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

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

#201

Post by lambdaphagy » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 12:18 AM UTC

Aelinsaar wrote: post #194

lambdaphagy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have better arguments if you understand why your opponents hold the views they do than if you just stare at them incredulously. Why would anyone be skeptical of contraception? Perhaps because the normalization of contraception has come at the same time as a dramatic increase in single motherhood, from single digits in 1950 to about half of all children today [0]. If we are tempted to think that single motherho…

Maybe you can point to what I said that came across as incredulous staring?

> There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem.

You're writing as though this were self-evidently absurd.

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

#202

Post by myslackusername » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:33 AM UTC

Aelinsaar wrote: post #200

myslackusername wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the patronizing last line with the capital LOT and italics for effect.

Hello new player. It sounds like instead of pointing out what was "incredulous staring" you seem instead to have offered a new accusation of "patronizing".

"Hello new player" - add ironic trolling to the list - bravo

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

#203

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #109

gozur88 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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... That's true, but if your argument is the lower number of births is due to widespread availability of contraception, you have to address pregnancy and not just births.

Access to abortions is just as important as access to contraceptives.

Important for what?

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

#204

Post by milesf » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:32 AM UTC

blue_dinner wrote: post #192

milesf wrote: post #42

Wow. If you treat teenagers like the young adults that they are, and not talk down to them like children but rather give them solid information, they rise to the challenge of taking personal responsibility for their lives. Whodathunk? ;)

Teenagers still don't have the wisdom or experience of someone in their 30s and I would hardly call them 'young adults'. I knew so many kids that had parents that would treat them like adults..and they still made all of the stupid mistakes as the rest of us. It's most likely a culture change. So many teenagers are becoming non-social and filling their time with the phone rather than sex.

People rise to the level of expectations placed on them. The concept of adolescence is a relatively new invention. For most of human history there has been childhood, adulthood, and old age.

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

#205

Post by Aelinsaar » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

myslackusername wrote: post #202

Aelinsaar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello new player. It sounds like instead of pointing out what was "incredulous staring" you seem instead to have offered a new accusation of "patronizing".

"Hello new player" - add ironic trolling to the list - bravo

No, that was just treating you with respect commensurate to what you offered, and I notice you're still dodging. I guess you'd know trolling.

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

#206

Post by valvar » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:49 AM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #156

valvar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me how (and if) Occam's Razor should necessarily be applied in this context. We are not choosing between a very simple, and a vastly complex alternative. Rather we are choosing between an unintuitive and probably complex option (contraceptives are causing less copulation - this does not sound at all like a simple suggestion to me), and admitting that our models and data may not be complete. Either w…

Teens are known to be rebellious and to like toeing the line By making things more accessible and banal, you remove the urge to do it just to spite authority. That simple argument justifies that teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink, and that kids who have ample access to sex ed and contraception are less likely to go and have sex both logistically and emotionally unprepared

>teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink

That's patently false. Cf. http://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2015.76.212

So far I find the argument far from convincing.

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

#207

Post by protomyth » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

bitJericho wrote: post #184

protomyth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it that the gas station bathroom didn't have them? In ND, every gas station seemed to have had the same condom dispenser. I've always wondered what company was responsible for them and who stocked them.

Hey I'm in ND too! I'm on skype under this username if you wanna start a local hn club :P

probably a couple around - I get the feeling a meet up would be in the east.

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

#208

Post by bitJericho » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #207

bitJericho wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I'm in ND too! I'm on skype under this username if you wanna start a local hn club :P

probably a couple around - I get the feeling a meet up would be in the east.

Yep! Hit me up on Skype or steam and we can talk shop sometime.

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

#209

Post by protomyth » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #170

protomyth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it that the gas station bathroom didn't have them? In ND, every gas station seemed to have had the same condom dispenser. I've always wondered what company was responsible for them and who stocked them.

Almost certainly the gas station itself maintained them. Just buy a dispenser, buy condoms, have an employee fill dispenser when you're cleaning the toilets anyway, make profit. You'll get some sales from people too embarrassed (or in a hurry) to bring condoms up to a cashier.

Funny thing is I don't remember them ever selling them in the gas station itself. I'm not so sure it wasn't the same model as Coke/Pepsi showing up and refilling the machines.

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

#210

Post by nikdaheratik » Tue, May 03, 2016, 6:40 AM UTC

fizgig wrote: post #172

rmc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or: Teens are having more sex, but contraceptives are stopping more pregnancies.

(this is not meant to me inflammatory, but rather an honest rumination) Keeping the feminism/SJW/manosphere shenanigans in my peripheral vision, there's been a huge backlash rallying against single mothers in recent years. There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the pac…

This explanation, if you want to call it that, doesn't seem to be borne out by anything in the study. More to the point, since most of these teens are unable to or unlikely to get married to begin with, I don't think any of the "single mother" nonsense applies to them.

Additionally, most people, but especially teens, don't think about some future "dating pool" when they decide to have sex. They usually just believe two of the oldest lies out there: "we're not gonna get pregnant" and "he's gonna still be around in 9 months".

So basically: your opinion is invalid, and it's also slightly insulting since it seems to put everything on the women in the relationship and blames "single mothers" for choosing the wrong gender, I guess, since they wouldn't be in the same situation by your logic if they did the exact same thing but were male.