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?

#711

Post by sjw987 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:17 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #161

My $0.02 is being a mom sucks. In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are working just as many hours the men are. Having kids means tension in relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and stress parenting kids. Even if the husband steps up, he still can't breast feed for 3 hours per day. Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-part…

"In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house"

This is a sexist take. It is not universally true, and a like-for-like retort would be considered sexist.

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

#712

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

htek wrote: post #698

the_real_cher wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#713

Post by EmptySocks » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

A strong family culture and the return of all the troops from ww2. More younger people getting married and having kids. It seems like cost of living has a lot to do with it as well. Most people who want to start a family are waiting for a house but it is impossible for most to afford one.

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

#714

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:30 PM UTC

npteljes wrote: post #695

navane wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prop…

That was a very interesting read. Even if it leaves me feeling like the reason teenage pregnancies are ‘bad’ is mostly because society is not set up for/condemns them. A teenage mother in a healthy family unit that drops the child with their parents while they continue to attend school will have significantly better outcomes.

I’m fairly certain a teenage pregnancy in Japan would work out more or less the same, because society is set up to facilitate people working 9h/day and dropping the kids off at daycare basically from several months of age. Of course, that’s combined with massive social stigma, so it wouldn’t on the balance really help things.

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

#715

Post by EmptySocks » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

sebmellen wrote: post #704

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having kids when you are young and financially not established is just irresponsible, but particularly female bodies don’t do well having kids older when you are established enough to do so responsibly. I’m having this problem right now with my spouse (we have a kid, but are thinking about another), it’s just super hard to get pregnant without medical help.

Why? Can you defend this for me? I'm genuinely asking. Why is it irresponsible to have a child when you're young and financially not established? Why is it any more irresponsible to do that than to have children at a geriatric age? Children are resilient, and so are parents. In my opinion, this idea that you have to have everything perfectly set up in life before you can contemplate having a child is ridiculous.

Reminds me of that scene from idiocracy about the genius couple that wanted kids but kept pushing it off until everything was “perfect”. Then they were too old and resented each other then died childless.

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

#716

Post by sparklingmango » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #170

0_____0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. On top of a $3000/mo mortgage. NE USA. When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded." Either that or they have one parent who cannot be employed outside the home.

> Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. That's what grandparents are for. Growing up my immediate family lived in the same neighborhood. My mother's parents lived two blocks away and walked over. My fathers parents lived ~15 minutes away. Everyone worked locally. Baby sitters were always named grandma :-) Now you have to move across the country for a lucrative tech job, leaving behind your support network.…

It's a lot to ask grandparents to take care of an infant full time during the work week. Here and there, on occasion, that is a completely reasonable thing to ask for. It helps strengthen family bonds. But I would never ask my parents or my in-laws to care for my toddler 8-5 M-F. They already raised kids.

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

#717

Post by ozgrakkurt » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #645

Henchman21 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to need someone to ELI5 precisely why we shouldn’t kill those 5 families and redistribute their shit.

Wealth isn’t zero sum, someone could write some code that increases the global wealth by $1 trillion from nothing.

It is not zero sum but the number seems really low

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

#718

Post by doright » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

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.

I guess it matters what "shitty" parent means. You can give all the financial/material support in the world to a child and still cause irreversible lifelong damage with the wrong parenting style. You don't need to be a "perfect" parent, but at the same time you do need to be a "good enough" parent, or the consequences are dire.

Knowing what I've been through, I'd much, much rather those people spend an extra 5 or more years working through those problems instead of having children that will grow up to regret being born.

And reality is, some people should never become parents, because they carry mental issues they will forever lack the self-perception to acknowledge and attempt to change. But they will become parents anyway, and the outcome is all but certain.

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

#719

Post by arvinsim » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #195

itake wrote: post #161

My $0.02 is being a mom sucks. In modern relationships, men just want to work and come home to a cooked meal and clean house, but their wives are working just as many hours the men are. Having kids means tension in relationship, unpaid labor by the woman, and stress parenting kids. Even if the husband steps up, he still can't breast feed for 3 hours per day. Pregnancy is really terrible on the woman's body. Post-part…

Not convinced that this is down to women. In my personal experience women want to have kids wayyyy more than men it is the men who are refusing them or want to delay. In fact I would say this is basically everyone I know, the men are the ones being anti-natal while women want kids way earlier.

Even if that is true, I still observe that gender norms are strongly adhered to.

Anecdotally, I see many women who want to settle down but never take the initiative to ask a guy out.

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

#720

Post by sjw987 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 1:43 PM UTC

It's the economy, stupid.

Most younger people can't afford homes. People's money doesn't go as far as it used to. Academic qualifications are worth less than they used to be. Many people currently working now won't see a pension. Many won't see a good paying job, even with good academic qualifications and work experience. General health and wellbeing is getting worse, with businesses abusing human psychology to shift product that knowingly causes worse health outcomes. Many people are concerned about the political direction of the countries they live in, and many are concerned about the changes in the community and culture around them. Many might see the first shockwaves of climate change (climate refugees, more extreme weather, water shortages). War is growing, and will grow further when states start fighting over dwindling resources. All generations, especially the young and impressionable are becoming addicted to information (not in a good way) and media consumption, the only upside of which is an inverse relationship to alcohol and substance consumption.

And their kids will have it worse than them. The world is getting worse to live in, and we (or many of us) have just enough education this time around to not want to burden another generation with that. In the past, and in certain places today, a lack of education would mean people would procreate even as society collapsed around them.

We've lived through a very small golden age of being alive (in select places) the last 70 years. It was unsustainable, and we are now seeing the undoing of those times. We might not see such a boom of prosperity again.