Childfree by Mutation?
The instinct triggering sexual activities and the instinct to procreate are not the same. Animals without an consciousness for consequences are driven by instinctive urges to copulate, and when the offspring appear, this then triggers the instinctive behavior to raise them.
Humans can be aware of their urges and they can consciously distinguish between the wish to mate for being a couple and the wish to procreate. Therefore there could be mutations eliminating only the wish to procreate without inhibiting either the sexual instinct nor the physiological ability to breed.
There is a big difference between the consequences of possible mutations leading to the evolution of a non-breeding phenotype and of a non-breeding disposition in the brain.
When a mutation impedes a person physically to have offspring, that gene dies with the person and it cannot spread.
But when a mutation of the disposition in the brain changes the balance of the relative strength of the instinctive urge to breed and the rational comprehension, that life without breeding is preferably for the individual, this does not automatically impede breeding, it only deletes or reduces the wish to breed.
Men with such a mutation may continue to be promiscuous without any wish to have offspring. Their instinctive choice of a mate may become different, not guided anymore by the preference of a mate promising healthy offspring but for more personal benefits. If contraception is not available or fails, they may still breed and spread their mutated genes. Maybe breeding men are only those, who provide for and raise their offspring, and if they want to spread their genes, they do it in variations of polygynous arrangements.
All men, who for whatever reason succeed to avoid to care and to provide for their offspring, may not have an urge for procreation in their genes.
Women with such a mutation may be forced, manipulated or bought to breed without wishing to do so.
Therefore it is possible, that such a mutation would not get extinct, but would become a recessive gene, that is spreading slowly. Only when two of those recessive genes are transmitted, the person would become someone, whose conscious choice is the preference to avoid breeding. But since they are physiologically able to breed, some of them again are handing on their genes by involuntary and accidental breeding for the same reasons as the already mentioned women and men, who first had that mutation.
Maybe that gene already exists and has just never been acknowledged by the mainstream culture, in which breeding is considered as the norm.
All through known history, there has been infanticide, abandoned children, children delivered to the orphanage, and men knowingly not providing for their progeny. It seems very plausible, that many of them were non-breeders by the same genetic disposition as the conscious proclaimed non-breeders of today, but their bodies and their ignorance of basic biological facts had got them into a horrible dilemma. Many of them wanted to be good, responsible people, and yet they faced the choice, whose life was irreversibly destroyed and damaged, that of the progeny or the own life sacrificed for the slavery of raising the unwanted progeny.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Therese had five children and they brought them all to the orphanage. Rousseau wrote a long book on education, and he is often attacked for what they did. Today, they would be a couple of childfree intellectuals, because today being childfree is an acceptable and possible lifestyle.
People with no wish to procreate had no chance to do so without committing crimes, social transgressions or sin in the definition of their religion, until the availability of modern methods of contraception, especially the pill, finally allowed people to refuse breeding and remain decent, responsible people in the eyes of society. Only when there were socially acceptable methods could it become possible to admit and proclaim the decision to remain childfree and not be punished and marginalised.
There was also a second effect, the spreading of ideas by the mass media like TV and the Internet. If only one person feels no wish to breed, and never even hears of any likeminded other, that person may well feel as an defective outsider of society attempting to conform. But if many people know of each other, then they can much better have the self-confidence to not only accept themselves but also demand to be accepted as different but not defective.
The instinct triggering sexual activities and the instinct to procreate are not the same. Animals without an consciousness for consequences are driven by instinctive urges to copulate, and when the offspring appear, this then triggers the instinctive behavior to raise them.
Humans can be aware of their urges and they can consciously distinguish between the wish to mate for being a couple and the wish to procreate. Therefore there could be mutations eliminating only the wish to procreate without inhibiting either the sexual instinct nor the physiological ability to breed.
There is a big difference between the consequences of possible mutations leading to the evolution of a non-breeding phenotype and of a non-breeding disposition in the brain.
When a mutation impedes a person physically to have offspring, that gene dies with the person and it cannot spread.
But when a mutation of the disposition in the brain changes the balance of the relative strength of the instinctive urge to breed and the rational comprehension, that life without breeding is preferably for the individual, this does not automatically impede breeding, it only deletes or reduces the wish to breed.
Men with such a mutation may continue to be promiscuous without any wish to have offspring. Their instinctive choice of a mate may become different, not guided anymore by the preference of a mate promising healthy offspring but for more personal benefits. If contraception is not available or fails, they may still breed and spread their mutated genes. Maybe breeding men are only those, who provide for and raise their offspring, and if they want to spread their genes, they do it in variations of polygynous arrangements.
All men, who for whatever reason succeed to avoid to care and to provide for their offspring, may not have an urge for procreation in their genes.
Women with such a mutation may be forced, manipulated or bought to breed without wishing to do so.
Therefore it is possible, that such a mutation would not get extinct, but would become a recessive gene, that is spreading slowly. Only when two of those recessive genes are transmitted, the person would become someone, whose conscious choice is the preference to avoid breeding. But since they are physiologically able to breed, some of them again are handing on their genes by involuntary and accidental breeding for the same reasons as the already mentioned women and men, who first had that mutation.
Maybe that gene already exists and has just never been acknowledged by the mainstream culture, in which breeding is considered as the norm.
All through known history, there has been infanticide, abandoned children, children delivered to the orphanage, and men knowingly not providing for their progeny. It seems very plausible, that many of them were non-breeders by the same genetic disposition as the conscious proclaimed non-breeders of today, but their bodies and their ignorance of basic biological facts had got them into a horrible dilemma. Many of them wanted to be good, responsible people, and yet they faced the choice, whose life was irreversibly destroyed and damaged, that of the progeny or the own life sacrificed for the slavery of raising the unwanted progeny.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Therese had five children and they brought them all to the orphanage. Rousseau wrote a long book on education, and he is often attacked for what they did. Today, they would be a couple of childfree intellectuals, because today being childfree is an acceptable and possible lifestyle.
People with no wish to procreate had no chance to do so without committing crimes, social transgressions or sin in the definition of their religion, until the availability of modern methods of contraception, especially the pill, finally allowed people to refuse breeding and remain decent, responsible people in the eyes of society. Only when there were socially acceptable methods could it become possible to admit and proclaim the decision to remain childfree and not be punished and marginalised.
There was also a second effect, the spreading of ideas by the mass media like TV and the Internet. If only one person feels no wish to breed, and never even hears of any likeminded other, that person may well feel as an defective outsider of society attempting to conform. But if many people know of each other, then they can much better have the self-confidence to not only accept themselves but also demand to be accepted as different but not defective.
