Not only do humans not directly care about increasing IGF, the vast majority does hardly even care about the proxy of maximizing the number of their direct offspring. That’s something natural selection could have optimized for, but mostly didn’t. Most couples in first world countries could have more than five children, yet they have less than 1.5 on average, far below replacement. The fact that this happens in pretty much all developed countries, despite politicians’ effort to counteract this trend, shows how weak the preference for offspring really is.
It also seems that particularly men hardly care about having children, even though few are directly against it when their wives want them. And women, especially educated women, largely lose their desire for children as they go to work, particularly full-time. That’s at least something which poorer and past societies suggest.
One theory to explain this is the theory of female opportunity cost. Women in modern society, especially educated ones, perceive having children as a large opportunity cost, since the alternative to rearing children is having a career. Women in the past and in current poorer countries lived in more “patriarchal” societies where women pursuing a career was not a social norm, and thus pursuing a career was not perceived by most women as a live option, i.e. not an alternative to having children. Thus their perceived opportunity of having children was much lower than for women in non-patriarchal societies.
In any case, any explanation of this kind must assume that women’s innate desire for children is so weak that it is easily outweighed by a desire for a career.
This is all to say: Most people are even more misaligned relative to IGF than one may realize.
Not only do humans not directly care about increasing IGF, the vast majority does hardly even care about the proxy of maximizing the number of their direct offspring. That’s something natural selection could have optimized for, but mostly didn’t. Most couples in first world countries could have more than five children, yet they have less than 1.5 on average, far below replacement. The fact that this happens in pretty much all developed countries, despite politicians’ effort to counteract this trend, shows how weak the preference for offspring really is.
It also seems that particularly men hardly care about having children, even though few are directly against it when their wives want them. And women, especially educated women, largely lose their desire for children as they go to work, particularly full-time. That’s at least something which poorer and past societies suggest.
One theory to explain this is the theory of female opportunity cost. Women in modern society, especially educated ones, perceive having children as a large opportunity cost, since the alternative to rearing children is having a career. Women in the past and in current poorer countries lived in more “patriarchal” societies where women pursuing a career was not a social norm, and thus pursuing a career was not perceived by most women as a live option, i.e. not an alternative to having children. Thus their perceived opportunity of having children was much lower than for women in non-patriarchal societies.
In any case, any explanation of this kind must assume that women’s innate desire for children is so weak that it is easily outweighed by a desire for a career.
This is all to say: Most people are even more misaligned relative to IGF than one may realize.