Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#251

Post by agensaequivocum » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

irateswami wrote: post #15

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage tha…

I've been thinking about whether, when we have our fourth, to get a minivan, or just jump straight to a 15 passenger van. I know I'll need one eventually.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#252

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:50 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#253

Post by lucretian » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #16

svachalek wrote: post #7

This reads like a textbook example of "correlation is not causation". You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.

I have elementary school age kids, so I know lots of parents. Anecdotally, there is a big jump between having two kids and having more than two. I've had a lot of conversations with friends on their third pregnancy about having to upgrade to a bigger car because with the size of car seats, you can't fit three of them in one row of a typical sedan. And I've likewise had conversations with parents who decided (like my…

> The transition from two to three is really just quantitative.

not from the perspective of the women who bear the health risk.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#254

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #171

irateswami wrote: post #15

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage tha…

> the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five I recently visited Pakistan for the first time, and was amazed to see a family of five riding around on a small Honda motorbike. The father was driving, a small child sat in front of the father, the was mother hanging on behind the father, and the oldest daughter sitting on the far back with both legs hanging off to the left while holding an inf…

Saw much of that in Hyderabad 2008.

It's one way the lethality of poverty is visible.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#255

Post by thatfrenchguy » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #44

irateswami wrote: post #15

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage tha…

We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat" We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well. But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea…

I mean in the US you’ll also need to save 6 figures for the kid’s college as well…

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#256

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #159

war1025 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. I guess maybe they are less comfortable than traditional car seats, but since car seats are basically build like lazy-boy recliners, that seems unsurprising. Our kids have never complained about the comfort or lack-thereof. They seem to have pretty equivalent comfort when compared to the back seat itself as far as I can tell.

That definitely seems like an improvement over car seats from the 90s. As an adult I still remember hating full-day road trips in the hard-plastic-with-a-fabric-liner car seat my parents owned; my butt was always sore after sitting in it for too long.

Car seats are way better than they were when I was a kid in the 80s. I recall that my car seat as a kid was a hard vinyl upright contraption that made me carsick whenever I rode in it for a long time. My mom actually sewed fabric covers for it so it wouldn't burn me on hot summer days.

My kid's infant car seat was a click 'n go bassinet with a soft fabric liner. His convertible car seat stays in the car, but it still reclines better than any adult seat, with more plush padding than the car itself. He actually prefers the car over the bed for naps. Only problem is that he's still rear-facing and his legs are getting a bit too long for the seat, but he solves that by putting his feet up.

Kid stuff is one area where I've been pleasantly surprised by how technology advanced when I wasn't looking. Car seats, strollers, baby gates, and toys are all way more advanced (and cheaper, inflation-adjusted) than they were in the 80s.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#257

Post by SulfurHexaFluri » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

nethunters wrote: post #239

safetyengineer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helmets work but after working in automotive safety, motorcycles are death traps. I can't emphasize this enough. They are no automobile, and are not comparable.

What other precautionary methods could help reduce mortality rates of motorcycles?

Keeping your speed under 40km/h would do a lot. And removing cars from streets.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#258

Post by SulfurHexaFluri » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #235

war1025 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat" We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well. But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea…

Let's say it costs you $200k to raise a kid to adulthood [0]. A Honda Civic costs $25k new [1], an 8-seater Honda Odyssey costs $31k new [2]. A car lasts 10+ years so conservatively that's $12k extra in transportation costs for your fourth child. Maybe you can argue it's $20k with fuel. That...doesn't seem unreasonable? As a society, we like people to start families and continue the human race, but we know overpopula…

We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#259

Post by memling » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #258

dmurray wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say it costs you $200k to raise a kid to adulthood [0]. A Honda Civic costs $25k new [1], an 8-seater Honda Odyssey costs $31k new [2]. A car lasts 10+ years so conservatively that's $12k extra in transportation costs for your fourth child. Maybe you can argue it's $20k with fuel. That...doesn't seem unreasonable? As a society, we like people to start families and continue the human race, but we know overpopula…

We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex.

> We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex.

Do you have any citations for this? Not snarking—genuinely curious, not arguing, but I was under the impression that most population growth in developed countries like the U.S. was due to immigration rather than above-replacement fertility rates.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#260

Post by jgalt212 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

irateswami wrote: post #15

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage tha…

> the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five

Yes, but only if you count by unique line items. If you count by market share, the large family market is well served.

“S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 percent of sales compared to 72 percent now.”[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/suv-sales-best-s...