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

derekthompson.org

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

#381

Post by itake »

slaw wrote: post #301
itake wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister is one of these cases. My take is the bar for marriage / life partner is really really high in modern relationships. Women aren't able to attract the mates they want, so they would rather try to do it on their own or wait, than "settle" for a guy that isn't meeting their standards. The female dating coach Logan Ury wrote a book called "How not to die alone" which discusses this issue.

> Women aren't able to attract the mates they want Women set expectation bar so high, only top 5% of men meet.

In 20 years, with more women than men going to college, a lot of women aren’t going to find partners if they want someone that matched or exceeds their education level.

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

#382

Post by bongodongobob »

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 was roaming the country and forest with the neighbor kids when we were 4. This was mid 80s.

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

#383

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

UncleMeat wrote: post #300
crtified wrote: post #178

My anecdotal experience, which illustrates how changing societal norms may be contributing. Around 1960, my grandmother scandalously fell pregnant with my mother in her late teens. The child was adopted out - well, not out - in. To her own grandmother, to be raised as a "younger sister" to her own mother. Around 1980, my mother scandalously fell pregnant with me, in her late teens. Despite family disapproval, the chi…

Abortions are not the primary reason why teen pregnancy is way down. There's actual data, you know. Fewer teen pregnancies is a reason why birth rates in the US are declining. But it isn't driven by abortion. And it is insane to me that I'm now seeing this "oh actually teen pregnancy wasn't so bad" thing pop up all over the place.

> And it is insane to me that I'm now seeing this "oh actually teen pregnancy wasn't so bad" thing pop up all over the place.

The other side of this is insane to me... the "oh actually looming human extinction won't be so bad" thing. Sub-replacement fertility rates are slow-motion extinction. Animal models where they "bounce back" is irrelevant, those animals have their extremely high above-replacement fertility all through their famines, plagues, and predator massacres such that when those pressures relent their population recovers. There's no known precedent for raising fertility rates that fall let alone so low.

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

#384

Post by arresin »

standardUser wrote: post #215

The tiny period of time that allowed some men in the wealthiest parts of the world to purchase property and support a family of 4+ on a single salary was an anomaly. It was a macroeconomic fluke, forever lost to the specific place and time that allowed it to briefly flourish. There's a chance a highly-automated future could reduce our neccesary working hours to those boomtime levels. But the one thing that will absol…

Saying it was a fluke discounts the hard work and sacrifice it took. It didn’t happen accidentally. It took raw will and courage to wrestle the social fabric into something more equitable. And without continued effort from those who came later it’s being unwound.

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

#386

Post by bethekidyouwant »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #55

As a new parent, it’s money. Daycare costs $400 USD per week in my area, from 7am-6pm, 5 days a week. So for one child that is roughly 20,000 USD annually. Once you hit the 3-5 kid mark, it usually does not make sense for the spouse to work, unless they are earning well above 6 figures. So then you’re going down to one income supporting a family of 3-5. That’s risky for a variety of reasons. If you want actual action…

We have a subsidized childcare in Quebec and the fertility rate is still shit

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

#387

Post by zmgsabst »

epicureanideal wrote: post #317
UncleMeat wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many men advocate for an equitable household. But the stats are clear. Women still perform substantially more labor at home than men do across the US population.

The stats are rigged and biased by not counting the types of work men do, and if they did count it they wouldn’t reach the “right” conclusions so wouldn’t be published. This is written about quite a bit.

Similar to how we talk about the Wage Gap but not the Death Gap, ie, that men do an order of magnitude more dying in the workplace.

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

#388

Post by giantg2 »

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…

Almost everything you said can apply to father's too. Plus the way father's are treated in family court. Being a father can suck.

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

#389

Post by bethekidyouwant »

malwrar wrote: post #192
qq66 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the 110 billion people to have ever been born, maybe 2 billion have been born into more comfortable circumstances than the median child born in the United States today.

Were those children born to brave parents who made a choice to selflessly sacrifice to do their societal duty, or could it be that having sex is fun and only relatively recently have we managed to figure out how to do it without risking pregnancy? Given individual choice, would we have such a large population to begin with?

People just figured out how to pull out?

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

#390

Post by bongodongobob »

Aurornis wrote: post #67
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.

> When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded. This is an interesting divide between social media reality of children and the real world. Any parent will recognize that having 5 kids does not mean paying 5X the cost of infant daycare, which is obvious when you think about it. Infant daycare is expensive but it's also temporary. It's also fascinating that so many people assume daycare i…

I'm sorry dude, but you are clearly part of the 1%. No one I know can afford any of what you're suggesting. "Just take a sabbatical and put up the nanny in your guesthouse!"
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