Public Response To The Birth Gap: With Stephen Shaw

In this interview, we are joined by Stephen Shaw, creator of the acclaimed documentary "The Birth Gap," to discuss the global fertility crisis.

Stephen shares his experiences making the film, including surprising reactions from anti-natalists. We cover the roots of demographic collapse, dating challenges today, and policy ideas like educating on fertility windows.

Stephen argues most childlessness is unplanned, caused by cultural factors that mislead people. He sees community-level solutions as most promising, though warns coercive state interventions could happen. We also touch on environmentalism, gender conflicts, and the profound grief of involuntary childlessness.

Overall an urgent call to action on demographic collapse, focused on the very real human impacts.

Stephen Shaw: [00:00:00] I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s.

you know, anti natalists or, you know, I call them anti natalists. Natalism to me is clear, though some people define it in different ways. It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children. So this was to do with the world running out of food. And then the world didn't run out with the Green Revolution and then we came up with the environment.

Maybe that was appropriate, but let's not get into that conversation because it's complicated. But my point is, right now they're shifting again. I can see the shift. The problem now is the patriarchy. And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see that the population is maximizing right now.

So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view about preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment, it's about men forcing themselves. We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because you know, they, they have an agenda. They are [00:01:00] ideologists.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello, everyone. We are extremely excited today to be joined by Stephen Shaw, who is the creator of the Birth Gap documentary, which we consider to be the seminal documentary on demographic collapse that covers the stats, but also the personal fallout from Demograph Collapse already.

He interviews quite a few people. It's, it's really great. The first half of it is available for free on YouTube. There is no excuse for you to not check it out. And welcome. We're so glad to see you

Stephen Shaw: here.

Simone Collins: What we'd really love to ask you to start at least because there's so many things we'd like to discuss is after birth cap came out did you encounter any surprises in terms of who was really excited about it? Who resonated with and who didn't like it? Because we found in our own journey with prenatal advocacy that or demographic collapse awareness advocacy that sometimes like surprising groups either really.

appreciate it and also really don't. We'd love to hear what you've experienced.

Stephen Shaw: I've [00:02:00] experienced everything. And I don't think I was prepared for it at all. I knew I would get pushback. I'd actually warned my kids several years ago that, hey, your dad's gonna get some pushback. You know, just, just, just be ready for it.

I thought it was mainly going to come from environmentalists. And I was, you know, preparing rightly so it's part of a healthy discussion about population and the environment. And it's, it's an argument I have had many times. And I think I feel confident to explain that reducing births is not exactly a very efficient way to help the environment.

It would take decades to have any impact being one of those, but, but actually, no, the main pushback. came from what I can only describe as anti natalist groups who have been vocal, extreme, relentless, and it's interesting. Maybe we can pursue that. But on the other side, the optimistic side also surprised me.

I made the documentary. Feeling frankly quite pessimistic that this is a, you know, a [00:03:00] reality that we have to simply prepare for a world with fewer and fewer people and the inevitable, you know, consequences of that personally to communities and to societies, but actually looking into the eyes of so many young people who watch this who are frankly shocked.

I mean, anger is what's being used that, you know, society is preparing them for a life of education first, career second. And then what do you mean we're going to run out of time to start a family? What do you mean we might end up childless when we want families? Those people give me confidence despite their frustrations and anger, because I see in their eyes, very likely many of them will, will do things differently.

Malcolm Collins: Can you talk a bit more about what is motivating, like ideologically or dispositionally, the antinatalist groups? I assume many of them are in the negative utilitarian sort of David Benatar sphere of antinatalism. Or are there other things that are motivating them, more just like general human pessimism?

There's part,

Stephen Shaw: there's part of that, and [00:04:00] actually, I mean, there's one or two very few people who come out and say that they believe in extinction. And relatively speaking, I respect them speaking relatively, because they're saying what they believe, and you can discuss that, and not many people think that, so that's fine.

What worries me is that many people who perhaps think that, I don't know, but they cloak their arguments. In many different ways and it's so easy to see so just just to maybe answer your question in terms of what the rationale is, these are clearly ideologists who are threatened by the idea that people, women in particular, actually want children and that many who end up childless have regrets or more rather grieve and that's why I show in part two of the documentary, there's a lot of deep grief That is felt by, by these organizations and so in some ways I've realized that, you know, by challenging the premise that women [00:05:00] don't really want children and that if they don't, it's, it's fine actually goes to the heart of their own ideology.

So I think, I think they have to argue against it because otherwise their ideology is finished. Oh, continue. Well, I was just going to say, so in a sense, it's a compliment, in other words, to me, that, you know, they're being forced into that position.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I to, to put, like, reword what you said, because I think it's really interesting, it's, the, the lifestyles, a lot of large groups in our society right now are promoting lead to people not being able to have kids.

And when I say lifestyles, I mean like college degree and independence before you marry a man. I'm not, you know, like, like just generic mainstream lifestyles and groups. What you're saying is an aspect of this is a cognitive dissonance. They don't want to take responsibility for the pain that this advocacy that they're pushing causes.

And so to do that, they're sort of denying. Or, or punishing anyone who brings up that there are negative consequences of this. [00:06:00]

Stephen Shaw: Well, I think cognitive dissonance is a big element, but it's not the entire story. I think there are people who are persuaded to focus on those things, persuaded perhaps indeed that children aren't that important.

And I have seen twice in screens, my documentary in Tokyo where women have. Breakdowns in the fifties, who made one of them, um, argued that the documentary wasn't fair on women, that no one didn't need their children, then spent a weekend, I later found out with her curtains closed, didn't come out of her apartment, remembering that she had one of the kids one day finally came to terms with it and invited me to lunch.

And suddenly it was like, thank you for allowing me to grieve. The reality that I had one of the kids. So that's cognitive dissonance where you're trying to kind of avoid the reality that perhaps for... No, no, no. I will say this. I want to say this. We should say this. A minority, I think somewhere around 5 percent of women, [00:07:00] um, do not ever have the desire of children.

I interviewed five of those women in the documentary and they're entirely happy. They have no regrets. I'm not saying it's entirely binary. I don't know that. But it's clear that for some who simply never, ever want children... They can and will go through life quite happy. That's what they wanted. It's, it's the remainder.

I think it's a significant majority of childless people who either had wanted and life didn't work out. They didn't have a partner at the right time. They left it too late. And we can't blame people. Society, though, is at the heart of this. We, we tell people, as a society, that it's fine to have children in your 30s.

Too many things get in the way and leave so many people childless.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What I really appreciated about the way that you framed things in the documentary, too, was just how clearly you presented, you know, two really interesting, like, sort of a dichotomy of issues between men and women, which we see a lot just among our own social networks.

Where Women are, you know, [00:08:00] interested in having kids often, but they're just delaying, delaying, delaying because of education and career. And then it's too late. Plus they're really struggling to find male partners who are willing to have kids. And then on the other end, there's, I think a lot of sort of societal pressures on men.

Holy smokes. Sorry. Two birds just randomly flew into my window.

They were probably chasing each other, but they're not doing so well right now. They both like passed out. That men are sort of discouraged from living anything, but like a sort of freewheeling hedonistic life where, you know, they don't want to give up their freedoms. They don't want to give up their ability to travel at the drop of a hat, do whatever they want, live their lives, and they're certainly not celebrated for making any of those sacrifices.

So that makes it even harder for women who, once they are ready to find partners who are willing. to take that leap. And, and I, I mean, it, it showed up a lot in, in, in part one, and it was really interesting to me because people don't really discuss that weird bifurcation as, as much as I would [00:09:00] expect because it is such a big part of the problem culture.

Well, you know, I,

Stephen Shaw: I, I came to realize quite quickly that you know, man, generally including myself, I have to say, I'm I'm divorced, not by choice, just life. You know, I want to live in the U. S. My ex wife didn't want to, to, to leave London, and that, that happened. And I think I did expect at some point in time I'd meet someone else.

But, you know, I think as men get older, what, what, what we forget is we're effectively competing with our younger selves for the pool of younger women who are able to have children. So, technically, we can have children later in life, much later in life. But actually, you still have to find a woman willing to have a child with you.

So it all evens out. And, you know, what we might see on occasion from Hollywood A list stars marrying someone 30, 40 years younger. My gosh, I mean, that doesn't happen to the man on the street at all. So, it affects everybody. We're just not thinking this through. Whether, you know, certainly men and yeah, society is not, is not.

Malcolm Collins: Well, to the, to the point that you made, and this is something I would strongly [00:10:00] advocate our listeners because I often talk to young men and they act like they have an infinite timeline on having kids. And that perception is one of the reasons why people who go at life with that mindset are unlikely to have kids.

And I think just a good heuristic is you should plan to have all of the kids you are going to have in your entire life by like 35. If, if you plan to do this naturally. Now, if you're freezing embryos, that's a bit different, which means that realistically you, you likely need to have secured the partner you're going to marry by like 27.

And, and this is just not the time society is giving. The other thing that I really wanted to advocate for our audience here, because, you know, this is like the pronatalist movement or the closest thing to a hub the movement has, is something that has constantly surprised me, and it's something that you mentioned here, is allies that are out there for us and that want to be the pronatalist movement's allies.

are women [00:11:00] who feel that they were hoodwinked by the system, never had any kids and are grieving and want to help reach out or, or through donations, help younger women not follow the same path that they followed. And it's really important to note this as a movement, because I think that sometimes. Young people in the movement can get really excited and be very dismissive of these individuals.

Like it's their fault that they fell for all this, that it's their fault that they, everyone was telling them this. You know, everyone was telling them they were good people for doing this. And when you lack compassion for these people who are genuinely suffering, you isolate the movement from a huge fraction of people who could be very strong allies.

And, and this is especially true because we have a lot of like manosphere types who, who watch our podcasts and stuff like that. If you want to convince young women to, to change priorities, like red pill guys telling them to do that isn't going to work. Old women who didn't have kids is going to work.

Stephen Shaw: Mm hmm. Yeah. And that's, that's what I'm finding, [00:12:00] finding too. I, I, I think women from, from what I see. I'm perhaps meant to simply being made aware that the fertility window is likely much shorter than you expect. And that there are other factors. It's not just fertility. It's, it's, do you have a partner at that time?

Are you sure you're not going to go through a divorce or breakup? Because that's quite commonplace these days. How sure are you at that age, you want to have a child age 35 or whatever it is that you're going to have everything lined up that turns out to be the biggest reason, you know, for not having children.

And, you know, I, I, another point as well, if I could share is that. You know, whatever statistics you may come up with, a lot of people want to know, well, what is the age when fertility falls off? And you hear different things about this, but the reality is there's huge variation in this. You can't assume, as a woman, that your fertility level is the same as the rest of the, as the average woman.

So, if children are important... Erring on the side of [00:13:00] caution is a common sense thing to do. You know, one of the greatest conversations I had was with a young Japanese 24 year old who had it all worked out. She was in a long distance relationship, and I, you know, cautioned that. So don't worry. I'm giving it one more year because if it doesn't work out, that gives me two more years to find the next boyfriend.

If that doesn't work out, I can still meet someone by 30 and I can still have the three children I want. Oh my gosh. Love her. Right. I mean, it sounds cold and calculated, but actually it's smart if children are important.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and speaking of cold and calculated, a statistic I always love to cite is if you look at the rates of love in arranged marriages versus the rates of love in marriages that were chosen for love, they are about equal.

But when you account for survivalship bias, because love marriages have a higher divorce rates in arranged marriages, they're actually higher. So applying a level of clinicalness. to relationships, even though society will shame you for it can have really positive outcomes for what is without a doubt the most important decision you're going to make in your life.[00:14:00]

Stephen Shaw: Yeah. And I haven't looked into that specific statistic, but it's interesting. You know, I, I do live in Japan and it is certainly true that when arranged marriage was commonplace. That there was more marriage and there were more births. I'm not totally convinced that that's necessarily meaningful in today's society, but you still have this culture in Japan of people helping each other find dates is a thing where people effectively, you know, three men, three women meet together and they get to know each other without any pressure.

It hasn't helped the birth rate though, I have to say, but it is still, I think you know, a nice way to potentially meet that person. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Also something I, I want to bring up here that's important for fans to note when they're thinking about planning their own life is, is this actually comes from a call we were having this morning was right.

Nationalist sort of going over all the stats on just how much male fertility has dropped in the last 50 years or so. We are not dealing with the same biologies that our grandparents had, and it is dramatically harder to get somebody pregnant today than it was historically, whether you're looking at sperm fertility dropping over 50 percent in the [00:15:00] last 51 years.

No, 51 percent in the last 50 years of what is a testosterone drop. It's like 30 percent in the last 20 years. I'm sure you remember that stat better than I do. Or you know, the, the like tide studies and endocrine disruptors and stuff like that, which means that you may need to approach fertility in a clinical fashion that may even feel unromantic and, and, and fertility isn't always a romantic thing anymore.

You know, we, we are in many ways becoming a more sterile species.

Stephen Shaw: Yeah, and this is not my specific area of expertise, but I do have a couple of comments to add. I'm a little bit skeptical whether this has yet been become a major factor in overall fertility. It might do. It may have recently. But my argument is, one of my findings was that mothers, once they do have the first child, In recent decades, we're having the same number of children as decades, well, decades ago.

So in the US, you know, the average mother was having 2. [00:16:00] 4 children, 1980s to this, actually up to 2. 6. And this is universal in Japan, 6 percent of mothers today are having four more children. That's exactly the same as it was 50 years ago. It seems to be about having that first child maybe it's sperm levels dropping to a point where you can't even tell, but yes, so you know, families, probably sizes haven't been changing.

That's a common myth. That's out there. The only thing that's changed is a rapid increase in childlessness. And most of that is what I call unplanned childlessness.

Malcolm Collins: But that would be what you would expect if a large portion of the population was infertile. Because they wouldn't be able to have child number one.

Well, might

Stephen Shaw: you argue that those with number one, if it's falling off, would be less likely than number two and number three? Again, that's not my expertise. But, you know, the data, you know, I just say, well, look, someone needs to know to do more work on this. Do I worry that this fall off is going to impact us?

Maybe this happened maybe in recent years. It's an additional factor. We'll take fertility down yet again. [00:17:00] My area of focus is really what's happened over the last 50 years. And the rise in childlessness is a key thing. I

Malcolm Collins: want to pull on the statement you just made, because I think it's really interesting, and it really contrasts with our thesis around fertility.

Which is to help very high fertility cultural groups maximize their fertility rates, because their kids are more likely to have more kids. Whereas for you, it seems the thesis is actually to get the people who have no kids to have that first kid, and then the rest will work itself out. Can you talk a bit about what kind of interventions you've seen be effective there?

Because we haven't even looked at that as a potential solution.

Stephen Shaw: Yeah, well, it's just one thing to put in the table here is that, you know, if you look at someone with two Children, they were more likely than not thinking of. Two or maybe three most people don't want one child. It's even those who have who do have one child don't recommend on Overall having one child.

It's it's it's the hardest Yeah, [00:18:00] nothing against one child Parents at all. It's just it's not the general preference Not, you know, those who are three were probably thinking of three or four Maybe two those are four or probably thinking four or five maybe three. That's the way it goes those with no children We're not generally thinking of zero or one.

Most

Malcolm Collins: of those people, that's a fascinating point.

Stephen Shaw: Most of those were thinking of two, three, four plus, just like everybody else. Wow. So if you like the kind of the power of that group, if they were to have that first child in terms of changing the overall birth rates of nations is much higher than increasing six to seven children, for

Malcolm Collins: example.

So how much of this do you think, if you were going to say, is, is, is dating market failure? And when I say dating market failure, I don't just mean finding a partner. I mean, the men who are on the market are not what the women who are on the market want, and the women who are on the market are not what the men on the market want.

And how much of it do you think is mis expectations around [00:19:00] timing?

Stephen Shaw: I think it's both. I'm glad I'm not in the market right now. It certainly doesn't look any easier, but I think another reality, you know, whether it's these days or decades ago is that when you're in your twenties, you can build a life together.

By the time you get into your thirties, you've got your career, you know, pretty much what city you want to live in. You have your friend group, you have your hobbies. Now you need someone to match those things as well as someone you actually like and want to spend the rest of your life and have kids with.

In your twenties, you can build much of those things together. So by definition, the pool of people available is less. Also, the fact that many people already got married in their 20s, so the pool is less anyways, so by definition, it cannot get easier and, you know, during the documentary, but certainly after there being so many people trying to find that partner struggling with dating apps, but I'm not sure it's just the apps fault.

I think it's a timing thing. Therefore, I think it [00:20:00] is, you know, if you are looking at the smaller group of people who might match you, who meet all of your criteria. Yeah. You know, it, it, it, it's, it's, it's, it gets harder and harder.

Malcolm Collins: And this is definitely something we experienced in our relationship. I do not think Simone and I could have been good partners for each other.

If we met when we were much older than we did. Yeah. Because you can grow together a lot more when you're early in your career.

Stephen Shaw: Yeah. Yeah. You know, my own experiences to share. I mean, I've, I've dated since, since I divorced. And, you know, one of the irritations I found is when you're with someone and they're a little older.

They will say things like, oh, when, when I was in my twenties, I had this friend, I had a friend who did this, I had a friend, and you kind of put this map together, all these friends, but you've never met them, you never know who they are. And then later it's like, is that the same friend? It becomes complicated to unravel someone's life and enjoy those conversations instead of having been there and actually recall them together.

It's a personal perspective, but. Ooh. It doesn't get easier.

Malcolm Collins: This is a [00:21:00] fascinating way to frame it because this aligns with our experience when we started dating, which is we got rid of almost all of our social network that we had before we started dating after we started dating. And to an extent, you should almost think of all the socializing you do before you get married or find the person you end up marrying as sort of wasted effort, which might encourage you to find

Stephen Shaw: Well, I, I, that may or may not work for everybody, but, but, you know, it's certainly, I'm not saying experiences before meeting the right person have no validity at all, but, but it does make it more complex as time goes on and you just haven't been there to experience those emotions, those friendships, those experiences, you know, not necessarily together, but to know, Oh yes, I remember you went on that trip with that group of friends and I met those friends and now I understand that story better.

So for, let's say a slightly more shallow, you know,

Simone Collins: I'm curious after you release a documentary, if you've come across any innovations or [00:22:00] interventions that give you hope or where you feel like people are recognizing the problem, either with dating markets or starting early enough to have a family or anything related to these declines in fertility, where you're like, Oh, wow, like this is a solution that seems to be working well or are you really only starting to see people innovate now?

I mean, we personally aren't seeing much. So I'm curious to see if you've seen anything in all your travels and interactions. Yeah.

Stephen Shaw: A lot. Well, first of all, a lot of things have been tried in the field. Yeah. I often do is explain, you know, some great policy that's going to be tried in a certain country and we'll show you all the exceptions as to why that hasn't worked.

The one thing I would like to see, because I do believe it will make the biggest difference is within our high school, college textbooks, biology textbooks, to just explain when we talk about fertility which, which we mostly do that there's a fertility window. You know, we don't explain that. I'm not sure why that is, like, why wouldn't we?

It's just objective information from science. [00:23:00] And I have a pretty good idea why that might be. There's certain people who prefer that young people don't have that information. anD I covered that in part of the documentary as to why our education system has really not been sharing the, the, the reality of the fertility window.

I think that would make a huge difference if young people were prepared for that. But you know, the optimism I get often, I often,,

Malcolm Collins: I was wondering if you would mind summarizing your thesis here, why the school system is hiding this from people.

Stephen Shaw: Yeah, well, if you look at the U. S. high school system, the biggest educator on population, I'll call them out, is an organization called Population Connection.

They have educated 50, 000 U. S. teachers, and those U. S. teachers every year are responsible for educating I believe it's three or four million U. S. high school students. Now I interviewed the CEO of that organization. In the documentary and asked him why he's not including information on falling [00:24:00] fertility rates around the world, and his response was, that's not our thing.

So they, for example, you know, would be, and it's not just them, they happen to be the most prolific. And let me explain briefly the heritage. They were formerly known as ZPG founded by Paul Ehrlich, the the author of the famous population bomb book in the late 1960s. They have millions and millions of donations every year from groups of people.

I suspect many going back to that time who thought we were about to experience a population bomb. So there's an organization out there educating our children on population matters and you know, the kind of things they educate them on are that, you know, that the world's population is starting here. I started here in 1800 and then kind of did this and then they stopped there.

Why would they stop explaining if they're you know, if they're trying to be objective about the reality that we know that everything's going to flatten out? Beyond that time, they don't do that. And when asked upon that scene online, they try to, you know, say, well, in the year 2100, there's going to be the same number of people as 1970.

[00:25:00] Yes, but most of people that society's going to have to support. So there are organizations out there. Another point, you know, if you look at the collection of organizations who share that message, they don't ever come out with messages like South Korea, it's low enough now, please, please stop your low birth rates and, you know, stabilize it.

They keep saying, no, less is more, less, less is more. Yeah, and you know, I'm sorry, if you hear me talking about this, I could talk a long time, but one more thing is, you know, they, they, they preach call it that, a lot about, you know, high birth rates in Africa. Okay, fair enough, you might say. But they don't preach about that so much in Africa, maybe not at all in Africa.

They preach to young, you know, American European high school students. And they say, look at this. Think about this. Those were the exact words I got. They want US high school kids to think about how many children are in Africa. That is a, you know, to me, that's propaganda. That's like, think about having less kids yourself [00:26:00] to balance out what's happening in Africa.

So to me, it's, it's high, you know, best, I would say it's. You know, partial information. I would be, I'm not going to go much further than that and just say it's ideological, it's driven by mindsets of the 60s that haven't changed and needs to stop.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well let's talk about who, who has because you talked a bit about this, but I just find this really interesting.

What have been unexpected supporters that you've had? Any, any groups where you're like, I did not expect this group to be as... I'm happy about that. It's happy about your work, not the situation.

Stephen Shaw: I'm not sure. Unexpected to be honest with you. I mean, there have been a wide range of groups. Religious groups.

Groups that support marriage have supported this a lot. I'm agnostic as a person. Marriage is probably a good thing for most people. I think, but I'm not certain of that. I don't try to get into those moralistic judgments at all. So, you know, while I'm happy that they are supporters well, [00:27:00] let me just call it one more thing.

I think it might not be a direct answer to your question, but I have been on quite a number of conservative podcasts and conservative TV stations. I do not choose to be on conservative podcasts or TV stations. They're the only ones who want to talk about this. I mean, just literally no one from the left wants to talk about it.

Yet this impacts the left at least as much as the right. You know, if you look at education levels, I would argue that there's more. People on the left are left in a, you know, state of unplanned childlessness. So it's terribly sad. Yeah, by far. Some people want to, want to talk about this. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: as we, we often say, this is the, the right's global warming.

Which it doesn't mean that either one of them is, is, is, is. True or untrue, but just what we're saying is it's very toxic for the other side to talk about it. It's so much so, I actually had a professor at Harvard which was talking to me, she's like, I follow you guys, what's my secret account? My secret Twitter account, because I don't want my students to know.

But even [00:28:00] so, one of my students somehow accused me of being a pronatalist. Like, accused her... Of potentially being a pronatalist, which she saw as being threatening to her tenure. That was insane to me that it has become that hyperbolic that being a out pronatalist could lose you your tenure at a major college.

So my

Stephen Shaw: own solution to that, and I actually believe it's a good idea, so let me share it with you. I call myself a pan nitalist. Pan nitalist meaning I equally support those who don't want children to live a life without children, and to support those who do want children. So perhaps anyone who feels conflicted can come out with something like that, and actually say they support both sides, because, you know, people who don't want children should not become parents.

They'd probably not make the decision.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah, no, we, we, we really agree. In fact, one of the reasons why we're really fighting for this is we know that basically reproductive choice and especially the option to not have Children, if you don't [00:29:00] want to is largely contingent on. those who are feminist, those who do support reproductive choice, having kids and sort of carrying their culture forward into the future.

Because if in the end we end up in a future where only those who don't support these things are around, people aren't really going to have as much choice as they did in the past. And we totally agree that, you know, not everyone is cut out to be a parent. Not everyone wants to be a parent. You know, not everyone's lucky enough to be in a situation to be a good parent.

I mean, I think like, for example, I would have been a terrible parent or I would have preferred to not have any kids at all. In the vast majority of permutations of my potential life, only because I met Malcolm, who's like absolutely perfect for me, am I really excited to be a parent? And I would not want to be in a world where I would be forced to be a parent otherwise.

So yeah, we really support that and it's, I mean, arguably this is much more a problem for the hyper progressive groups that don't support prenatalism either out of environmental concern or out of reproductive [00:30:00] choice concern or the desire to not have kids than it is for the conservative groups that, that support marriage, that support having families.

They're going to be fine, largely speaking. And

Malcolm Collins: we really agree with you on the, like, an arm movement does not take a stance on things like, do you need to be married to have kids? We say, everyone right now that is attempting a different cultural solution to having kids is attempting a hypothesis. Our hypothesis is that intergenerationally that won't work, like it'll lead to lower fertility rates and those groups will die out.

But I don't think that we, you know, time passes that judgment, not us.

Stephen Shaw: Yes. Oh, that's right. I don't think people realize how quickly the, the transformation, what will happen, you know, of course, year by year, things look the same, even decade by decade to some extent, but the, you know, I call this a tipping point because, you know, as you, as birth rates get lower, you know, I have a thing that we share with you.

It's, it's, it's, it's in the second part of the documentary. That's not yet, but I call it the societal half life. It's the time [00:31:00] taken for low birth rates to materialize and half the number of babies being born. And most of the industrialized world right now, that's somewhere around 50 to 70 years. I mean, halving the number of newborns in 50 to 70 years is frighteningly fast.

Now, if you, so what will happen is it will be those groups perhaps ideologies, those who have more children. Those will be the ones for the one thing we, we, we do know is that. Religiosity is associated with higher birth rates, but also, you know, that that can be, that that's inheritable. So I, I agree with you.

I, I, I would really caution anyone who thinks that we're going to glide down to a planet with fewer people and we're all going to have more space and life's going to be beautiful. No, the world's going to be a very varied place. Civilizations will have changed and people may not like what we're heading for.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, as, as we often point out not only this relevant to the economy, but when a developed economy collapses or goes [00:32:00] downhill, it's much worse than it is at equivalent economic levels if it's developing and we keep pointing to South Africa as a good example of what a developed economy looks like as it collapses because, you know, you get rolling blackouts, you get security issues that are much higher than equivalent income levels in developing countries.

And we have other videos that talk on this. Transcribed but yeah, this idea that this all can just happen quietly in the background I think is completely delusional when you look at the, the statistics on how much we rely on the young to support the old in our society.

Stephen Shaw: cOmpletely. And, you know, we've, we've really lost, you know, the, the sense of community has disappeared, really, and that, that I, you know, my own feeling is that national governments have only a minor role to play in the solution.

Solution will come from, you know, people, young people by definition, you're finding communities and societies where they're able to have the children they want to have. And a lot of the problems are there's, there's no one around to help support to, to be role models, et cetera. So, a [00:33:00] lot does have to change, but we've got to be very careful that it changes in a positive way because, I mean, for example, can I share now, you know, in Iran right now, Iran's got, Very low birth rates.

That's right. Yeah, terrible. But they, I think two years ago, banned vasectomies to increase birth rates. I'm hearing, I don't know if it's correct, but I'm hearing that the number of vasectomies in China has fallen by over 80 percent. There's no specific order about that, but that's how, things like that will happen.

And you know, some people speculate that at some point there will be a ban on abortions in China to force birth rates up. So seeing things go down too fast. Will likely have a kind of reaction in many cultures that, you know, people should not be gleeful that we're, you know, heading to smaller populations.

There will be a lot of turbulence along the way.

Simone Collins: Well, and we really don't like those policies because, you know, when we look at when these policies have been implemented in the past, they don't actually solve the problem. They may cause a temporary boost and then a [00:34:00] huge depression in the future because, you know, all these people then associate fertility with coercion.

And with, you know, being low class and all these things, like when, when this happened, Romania, horrible fallout after that. So it's a, it's, it's a scary, it's a scary

Malcolm Collins: world. And I think something that's captured in your work that's not captured in any of our work and our viewers know this about this. We're completely heartless and we are incapable of approaching things from a heartful matter, but your work really shows the amount of genuine human pain That this is causing and the amount of people who wanted larger families than they had, but due to social and cultural reasons, we're not able to find partners that they were satisfied with.

And I think when we look at today, you know, whether it's on Tik Tok, whether it's the gender wars or everything like that, it's really easy to like. Fractionalize yourself and have teams and everything like that. And dunk on women or dunk on men or, you know, whatever. But these lead to behavior patterns, which make long term partnerships [00:35:00] really unviable.

And it's, I think one of the things that is causing this. And so, and I think that this is more of a progressive issue than anything else. These people on TikTok who are gladly stoling them not having kids because they get virtual, like, like, social points for that. They get validation for that and they move up within their local social hierarchy because it's seen as a high value thing to, to, to signal.

Without considering the long term pain they might be causing to impressionable young people. By convincing them that they will always feel the way about kids they do in their early 20s. And that's one of the hardest things about kids is when you really, really want kids is generally after it's It's easy to have them.

You need to have been preparing for the way you feel about the world to shift before it happens. In the same way that our school system prepares us for puberty before we go through it, you need to be prepared for this, like, baby puberty beforehand, because if you don't have a partner by the time this biological [00:36:00] flip happens you know, there really isn't anything you can do at that stage, often.

Stephen Shaw: Yeah, I agree with that. Again, I get confidence from just seeing younger people watch the documentary because I think people figure this out for themselves. I don't think we have to, you know, say more than just like, here are examples of people with regrets. And people have, people generally aren't aware of that, certainly haven't seen those emotions.

And if I could explain, I didn't go search, I mean, I was, I come from the world of data science. I don't know if your viewers know that, but I'm not a filmmaker. I ended up throwing myself into this project, realizing that something was out in the data. Why would all these countries have falling birth rates at the exact same time?

And the data itself wasn't answering this question. I thought I needed to talk to people about what's happening in their lives. A one year project to film in a few countries turned into a seven year project filmed in 24 countries and 230 people I interviewed but but what kept happening when I met people mid well mid 40s 50s certainly Much more often than not these [00:37:00] emotions Some level of regret would come out.

I'm not saying everybody's life was completely grief ridden. thAt wouldn't be true. But there's grief there for the vast majority. In some cases, that grief was intense. Very, very intense. And, you know, that's why I kept going. Because I felt these people are telling these stories for the first time. You know, it wasn't that they're sharing these emotions even with their close friends and family.

I opened up. Yeah, the topic. So, I think people, when they see that this is a reality, which is why I think these antinatalists are so, you know, upset with my documentary because, you know, it goes against the idea that people, you know, so a couple of other things, I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s.

you know, anti natalists or, you know, I call them anti natalists. Natalism to me is clear, though some people define it in different ways. It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children. So this was to do with the world running out of [00:38:00] food. And then the world didn't run out with the Green Revolution and then we came up with the environment.

Maybe that was appropriate, but let's not get into that conversation because it's complicated. But my point is, right now they're shifting again. I can see the shift. The problem now is the patriarchy. And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see that the population is maximizing right now.

So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view about preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment, it's about men forcing themselves. We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because you know, they, they have an agenda. They are ideologists.

And I will, I want to say one more thing that you, you, in your statement there about the people who don't have children. And do you know, if you go online, you will find comments, tweets between those extreme, they are extreme [00:39:00] people who don't like children. I can't call them any anti natalist attacking.

People who, who are childless by choice saying, Why are you complaining about not having children? You can get out of bed anytime. You know, you can have all the vacations. Stop this. And the bitterness and the attacks that those people are receiving. I mean, it's just horrendous. So, you know, that, that's why it's very clear to me, okay, these are ideologies who don't care about people's feelings, they don't care about facts, they don't care about people's suffering, they just want to pretend human nature doesn't exist and women don't have, don't have children, which is just nonsense.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think one of the things that I often mention on the show is if you're at a, at a party in New York with a bunch of, you know, wealthy progressives, which we often go to, and you bring up the concept like fertility rates, fertility rates, Uncommon for someone to say, in fact, I'd say it almost happens every time if you're in a group of five or more, for someone to say, is it really [00:40:00] so bad if humans go extinct?

And I think that this concept has been normalized among a large part of our society, and they know they're not supposed to talk about it publicly, I mean, some do, but I think it's, it's more commonly held than, than people

Stephen Shaw: would think, yeah, and well, you know, if, if that's true on that scale, it explains a lot of these ideologists, I think they're concealing their real motives or, or their, you know, benefactors might maybe have, have those motives in terms of setting up these organizations.

It would explain a lot because they never change the message. It's always about fewer children. There's one organization that just promotes the idea, have fewer children than you want. And I asked them, well, what if you only want one child? They didn't respond. And then one of their own donors jumped in and said, you know, that, that's, you know, just unacceptable.

Everybody has a human right to have a child. They don't care. It's just have fewer children down to zero. It, it's endless. I mean, there's the other one about the environment. Gosh, I could talk about this for a long time. There's so many examples. They try and make [00:41:00] us think that people without children are happier.

You look at the research, it doesn't show that at all. They're so selective in that, that the impact on the environment of having a child is much bigger. Then all of these other things, you look at the research and it doesn't support that at all. So there's people out there with agendas. Yeah,

Simone Collins: absolutely.

 It it's interesting to me, though, as I hear you talk about your experiences, I feel like you've come across so many more pronatal people than we do. And I wonder if that's because of your international focus and creating this documentary, whereas like Malcolm and I are mostly interacting with probably coastal elites in antinatalism, it,

Among that group is much more vehement than that. I've never heard someone say, Oh, everyone has a right to have one kid. What we're more used to hearing is. Wouldn't it be better if there were just no more humans at all? Which is really sobering. But it's encouraging at least to hear that [00:42:00] like, even the more skeptical groups that you're coming across are a little bit more friendly to children.

I didn't expect to be pleasantly surprised by that. So it does give me some

Malcolm Collins: hope. Well, where can we point people that would be most useful to your efforts?

Stephen Shaw: Well, I have a website called birthgap. org. We've got around 4, 000 members. It's a community just where we share information and thoughts and data that the maps I created, for example, in the documentary are on there. You can direct message me on there. I'm on Twitter at Steven J. Shaw, S T E P H E N J S H A W.

And on YouTube, you can find part one. If you search for birth gap. Charlotte's world part ones on there, and there are actually two more parts that will be out in the months ahead.

Malcolm Collins: We are so honored that you took the time to come on with us, and I really hope that we can together continue to grow this movement.

And I really love your voice here because it is so orthogonal to ours in its ability to capture the emotions behind all of this.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you're, you're like the non sociopath [00:43:00] in this movie. Very necessary. We're, we're really, really, really grateful for your work and please keep us posted on anything we can do to be helpful to you.

Stephen Shaw: Thank you. Enjoy the conversation.

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