However, as one of the *last* people that I knew when I was 14-30 that remains without children, OK, but that's your (necessarily limited) experience; you can't generalise from that. I know literally dozens of people in their late thirties and forties who are happily child-free and regret-free, myself included.
As for "social pressures", tell me, do binobos have "social pressures"? Rats? Sheep? And yet *all* of them reproduce, almost without exception. But bonobos (and rats, and sheep, and every other animal too) don't have an innate urge to reproduce; they have an innate urge to breed. That's a different thing, and you seem to be conflating the two. And of course the idea that animals don't have social pressure and therefore humans don't either is utterly specious. Other animals don't do all sorts of things which we humans do. We absolutely _do_ have social pressures, and they're remarkably powerful; we know this, beyond any doubt, as there is a huge body of research looking at exactly this. Other animals don't have language; does that mean we don't either?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-06-20 08:39 am (UTC)OK, but that's your (necessarily limited) experience; you can't generalise from that. I know literally dozens of people in their late thirties and forties who are happily child-free and regret-free, myself included.
As for "social pressures", tell me, do binobos have "social pressures"? Rats? Sheep? And yet *all* of them reproduce, almost without exception.
But bonobos (and rats, and sheep, and every other animal too) don't have an innate urge to reproduce; they have an innate urge to breed. That's a different thing, and you seem to be conflating the two.
And of course the idea that animals don't have social pressure and therefore humans don't either is utterly specious. Other animals don't do all sorts of things which we humans do. We absolutely _do_ have social pressures, and they're remarkably powerful; we know this, beyond any doubt, as there is a huge body of research looking at exactly this. Other animals don't have language; does that mean we don't either?