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The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

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Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#211

Post by withinboredom »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #203
withinboredom wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I bring my son’s opinions up with the school? Because they learned about global warming? Nah, we had a sit down talk about it and how it isn’t “any one specific person’s” fault.

Because from the description, one of two things probably happened: Either the school taught a secular version of a "put the fear of God into them" lesson, and your kid came home in feeling like he literally should not have been born, or another kid talked to him with the same result. That's a really unfair message to hand a 9-year-old.

It seems like a natural conclusion:

1. Teach: humanity has done X to the environment

2. Teach: if we don’t do something Y will happen

3. Conclude: I was not alive to do X

4. Ergo: the adults in my life did X

5. Ergo: the adults in my life will continue to do X which will cause Y because I can’t affect meaningful change

I don’t automatically assume they start at step 5 at school. I’ve seen his math homework. Is that a normal way of thinking though?

To automatically assume that with my son would teach him (likely, inadvertently) that what he learns at school may not be right (which isn’t true, for the most part). Rather I want to teach him that he takes ownership of the words that come out of his mouth. That his opinions are his own and he has to defend them, and further learn what is an opinion and what is a fact.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#212

Post by abenga »

mschuster91 wrote: post #199
berberous wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think you need two children for one to make it to 18?

The US has seen an insane rise of child and adolescent mortality over the last years [1] - and a large part of this is due to the top death cause: homicide or other firearm incidents [2], a scale orders of magnitude worse than among other developed nations. Add on top of that the rising drug epidemic, the removal of access to reproductive and mental health care... [1] https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-te…

Still, the probability of dying while a child in the US is minuscule (about 35 in 100,000 from the first source cited)? Hardly enough to have an additional child to make the expected number out of the two at 19 to be 1 child.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#213

Post by somenameforme »

lapcat wrote: post #103
mihaic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels actually anti-rational, since if the people that care about the environment stop having children that means the people that are passing on their life outlook are mostly ignorant of the environment. It must be a US thing more though, as I haven't personally heard people say fear of environmental damage to keep them from having kids.

> That feels actually anti-rational, since if the people that care about the environment stop having children that means the people that are passing on their life outlook are mostly ignorant of the environment. This assumes that parents successfully pass on their life outlook to their children, but if that were true then society would have never changed. I don't share the life outlook of my parents.

It's all about averages. People, on average, will share the same broad traits and characteristics as their family. Also, depending on your age, give it a couple of decades. Time and experience have a way of shaping our character in ways we may never have expected, let alone ever desired.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#214

Post by X0Refraction »

orionsbelt wrote: post #194
X0Refraction wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that I've said it's one of the factors, not the only factor. But why should my standards be just better than most times in human history? That seems a low bar to me, most times in human history were miserable for the majority of people compared to the living standards I've become accustomed to. To be clear, I don't feel there is any moral duty to continue my particular genes and the world population will…

If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did? If you could be born in America in 1925 and live until 2015, would you? Or would you decline because the standard of living dropped right away with a Great Depression followed by a world war? I agree with you that if I knew, with certainty, that my…

> If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did?

I'd agree there's nuance to this. For your cherry picked scenario, no, that wouldn't affect my decision. I can accept a single person having a reduction in living standards. However, when most of Western society (I'm British, not American) is struggling to attain housing at a rate similar to the generation before, when the middle classes as a whole aren't able to become as financially secure as the generation before then it is enough to give me pause.

So ignoring any climate worries I already think things will be much harder. When you add on that it's estimated that billions will be without sufficient water in a few decades it's not hard to imagine that there will be significant problems of which I have very little confidence that we will be able to handle well as a species.

Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. But as I say, this isn't the only factor we've taken into account, it's more a tertiary concern.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#215

Post by abenga »

smith002 wrote: post #207
willis936 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divorce rates are going down and have been for generations.

you’re insane, divorce has exploded since the 50s

You're wrong, maybe rates went up drastically once it became socially acceptable, but since then they have had a decline [1].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm?CDC_AA_re..., for rates since 1990.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#216

Post by HDThoreaun »

kypro wrote: post #31

> No obvious policy or economic factor can explain much of the decline. I mean, if people literally can't afford to have kids what do we expect to happen to the birthrate? I want kids more than anyone I know yet realistically I'm never going to have them. I'm 33 now and like most people in their early 30s I'm no where near in a stable enough position to raise kids. I mean who the hell even owns a home Here in the UK…

Most people with kids do not own their home and live paycheck to paycheck for what it's worth.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#217

Post by HDThoreaun »

knallfrosch wrote: post #40
bboygravity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also "the economy improved" doesn't mean that people could afford a house or kids. It could just as well mean that companies and the 1 percent got way richer.

That's what 2,000 people tell Paul Krugman every time he tells them 'the economy is fine' in his New York Times column. It's quite entertaining to watch, altough troubling. He's smart, he gets a lot of direct feedback, and yet he doesn't understand it at all. Put simply, the economy isn't "working" when people can afford less food by the month, renting gets harder by the week, used cars are double as expensive, new c…

Americans are stupid. Housing is more expensive but real wages are up, the vast majority of Americans can afford more food than ever before.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#218

Post by mschuster91 »

abenga wrote: post #212
mschuster91 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has seen an insane rise of child and adolescent mortality over the last years [1] - and a large part of this is due to the top death cause: homicide or other firearm incidents [2], a scale orders of magnitude worse than among other developed nations. Add on top of that the rising drug epidemic, the removal of access to reproductive and mental health care... [1] https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-te…

Still, the probability of dying while a child in the US is minuscule (about 35 in 100,000 from the first source cited)? Hardly enough to have an additional child to make the expected number out of the two at 19 to be 1 child.

It's still way too high - once a week there's some sort of shooting incident in the US [1], and that doesn't include all the other mass shooting incidents in general society [2], nor the shooting incidents that don't kill multiple people. Frankly, for me as an European, these numbers are insane - and the worst thing is, even after outright massacres nothing changes.

It's one thing if society learns something from incidents like we did with after the mass murder at Winnenden 2009. But in the US, it's "thoughts and prayers" and that's it - utterly dystopian.

[1] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#219

Post by taylodl »

throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

(policy) the middle class was forced to bail out the 0.1% for making bad investments during the crises of 2008.

It should be obvious to everybody the U.S. is an oligarchy. It actually has been for decades now, but it was laid bare in 2008. Many people are fighting the oligarchs in an interesting way - refusing to provide them the labor they need to further enrich themselves. The kids born in 2008 would be 15 in 2023. What the oligarchs are worried about is a huge drop in the labor market. That's one reason they're pushing so hard for ending abortion. All I can say is there's going to be a lot more incels.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#220

Post by lapcat »

somenameforme wrote: post #213
lapcat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That feels actually anti-rational, since if the people that care about the environment stop having children that means the people that are passing on their life outlook are mostly ignorant of the environment. This assumes that parents successfully pass on their life outlook to their children, but if that were true then society would have never changed. I don't share the life outlook of my parents.

It's all about averages. People, on average, will share the same broad traits and characteristics as their family. Also, depending on your age, give it a couple of decades. Time and experience have a way of shaping our character in ways we may never have expected, let alone ever desired.

To avoid repeating my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35973362
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