How to reverse declining birth rates? The guy from Jim’s Mowing has a theory and it’s … unusual
Limiting sex could lead to more babies, the man behind Jim’s Mowing says. Sex, drugs, parties and social media have blunted humans’ dopamine responses, Jim Penman argues in a new book. That has led to less interest in faith, community, marriage and producing potentially “boring” children. “Scientific interventions may become necessary” to turn around the resulting fall in birthrates, he writes in The Birth-rate Crisis: the Hidden Catastrophe in the Global Decline. Penman is the chief executive of Jim’s Group, the largest franchise business in the southern hemisphere, with a billion-dollar annual turnover. He has poured millions into epigenetic research and says gene editing, drugs or pheromones could ultimately provide a solution by restoring the brain’s sensitivity to dopamine. Birthrates have declined around the world, and in most countries are now below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman. Australia’s rate is 1.48. Government policies such as Australia’s baby bonus have failed to change that trajectory. “We’ve proposed a more controversial possibility: that the birthrate crisis may ultimately require a biological solution and not just a cultural one,” Penman writes. “My research team is actively investigating such treatments. Technological and medical advances may eventually make it possible to alter how the brain responds to reward and stimulation. “Immediate benefits could include improvements in addiction, anxiety, depression, motivation, and self-control. In the process, the birthrate crisis itself might largely disappear.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Penman has 10 children and “would dearly have liked more”. He is running for the Libertarian party in November’s Victorian election, but his politics do not slot neatly into the global “pro-natalist” push. It comes predominantly from the right in the US, linked to calls for a return to the traditional family and cuts in immigration levels. Elon Musk has called the collapsing birthrate the “biggest danger civilisation faces by far”. The SpaceX boss and father of 14 retweeted a post on X on 7 June about Australia’s fertility rate, with the comment: “They are disappearing.” The late Maga activist Charlie Kirk told people to “get married, have kids, and stop partying into oblivion”. The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy, says the US “fertility crisis [is] a threat not only to our economy [but] to our national security”. And Donald Trump has declared himself the “fertilisation president” as he tries to encourage a baby boom. Closer to home, the Nationals leader Matt Canavan has called for “more Australian babies”. Research suggests women’s liberation, education and access to contraception have contributed to the fall in birthrates. Women having babies later in life have fewer, and are more likely to have fertility struggles. Social and economic policies may also play a role. Polling done for the Nine Newspapers found the most common changes people nominated as likely to encourage people to have children or more children were: working from home policies; more parental leave; free or heavily subsidised childcare; and more affordable housing designed for families. ‘Discouragement of … masturbation’ But Penman argues financial reasons “don’t fully explain the scale and consistency of the decline”. He points to sex, sex addiction, porn, social media, gambling, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, calorie-dense food and caffeine as some of the culprits that have disrupted our brains. “Our brains have been so bombarded by surges prevalent in the modern world that we’ve become far less sensitive to dopamine,” he writes. On the other hand, he says, religious communities such as the Amish and the Mormons, where gambling and heavy drinking are discouraged, are more likely to have higher fertility rates. “Another shared factor is the strong discouragement of sexual activity outside marriage, including masturbation,” he writes. “Marriage also tends to be both early and near-universal, at least compared to wider society.” He writes that it is difficult for young men with normal sex drives to completely avoid “any form of sexual outlet”, but that any reduction could help. He says his own experience may have had a “profound effect” on his character. “For five years after reaching puberty, my sole sexual outlet was nocturnal emissions, more commonly called wet dreams,” he writes. “Lack of sexual outlet meant that I had fewer of the surges that desensitise brains to dopamine, so my brain could have become unusually sensitive to its effects. And because it happened at a young age when my brain was plastic, this effect would be enduring.” He writes that limiting sexual activity is an effective way to increase dopamine sensitivity, and that “even within marriage, frequent sexual activity may have negative effects”, but that these are balanced by positive effects, such as strengthening the marriage itself. As more women pursued education and careers, often delaying marriage, there were also “more premarital relationships, wider use of birth control, and more open discussion of sexuality”, Penman writes. He points to the 1920s as a key turning point. “Cultural trends such as the emerging image of the ‘modern woman’, jazz, film, and consumer goods reflected these changes,” he writes. “Lively parties, especially combined with alcohol and drugs, are also attractive.” Penman argues limiting or forbidding these activities will make the brain more sensitive to dopamine. As a result, everyday activities will become more pleasurable and “we feel less need to chase dangerous surge activities such as alcohol, drugs, gambling, porn, and promiscuous sex”. The evidence on dopamine There is plenty of evidence linking such activities to dopamine highs and lows. Dr Anna Lembke, the author of Dopamine Nation, has warned that smartphones are turning us into dopamine junkies and that it’s making us depressed. Our brain compensates for the instant gratification from pleasurable things by “bringing us lower and lower and lower”. She advises stepping away from the phone, and doing “things that are hard”, when the pleasure comes later. There is plenty of advice online and on social media about the supposed benefits of “digital detoxing” to reset the brain for a healthier dopamine balance, although the science around it is nuanced and mixed. Penman has gone beyond that to argue that medical treatments, rather than digital detoxing, could be the answer. A team of scientists at his research company, Epigenes Australia, is looking at how different ways to mimic the effect of calorie restriction could reset the brain. He says female rats whose food is restricted in studies are more attentive towards their young. Scarcity, he writes, could “reduce overstimulation and restore sensitivity to everyday rewards”. Rats exposed to “the soiled bedding of calorie-restricted rats” also became more “exploratory”, he writes. He says his team plans to do similar experiments with humans, using sweat rather than urine, but that regulations make it prohibitively expensive in Australia. “It’s one reason we’re moving much of the research to China,” he says. Penman is also keen to explore something like a GLP-1 (Ozempic or semaglutide), which has been shown to reduce interest in alcohol, smoking and gambling as well as food. Scientists are still trying to understand how GLP-1 drugs affect people, including whether it can cause “emotional flatness”. Neuroscientist Paul Kenny, from the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, recently said it was possible that they could affect emotions and social interactions. A third avenue of exploration is gene editing. Penman points to CRISPR technology, saying epigenetics could induce the same effect as calorie restriction, and make marriage and children more appealing. “Over time, the birthrate crisis could begin to reverse naturally,” he writes. • The Birth-rate Crisis: the Hidden Catastrophe in the Global Decline is due to be self-published in October, with the proceeds going towards further research.
