What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another? • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by aaron695 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 4:42 AM UTC

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.

[dead]

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

#552

Post by lmm » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 4:45 AM UTC

MangoToupe wrote: post #525

Aurornis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A stable population requires a fertility rate of about 2.1. It’s not about growth, it’s about stability of population at this point.

You don't need a stable population to have a stable society. I'm not sure why you're connecting the two.

Are there any historical cases of societies remaining stable despite massive population decline?

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

#553

Post by Teever » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

nothercastle wrote: post #545

mensetmanusman wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s symptoms all the way down. If the system decides it needs more births it will ban abortion, and that’s not a moral failure on the system’s part, it’s an indictment of the symptoms itself.

Abortion won’t change the game you would have to ban condoms and birth control

If you can't successfully ban cannabis and cocaine (in prisons no less). You can't effectively ban condoms and birth control

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

#554

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

lisbbb wrote: post #254

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…

Being a Dad really sucks, too--I'm unemployed at 52 at what should be the height of my career when my kids really need someone who is making money so help pay for college tuition and my wife has cancer, so save it how rough breast feeding is when breast feeding only last about a year or so anyways.

Good news is if your income is still low by the time they head to college, depending on the state, in-state tuition to a state college will be reasonable or free.

If your income is higher by then, it'll probably be ok.

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

#555

Post by Tadpole9181 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

alexey-salmin wrote: post #261

louwrentius wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made that up. It’s very easy to think of circumstances where it would be very immoral because of all the suffering the children will have to endure.

Moral norms evolve to ensure survival of it's bearers. Basically under no circumstances it will be immoral for the population at large to have kids because such moral norms will quickly cease to exist. Eather because it's bearers cease to exist or more likely because they move on to more suitable moral norms. I say "more likely" because humans obviously didn't get extinct despite bringing kids into the world of suffe…

I was literally told as a kid that we were heading to overpopulation and that having kids would be immoral. The Chinese committed a genocide against girl infants with that as a justification.

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

#556

Post by csomar » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:04 AM UTC

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…

Oh it’s sure birth control that’s doing it and not the backward societal norms that are still sticking.

Thanks for pointing out that the baby boom happened by accidental births and confirming it with your own anecdotal evidence.

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

#557

Post by csomar » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:08 AM UTC

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #413

lisbbb wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What loss? It was not her but her "girlfriend" which I don't even know how to correctly interpret these days. Is she saying it was her love interest or just a friend who is female? Heaven knows! Kids aren't even dating anymore hardly. My son (15) is having a horrible time navigating social interactions. The girls at his school are all horrible people, it seems (not true, I'm sure, but I constantly have to hear about…

It goes both ways. Add to this that boys today have been raised on a steady diet of pornography on their smartphones from a young age and never taught to master their impulses and learn genuinely masculine virtue. What do you think this does to their perception and treatment of women? And women are taught to view sex as an instrument of power and control (look at the number of young women with OnlyFans accounts), and…

Pretty sure my interactions with 60+ old man and the younger generation refutes this. Of course this is anecdotal but you also offer no evidence whatsoever.

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

#558

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #280

angmarsbane wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divorce laws vary by state. California is equal property, and alimony kicks in immediately (no minimum length of marriage). As a female, higher earner, I paid my ex-husband alimony for a 1 yr 9 month marriage.

Do you feel that this is a fair way to distribute earnings upon divorce? When no children are involved? My interpretation is that one should not marry somebody who earns significantly less than them due to how courts will force payments with the possibility of jail time.

What if you think about it this way: By default, a marriage is a contract agreeing to equally pool financial resources. If that contract feels unfair to you, it's usually possible to draft a contract with a different distribution, which people often do if one of the two has vastly more financial resources going into the marriage.

Does that make it feel more fair?

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

#559

Post by kelseyfrog » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

teitoklien wrote: post #530

kelseyfrog wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empirically, how well does the "we have it better off now" response work against feelings of an unfair system. Does it tend to change perspective in your experience?

the mindset you're discussing isnt whats driving this for majority of people (im myself young and in my 20s). its a problem in your extremely small bubble of leftist spaces which i've often heard this doomism being argued. World has never been that fair, its a work in progress that has been going on since 1000s of years heck probably 100,000s for humans. First there was Anarchy / Stateless Societies (Pre-Leviathan),…

Can you explain how all of this is supposed to make me feel like it's worth opting in to? It sounds like this society is fundamentally broken. Why support something I don't believe in?

Make a society worth believing in.

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

#560

Post by rdm_blackhole » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

socceroos wrote: post #312

I find the repeated comments of how much parenting 'sucks' and how much childbearing 'sucks' to be distasteful. It has been the single most incredible experience I've had (5 times over). I feel like, primarily, the reason why our society isn't having children is because of a growing selfishness and entitlement; which happens to be the very thing that Rome was suffering from when their society was collapsing too. No,…

> I find the repeated comments of how much parenting 'sucks' and how much childbearing 'sucks' to be distasteful.

Shouldn't people who think that parenting is not a glamorous job be allowed to express their thoughts on this subject?

> It has been the single most incredible experience I've had (5 times over).

So other people's feelings and experiences are according to you distasteful but yours should be accepted as some sort of universal truth?

You had a great experience bringing kids into this world, that's nice but that doesn't mean that everyone should be willing to go through the same things you did.