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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?

#231

Post by yieldcrv »

> between the mid-1930s and mid-1950s, the US maternal death rate fell by 94 percent

that’s it

so basically very few people - as in both partners - were consciously planning kids, they were just having sex, but the irresponsibility was curbed by nature, sanitation, as many of the resulting children died.

of the people that were planning children, they also has to hedge with many dead children, but suddenly they were all living

so now people had to plan for the consequences and post 1950s the planning resulted in real practical choices, where people realized they dont want children.

people never wanted the consequences of having children or many children. the history corroborates this. when both parties are now choosing

the incentives haven’t helped for that reason

the incentives are all based on the assumption that family planning is difficult and out of reach. merely delaying something desired, when they just won’t accept that most of has just don’t want children and never did.

we still have sex. the decline in that amongst always single people is new, just the last several years. couples do the things that make children all the time, and just don’t get pregnant or output children.

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

#232

Post by beefnugs »

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.

I used to be really angry at parents, thinking it was incredible cruelty to throw children into a world without teaching them just how hard capitalism is going to try and wreck them. But i guess it didn't "used" to be this bad, you used to be able to afford rent i guess.

But still, we need to be teaching above all the other dumb shit thats happening in school: how capitalism hates them. How you need to eliminate middle men, having a regular wage means you are going to be an oppressed slave for life. You need to come up with your own thing, that you own and control and get to do some kind of negotiating for its value. You need to invest in things that can be used to make money in the future, little side hustles always. And maybe even deep dives on how crime really does pay, and if not figure one out yourself at least know the huge majority of people that are going to try and scam you. It is pure evil not to teach reality in high school

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

#234

Post by itake »

echelon wrote: post #217
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…

I think that you're right and that this is one of the predominant reasons for declining child births. I think that if I were a woman that I would personally choose career or personal life first before having children, all other things in my life held equal. I have a lot invested in those things, they're here and tangible, and they bring me joy. Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed that to be…

Yeah, drives me crazy when governments are trying to lower the cost of childcare with tax incentives or creating dating apps to encourage connectivity.

Yeah, this might convince some people, but money is not preventing educated women from having kids.

My 31-year-old ex-girlfriend told me she needs a high degree of career stability, especially after recently losing her job. Even if she landed a new role quickly, it often takes 1–2 years to feel secure and fully ramped up in a new position. As someone at a level 4/5, she'd likely be aiming for a promotion once that stability sets in. Realistically, that puts her promotion around age 33 to 35, which is right around the time when starting a family becomes more biologically challenging.

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

#235

Post by alexey-salmin »

louwrentius wrote: post #168
t1234s wrote: post #31

You would need an economy where the average man can work and provide a life for his stay-at-home wife to raise the 3-4 kids at a decent living standard.

We really don’t need this kind of sexist attitude on HN in 2025.

Not the OP, but the statement above is a proposed answer to the question in the article title "What Would It Take to Have Another?"

As such it can be true or false, but I don't really see how it can be sexist.

If you think it's not true, it would be curious to hear why.

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

#236

Post by mcdeltat »

ziknard wrote: post #199

Worrying about declining birth rates on Earth in 2025 is exactly as psychotic as dinosaurs worrying about their investment portfolios the day after Chicxulub. Someone said "more meat for the grinder", which is exactly correct whether it is referring to a war machine or the late-stage capitalist shithole we've created. You're all absolutely crazy if you think more fscking people on this finite planet is going to solve…

Times like these you realise HN is surprisingly conservative and narrow minded

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

#237

Post by Analemma_ »

triceratops wrote: post #206
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…

> In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house As a man in a "modern relationship" I strenuously object to this. I mean yeah I want that (who wouldn't?), but I know I'm not going to get it because my partner has a job too so we have to help each other. Literally every one of my married male friends also regularly cooks and cleans.

Since you're posting on Hacker News you're probably in a pretty high income bracket, and your married male friends probably are as well. High income brackets have seen pretty steady marriage rates, and as someone also in this bubble, they tend also to have men with more egalitarian views on marriage. But the flipside is that high-earners tend to delay childbirth-- they have to, because you need a lengthy period of education and work experience to get to that high bracket.

It's lower income brackets where marriage rates are really collapsing. A lot of this is economic-- the earnings potential for lower-class men has eroded-- but it's also the men in these income brackets tend not to have adopted upper-class views on egalitarian partnerships, and their potential partners aren't having it.

So among high earners you have stable marriages but where they can't start having children until their careers are secure, while among low-earners the men are both economically and temperamentally unacceptable to their partners. So fertility collapses in both groups.

If this view of marriage sounds unfamiliar, you might want to see e.g. [0], in particular the point about how "top-half marriage and bottom-half marriage are so unalike they might as well be completely different institutions."

[0]: https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/marriage-is-down-beca...

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

#238

Post by angmarsbane »

MisterTea wrote: post #170
0_____0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. On top of a $3000/mo mortgage. NE USA. When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded." Either that or they have one parent who cannot be employed outside the home.

> Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. That's what grandparents are for. Growing up my immediate family lived in the same neighborhood. My mother's parents lived two blocks away and walked over. My fathers parents lived ~15 minutes away. Everyone worked locally. Baby sitters were always named grandma :-) Now you have to move across the country for a lucrative tech job, leaving behind your support network.…

I have been in tech for 7 years and it would be a stretch to afford the house I grew up in. Plus the commute to the city from my parents has increased from 45 minutes to 2 hours over the last 30 years. My high school recently closed down because families can't afford to live in the neighborhood.

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

#239

Post by floren »

triceratops wrote: post #196
floren wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think literal chattel slaves knew they were pretty bad off but they still had kids. (If you implied sarcasm I apologize, it's extremely hard to tell when dealing with HN posters)

I encourage you to do some research about this. I did and I wish I had not.

edit: you know what, I'm not going into this here, I'll leave a link with some actual slave narratives about family and children. https://americainclass.org/family-life-of-the-enslaved/

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

#240

Post by echelon »

itake wrote: post #234
echelon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you're right and that this is one of the predominant reasons for declining child births. I think that if I were a woman that I would personally choose career or personal life first before having children, all other things in my life held equal. I have a lot invested in those things, they're here and tangible, and they bring me joy. Media says that it's the economy, but I've never once believed that to be…

Yeah, drives me crazy when governments are trying to lower the cost of childcare with tax incentives or creating dating apps to encourage connectivity. Yeah, this might convince some people, but money is not preventing educated women from having kids. My 31-year-old ex-girlfriend told me she needs a high degree of career stability, especially after recently losing her job. Even if she landed a new role quickly, it of…

Our dreams and aspirations, a product of our society, do not easily fit within our biology and our short lifespans. I'm not just talking about women and children.

There's too much opportunity (good!) and too much opportunity cost.

We're truly gradient ascent explorers in the rawest sense. And our adventures take us off the evolutionary path. We've jumped the shark on our biology.

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