Optimal marriage strategy for boys in a conservative church

Marriage strategy optimizing for quality adjusted grand-kids within a traditional church with female surplus

Absent of religion (Christian/Jew/Muslim) fertility seems to collapse in modernity. Even if you personally conclude, that a TFR of 1 is unsustainable, you and later your kids still need a fertile wife. The stricter the religion the higher the fertility.

Visiting my local church I only found few grannies, so I married outside of church. After moving I found a very traditional church (no sex/kissing/hugging before marriage, wife has to submit to husband, no contraception). Women are good at housekeeping, caring kids, some women are even intelligent, many look decent (low mutational load) and you have a surplus of women. They live in modernity but shield themselves from modern culture. Healthy women get 10-20 kids. Less healthy women get 6-10 kids. But I’m already married, so no honey for me.

However I have sons, which may choose to stay in church. So, I thought about the optimal marriage strategy for them. Since we aim for many high quality children here, son should choose a women as young and as good as possible. Since big age gaps are not common, my son should not marry too old, otherwise he would have to either choose an older girl as well or a lower quality girl or risk rejection. I eyeballed the minimum female age depending on the male age at proposal (MinAgefemale =MAX(Round(Age_male/1,7+5,5;0);18) He should also have established himself economically and within church. Between 18 and 22 establishing yourself has little costs, since you can still marry an 18y-old girl. After 22 aging for 2 more years increases the age of a possible wife by one year. An older wife means less children. Between 18 and 22 you can establish a decent trajectory economically and in your job. Additional education is not efficient for boys.

The boy will ask the girl/her parents for marriage. Parents and girl can then accept or refuse the boy. The boy can either chose a girl at around 80% of his quality (a safe bet) and get accepted with 90% probability or the boy can ask a girl of around 110% of his quality (a risky bet) and only get accepted as a husband with 50% quality. After rejection the boy has to wait for 2 years until he can ask the next girl within his church (however he can still ask girls from other churches). I calculated the expected value of quality-adjusted children and grandchildren for different strategies taking into account number of expected kids, rise in mutational load due to aging, wife quality and probability of waiting due to rejection. I found out that the boy should ask girls slightly above his own quality. The benefit of getting a good wife is higher than the expected loss due to a later marriage.

Result: Son should hurry your education so you can start asking parents/girls for marriage. However it is better to risk rejection than to settle for a lower quality wife.

Now let's optimize marriage for girls.

I know the general process, but I lack details what is discussed behind the scenes between the parents.

If a girl marries within church, her fertility will be much higher. However, girls control the marriage situation less than boys. They just sit there, be nice, hardworking, obedient and ok looking. They have to wait for a boy to ask them to marry them. Every year they will lose one year of fertility, if they eventually get married. Every year they also increase their risk of being left over. If a boy asks a girl for marriage it is almost always optimal to agree on the marriage, even if the boy is lower quality than the girl.

Since age of marriage outside of church (30-35) is later than inside of church (18-23), the girl will have better marriage chances outside of church later in life. The fertility disadvantage outside of church is also shrinking as her biological (and not ideological) fertility limit becomes binding. I assume a 4 year period after leaving the church to find a non-church husband. The optimal time to leave church would be at the age of 30, marring out of church at 34. Realistically however, if I pushed her into church from a young age she won’t leave church at the age of 30, only because it would be optimal from an evolutionary perspective.

Since time is so valuable for my daughters (lower fertile years and higher risk of being left over), I have to be actively involved in finding a husband for them. Ideally, I should have chosen the husband, when my daughter is 16 years old and they will marry when she is 18.

Secular communities in Israhell have high fertility rates; “strict” religious areas in Iran are cucked to sub-replacement. It has everything to do with female liberation and expectations inculcated by meme education and entertainment - and nu-males' unwillingness to put them in their place.

TFR below 4 is cucked. I'm already at 4 and my wife is not even religious. I'm hoping for 6 kids. The religious people around me have 7-20 children while retaining their kids withing the religion. So what makes religion attractive is, those pople are outperforming me. Some religious groups manage to block female liberation and frame control expectations with parents chosing the education of their daughters and banning entertainment. Obviously you don't convert to a religion whose members fail at reproducing. Secular communities in Israhell are only slightly above 2, better than western Europe or east Asia, but not very high. “For Ashkenazi Haredim, the TFR rose from 6.91 in 1980 to 8.51 in 1996. The figure for 2008 is estimated to be even higher”. Haredim is a working religion.

OP here

Q: How many children can a woman expect, wenn she donates her eggs? A: 10 kids, 15 grand-kids

American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends a lifetime maximum of six egg donation cycles for any individual donor. Each egg donation cycle will give you on average 10 eggs. You need around 2-3 eggs for one successful pregnancy. So after each of the 6 cycles and 6 pregnancies, you have 7 left over eggs per cycle. The left over eggs could be thrown away or given to scientific research. Or they could just stay frozen for a long time. At best these eggs are unfrozen later and used for crating more children. Egg donation can realistically give you around 10 children. Those children will then have a TFR of around 1.5 giving you around 15 grandchildren. A better scenario would be 1+1.5 children per cycle, which would yield in 15 children or 22 grandchildren.

Average fertility of a married woman in church is around 10. For my daughters I would expect only 7. Half of her kids would leave church (TFR = 2) and half will stay (TFR = 8). Average TFR will be 5. Therefore 7 children produce 35 grandchildren.

Marriage in church with 35 grandchildren outperforms egg donation with 15 grandchildren.

Can we combine church strategy and donation strategy?

Egg donor should be age 21-29. Time between donations: While not explicitly stated in the search results, most clinics typically require a waiting period of several months between egg donation cycles to allow the donor's body to recover. This period can range from 3 to 6 months, depending on the clinic's policies and the donor's individual health status.

Optimal strategy: Stay in church until 27 and try to get a church husband. If not successful donate eggs between age 27-30. Find non-church husband at age 30.

How many kids does your church actually have?

The average married couple has around 10 children. Healthy couples have 15-20 kids. Normal couples have around 10 kids and less healthy couples have 5-8 kids.

The church has no contraception, sex, limited period of breast feeding and quite frequent twin births resulting in a high birth frequency. The age of marriage is low resulting in a long productive fertility window.

Members of the church are hardworking but allocate only little time to employment. There is much time allocated to raising and educating children. They use most modern technology (but no TV and they restrict smart phone usage). The kids go to public schools, but don’t join some non-church activities like sports clubs.

I would estimate the retention rate (= kids remain in church) at around 80%.

You get a combination of Amish fertility plus modern technology.

Most of them also seem to be true believers (as opposed to going to church for group identity, marriage or business advantages).