651–660 of 927 posts
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Stable in terms of population, not all of the stuff you're talking about.
Why is a stable population good or desirable?
When you retire there will only be two. Expect less than half the care, because automation of elderly care is more expensive than a person.
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You say ‘modern relationships’ but I feel like you’re describing a stereotypical 1950s relationship in that paragraph. The lack of contrast surprises me.
The big difference is that mom is working now. The problem is not who does the most household work, the problem is that the one who does (usually the mom) can't compensate by not working. A single income is rarely sufficient for a family.
Maybe that is a good explanation for the baby boom though.
You would need an economy where the average man can work and provide a life for his stay-at-home wife to raise the 3-4 kids at a decent living standard.
We really don’t need this kind of sexist attitude on HN in 2025.
Some young women are waking up to the fact that even though their corporate overlords call them family a month before mass layoffs, it can be a lot more rewarding to work for your actual family instead of the family assembled by billionaires looking for a good return on investment and pension funds.
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I make 5 times more than my SO and I can realistically have 3/4 families if I wanted. I proposed multiple times my SO to work part time and spend more time at home and have children and she has 0 intentions of giving up a single dime of her independence.
Good for her, I wouldn't want to be beholden to someone else either.
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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.
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…
My bet is still WW2. The fact that the boom started earlier than '45 is easily explained by his own quoted graph in which the birthrate plummets in the 20s (which I would assign to WW1), the first rise is merely a correction.
Why would one result in a bust and the other into a boom? For one, the economy followed the same bust ('29) boom pattern. WW1 ended unresolved, showed the evil of man in general, where WW2 resolved WW1 and showed the evil of particular man, and it wasn't us, but which we defeated.
WW2 learned a lot of lessons from WW1 which made post war society thrive for not only the rich.
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I make 5 times more than my SO and I can realistically have 3/4 families if I wanted. I proposed multiple times my SO to work part time and spend more time at home and have children and she has 0 intentions of giving up a single dime of her independence.
Is that how you proposed it?
I see her situation as a blocker, but other than proposing her to move part time I don't know what to do really.
Homer Simpson is a bumbling incompetent who manages to have a stable job, and can afford a mortgage, insurance for his family of 5, and two good enough cars as the sole breadwinner for his household. It's going to take something like that.
Homer Simpson is also a fictional cartoon character
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…
Kids are a phenomenal experience.
I concur with you, social pressure is a defining element on having/not having them.
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+1. I'm 38 and the overwhelming majority of women I had relationships with had the maturity of a teenager well in their 30s. Barely able to take care of themselves financially, mentally, physically, let alone of a family. I seriously felt, except once, I had daughters rather than significant others. Mind you, I might've been unlucky, but the narrative that women are more mature than men, might be true on large statis…
That you've consistently chosen immature women to have relationships with tells us nothing about the average woman. You weren't unlucky, you specifically made choices that led to these outcomes. Had you chosen women purely randomly, it'd be a different discussion, but you hadn't. You've done the equivalent of consistently driving above the speed limit and subsequently complaining about the police being too eager to g…
Yes, I suspect that my mother being this kind of person, immature even at 50, made me feel at home with women like that.
In any case, I can't say that most of the other women I know is that much different in my area (Rome - Italy).
They are all more or less 35+ teenagers (the single ones).
Few things that should be noted: women at 25+ have more or less the same children they had 60 years ago. It's teenage and very young women virtually not having kids anymore. Thus, the narrative that in order to stop population shrinking we have to go back to some past state is false. We shouldn't promote teenage and very young women pregnancies, and we should support older women and men having child at later stage at…
> We shouldn't promote teenage and very young women pregnancies Why not? The statement seems very much derived from 'current culture' morals. For most of human history I would guess that behavior was normal human behavior.