The Baby Boom Mystery: Europe Was Below Repopulation Rate in the 1920s?!

https://discord.gg/EGFRjwwS92

In this in-depth exploration, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the fascinating history of the Baby Boom and its surprising origins. They challenge common misconceptions about what caused this demographic phenomenon and discuss its implications for modern pronatalist efforts. Drawing from historical data, academic research, and their own insights, the Collins couple offers a fresh perspective on fertility trends and what they mean for our future.

Key topics covered:

* The unexpected fertility decline in early 20th century Europe and North America

* Debunking myths about the causes of the Baby Boom

* The role of medical advancements in reducing maternal mortality

* The impact of World War II on societal values and family planning

* Cross-cultural comparisons of Baby Boom effects

* The limitations of housing policy in addressing fertility rates

* The importance of cultural shifts in promoting higher birth rates

* Implications for modern pronatalist movements

Whether you're interested in demographics, history, or social trends, this video provides valuable insights into one of the most significant population shifts of the 20th century and its relevance to today's fertility challenges.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone! We are back to pronatalist coverage! All right. And today we're going to be talking about a very Interesting phenomenon that not many people know about.

Not many people are aware that half of Europe was below repopulation rate before the baby boom. In TFR numbers, that means that they weren't having enough kids to replace themselves. The entire world was in a bit of a fertility collapse during that period. And, We somehow got out of it with the baby boom, and then that's at a new sort of set point that we've been declining from ever since then.

But I want to talk about two things. One, this initial slump, and two, theories for what caused the baby boom to potentially recreate a phenomenon like this. A phenomenon that we can recreate every hundred years or so, and then just have this cycle. That would be great, right?

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: This was written by Phoebe Arcelognick Wakefield.

Phoebe came to our

Simone Collins: dinner in London, remember?

Malcolm Collins: We met her?

Simone Collins: Yeah, we know Phoebe.[00:01:00]

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, oh, her, yes! Yes, Phoebe. The Indian food in London? Yes, yes, yes.

I do think you begin to see her blinders near the end of the piece that is mostly due to the areas of policy in which she has worked.

Malcolm Collins: But outside of that I actually think the piece is fantastic because it brought a lot of information to me that I didn't know. And I'd also say another thing I really liked about this piece and her writing Is usually when I take a piece, I just read like a few paragraphs from it to get like the core of the message.

I'll be reading over 50 percent of this piece. Because she presented so much consistent new information. That I really have to read most of it to get the point across.

Simone Collins: Right. I think we should be clear that Phoebe is one of the most prominent pronatalists in the UK. She's very respected, she's very smart, and she's a wonderful person.

And you may be bad with names, but yes, we do know her. And she was always presented to us as a who's who of one of the, the top pronatalist policy wonks and thinkers. in the United Kingdom. So if you want to read [00:02:00]

Malcolm Collins: this or other work of hers, you can check out works in progress, in 1800s, the average British woman had 4. 97 children over the course of her life, about the same amount as the average woman living in Birkenau Fosso today. A century later, Britain's fertility rate had slipped to 3. 9 children per woman. And 30 years later, in 1935, it had plummeted to 1. 79, well below the replacement rate of 2. 1, the number of children per woman needed to keep the population steady. So in 1935, the TFR of the UK was only 1.

79. That's kind of shocking.

Simone Collins: Yeah, those are modern numbers so much for, Oh, it was women entering the workplace. It was the pill.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, this is actually very important. Very clearly this debunks the women in the workplace and the pill arguments

Simone Collins: and even women getting educated at that time, women, you know, also didn't have such high levels of, higher educational attainment either.

So yeah.

Malcolm Collins: [00:03:00] Yeah. This trend occurred across Europe by the 1920s. Over half of Europeans lived in a country with a below replacement fertility rate, including Sweden, Germany and the Czech Republic. The US and Canada also saw steady declines in family sizes throughout the 19th century. By 1800, the average American woman had over 7 children.

By 1900, she had fewer than 4. 30 fewer than three. So talk about how quick that's happening. It goes from four to three in just 30 years there. And that's,

Simone Collins: sorry, that's from what you said, 1850 to 1900.

Malcolm Collins: So, 1807, 1904. Okay, over the course of 100 years. No, no, 1904, 1933. Oh. Okay, and I'm going to put a graph on screen so everyone can see and they can more easily visualize than you can.

If you look from.

1800 to 1880 in most countries except for the U. S., you had a steady fertility rate. In the U. S., you had a slightly declining fertility rate. And then [00:04:00] 1880 to 1920, pretty much across the board, you have steadily declining fertility rates. And it seems to accelerate in the U. S. a little bit during that period.

So France's fertility rate had begun slipping even earlier to great alarm in 1896.

An organization called the Alliance Nationale pour le Croisement de la Population. The way you butcher French.

Simone Collins: Can you, it's like when Gomez speaks to Morticia in Italian.

Tish. That's French. Gomez.

Simone Collins: No, I speak French. Which is better. Okay. Like the guy on glorious. What gets me harder for you is when you butcher French for me.

Like, oh, Malcolm Butcher some more French for me. I

Malcolm Collins: love it, . Yeah. But you love how, how, how patriotic I am. And I've, you keep, keep doing it. Keep reading it up. Read it. Sorry. Read that off again. Honestly,

Created. [00:05:00] No, read it again! Oh my gosh, okay. Alliance Nationale pour le Croisement de la Population Francaise was born,

Gli amici della vedetta ammirata da tutti noi questa gemma provera della nostra cultura saranno naturalmente accolti sotto la mia protezione per la durata del loro soggiorno.

Grazie. Colomi. Do I pronounce it correctly? Uh, yes, uh, correcto.

Malcolm Collins: Created expressly to combat denatelite, essentially depopulation. It had attracted some 40, 000 members by the 1920s, was novelist Emily Zola an early recruit. The Alliance Nationale was merely one of many organizations, local and national, established to resist France's apparent progress towards what demographer and statistician Dr.

Jacquerie Berlite [00:06:00] Tillion , disparagingly called the imminent disappearance of our country.

French pronatalists frequently and vividly campaigned on the issue as a serious matter of national security. In 1914, the Alliance Nationale published over a million posters showing two Frenchmen being bayoneted by five Germans. The poster bore a caption exp