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The central premise aluded in this article is that birth rates dropped because some women didn't ever want to have children, but used to be forced into it. While it's true that married women now have more control of birth rates due to contraception, the real reason birth rates dropped is that childhood mortality dropped! It used to be that if a woman wanted to ensure that she had decendents, she had to have lots of pregnancies. Now, almost every child born is likely to grow up. This means that one can reduce the number of children one has.

Second, the assumption that society has changed to allow women more control over marriage is also bunk. In most societies, women have always had the right to say no... save for a few very aberrent and ugly societies. Frankly, this hypothesis doesn't pass my 'sniff' test.

Third, the idea that a "mommy" gene that decides that one is going to have children is a strange one in evolutionary terms, since most animals, including early hominids, wouldn't have needed, nor benefitted from such a gene. No, all that is needed is a gene, or set of genes, that encouraged heterosexual sexual relations! Wanting to be pregnant is irrelevant, having sex is all that is needed. Wanting to be a "mommy" after the infant is born, is another matter entirely.

I can see that a "maternal caring" gene or set of genes, might exist. I know that I certainly have it, if it exists! But only in modern humans, having the ability to connect the dots between sexual behavior and becoming a 'mommy', would evolution have come into play. Maybe it will become a factor in future, but given that the human population is in the several billions, the evolutionary pressure would have to be *enormous* to cause any noticable change in the aggregate gene frequencies in the population.

Finally, I would assert that the number of women who are childless entirely is probably not higher now than in historical times. Only the number of children per child bearing woman. That being true... I think noise in the system is larger than the evolutionary pressure, coupled with the large base population, there won't be any evolutionary change noticable in less than fifty or more generations.

--Candice H. Brown Elliott