θάλασσα' from Xenophon's Anabasis, which is an extraordinary, and first hand, account of the journey out, battle and return of a bunch of Greek soldiers to help out in an internal Persian conflict.

They shout 'the sea the sea' on sighting the Black Sea, after an extraordinary arduous return from the desert. It's a great story from a totally forgotten bit of Greek/Persian history of about 400 BC. There's a decent Penguin Classics edition.

Xenophon knew Socrates, which makes you think.

It also gives Iris Murdoch a book title.

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

Hmm. Depends if it’s about clockwatchers or getting the job done. My contracted week is 36.5 h, over 5 days. But realistically, as an academic, (a) no one is checking and (b) I do more than that most of the time and fail to take all my leave, plus working weekends for recruitment events.

I genuinely think if you set someone their tasks and they have achieved it in four days, then that’s fine.

I know I've said this before, but I work 24-7.

That's 24 minutes an hour, 7 hours a day.

I may jest, but I don't think that is too far off the mark for many of us, once you factor in coffee breaks, loo breaks, chats to colleagues, the odd domestic chore when wfh, and of course dipping in to an online discussion site every so often.

It depends. When I have a complex case I can step up the work rate remarkably and get prodigious amounts done in very little time. But it is exhausting and for short bursts only. I could not possibly work at that rate most of the time. Most of the time we potter along, doing enough to keep the emails answered, the engagements met, the routines followed. It's dull and I can't deny I feel more alive when genuinely pushed. I would just make myself ill if I kept it up for too long.

Today's lesson.

,I>How did solar get cheap?

Phase 1: 1950-1990s - NASA
Solar was invented in the US by Bell labs and pretty much only used by NASA who needed something very lightweight to power their space assets.

Phase 2: 2000 - Energiewind
The German government passed a law where it guaranteed that if you put solar panels on your roof the German government would pay you a high feed in tariff. Demand exploded.

Phase 3: 2005 - 2015 - China
In Europe German manufacturers could not meet their demand at home and Chinese entrepreneurs saw this fixed arbitrage opportunity and went all in. Chinese companies like Suntech took on huge government loans and built vast factories. Spain and Italy joined Germany with solar subsidies. Because of the price fixing in Europe the market arbitrage held as the solar cell manufacturing output in China exploded.

Phase 4 2015-2025 - Swanson’s Law
Once the big Chinese gigafactories were built, Swanson’s Law kicked in. This is the learning curve where manufacturers compound marginal gains and accumulate 1,000s of solutions to solved problems.

1. Ingots, originally they grew small Si crystals this was a slow batch process. Later they used continuous Czochralski pulling where you refill the crucible whilst the machine is still running. Saving hours of cooldown per batch. They also learnt how to grow huge single crystals that were 2-3 meters long.

2. Wafers, originally they sliced the crystals into wafers using saws. This was slow and turned 40% of the Si crystal into sawdust (kerf loss). The fix was diamond wire cutting, the wire was razor sharp, fast, much thinner than the saw, easier to keep clean and far less wasteful (4% kerf loss). Wafer costs plummeted.

3. Cells, you have to print silver lines on the back of the wafer to collect electricity. Over 15 years silver printing resolution improved and silver use was reduced by 70% whilst also blocking less sunlight. The mirror backing used to be aluminium which captured some solar energy as heat and was lost, so they added a dielectric passivation layer that captured more photons and improved cell conversion efficiency without changing materials...

If we want to reverse demographic trends we need to create a society where women feel economically secure having children in their 20s and 30s.

I don't think it's just economics, I think women (and men) have been rewired to not want a family by media, bitter academics who never had kids and the nonsense and pervasive idea that having kids is a sacrifice rather than hugely rewarding experience for both parents.

Really, the question is one of emotion than rationality. People have been convinced for decades that having kids is a huge lifestyle negative but it isn't. I remember when my wife and I were having "the talk" about starting a family she was in her late 20s and all of the "advice" she read online was that it would be her sacrificing her career and that kids weren't that great and why should she have to go through it all etc... but when she spoke to her aunts, her friends who had kids the story was completely different. Every single one said they wouldn't change anything and that emotional aspect really convinced her rather than any kind of economic security given that both of us are pretty high earners.

Academia has been telling women that having kids is a net negative to their lives but consistently studies show that women who have children are far, far happier than those who don't with better emotional stability, even those who get divorced or are single parents.

If we want to raise the birth rate then this is probably a much more important step than anything to do with economics. People had kids for centuries while being poor.

If that was the case, then places like Iran would continue to have really high birth rates.

After all, the media is state controlled, and if there are any "bitter academics who never had kids" then the people don't hear about them.

Iran's birthrate is just above the UK's.

Birth rates have fallen everywhere, which suggests the problem is global in nature.

I don't know about that but I do know how pervasive the anti-kids/anti-family stuff is everywhere across modern media, social media and in universities from bitter older academics who didn't have kids. Again, it's one of those anecdata vs official statistics situations, I guess I just don't believe the same people who try and tell me the sky is green anymore and call me uneducated for disagreeing with them.

The idea that women aren't having children because of "bitter old academics" is ridiculous enough to require a bit more than anecdata.

You really don't know how pervasive it is in universities across western countries. Go out and speak to Gen Z women about their university experiences and what the diet of information was from their professors. I've got cousins who talk about this stuff to my sister and to my wife at family gatherings all the time (both of whom have kids), one of the more delusional ones called my sister a gender traitor for giving up her career for 4 years to concentrate on her family. It's genuinely terrible out there.

On the flip side we've got younger men being fed a diet of the most awful women hating shite on social media and is it any wonder that the birth rate is crashing?

It's not economics or anything rational driving down western birth rates, it goes well beyond that. I say this as someone who was convinced just a few years ago that better economic incentivisation for kids would solve the issue but I realise now that it's so much more complicated than simple maths.

You're a splendid chap Max, but really? How many professors even talk to undergrads if they can help it, let alone about this sort of thing? Not that it doesn't happen at all, but I rather doubt that it happens enough to tilt the statistics.

I suspect Max is a 40 something going on 80. Theyve just had a really interesting prog on radio 4 about GenZ girls and their politics and how their social concerns are greater than their male equivalents which is why they are big fans of Zack and Sultana and they care about immigrants and Gaza. It was like an oasis in a desert and quite uplifting.

I was chatting with my boys over the weekend. Both will be voting Green, as will Fox jrs partner. They are turned off Starmer and the Tories particularly by the Culture war stuff. Fox jr and his other half (female University staff...) interestingly arent planning to vote YP despite being in one of the few YP held seats (Leicester South). Too shambolic it seems. Fox jr2 is really put off by the Transphobia stuff, as his best friend and former flatmate is Trans. Another one for Zack.

No grandchildren yet, but both keen as are their partners.

If we want to reverse demographic trends we need to create a society where women feel economically secure having children in their 20s and 30s.

I don't think it's just economics, I think women (and men) have been rewired to not want a family by media, bitter academics who never had kids and the nonsense and pervasive idea that having kids is a sacrifice rather than hugely rewarding experience for both parents.

Really, the question is one of emotion than rationality. People have been convinced for decades that having kids is a huge lifestyle negative but it isn't. I remember when my wife and I were having "the talk" about starting a family she was in her late 20s and all of the "advice" she read online was that it would be her sacrificing her career and that kids weren't that great and why should she have to go through it all etc... but when she spoke to her aunts, her friends who had kids the story was completely different. Every single one said they wouldn't change anything and that emotional aspect really convinced her rather than any kind of economic security given that both of us are pretty high earners.

Academia has been telling women that having kids is a net negative to their lives but consistently studies show that women who have children are far, far happier than those who don't with better emotional stability, even those who get divorced or are single parents.

If we want to raise the birth rate then this is probably a much more important step than anything to do with economics. People had kids for centuries while being poor.

If that was the case, then places like Iran would continue to have really high birth rates.

After all, the media is state controlled, and if there are any "bitter academics who never had kids" then the people don't hear about them.

Iran's birthrate is just above the UK's.

Birth rates have fallen everywhere, which suggests the problem is global in nature.

I don't know about that but I do know how pervasive the anti-kids/anti-family stuff is everywhere across modern media, social media and in universities from bitter older academics who didn't have kids. Again, it's one of those anecdata vs official statistics situations, I guess I just don't believe the same people who try and tell me the sky is green anymore and call me uneducated for disagreeing with them.

The idea that women aren't having children because of "bitter old academics" is ridiculous enough to require a bit more than anecdata.

You really don't know how pervasive it is in universities across western countries. Go out and speak to Gen Z women about their university experiences and what the diet of information was from their professors. I've got cousins who talk about this stuff to my sister and to my wife at family gatherings all the time (both of whom have kids), one of the more delusional ones called my sister a gender traitor for giving up her career for 4 years to concentrate on her family. It's genuinely terrible out there.

On the flip side we've got younger men being fed a diet of the most awful women hating shite on social media and is it any wonder that the birth rate is crashing?

It's not economics or anything rational driving down western birth rates, it goes well beyond that. I say this as someone who was convinced just a few years ago that better economic incentivisation for kids would solve the issue but I realise now that it's so much more complicated than simple maths.

You're a splendid chap Max, but really? How many professors even talk to undergrads if they can help it, let alone about this sort of thing? Not that it doesn't happen at all, but I rather doubt that it happens enough to tilt the statistics.

I would tend to think that the anti-child crap is an attempt to justify/rationalise the lack of children, rather than a cause of it, though it could make it harder to increase the number of children again.

My daughter was born when I was 21. I started my first (non-temporary) job on the day she was due to be born, and she ended up being born seven days later. So in economic terms it was a shambles, and I wasn't at all ready.

We delayed having a second child until her mother was established in a job, but that relationship broke down before that happened.

With my second wife, we also decided to do the sensible thing and wait until we were "ready", but with one thing or another that didn't happen, and by the time we realised that the perfect time wasn't going to arrive we turned out to be too old. So one child for me (I always thought I'd have three) and one step-child for my wife.

I think the idea that people should only have children when they're "ready" is pernicious and needs confronting. The same as the justification for the two-child benefit limit, that people should only have children that they can afford. You are never ready to have a child, and a child can consume a limitless sum of money. It's a massive thing, but you learn as you go along, and in terms of being "ready" the most relevant factor is that health outcomes are much better for mother and baby if the mother is in her twenties (and the same for the Dad, to a lesser extent).

Find someone to have children with, and then have children*. You'll work everything out.

I don't regret having a child when I wasn't ready with, it turns out, the wrong person, but I do regret waiting until we were ready and missing out on having children once I had found the right person.

* Or don't have children if you don't want to, but don't try to come up with some grand justification about saving the planet, or whatever, just to do down people who do have children.

If we want to reverse demographic trends we need to create a society where women feel economically secure having children in their 20s and 30s.

I don't think it's just economics, I think women (and men) have been rewired to not want a family by media, bitter academics who never had kids and the nonsense and pervasive idea that having kids is a sacrifice rather than hugely rewarding experience for both parents.

Really, the question is one of emotion than rationality. People have been convinced for decades that having kids is a huge lifestyle negative but it isn't. I remember when my wife and I were having "the talk" about starting a family she was in her late 20s and all of the "advice" she read online was that it would be her sacrificing her career and that kids weren't that great and why should she have to go through it all etc... but when she spoke to her aunts, her friends who had kids the story was completely different. Every single one said they wouldn't change anything and that emotional aspect really convinced her rather than any kind of economic security given that both of us are pretty high earners.

Academia has been telling women that having kids is a net negative to their lives but consistently studies show that women who have children are far, far happier than those who don't with better emotional stability, even those who get divorced or are single parents.

If we want to raise the birth rate then this is probably a much more important step than anything to do with economics. People had kids for centuries while being poor.

If that was the case, then places like Iran would continue to have really high birth rates.

After all, the media is state controlled, and if there are any "bitter academics who never had kids" then the people don't hear about them.

Iran's birthrate is just above the UK's.

Birth rates have fallen everywhere, which suggests the problem is global in nature.

I don't know about that but I do know how pervasive the anti-kids/anti-family stuff is everywhere across modern media, social media and in universities from bitter older academics who didn't have kids. Again, it's one of those anecdata vs official statistics situations, I guess I just don't believe the same people who try and tell me the sky is green anymore and call me uneducated for disagreeing with them.

The idea that women aren't having children because of "bitter old academics" is ridiculous enough to require a bit more than anecdata.

You really don't know how pervasive it is in universities across western countries. Go out and speak to Gen Z women about their university experiences and what the diet of information was from their professors. I've got cousins who talk about this stuff to my sister and to my wife at family gatherings all the time (both of whom have kids), one of the more delusional ones called my sister a gender traitor for giving up her career for 4 years to concentrate on her family. It's genuinely terrible out there.

On the flip side we've got younger men being fed a diet of the most awful women hating shite on social media and is it any wonder that the birth rate is crashing?

It's not economics or anything rational driving down western birth rates, it goes well beyond that. I say this as someone who was convinced just a few years ago that better economic incentivisation for kids would solve the issue but I realise now that it's so much more complicated than simple maths.

You're a splendid chap Max, but really? How many professors even talk to undergrads if they can help it, let alone about this sort of thing? Not that it doesn't happen at all, but I rather doubt that it happens enough to tilt the statistics.

Go and speak to Gen Z women and even some younger millennials, the attitude is pervasive. Universities have been teaching young women that kids, families etc... are a sacrifice and it sticks with them into later life. My theory is that misery loves company so those bitter childless academics are just passing their loneliness and bitterness onto the next generation.

You also have the problem of how can a family buy a house and get to a stable position in which they can have children.

Back in the 70s that was easy, back in the 90s we were able to do so but those graduating after me found it harder and post 2000 it’s got more and more impossible to buy a home big enough to have children in.

Until that problem is fixed many people are going to see having children as an impossible dream

In the 19th and early 20th centuries their great grandparents and great great grandparents rented their whole lives and still managed to have two, three or more children. Having to wait until your late 30s to be able to buy a home is not as big a factor as the relative decline of religion and more women going to university and having full time careers is in the declining birthrate

Good afternoon

You do know that times change and we live a far better life today despite all the problems we face

And why shouldn't more women go to university and have full time careers

Indeed our daughter in law did both and has three children, the youngest when she was 42