zlacker

This could be the culprit - those women, that became independent removed themselves and their traits from genetic pool due to not having children or having fewer of them. That might also explain persistence of religions that emphasize sexual relationships for reproduction only and banning abortions, as it leads to higher probability of carrying on with one's genotype. So what we are observing could be some stochastic optimum in some game theory of natural conditions. A question is if our civilization that could seemingly solve cutthroat problems of the past leading to brutal competition like food scarcity will have completely different, stable stochastic optima. I guess we will see (or generations after us).

>>bitL+(OP)
Indeed. I wonder wether civilisations after reaching certain step sort of goes into self-destruction mode.

Maybe deep down humans feel that they're at evolutionary dead end and decide to off themselves as a society? I could easily see why today's western society (and possibly others as well) may be far from optimal. Yet I'd prefer to try to fix it.

What is funniest, people advocating for "progress" etc frequently are those who have no children. Although old good "you're not grown up till you got kids" outlook is looked down nowadays, I can see why it'd make sense. If you don't have kids - you don't have skin in the long game. Nor experience what it's like to play in that mode. I wonder how the world would change if we'd only allow people with kids to vote and/or participate in politics.