Framtiden tillhör de konservativa

Varför män bestämmer och konservativa kommer att ärva jorden. Så lyder den milt sagt uppseendeväckande rubriken på framsidan av det senaste numret av tidskriften Foreign Policy. Det handlar om hur samhällen i takt med männens minskade inflytande får allt lägre födelsetal. Och att konservativa grupper är de som föder flest barn. Bakom dessa uppgifter står författaren och forskaren Philip Longman som i sin artikel The Return of Patriarchy förutspår patriarkatets återkomst. Han skriver:

Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.

Patriarkat innebär nu inte enbart att männen styr. För Longman handlar det om hur ett samhälle organiseras för att maximera fertilitet och föräldrars investering i nästa generation. Eller med Longmans ord.

Patriarchal societies come in many varieties and evolve through different stages. What they have in common are customs and attitudes that collectively serve to maximize fertility and parental investment in the next generation. Of these, among the most important is the stigmatization of “illegitimate” children. One measure of the degree to which patriarchy has diminished in advanced societies is the growing acceptance of out-of-wedlock births, which have now become the norm in Scandinavian countries, for example.

Another key to patriarchy’s evolutionary advantage is the way it penalizes women who do not marry and have children. Just decades ago in the English-speaking world, such women were referred to, even by their own mothers, as spinsters or old maids, to be pitied for their barrenness or condemned for their selfishness. Patriarchy made the incentive of taking a husband and becoming a full-time mother very high because it offered women few desirable alternatives.

Han menar också att patriarkatet har fått ett oförtjänt dåligt rykte. En patriark är ingen hustrumisshandlare som styr sin familj med järnhand utan en familjefar som gör sitt bästa för barnen. Longman igen:

Today, after all, we associate patriarchy with the hideous abuse of women and children, with poverty and failed states. Taliban rebels or Muslim fanatics in Nigeria stoning an adulteress to death come to mind. Yet these are examples of insecure societies that have degenerated into male tyrannies, and they do not represent the form of patriarchy that has achieved evolutionary advantage in human history. Under a true patriarchal system, such as in early Rome or 17th-century Protestant Europe, fathers have strong reason to take an active interest in the children their wives bear. That is because, when men come to see themselves, and are seen by others, as upholders of a patriarchal line, how those children turn out directly affects their own rank and honor.

Longman observerar hur konservativa grupperingar har högre födelsetal än de som styrs av moderna värderingar. Ett exempel är de delstater som röstade på George W Bush i presidentvalet 2004. I dessa är födelsetalen 12 procent högre än i de delstater som röstade på John Kerry. Liknande siffror finns för Europa:

In Europe today, for example, how many children different people have, and under what circumstances, correlates strongly with their beliefs on a wide range of political and cultural attitudes. For instance, do you distrust the army? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ronny Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids””or ever to get married and have kids””than those who say they have no objection to the military. Or again, do you find soft drugs, homosexuality, and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? For whatever reason, people answering affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone, or in childless, cohabitating unions, than those who answer negatively.

The great difference in fertility rates between secular individualists and religious or cultural conservatives augurs a vast, demographically driven change in modern societies.

Longman avslutar med prognosen att det är i de mest sekulära samhällena liksom i de med de största välfärdsapparaterna som vi först kommer att få se patriarkatets återkomst:

Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family. The absolute population of Europe and Japan may fall dramatically, but the remaining population will, by a process similar to survival of the fittest, be adapted to a new environment in which no one can rely on government to replace the family, and in which a patriarchal God commands family members to suppress their individualism and submit to father.

Det mest intressanta i Longmans artikel är iakttagelsen att det är de samhällen som värderar den starka familjen som också är de mest livskraftiga. Det motsatta gäller också. Samhällen som upphöjer individualismen som religion försvagas successivt därför att de inte investerar i den uppväxande generationen.

Om Longman har rätt i sin prognos borde Sverige stå på tur. Och har vi inte redan börjat känna hur friska fläktar från en konservativ vår närmar sig?