Jim Penman argues that depression in late childhood increases dopamine sensitivity, making family life more appealing. He claims this explains the post-WWII baby boom and suggests artificially boosting dopamine sensitivity during childhood could reverse today's birth-rate decline.
Is dopamine the key to solving the birth rate crisis? Dopamine sensitivity is the key. We need to work out ways of making our brains less sensitive to dopamine, and we do know that can be done, especially in childhood. So kids who go through a depression in their late childhood tend to be much more sensitive to dopamine. That's like the people who went through the Great Depression during their late childhood, with the parents of the baby boom. So we know it can be done. What we've got to do is to work out a way of making the brain permanently more sensitive, so therefore things like family and children become attractive.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
