Newsroo - There are several reasons why nobody has challenged the dominant theory that declining population means economic ruin. Part of the answer is to understand why it is the dominant theory. I think it is because business people have money invested in increasing population. If you have invested in an office building and there are no new tenants to fill it up, you are going to lose money. If you have invested in property on the edge of the city and population growth slows, you may not get to develop it for 20 years instead of five. That might be a lot of interest payments to carry. For many business people promoting population growth is simply taking care of your investments.

For others it is easier just not to tackle population issues at all. I think the membership of Environmental groups don't challenge it because opposition to population increase sometimes means reducing levels of immigration, and that might mean you look like a racist. The type of people that support environmental groups feel just as strongly about refugees and racism as they do about dry land salinity and greenhouse, so it is easier to concentrate on the forests and urban planning (less controversial issues than population) than potentially touch the racist nerve.

Others don't challenge it because of the abortion connection - another tangled web that many choose to avoid. Others say the status quo is just fine, we have always grown so lets stay with it. Many don't think long term. We are not really programmed to think 40 years into the future. In Australia there is so much open space we think we are immune to population pressures. I'm sure there are several other reasons.

The government has incorporated the low fertility rate issue with a concern that there won’t be enough money to support elderly people in future years. However this may not be the case, and Australia’s overall economy may not be greatly affected by a older population.

It is possible that the government has simply been trying to get wage-earners to save more money, and put more money it into superannuation funds for example. By saving money, people are not buying so much and therefore increasing the trade deficit.

Difficult to tell, but for individual couples, the decision on whether to have children, when to have children, and how many children to have is a real issue. Gone are the days when children just came along almost at random, as nature seems to have intended.

However the belief that there is some type of conspiracy against women is drawing a rather long bow. Enormous amounts of money is being given to women, (as easily seen with the amount of pork-barrelling to women during the last election), no major political party has a policy for men but all have policies for women, numerous agencies are devoted entirely to women, there is much thought that the Family Court has become highly anti-male(or at least has an extreme PR problem), and as seen by the AIFS, almost no social science research carried out in the past has incorporated the viewpoints of men or fathers. (NB the comment by Leslie Cannold that men are “absent, reluctant or sexist” is not backed up by reliable research, and is a sexist remark made by someone whose wage is paid for by the tax-payer)

I’ve just reread all of this (including my own silly comments), and it is still all about women. I guess there is no way around that, as long as women legally retain control of their uterus. Housework, and domestic violence (just to name two), are red herrings.

This is just good old pinko dogma against us poor men without a uterus. Like hey, we’re on baby strike, how much do we get to change our mind?!

You inventor dudes reading this, please note what needs inventing… (yes, dudes - it's not like I'm talking to female scientists). Roll on science!

(this is Seeker attempting humor;-)

I've been busy for 2 days - so has everyone on this comments site apparently! Thank you Newsroo, Grace and Ericc for the links - I appreciate it. I haven't got time to respond/comment except to say I second Newsroos sentiments - what a great healthy respectful debate. Couldn't resist a word to Seeker, (without a uterus!) - you still control your own fertility though Seeker - you can always 'keep it in your pants'! lol!

It's funny you should say Seeker, I call it a 'fertility strike'... not for me really as I wouldn't have wanted to be a mum no matter what but for some other women I do believe this is true - they are striking until having children is a joint responsibility, and individual adults look after themselves. There is NO reason a father can't do his own washing...or clean the bathroom once a week, these things are not biological.

Although it is not fair to say that modern men are necessarily the chauvanistic 'master of the house' that their fathers were, I think this generations' women have a severe hangover - the duality of growing up in an increasingly equal rights society where they were told 'girls can do/be anything!' and watching their mothers subservience (washing clothes/cooking/cleaning etc etc) to their fathers creates a confusion to which the simplest answer is to avoid the whole thing.

So I guess despite my outrage initially, I do agree with the article. What I don't agree with is that current policy encourages perpetuation of gender roles.... money won't change that - it's education and attitude change. I truely believe that political correctness is *evil* and counterproductive.... I also believe that men are being discriminated against in terms of family courts and employers - mainly due to this stupid idea that women are 'more nurturing' than men. Bullshit - nurturing is a chemical balance in an individual - not connected to genitalia!

My 'terms of negotiation' if I WERE a woman who wanted kids would be something like - Equal Parental Leave, Equal Pay, Active Encouragement of Paternal Involvement by Employers.

Adults looking after themselves could be encouraged by making it a negative thing to be 'helpless', so men would WANT to learn how to use the washing machine to avoid being seen as useless...come to think of it - why isn't this a policy now? I would be embarrassed to admit I needed someone else to wash my clothes....

I think you have nailed it there seeker with “ownership of the uterus”. There is now so much legality involved with children. In the past men and women were encouraged to marry young and start producing. This was a necessity because there was a fairly low life expectancy rate, but neither the father nor the mother had any great “legal” ownership of the children, and it was rarely an issue because divorce was rare.

Now there is much more temporary de-facto relationships and much more divorce occurring. Relationships are much less permanent (almost throwaway), and it has become a belief that the mother owns the child because simplified thinking says it came from her uterus so she owns it.

So the father is left on the outer, he has almost no say in anything. He cannot stop an abortion, he cannot compel an abortion, he cannot initiate a pregnancy if she is on the pill, he cannot stop her from going off the pill and she needn’t tell him. Media portrays him as being an incompetent clown, and industry thinks of him as being a highly necessary resource to make more profits and wants him to work longer and longer hours. If he does have a child, then that child becomes dependant on the decisions of the mother and the Family Court. Feminists back up this system to the full because they are so concerned about equality and human rights, and social science is so biased it has nothing to offer to help solve any social issues involved.

Great evolution of society.

Newsroo, no reliable study has ever proven that males don’t know how to use a washing machine. I think males invented them, or at least they normally service them and fix them. Males may not want to wash every day, (or twice a day as with one relative), but I think males know how to put clothes in an automatic washing machine and press a button. Washing clothes can’t get much easier, and I think that there are 10001 ways to reduce the time spent on housework. Maybe a male will have to write a book on it. Any volunteers.