Population Age Structure and Fertility

by Andrew Hamilton

The white racial predicament, now so extreme—fundamentally, looming extinction or genocide—can be studied from countless angles. The issue is so multifaceted that it is easiest to break the main problem into smaller, discrete components, holding fixed and temporarily ignoring numerous crucial elements that in real life cannot be readily ignored.

One facet of the overriding problem is sub-replacement fertility: the failure of whites worldwide to replace their population by having at least 2.1 children per couple.

The result is a white population declining both in absolute numbers and relative to other races, many of which are growing in size. This is happening at ferocious speed, far more rapidly than most white nationalists grasp.

Note also that the offspring of the many whites who now intermarry, or reproduce interracially outside of marriage, do not augment the white birthrate, but detract from it; such children are non-white. And this is not a marginal problem.

Under present conditions, such hybrids must be uncompromisingly deflected away from the white population and gene pool. Hybrid individuals are unacceptable as group members.

At the most fundamental level, white racialism is a straightforward exercise in conservation biology. Whites, or a remnant of them, must physically survive as a racially-conscious, culturally coherent breeding population or group of genetically similar breeding populations.

The Option of Increasing Family Size

There are many obstacles to having more than two children. The power structure is deeply anti-family and anti-white.

Institutionalized hatred, discrimination, interracial wealth transfers, prevailing ideology, and a monolithic, viciously racist media, educational, and legal system strongly militate against the white family.

Additionally, we suffer from serious ideological and moral malaise. It will do no good to generate large white families that develop into carbon copies of conformist, immoral Romneys, Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, or Rockefellers committed to Jewish supremacy, totalitarianism, and the genocide of the white race.

Indeed, for all intents and purposes it is safe to say that the white family no longer really exists. For thousands of years our race sustained itself, and expanded, thanks to the settled institutions of marriage and the stable family structure. Both have been effectively eradicated within the past few decades.

But we must isolate, forget about, ignore, all of this for purposes of the discussion that follows.

Instead, we will simply assume that white couples can marry (more than once if necessary), or maintain a de facto relationship outside of marriage, and produce and raise offspring.

Such children may not have the opportunity to attend college due to economic constraints, racial discrimination, or other reasons, but responsible, determined white adults can still have more than two children.

In other words, white couples retain the option of having more children despite all of the obstacles thrown in their path. We can isolate this aspect of the racial problem and analyze it.

We shall therefore adopt a mindset that values and encourages abundance rather than scarcity of white children, regardless of the difficulties involved. Having children has always entailed risk and uncertainty, and required faith on the part of couples that things will ultimately work out.

A philosophical and practical guide to such an approach to family and fertility has been developed by a small community of fundamentalist Christians, often loose-knit, such as the Quiverfull Movement (at the link scroll down to that subhead).

Here I will simply provide a general overview of the lifetime fertility window, which is narrower than generally understood.

Despite the Left’s vaunted commitment to “sex education,” there is widespread ignorance about basic aspects of sex, family life, and reproduction. People may be more ignorant today than they ever were.

Male Fertility

Men and women have a lifetime fertility window during which they can reproduce. In general, they cannot reproduce before puberty or too long after middle age, although men have a significantly wider fertility window than do women.

Puberty is the stage of becoming physiologically capable of sexual reproduction, marked by genital maturation, development of secondary sex characteristics, and, in girls, the first occurrence of menstruation.

Puberty begins somewhat later and lasts longer in boys than it does in girls. It is initiated in males around age 10 or 11.

Historically, tribal societies often maintained specific puberty rites for boys, with an arbitrary age chosen for initiation into adulthood. As one text noted, “With the exception of the bar mitzvah among Jews, our society does not have formal puberty rites for boys.” (I recall reading, however, that on the American frontier boys were traditionally presented their first rifle at the age of 13 by their fathers.)

Men do not have a fertility cycle as women do. Sperm are produced throughout their reproductive years, and a healthy man is consistently fertile at all times. In lower animals, there are exceptions to continuous male fertility.

There is no male equivalent of menopause, either, in which the female’s ovaries (organs that produce eggs, as well as the hormones estrogen and progesterone) essentially shut down at a fairly specific point in life.

There are well-documented reports of 90-year-old men having fathered children, and viable sperm have been found in the ejaculations of even older men.

But in recent decades increasing attention has been given to certain negative changes in male fertility or physiological conditions (notably, erectile dysfunction or ED, also known as impotence) closely associated with reproductive capacity.

For example, it now appears that children sired by older men may be at somewhat greater risk for abnormalities.

Also, we are told that ED, which appears to be on the rise, is a common age-related phenomenon.

Less than 1 percent of the male population under 30 years of age is affected by ED, 3 percent under 45 years, 7 percent between 45 and 55, 25 percent at age 65, and up to 75 percent over the age of 80.

Is the seemingly greater prevalence than in the past due primarily to “greater awareness” (public discussion), or are some new cultural or environmental factors at work, analogous to the “obesity epidemic” or, among boys, attention deficit disorder?

Very recent medical reports suggest that ED is often symptomatic of underlying cardiovascular disease.

Female Fertility

Puberty for most girls occurs between the ages of 9 and 12, while menarche (the first menstrual period) usually occurs between the ages of 11 and 14.

For the first few years after the menarche, the girl’s menstrual periods are irregular, and ovulation (the ripening and discharge of an egg from an ovary for possible fertilization) does not occur in every cycle. For some time after the first period, then, a girl is relatively infertile, yet still capable of becoming pregnant.

A number of rare diseases can cause precocious sexual development, and pregnancies in girls with these disorders have occurred as young as 5 or 6.

One of the youngest documented pregnancies occurred in Peru in 1939, when a girl aged 5 years 7 months gave birth by Cesarean section to a 6.5 pound baby boy. The girl had menstruated regularly since the age of 3, and became pregnant when she was 4 years and 10 months old.

In some cultures, menarche is treated as the time when a girl becomes a woman; in such societies, girls often marry after their first menstruation.

In European law, legal puberty was the earliest age at which one could consent and enter into a binding marriage.

At English common law, children became marriageable at the onset of legal puberty—age 12 for girls and 14 for boys.

At French civil law, a marriage could not be contracted before the end of legal puberty—age 15 for girls and 18 for boys.

Demographic historian Ole J. Benedictow maintains that different civilizations and different historical periods within specific civilizations are characterized by their own unique demographic systems. It is a mistake to assume, as many scholars do, that the demographic structures of any given historical period can be projected across the dividing lines of other historical periods, or across the societal dividing lines of different civilizations. (Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History, 2004, p. 248)

In European history Benedictow distinguishes between a “medieval demographic system,” for example, and an “Early Modern demographic system.”

Among other things, the medieval system displayed higher mortality and higher fertility—”turnover rates,” “higher rates of inflows and outflows of members of populations”—than did the succeeding period. Fewer medieval women remained unmarried (celibate), and they had a significantly lower age at marriage than did Early Modern women.

Empirical evidence ranging from Italy in the south to England in the west and Iceland and Sweden in the north shows that medieval women generally married at ages 14-20, in contrast to a higher average age at marriage of 25 during the Early Modern period.

As an aside, in 1726 Benjamin Franklin’s younger sister Jane was betrothed in Boston at the age of 14, the marriage to take place some months thereafter.

Under medieval medical conditions, low age at marriage for women combined with higher fertility meant more pregnancies and more female deaths: “Women did not live longer lives than men in pre-modern Europe, but rather somewhat shorter lives,” Benedictow writes.

According to a 1972 textbook, an “unexplained observation” is that the average age of menarche in modern Western countries was at that time gradually declining: in 1860 a girl usually had her first period between ages 16 and 17, while in 1960 it occurred between ages 12 and 13.

Menstruation (periodic uterine bleeding) occurs only in female humans, apes, and some monkeys. An ovarian or estrus cycle occurs in other mammals but is not accompanied by bleeding. The length of the ovarian cycle varies by species: in humans it is approximately 28 days, in chimpanzees 36 days, cows 20 days, sheep 16 and mice 5 days. Cats and dogs ordinarily ovulate just twice a year.

Every month, one ovary releases an egg (a process known as ovulation), which travels through a fallopian tube toward the uterus.

If the egg is fertilized by a sperm, it implants in the lining of the uterus, where it becomes first an embryo (at which point a woman is officially pregnant), and then a fetus. If unfertilized, it will be shed during menstruation.

In light of the vigorous promotion by schools and professional sports of strenuous athletic activities for girls and women, it should be noted that young females who engage in excessive exercise or train or compete intensively are at risk of developing a condition known as the female athlete triad. This is a cluster of three disorders: eating disorders, infrequent or absent menstrual periods due to inadequate production of the female hormone estrogen, and bone thinning (osteoporosis).

According to Mark Perloe, M.D., an Atlanta infertility specialist:

A woman reaches her peak fertility at age 18 or 19, with little change until the mid-20s. As she approaches age 30, her hormone levels start to decline and her fertility also begins a slow decline, with a more rapid decline after age 35. Menopause, which occurs in the late 40s to early 50s in most women, marks the end of a woman’s natural ability to bear children. A man’s fertility decline is not as rapid and has no clear-cut end point, but a man of 50 has lower hormone levels and is likely less fertile than he was at age 25 or 30. (“Infertility,” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2005)

A Mayo Clinic guide states that female fertility rates “remain relatively stable until the early 30s, and then they decrease to very low levels by the early 40s.” Broken down further by the same source (Robert V. Johnson, M.D., Editor-in-Chief, Mayo Clinic Complete Book of Pregnancy & Baby’s First Year, New York: William Morrow, 1994, p. 5):

  •  Ages 18-24: peak female fertility
  •  Ages 30-35: fertility is 15%-20% less than maximum
  • Ages 35-39: fertility is 25%-50% below maximum
  • Ages 40-45: fertility falls to 95% below maximum

“Ultimately, age is still the most important factor when it comes to fertility prediction,” Perloe says. “If you’re in your early 40s, the odds are against getting pregnant without help, no matter what the tests say. The odds are much better in your late 30s or younger.”

Widespread Ignorance About the Biological Clock

Surprisingly, many women have no idea how rapidly fertility declines with age. By the time a woman hits 44, it is almost nonexistent.

According to Dr. Roger Pierson, a Canadian fertility specialist, “Everybody in the reproductive world is shocked at how much ignorance there is. Women get their information from the rather dubious magazines that tend to lurk around the checkout counters of grocery stores.”

In 2009, Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) went so far as to issue a public warning that women should become mothers by the age of 35 or risk infertility, miscarriage, or health problems:

Our statement has been prompted by concern among obstetricians and gynaecologists because we are seeing more and more [older] women who are confronting the heartbreak of infertility and miscarriage. Every week in my clinic I see women who say ‘if only I had known this, I could have planned for this. I wouldn’t have postponed my plans for pregnancy’.” The college fears too many women still do not understand that their fertility declines after 35.

A University of Calgary professor added: “Women have been given the impression that biology doesn’t matter and they can do whatever they like.”

The Window Shuts

Menopause, also known as “change of life,” is the end of menstruation due to physiological processes associated with aging. It usually occurs between ages 45 and 50.

Several years before menopause, menstrual periods become irregular, leading to an interval of alternating fertility and infertility analogous to the stage after menarche.

Periods ultimately cease permanently at the average age of 51. Doctors consider menopause to be complete when a woman has gone one year without a period.

With an average life expectancy of 81, a woman can expect to live more than one third of her life after menopause.

Pregnancy beyond 47 is extremely rare, although it has been medically documented as late as 61.

Fertility treatments may extend the reproductive window slightly, but are extremely expensive and subject to age cut-offs. In Canada, fertility specialists generally will not accept women past their mid-40s.

At age 40, even with in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, the success rate is only around 40%, whether a woman uses her own eggs or the eggs of a donor.

There are outliers, of course. In 2006 a Spanish woman just shy of her 67th birthday gave birth to twin boys weighing 3.5 pounds each by caesarean section after lying to a California fertility clinic about her age in order to obtain in vitro fertilization treatment. She was forced to sell her apartment in order to pay for the expensive procedure. She died in 2009, leaving her 2-year-old sons orphans.

Don’t Give Up

Despite such difficulties, the UK’s Royal College of Midwives defends women’s right to have children as late as their 40s:

We support women in their choice to have a baby in their late 30s and 40s, although pregnancy complications can be more common in older women. They have higher rates of induction of labour and Caesarean births, which present greater risks to both mother and baby. Despite this, we support a woman’s decision to choose when to embark upon a pregnancy.

Under present conditions, we should not dismiss such liberal attitudes out of hand. Rather than advice to delay pregnancy and childbirth, they should be viewed as a positive determination to keep options open as long as possible. Of course, earlier is better.

The Mayo Clinic guide offers the following advice:

Women in their 30s and 40s sometimes wonder if they’ve waited too long to have a baby or if their chances of having a healthy baby are reduced. Even though achieving pregnancy can be more difficult in an older woman, the overall outcomes are excellent. There are some concerns about higher risks of having a baby with low birth weight, premature labor, or a child with chromosome abnormalities such as Down syndrome. In general, however, women in their 30s who start pregnancy in good health are likely to have a healthy, normal pregnancy. (Mayo Clinic Complete Book of Pregnancy & Baby’s First Year, p. 5)

An online female commenter contributed this useful perspective about relative versus absolute risk:

[Take] a 34-year-old childless woman, who seriously wonders if the risk of Down syndrome makes it immoral to have a baby past 35. Now 1 in 378 [the risk after age 35] is 2-3X bigger than 1 in 952 [the risk at age 30], but still it’s 0.26%! It’s not something to forego motherhood over. If you focus on the relative risk, you fail to notice that the absolute risk is still tiny.

Linking Fertility to Age Structure

Because fertility is crucially age-dependent, it is important to understand the implications of an ominously inverted population age structure. The biological considerations discussed above should be viewed in light of this all-important fact.

A demographic tool useful for this purpose is the population pyramid.

A population pyramid is a statistical representation consisting of two side-by-side bar graphs, one showing the number of males and the other females in five-year age cohorts.

Population is plotted on the X (horizontal) axis and age on the Y (vertical) axis. Males are conventionally shown on the left and females on the right, often in contrasting colors, and may be measured either by raw numbers or as a percentage of the total population.

Population pyramids are one of the most effective ways to graphically depict age and sex distributions because of the clear images they present.

Although population pyramids are almost always used by demographers to analyze racially mixed geographic populations—such as those of nation states or the world at large, they could readily be adapted to racial analysis.

Even in the absence of adequate race data, they are quite useful for conceptualizing what is happening to various races, or what has happened to them in the past (see, for example the contrasting Finnish population pyramids below).

So let us imagine graphs that represent not specific countries, but any race inside or outside the First World.

Thus, within a multiracial country such as the United States, we could, in theory, construct individual graphs for every race within its borders, contemporary or historical.

Alternatively, we could construct a graph representing the global size and age structure of the white (or any other) race. Conceptually, we thus eliminate national boundaries and substitute races for national (state) populations.

Here, for example, is the population pyramid of a contemporary black population:

Representative Age Pyramid for a Hypothetical Expanding Nonwhite Race (Angolan age pyramid, 2005)

Because Angola is overwhelmingly black, this pyramid doubles as both a national and a racial pyramid. Looking at the age distributions on the left, you will see that most of the population is young, while the number of aged is proportionally small.

A substantial proportion of any population so distributed exists either at reproductive age, or has yet to enter it. In terms of raw numbers, it is a racially vibrant population.

Next, look at Finland’s contrasting population pyramids from 1917 (when the country was all-white) and 2006 (representing a mixed white/non-white population). These graphically illustrate the effects of white fertility decline. The radical historical change depicted may be viewed as roughly representative of what has happened to every white country in the world.

Finnish Population Pyramids, 1917 v. 2006

In 1917, white Finns were demographically healthy, just like Angolans today.

But in 2006, the constricted base of the Finnish pyramid signifies greatly diminished numbers of reproductive young in comparison to old.

White fertility everywhere is extremely low—indeed, far lower than depicted due to both higher immigrant reproduction rates (they have higher fertility than the whites they live among) and substantial interracial hybridization between whites and non-whites, which is constantly on the increase.

Finally, here is an example of a hypothetical, inverted pyramid probably characteristic of the age structure of the white race, characterized as it is by below replacement fertility—many old and few young, many deaths and few births signaling demographic collapse.

When you have an inverted population pyramid like this, only a comparatively small proportion of the group’s members are even capable of reproducing. (Match the age cohorts to the fertility windows discussed above; large segments of the population fall outside the range. Such people are no longer capable of reproducing.)

Moreover, total racial numbers, regardless of individual reproductive capacity, keep declining drastically because the most populous age cohorts are constantly dying off—literally vanishing—every decade.

Hypothetical Inverted Age Pyramid of the White Race

Note particularly the declining proportion of whites at or approaching reproductive age, recalling that many of these fertile individuals, in today’s climate, will remain childless, have less than two children, or hybridize with ever-increasing numbers of non-whites continuously being imported by hostile elites.

Finally, the large, unmixed alien populations in our countries have far higher birth rates than do indigenous whites.

As a consequence of all of this, whites have a numbers problem of staggering proportions. With each passing day it becomes worse.

Time is of the essence, and radical steps are necessary to prevent complete demographic collapse worldwide.

The inverted age structure and reproductive profile has grave implications for (a) group survival (b) inter-racial competition for political power, economic resources, and retention of human rights and (c) the potential recruitment pool for nationalist movements, organizations, political parties, or ethnostates.

Collectively, the target audience for white nationalists every year grows markedly older, numerically smaller, and less influential, affluent, healthy, vigorous, and politically assertive.

Darwinian fitness is measured solely in terms of reproductive proficiency. Its guiding principle is “be fruitful and multiply.” It is therefore essential to distinguish Darwinian fitness from “fitness” as excellence determined by some subjective standard. Not only are the two not identical, they may be in direct opposition.

In Darwinian terms, whites currently are not a fit population.

Original Article Here.

2012-07-02