The Problem With Not Having Kids: Paul Morland

The Problem With...

James Smith

Society & Culture

4.9 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Demographer and author Paul Morland joins James Smith to reveal the uncomfortable truth about the problem with population collapse - why falling birth rates are creating aging societies, economic decline and a quiet crisis at the heart of the modern world. Morland explains how a lack of children is reshaping nations, destroying communities and threatening the future of humanity itself. They discuss the myths around “overpopulation,” the cultural shifts stopping people from having families and the real reasons behind the demographic time bomb no one wants to talk about. From housing and technology to feminism and social media, this episode explores how comfort, distraction and misplaced priorities have turned reproduction into a global taboo. 👁️ Try Neutonic: https://www.neutonic.com/jamessmith 🧪 Check your Test: https://www.manual.co/smith 📝 Business Mentoring: https://www.jamessmith.business 🏋🏼‍♂️ Online Coaching: https://www.jamessmithacademy.com He explains: ◼️ Why population collapse will bankrupt countries ◼️ How culture and comfort are killing fertility ◼️ Why the “too many people” myth is a dangerous lie ◼️ How governments can (and must) incentivise family life ◼️ What happens when a society stops having children timestamps 00:00 Why Population Decline Matters 02:00 Korea’s Aging Population Spiral 05:14 Can Earth Support More People? 08:34 Humans As The Ultimate Resource 11:22 Demography Everyone Misunderstands 14:07 The Global Fertility Collapse 18:55 Choice Vs Biological Fertility 22:10 Why People Stop Having Kids 25:33 Housing, Work, And Modern Life 27:07 Incentives Can’t Fix Culture Alone 31:16 Welfare, Taxes, And Family Penalties 34:20 Why Fertility Isn’t Political 36:49 Women, Work, And Family Timing 41:12 How Workplaces Must Change 49:21 Dating Apps And Relationship Breakdown 57:31 Teaching Fertility Earlier 62:44 East Asia’s Status Trap 68:26 Immigration Or National Decline 80:46 What Population Collapse Looks Like Welcome to "The Problem With" where each week we look into a problem to get a better understanding of it. This podcast has no sponsors, only my businesses and investments. Please check out the links below. I'm on a mission to help men check their levels of Testosterone, more info here: https://www.manual.co/smith I help small businesses make money online: https://www.jamessmith.business Please check out and try Neutonic here: https://www.neutonic.com/jamessmith For a free trial of my online personal training app go here: https://www.affordableonlinecoaching.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	At 8 billion, we're living much better than when we were 4 billion.
0:03.0	And I think the idea that we have to take our numbers down to save ourselves and to save the planet is completely delusioned.
0:09.0	When we were 1 billion, back in 1800, probably a third of kids died before the age of 5.
0:14.0	Most people didn't make it to the age that they could reproduce themselves.
0:18.0	Most people were a couple of meals away from being hungry or starving.
0:21.6	So we made incredible material progress as human beings while our numbers have gone up.
0:26.6	Paul Moreland is a British demographer and author.
0:29.6	This week, James and Paul discuss.
0:32.6	What is the problem with not having enough children?
0:34.6	As you go from high infant mortality, lots of people dying very young and having six or seven on average, towards very few of any dying and people having a couple, what then goes wrong that they then don't have a couple they have on average one or even fewer than one. I know some people not having children because if they wanted to have a child, both of them wanted to work and if if they both work, that the child would have to be in daycare,
0:54.5	and they'd only see their child about an hour and a half a day.
0:56.3	So they said, that's not fair on the child,
0:57.8	therefore, which is not going to have children at this stage, not life?
0:59.8	Why is it that the government are so blind to the fact that if you create these environments, you're going to make the situation worse? I do see these issues.
1:06.3	And I wrote an article in the Sunday Times about three years ago.
1:09.7	Well, they headlined it is a time to tax the child.
1:12.1	And what I said in that article was... Isn't it annoying when people interrupt your podcast to promote random crap and spend a minute talking about the benefits? I respect your time, so I do it in 12 seconds. These are some of our newtronic products, and they're really good. So please head to Newtonic.com and find out for yourself. Right, let's go back to the episode now. Don't forget, newtonic.com. What is the problem with not having enough children? There are two problems, I think. The first is it's quite sad for people who like children. There's a sort of personal, subjective sense of something missing in your life. But that's really difficult to persuade people of either you get it or you don't,
1:47.2	and some people genuinely would rather not have children.
1:49.7	So the whole kind of personal subjective side of things.
1:52.9	The more objective side that you can talk about more freely is that if you imagine
1:58.3	Korea where people, 100 people of the grandparents generation,
2:03.3	produce about 33 people of the parents' generation, create about 11 people of the grandchild's generation.
	...

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