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What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

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Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#181

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

itake wrote: post #161

My $0.02 is being a mom sucks. In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are working just as many hours the men are. Having kids means tension in relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and stress parenting kids. Even if the husband steps up, he still can't breast feed for 3 hours per day. Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-part…

Yes of course being a mom AND WORKING A FULLTIME JOB sucks because doing anything that effortful and working a job sucks.

Drinking beer and playing video games for 10 hours a day AND WORKING A FULLTIME JOB would also suck.

From everything I hear, being a mom is pretty awesome and rewarding.

But there are only 24 hours in a day and you can't have everything and you have to choose what is most important. Welcome to life.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#182

Post by anonymars »

bpbp-mango wrote: post #150
supportengineer wrote: post #141

I have two teenagers and they are wonderful. But the world is NOT the same anymore. In the current moment, I would really think twice before bringing any more kids into this world. I feel sorry for everyone coming of age at this time. The world got very bad very quickly. There's no jobs, no one can afford a house, healthcare, or retirement, and the climate is toast.

What a ridiculous attitude. The world will always have problems you cannot control. People have been having babies in all sorts of adversity for all of history.

Why is this ridiculous? If the topic is about the baby boom, surely "optimism" at the end of WWII plays a big role. (Unsurprisingly, birth rates during the Great Depression had plummeted)

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#183

Post by trod1234 »

Animats wrote: post #163

Well, let's see how it works for Russia. Russia has a 1.41 fertility rate (2.1 is breakeven). Plus Russia has lost somewhere around a million soldiers so far in Ukraine. Deaths outnumber births by 1.6 to 1. They need fresh meat for the grinder.[1] Current steps being taken include: - Emphasizing family values via the Russian Orthodox Church - Restricting abortion, which was cheap and easy in the USSR days - Encourage…

Most countries today are losing population (below replacement value).

The US is at 1.62, Taiwan is at 0.85.

There are a lot of economic factors required for having children that are simply not there anymore for quite a lot of people. Third-party malign interference has never been higher. Those dating apps all the women are using, they aren't matching people up to have babies.

They are matching people up who won't ever have babies.

What makes this worse unfortunately over time is intelligent people don't have children if they can't support them; so if you have growing inequality with no social mobility upwards, you have an evolutionary skew towards the dumb similar to the movie idiocracy.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#184

Post by louwrentius »

PakistaniDenzel wrote: post #169
itake wrote: post #161

My $0.02 is being a mom sucks. In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are working just as many hours the men are. Having kids means tension in relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and stress parenting kids. Even if the husband steps up, he still can't breast feed for 3 hours per day. Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-part…

No - being a mom and having to work full time sucks. Being a full time mom probably isn't that bad.

Some Women who are full time mothers report feeling isolated. Many chose to keep their job even if all the money goes to day care.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#185

Post by rjsw »

jansan wrote: post #7
blackhaj7 wrote: post #4

War, sadly. Seems like some politicians are doing their best to arrange that

Do you see rising birth rates in Ukraine and/or Russia?

Ukraine has conscription for over 25s so that they can have children before going to the war.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#186

Post by ElevenLathe »

IshKebab wrote: post #144
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #36

These studies never seem to look at time spent parenting, between baby-boom years and now. My parents parented a few hours a week and were entirely typical. I parented ceaselessly, just like my parenting-peers. My parents world was possible because kids roamed with peers (and without adults) for many hours a week. This was my childhood, my parents childhood, my grandparents childhood. My kids grew up under 24/7 adult…

I don't think that's a significant factor because it doesn't come into play until all of your children are at least like 8. Nobody is thinking "I'll have to drive them to music lessons in 10 years instead of letting them play outside". I think the obvious factors are far more likely - people are poorer, childcare is more expensive, stay-at-home parents are less common.

It also may be the wrong causality. Perhaps when children are rarer, they are more precious and we naturally want to protect them more.

It's bizarre to me that the piece doesn't mention the contraceptive pill, which debuted in 1960, the exact same year as peak fertility.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#187

Post by Glyptodon »

I continue to think that despite the likelihood of birth rate being multiplicatively impacted by different factors, housing being stable and inexpensive has to be a leg on which all the other factors build. I know so many people who have put off having kids despite wanting them because they do not believe (having gone through the great recession, experiencing modern hiring and firing practices, the pandemic, and seeing global warming, and now AI, while being given a roadmap called "just go to college and everything will be easy" from boomers) that it's prudent when rent and mortgage payments hang over ever all other factors and when things never actually "feel" like they improve for them and don't seem likely to.

Make housing so cheap that people feel there's nothing risky about working minimum age job with 3 kids and you have the first leg of higher birth rates being societally supported IMO.

But that's not an easy place to arrive.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#188

Post by [deleted] »

itake wrote: post #161

My $0.02 is being a mom sucks. In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are working just as many hours the men are. Having kids means tension in relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and stress parenting kids. Even if the husband steps up, he still can't breast feed for 3 hours per day. Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-part…

[deleted]

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#189

Post by alexey-salmin »

IshKebab wrote: post #144
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #36

These studies never seem to look at time spent parenting, between baby-boom years and now. My parents parented a few hours a week and were entirely typical. I parented ceaselessly, just like my parenting-peers. My parents world was possible because kids roamed with peers (and without adults) for many hours a week. This was my childhood, my parents childhood, my grandparents childhood. My kids grew up under 24/7 adult…

I don't think that's a significant factor because it doesn't come into play until all of your children are at least like 8. Nobody is thinking "I'll have to drive them to music lessons in 10 years instead of letting them play outside". I think the obvious factors are far more likely - people are poorer, childcare is more expensive, stay-at-home parents are less common.

I think the level of obsessive care people feel obliged to deliver to their single child prior to age of 8 is a part of the same story. You can see how radically it changes even with the second child (not to mention the third) but half of the parents never get there nowadays and think it's the norm.

Re: What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?

#190

Post by aianus »

DeRock wrote: post #142
lesuorac wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most families in the US can't afford a nanny. Daycare is already stretching it. Where are you at? Nannies are cheaper than daycare starting at 1 kid and the cost becomes overwhelming in favor of a nanny when there's multiple kids. You can also have the nanny watch other kids in the neighborhood if you only have 1 kid.

Paying someone to watch your children full time so that you can do your full time job is inherently classist. Who takes care of the nannies kids? The solution to "kids are expensive" being to just pay someone lower class to do it is absurd. > You can also have the nanny watch other kids in the neighborhood if you only have 1 kid. You're re-inventing daycare here.

It's classist that I have to work every day and the owners of capital do not, so what?

There is nothing morally wrong with hiring someone to do labor for you.

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