UCLA researchers predict dramatic changes in fertility, marriage and gender roles in the post-Corona world
From: University of California - Los Angeles, translation: Ziv Adaki. The article was published on October 21, 2020
The corona virus and America's response to it are expected to have a profound effect on our families, our lives, relationships and gender roles for years, so claim 12 prominent scientists, who analyzed 90 studies and harnessed their various fields of expertise to evaluate our response to the epidemic and anticipate its results.
The group, which includes several researchers from the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), foresee lasting psychological consequences following the crisis, even among those of us who have not been infected. Their predictions and insights were published on October 22, 2020 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, including:
- Planned pregnancies will decrease in a disease-stricken world, the birth rate will drop and many couples will delay their marriage, according to Martie Haselton, lead author of the article and a professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA.
- Singles will be less inclined to start new relationships. Women who can afford to live alone will tend to stay single for longer.
- Since the children are at home following the pandemic, women spend more time caring for them and supporting their studies, they are less available for lucrative careers and many of them will become more dependent on their partners as breadwinners. Such a reality may push us towards conservative social gender norms and the possibility of a retreat in gender equality.
- Unlike past crises, this pandemic does not bring people closer together, with the exception of a few exceptional cases, especially in the US, according to lead author of the article Benjamin Seitz, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at UCLA and an expert in behavioral neuroscience .
- "Our species is not wired to seek an accurate understanding of the world as it really is," the scientists write, and our tribe is prone to groupthink resulting in widespread misinformation. We tend to look for information that supports our opinions and too often we don't trust health experts, they say.
"The psychological, social and economic consequences of the corona will be long-term," Haselton says. "The longer the epidemic lasts, the more entrenched the changes are expected to be."
The coronavirus and America's response to it are expected to have a profound impact on our families, our lives, relationships and gender roles for years, say prominent scientists who analyzed 90 studies and harnessed their diverse fields of expertise to assess our response to the pandemic and predict its outcomes. Some of the predictions: a decline in planned pregnancies in a disease-stricken world, a drop in fertility and many couples who will postpone their marriages, according to Marty Heselton, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at UCLA. Credit: Jeff Berlin
The corona virus: a global social experiment
"Marriage rates fell, and people put off childbirth in a plague-stricken world, the populations of various countries will shrink and gradually fall below the 'replacement level,'" the researchers write. A decrease in productivity may later have social and economic consequences, an impact on employment opportunities, challenging the ability of countries to provide a safety net for aging populations, and may lead to a global economic contraction.
The study showed that even before the pandemic, women were under more pressure than men in the context of family and career. Now, they have even more responsibility in managing the household, especially the one related to taking care of the children and taking care of their education. In medicine and other sciences, women academics are already publishing significantly less research compared to the previous year, while men have seen an increase in output, Haselton said.
Haselton and her partners predict a turn towards social conservatism. As a result of the pandemic, there may be less tolerance towards legal abortions and towards the rights of sexual minorities, which are inconsistent with conservative gender roles. On top of that, in times of economic inequality, many women will emphasize their sexuality more because they are competing with each other for desirable men, Haselton says.
Many times, people who meet online will be disappointed when they meet in person. "Does the couple have chemistry? You can't tell with zoom," says Heselton. In new relationships, people will miss clues, especially online, and the disappointing results often originate from the idealization of the potential partner - that is, the perception of the person as you would like them to be and not as they actually are.
The pandemic is a kind of global social experiment, say the researchers, who are experts in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, behavioral science, evolutionary biology, medicine, evolutionary social science and economics.
Evolutionary struggle
The researchers used an evolutionary perspective to highlight the strategies the virus develops against us, the strategies we have to fight it, and the strategies we must acquire.
Human beings today are the products of social and genetic evolution in environments that are not at all similar to our world today. These "evolutionary mismatches" are probably the reason why we are not shaken enough by the epidemic, the researchers write.
Individuality and challenging authority - not suitable during a pandemic
Americans, in particular, value individuality and the ability to challenge authority. "This combination is not so successful during an epidemic," says Seitz. "This virus exposes us and our weaknesses."
Haselton agrees, calling the virus "wily” (cunning), for no ability to infect us through contact with people we love and look healthy. "The social characteristics underlying our definition as human, make us a prime target for the exploitation of the virus," she says. "The policies that ask us to isolate and distance ourselves deeply affect our families, our lives, our relationships and gender roles."
All infectious agents, including viruses, are under evolutionary pressure to exploit the physiology and behavior of their hosts – in this case, us – in ways that increase their survival and transmission. It is possible that the current corona virus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the corona disease, is changing human nerve tissue to change our behavior, the researchers say. These changes can be, for example, depressing feelings of patients, and perhaps even the strengthening of our social impulses, in peak times of infection, before the symptoms appear. People who are infected but do not feel sick, are expected to behave normally and come into contact with others, whom they may infect.
Disgust is useful and motivates us to stay away from people who show obvious signs of illness - such as blood, pale skin, lesions, yellow eyes or a runny nose. But when it comes to the corona disease, that's not what most people see. Family, friends, co-workers and strangers may appear perfectly healthy and symptom-free for days without knowing they have been infected, the researchers note.
Although this may sound counterintuitive, normal brain development requires exposure to a variety of microorganisms, exposure that helps young animals prepare for the range of pathogenic hazards they may encounter in adulthood. But measures to maintain health such as lockdown and "safest at home" have temporarily stopped social activities that usually bring millions of young people into contact with new microorganisms. As a result, children and adolescents whose immune systems and brains, in normal times, would be actively shaped by exposure to microorganisms may be adversely affected by this change, the researchers say.
By understanding how the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolves and how it affects our behavior and psychology in a way that enhances its transmission, we can fight it better, so that it becomes less harmful and deadly, the researchers write.
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So far I have witnessed many pregnancies and births due to the corona virus. This is the baby boom of the 21st century. So stop confusing your brain.
Fantastic article, I think the correct title for the article would be - goals and objectives in the current era.
First, someone is playing with our minds. This is the only way to explain why various authorities and the media started using the concept of "social distance" with the outbreak of the epidemic, while what is required is actually physical distance. If anything, it would be appropriate to emphasize that it is appropriate to maintain social closeness with physical distance, and that there is no contradiction between the two.
As such, it is appropriate to take some of the research conclusions with the appropriate dose of skepticism. In any case, childbearing is currently under progressive attack with a number of claims that it threatens the ecology and the climate and the proper social structure (in their opinion), so it is a bit strange to accept the claim that women will tend to stay at home, play more "conservative" roles - and yet have fewer children. This is one paragraph in the article that contradicts the other. What is true is that many populations are already shrinking below the replacement level, and this started happening many years before the outbreak of the corona virus.
The study tends to resent the unwillingness of the world's citizens to obey authority, well, it is an authority that is not exactly doing what is required of it in this emergency. When the President of the United States began suspending flights from China and later from Europe, his political opponents went around Chinatown and "fought racism". The governor of New York directed corona patients to be hospitalized in a nursing home - and contributed to the catastrophic results there, even though the bad impact of the virus on the elderly population was already known. Later these opponents changed their taste and began enforcing far-reaching measures in the states under their control, to the point of collapsing the economy. Lack of clarity and contradictory and sometimes draconian instructions did not add to the credibility of the politicians. Countless well-known and documented cases of disobeying the instructions by the biggest preachers of "social distancing" and wearing masks have added a thin and beautiful coating of hypocrisy to this entire concoction. Add the fact that everyone is now an expert in their own right on Corona, and that the effect of the virus is not bad on people who are not very old and at an initial level of health that is not completely catastrophic, and we will get erosion in the level of anxiety and in the willingness to obey unclear, sometimes contradictory and usually foolish instructions.
Thanks for the attention. fixed.
The link to the article is broken