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?

#561

Post by pyuser583 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #430

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You don't have to be an "extinction apologist" or whatever to think that we'll probably solve the problem before we go from 7 BILLION people to not enough humans for healthy genetic diversity. We've rescued animal species from extinction with populations of <100.

We’ve never come up with a way to correct this. No country has reversed course. That’s troubling.

When it comes to animals - species that refuse to breed have a tendency to go extinct.

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

#562

Post by ako » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #536

kelseyfrog wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist. It's wild that we find it harder to change the system than to walk away from it entirely. People opt out in a thousand small ways - refusing to have kids, refusing to participate, numbing themselves with distractions, or just mentally checking out. If the core pitch of society is "keep grinding or suffer," it’s not…

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.

Hans Rowling found that one of the best way to increase numbers of births is to reduce education for women. Or at least there’s strong correlation between both.

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

#563

Post by SturgeonsLaw » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #383

UncleMeat wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> looming human extinction

https://populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Hea...

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

#564

Post by kelseyfrog » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #536

kelseyfrog wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist. It's wild that we find it harder to change the system than to walk away from it entirely. People opt out in a thousand small ways - refusing to have kids, refusing to participate, numbing themselves with distractions, or just mentally checking out. If the core pitch of society is "keep grinding or suffer," it’s not…

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.

The system has no morals, but every person operating within it does. If the system demands what it needs from us without regard for morality, it's on us, as moral agents, to refuse compliance. The system can demand what it wants, but no one is obliged to give it anything.

If the point is that the system will coerce what it needs from us, then it deserves not merely to perish, but to be destroyed, actively, deliberately, and ruthlessly. If births are the air it breathes, let us suffocate it by refusing to bear its children. Let it choke on its own demands.

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

#565

Post by alexey-salmin » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:33 AM UTC

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #555

alexey-salmin wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not saying that's something that can't happen, I'm saying it can't last for long.

The "immoral to have kids" crowd still exists e.g in Europe but their options are to either change their mind or to be gradually overrun by people who think otherwise.

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

#566

Post by pyuser583 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:35 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…

No you are not heading towards 50 if you were born in 1980. You are nowhere near 50, and I refuse to believe otherwise!

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

#567

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

angmarsbane wrote: post #266

mcoliver wrote: post #50

Having children younger. This builds villages and generates the community flywheel. The problem now is that it's close to impossible for the vast majority of younger people to buy a home with a single income. So the choice becomes dual income and farm out the raising of your children (requires even more money and negates the benefits of enjoying your children which is part of the reason to have them in the first plac…

It's even less about buying a home now and more about just affording a second or third bedroom in a rental. If you look at job centers, even when they do build multi-family they aren't building family sized units.

Which is partially an issue due to fire codes that were established when we built vastly more flammable cities.

It's weird how much happens for random, completely unrelated reasons.

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

#568

Post by rdm_blackhole » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #467

Why not pay women a competitive (not $10/hr) salary for raising a child, collected from taxes from people who don't have children under 18? To make building a family more profitable than working a job. It seems that politicians (calling for ban of abortions) want to have a cake and not pay for it.

So you basically want to add another tax on young single/unmarried people?

What if you are infertile? Is the government/state going to pay for all the procedures related to adoption/ fertility treatments?

What about gay people? Would they be forced to adopt kids or use surrogates to have children so that they stop paying this tax?

At what age should men stop paying this tax? After all, a man in his 60s and even later can still in theory father a child with a younger woman, so there is really no cut off date for men in this case?

Finally why not pay men as well if they are the ones doing most of the child raising? This would apply in cases where the mother died or left. Would that be acceptable?

I am sorry to say but your proposal is not very well thought out and on top of that your forget that people in relationships without children are already paying more than there fair share of taxes.

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

#569

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

ivape wrote: post #458

Aurornis wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s strange to see that anecdote so highly upvoted when it’s so trivial to look at birth rates by parental age. Reduced teen pregnancies are not the driving factor in recent fertility rate declines at all. It is interesting how an appeal to emotion with a difficult story can lead so many to overlook the obvious shortcomings in that explanation. Honestly this entire comment section has a lot of people making guesses…

Maybe it has something to do with the “you are not good enough” treadmill the modern world has everyone on. I don’t think people of yesteryear contemplated if they were ready to start a family. I don’t think they contemplated if a job was the “right fit”, and I doubt they scoured the world looking for their soulmate. So, if you live in our current time period where you are never “complete”, then you may have a hard t…

> Maybe it has something to do with the “you are not good enough” treadmill the modern world has everyone on.

I don't think so. I think it's because

    A new couple can't support themselves when
    rent=1mo typical wages. It is impossible to pair off.    

    Parenting time is up 20-fold from the 1950s.
    Was a few hours wk. Now it's ceaseless, 24/7 adulting.

    Childhood is effectively ruined due to 
    - eradication of free ranging area thanks to automobile
    and trespassing culture. 
    - eradication of regular hours of adult-free peer time
    where critical social and growth skills are learned.
    Modern childhoods are spent in boxes w/ adults.

    Poor mental health follows and kids cope using devices.
    So adults predictably want to take that away as well.

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

#570

Post by pyuser583 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 5:37 AM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #460

teitoklien wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is heavily politicized, atleast for the forseable future, until society reaches a conclusion, people will lie with statistics, smear their opponents in discussion as bigots, sexists, whatever. But sooner or later it needs to be asked and acted upon. Should society structure itself to penalise abortions, and reward births of children. Did our old religious and conservative societies where parents and grandparents h…

When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist. It's wild that we find it harder to change the system than to walk away from it entirely. People opt out in a thousand small ways - refusing to have kids, refusing to participate, numbing themselves with distractions, or just mentally checking out. If the core pitch of society is "keep grinding or suffer," it’s not…

Society has been getting better and better. The privations our parents and grandparents went though were insane.

Conscription, poverty, illiteracy, I mean wow.

By almost every conceivable metric, the world is getting better.