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Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#31

Post by earlyresort »

gozur88 wrote: post #18

I wonder how big a role obesity plays in all of this. It may be that teens are having less sex because so many of them have effectively taken themselves out of the sexual marketplace.

C'mon - when I was a teenager I would've had sex with the crack of dawn if I knew it was interested. I doubt anyone capable of getting pregnant is truly 'off the market' for every teenaged boy in their vicinity.

It's more likely that popular representations of teen pregnancy in the media gradually taught enough kids that having a baby in their teens will seriously screw up their life. You only need to see one episode of Teen Mom to know that's nowhere you want to be.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#32

Post by throwawaybookst »

As of this post, three of the 20 comments on this story conjecture that obesity plays some role, and a full half of the comments are on subthreads discussing this hypothesis.

Interesting because I've never heard this hypothesis before and other online discussion of this article does not mention obesity.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#33

Post by tetrep »

personjerry wrote: post #19

Isn't it typically "teen pregnancy" rather than "teen birth"? Is the nuance between pregnancy and birth significant? Also, this wording can seem confusing (i.e. you can't give birth to a teen!).

Births are what matter, as a pregnant teen can get an abortion, resulting in skewed statistics if you're trying to figure out how many teens are having babies, which (imo) is the thing society should actually care about, as unready parents tend to be a drain on collective/social resources.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#34

Post by nsxwolf »

maxander wrote: post #9

The thing that will save the world from overpopulation- the internet. Both as a source of information, and perhaps as a way of abstracting social interactions that otherwise would have more opportunity to be acted out in sweatier ways.

I think low birth rates are doing that and those started with widespread contraception, not the internet.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#35

Post by throwawaybookst »

personjerry wrote: post #19

Isn't it typically "teen pregnancy" rather than "teen birth"? Is the nuance between pregnancy and birth significant? Also, this wording can seem confusing (i.e. you can't give birth to a teen!).

Teen pregnancy rates will be higher than teen birth rates in jurisdictions that are not hostile to abortion. But teen birth rate is probably a far easier statistic to gather.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#37

Post by nsxwolf »

gozur88 wrote: post #27
orky56 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to obesity in terms of attractiveness or ability to conceive?

I was just thinking in terms of attractiveness. Kids today have an unlimited supply of videos of beautiful people having sex. Not only are their expectations rising, but their choice of attractive mates is falling.

So they'd rather just watch porn than lower their expectations and have some sort of sex?

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#38

Post by ryanmarsh »

Delaying coitus long enough to consider the economic consequences of an unwanted pregnancy is some pretty hard-core adulting. If I remember anything about that age it was the manic ache to fuck. No, I'm pretty sure access to porn has something to do with it.

"widespread availability of broadband Internet"

LOL

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#39

Post by batbomb »

gozur88 wrote: post #18

I wonder how big a role obesity plays in all of this. It may be that teens are having less sex because so many of them have effectively taken themselves out of the sexual marketplace.

I hate to break this to you, but obese people have sex too.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#40

Post by mirimir »

> Veronica Gomez-Lobo, director of pediatric gynecology at Children’s National Medical Center, said the trend of abstinence has been mostly among younger teens rather than older ones. While there's not good data on why this is happening, she thinks of it as a “contagion” factor. So many teens are waiting to have sex, she suggests, that the peer pressure goes the opposite way than it might have in the past.

OK, so the interesting question is whether the birth rate for this cohort will increase as they get older. Hypothesis: Sex has become unworkable for many young people, and they will just opt out of reproduction. In recent decades, birth rates have dropped in many Western European countries, Russia, Japan, etc. The reasons have been diverse. Too many other options. Social disruption. Whatever. But time will tell ...

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