Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

derekthompson.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 927 posts

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

#691

Post by coldtea »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #563
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…

> looming human extinction https://populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Hea...

Conveniently stops at 2024.

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

#692

Post by lelanthran »

pseudocomposer wrote: post #649
squigz wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The short way to get a baby boom is to make it OK to be a less than perfect parent. There are still lots and lots of shitty parents out there.

It’s almost like our social norms prevent “good” and “okay” people from becoming parents, waiting for a “perfection” they’ll never achieve… but those norms have no real effect on the people who will be “shitty” parents.

Watch the first 10m of idiocracy on youtube

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

#693

Post by sebmellen »

coldtea wrote: post #684
Aeolun wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actually teen pregnancy wasn't so bad I mean, it was a thing for most of human history. There’s a reason biology makes you capable of having children at a young age. Isn’t it kinda bizarre that we think it’s weird?

People today think a 18-19 year old (which is still a legal adult in most places and for most purposes, can drive, go to war, live alone, work, and was always considered an adult throughout history) is "a child". Of course kind of makes sense when 30 and 40 year olds also behave and live like children and find "adulting" out of their capabilities.

I can't tell you how strange it is to have become a parent at 24. It anecdotally feels like the average parents my wife and I meet (with similarly-aged kids) are about ten years older than us.

Making life is a normal part of life, and it's quite sad that we don't acknowledge the capacity of young adults.

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

#694

Post by intended »

teitoklien wrote: post #429
senectus1 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree, his experience is also salient. Ease of access to birth control and ease and safety of abortion will be having a very detectable impact on the birthrate. Not saying they need to be restricted, just that they're very relevant data points.

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…

Why use a bot to write this?

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

#695

Post by npteljes »

navane wrote: post #661
npteljes wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There’s a reason biology makes you capable of having children at a young age Biology and evolution doesn't really have a huge baseline. You basically have to survive until you reproduce successfully. Successfully here meaning that the offspring also has to do the same. If this is sustainable - the species is viable. But, us humans like to know better. That's what the entire civilization is all about. And on the path…

And now, while preventing and tabooing teen pregnancy, society is about to collapse on itself by lack of reproduction. We coddled our kids to extinction. > Successfully here meaning that the offspring also has to do the same. If this is sustainable - the species is viable.

Raises the moral question of what kind of living is worth it, and on what level is it okay to impose on one another. Looking at how families from teen pregnancies fare*, I'm absolutely positive that mitigating these is far from the biggest contributor to "societal collapse". Doing anything to raise this number is not going to do society any good, even if it results is a larger number of children on paper. Taking proper care of this situation is not any kind of coddling, more like basic human decency.

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10002018/

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

#696

Post by coldtea »

stevula wrote: post #396
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…

“Developed countries have reduced population growth” is a far cry from “looming human extinction”.

It's not “developed countries have reduced population growth”.

It's: ALL countries have reduced population growth in recent decades compared to their historical baselines. Including in "non-developed" countries, like in Africa.

Many (most) countries have also dropped to sub fertility rates or close above.

On top of cultural and other reasons, there are also objective fertility issues with sperm counts and others emerging (likely due to modern food, climate crisis, microplastics, or some such).

Combine that with looming issues emerging from population shrinkrage causing economic decline, pension collapse and things like that, and then add environmental issues and resource wars into the mix.

It's no consolation if some pockets of humanity here and there carry on the torch, if humanity shrinks down to irrelevance.

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

#697

Post by sebmellen »

moralestapia wrote: post #664
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.

>There's actual data, you know. Did you bother to check it out? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_U... More than half a million in the US alone, per year . That's material.

Yep — adding 500,000 births per year to the U.S. population would increase our overall TFR from 1.62 to 1.85, which is certainly significant.

The impact of other contraceptive methods is likely far larger. Social pressure not to conceive being perhaps the most effective contraceptive...

My wife and I had our first child while she was in medical training — the amount of absolutely vile commentary she had to push through from fellow trainees and program supervisors was absurd. But she also paved the way for other mothers at her program. In the ~two years since, she’s had at least five other women tell her that she proved it was possible and was the catalyst for their pregnancy.

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

#698

Post by htek »

the_real_cher wrote: post #683
Mawr wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to contemplate anything if your run-of-the-mill average job lets you support your entire family and purchase a house.

People are acting confounded that the birthrate is goong down. But if people cant afford kids they wont have them. Its like super simple.

Exactly. I suspect the lack of understanding or overcomplicating the reason the birthrate is declining may have something to do with the much higher than average salary of the average HN commenter relative to the average worker's salary in the US. It's common for people who need to go to the doctor to avoid going to the doctor because they can't afford it. A baby is an order of magnitude more expensive than that and an ongoing expense of doctor visits and potential ER visits among other costs and logistical issues.

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

#699

Post by sebmellen »

swat535 wrote: post #338
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…

I think the uncomfortable truth that many are reluctant to admit is that religion and societal norms (as you highlighted above) played a major role in this. I'm not discounting other facts such as the housing crisis or cost of living but I fear that while those are important, they are secondary. Women were often forced to carry a child due to outside pressure and had no recourse. However since the introduction of saf…

The issue is not so much the access to the methods, but the negative feedback loop that they cause. For every woman freed from unwanted childbearing, how many are socially pressured into not having a child?

Anecdotally, this is something that my wife and I experienced as relatively young parents (~24 at first child): people expect abortion to be the default. I can't tell you how many people asked us when we were going to “just get rid of the thing” because they expected that to be the default option. We have no idea how damaging this effect is to overall fertility.

The saddest part is that many women will get to an age where they do want to have one or more children, but because they are closer to the end of their fertile window, they cannot. I’ve seen this happen to my extended friends and family far more than the “unwanted pregnancy” scenario, which I’ve only seen happen once.

Fundamentally, there's perhaps a broader philosophical divide. Do you believe that children are burdensome, or the most valuable thing you can produce in life? If you think the former, it's nearly impossible to feel any motivation to tolerate the difficulty of pregnancy and childbearing.

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

#700

Post by coldtea »

exhilaration wrote: post #421
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…

Looming human extinction? Bro, all you need to fix this "problem" in the West is more immigrants.

If there's no culture, development level, and way of life preferences, for different national states and ethnic groups, and humans are just interchangeable units, sure. Just add as many immigrants as you want, problem solved.

Adding, say, to a country an additional 10%-20% of its current population in people from another culture, to be the younger and more fertile group, in an aging domestic population, would absolutely go without issue.

At least, if we also ignore that immigrant origin countries all see fertility drops, many projected to reach sub-fertility rates themselves soon, of course.

Post reply on HN