Jim Penman explains why Latter-day Saints have more children than other Americans. LDS families averaged 3.4 kids versus 2.1 for all U.S. adults in 2014. Penman argues the church's restrictions on sex, alcohol, and caffeine keep dopamine levels lower, making family rewards feel more appealing.
Hi, I'm Jim Penman. I'm a businessman who's funded a research institute into, amongst other things, the birth rate crisis. Why are birth rates dropping? I've written previous books including Epigenetics and Character and Biohistory, about to release Birth Rate Crisis. Okay, these figures are from 2014. They're a bit dated now, but Latter-day Saints at that time had 3.4 children on average. All US adults, 2.1 children. Religiously unaffiliated, 1.7. Now Birth rates have gone down since then, including amongst the Latter-day Saints. So this is slightly outdated. But there's a reason why Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons, have more kids. And it's to do with the kinds of behaviors associated with the church. The church does certain things like they're very strong on limiting sexual activity. Sexual activity, especially at an early age, tends to make the brain less sensitive to dopamine. Also, being involved in a religious community and being community-minded tends to desensitize the brain to dopamine. And even avoiding alcohol, coffee, tea, these are all things that boost dopamine, give dopamine surges, which makes the brain less sensitive. So what the Latter-day Saints have is a system that actually limits the kind of surge activities like sex and alcohol and those kind of things, which makes the brain less sensitive. So therefore, that in a sense would tend to have brains more sensitive to dopamine, which means that family, children, work, all more appealing than for the general community. And the more religious you are, the more children you have for exactly the same reason.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
