Ocean Frontier Fertility:  Ecologically Imposed Patriarchy

Posted by JRM on March 03, 2006, 02:09 PM | #

James,

Could you name some others who have had the idea that fertility explodes at the frontier?  Not that I am a social conformist, but I would like to see what they have to say on it.

Posted by Søren Renner on March 03, 2006, 02:21 PM | #

Very, extremely, much-of-a-muchnessly interesting post. Everyone knows which side of the cornucopianism vs malthusianism argument I take; but I will put that aside and listen. I am reminded of something Freeman Dyson wrote about.

Posted by James Bowery on March 03, 2006, 05:04 PM | #

JRM—the “idea” that fertility explodes at the frontier is not so much an idea as an observation when looking at the American West.  Moreover, it is important to understand the neolithic revolution’s contribution to carrying capacity via cultivation of the land here.

I don’t think it is considered estoteric knowledge that the spread of agriculture resulted in a profound increase in the fertility rates of the practicioners of agriculture—at the expense of the hunter gatherers who refused to adopt agriculture.

The American West was a similar story to this, with many of the native tribes refusing or lagging the adoption of cultivation.  Here is an excerpt from an article appearing in the Journal for American Historians:

The robust baby-making of frontier families is especially interesting because it ran against the national trend.  In many other regions, both in the city and countryside, the birth rate was dropping, in some cases dramatically.  Some social critics worried that unless old-stock American parents picked up the pace, new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe would dominate the land, including the western garden.  Would the millions of homes in the new country be filled by “our own children or by those of aliens?” an essayist asked.  Pioneer women would have to answer: “Upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”

White mothers raising families in the West were not berthing lots of babies because eastern newspaper columnists told them to, however. They had their own practical reasons, stemming from circumstances closer to home.  Elsewhere in the country birth rates were declining partly because more and more parents were depending less and less on their children’s labor.  Not so on the frontier.  There, where families were starting from scratch and often with little outside help, boys and girls were vital parts of economic life.

More to the point, a pioneer household was an economic mechanism of mutually-dependent parts.  Here is a second way of thinking of families: as a productive unit, often a remarkably effective and self-sustaining one.  Fathers did the heaviest labor—sodbusting, construction, and fence-building on a homestead, mining in the camps, and various big-muscle jobs in the new towns—and took off in search of other wage work when necessary. Mothers handled the multitude of domestic duties, cared for barnyard animals, gardened, and earned cash by washing, cooking, and sewing for others. Children filled in wherever they were needed: hunting, weeding, gathering wild plants, herding, peddling pies, delivering laundry, hawking newspapers, caring for younger siblings, cooking, canning, and much more.  The frontier’s popular image is one of individualism and self-reliance, usually in the shape of rugged adult males.  But the transformation of the nineteenth-century West could be more accurately pictured as a familial conquest, an occupation by tens of thousands of intradependent households.

Related families frequently settled together.  Once again, this contrasts with the common impression of bonds of kinship shattered among isolated pioneers.  Take, for instance, the Oklahoma land rushes. These mad scramblings might seem the outstanding instances of atomizing individualism, but in fact boomers often made the runs as extended families, grabbing neighboring claims or swapping around so they ended up among relatives. Most rural counties quickly became interlocking networks of families and sometimes of former neighbors, instant communities of tested kin and friends upon whom others could count for help and continuing support.

This pattern of settlement in which groups of families settled together was one of the few points the West’s diverse population held in common. Native-born pioneers of Anglo stock, Germans from Russia, Japanese, Czechs, Basques, and the many Latino groups from the south all understood the advantages of living near relatives who helped with the multitude of jobs and who could step in during a crisis.  The arrangement continues today. Koreans, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Salvadorans, Filipinos, and Native Americans leaving the reservations all tend to cluster among kinfolk.  This familial webbing has always been a key to understanding the social landscape of the West.

As a productive unit, the western family was an extraordinarily efficient machine of environmental change.  Its several parts worked together to transform the land, for better or worse.  The results are most apparent in rural regions.  Fathers broke the sod, then children harrowed the turned soil, pulled native weeds, and tended cattle and sheep—hoofed invaders that were given protected possession of land essential to herds of wild grazers.  Fathers and children also killed outright enormous numbers of bison, deer, antelope, elk, and other indigenous animals, which then were butchered, cooked, and served by mothers to fathers, daughters, and sons who, newly refueled, continued to alter their physical environment.

Posted by slinker, sailer, toldya, sly on March 03, 2006, 08:41 PM | #

And what happens when Professor Michael Hart shows up at the new frontier, demanding admittance, and screaming that you are a F—king Nazi, if he is not let in?

White gentiles need to be innoculated against chutzpah.  The sheer gall of certain people can stun the senses, leaving the victim defenseless against a concentrated memetic attack.

Posted by James Bowery on March 03, 2006, 09:28 PM | #

We’re at the stage of scientific understanding of human genetics and their relationship to politics where the opening up of any substantial frontier will do two very critical things:

1) Make being realistic very rewarding

2) Provide breathing room and self-sufficiency.

You can bet your bottom dollar the Michael Harts of the world will (continue to) do everything they can to prevent any frontier from being opened up unless it is under the authority of something like Speilberg’s fantasy portrayed in “Seaquest” where the “United Earth Oceans” hire “trustworthy” guys like Roy Schieder to police the “outlaws”.