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We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

nytimes.com

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Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#91

Post by beaconstudios »

yesenadam wrote: post #84
beaconstudios wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Privilege" is a terrible word to have become entrenched for such a useful concept, because many people instinctively get their backs up about being told they're privileged when they don't have to face a challenge that someone else faces. I think people get their backs up because privilege checks as a concept are based largely on stereotypes/generalisations and confrontational behaviour, not empathic individual rela…

"the mainstream media is, by definition, normative" ELI5 please? or, you know, 10ish.

sure thing - so the idea is that the mainstream media exists to prop up the status quo. Not in the sense that it was invented for that reason, but the incentives at play force the media to essentially play to the confirmation bias of their audience in order to be competitive. Given that the media also pretends to present an objective truth (the idea of objective truth is also a very modernist ideal, but I don't want to go too deep into the postmodern rabbit hole here), the outcome is that the status quo is presented as the objective ideal. Thus if you believe that narrative, anything that isn't the status quo is treated comparably as inferior.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#92

Post by gwbas1c »

a_brawling_boo wrote: post #13
Scandiravian wrote: post #3

I'm surprised by this, as I had expected the opposite. Couples are spending a lot of time together being confined to their home without much entertainment, so I'd expected that to result in more baby making I guess the stress from the uncertainty of the future and lack of personal space more than countered that Time for me to adjust my assumptions about the world... And probably check my privilege, since I'm massivel…

My wife and I had decided to start trying for a second child around the beginning of 2020, after the outbreak we put those plans hold because we didn't want to have to make repeated trips to the doctor/pediatrician/hospital where all the covid was. What was our employment/financial situation going to look like? In the spring of last year a million people were loosing their jobs a day at one point. Also, friend of our…

My wife and I started talking about having a kid and.. oooops!

The maternity visits are fine. The major consequence is that only mom can go. I didn't get to see the ultrasounds this time around.

For the maternity ward, just make sure to have an N95 or KN95 mask. Keep it on AT ALL TIMES that you are outside of the room. The hospital we went to had negative pressure machines in case a mother was covid positive.

Have your kid. You'll be fine, and when you're old, you won't regret it.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#93

Post by LargeWu »

swiley wrote: post #83
SamuelAdams wrote: post #29

I wonder if there's a good way to model the cost of children over the last 100 years? My guess is fewer people are having children due to the financial costs rising considerably.

Housing and Education are probably the biggest costs. Maybe healthcare too.

Childcare can easily run over $1000/mo per child. More for infants. When my 2nd child was born, it cost us over $500/week.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#94

Post by minikites »

gadders wrote: post #71
ianai wrote: post #41

This is probably mostly covid related. But I personally don’t even consider kids. Kids are a life long commitment. I’d only make that commitment if I felt long term stability or at least optimism. Austerity and cynicism dominate the US right now though. It’s a recipe for strife, struggle, and things that rip families and countries apart. It doesn’t have to be this way in the US.

That's a valid perspective, but times have been a lot worse in the past. It's a good job our ancestors didn't think like this.

History is not a monotonically increasing function of progress. Things can and often do get worse in the short term and there's no reason the past can't be better than the present.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#95

Post by nindalf »

kingkawn wrote: post #77
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that it's also due to kids having "more" rights via the culture perpetuating entitled rights. So a mild spanking could be consider by many as straight up child abuse. People scoff if you let your kid just poke the world around without asking who, what, where, why. Kids needs to grow into their own and the current culture doesn't allow that.

Sorry you can’t beat your children as you’d like

I love this comment because it can be interpreted in two ways - "sorry, you can't beat your children", telling them what they can't do. Or sarcastically empathising like "sorry you can't use violence to coerce your child".

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#96

Post by theNJR »

This study seems relevant https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2378023121996854

> Fewer young adults are engaging in casual sexual intercourse now than in the past, but the reasons for this decline are unknown.

And this recently discussed article

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/sunday/endocrine-...

> Scientists are concerned by falling sperm counts and declining egg quality. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals may be the problem.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#97

Post by yortpyperty »

motohagiography wrote: post #64

Birthrates are a powerful, but lagging/post-hoc indicator of public policy effects. It's worth noting that we tend to associate high birthrates with poverty and negative social outcomes. Except, when rates are low we (western countries) use immigration from high-birthrate societies to shore up the population replacement rate, as the article notes. When you look at who is having kids in the US and Canada, the families…

As a new father, I share this perspective. To get an anecdotal sense of our financial struggle, we have 2-4x the net worth that my parents when they were our age, but cannot afford the same house that I grew up in and doubt we ever will.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#98

Post by beaner »

Teever wrote: post #76
gadders wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid perspective, but times have been a lot worse in the past. It's a good job our ancestors didn't think like this.

It's not that they didn't think like this but that they couldn't. Thanks to readily available and affordable birth control individuals have much more freedom to make reproductive choices that benefit themselves. What those individual freedoms do to society as a whole is another issue but it is entirely within the ability of western governments to increase birthrates through policy. The fact that they don't is most in…

Ehh... I wouldn't assume that's the whole reason. It's been known for a pretty long time how to not have a baby if you don't want one, physically.

Two other factors are religion, and the fact that children are now expenses into their mid-twenties rather than income-generating/household-contributing in their teens.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#99

Post by ViViDboarder »

mbg721 wrote: post #26
jasode wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Couples are spending a lot of time together [...], so I'd expected that to result in more baby making But a counteracting force is that some couples think 9 months ahead and are afraid of delivering their baby in a COVID-overloaded hospital. COVID makes the opportunities for conception easier but adds to the stress and uncertainties of delivery and postnatal care. (So maybe more sex activity but also more contra cep…

The uncertainty isn't just the COVID overload, but also no doulas/support people, and not knowing if the father is even going to be allowed in the building in case something unusual happens.

I’m in San Francisco, where we’ve consistently had some of the most restrictive policies.

My wife is pregnant and they’ve told me the whole time that I’d be allowed in for the birth, but while rates were climbing I’ve been unable to attend any appointments or ultrasounds. It’s been kind of surreal knowing that, yes, we’re having a baby, but not having been able to really see it.

Now that rates have dropped, I’m finally going to be able to attend my first ultrasound today and I’m totally stoked!

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#100

Post by ldbooth »

ploika wrote: post #37
SamuelAdams wrote: post #29

I wonder if there's a good way to model the cost of children over the last 100 years? My guess is fewer people are having children due to the financial costs rising considerably.

Much more of the decrease in the past century is due to increased access to education and full time employment for women, increased availability of contraception, and decreasing child mortality.

That is tied to the changing of jobs as well. Jeremy Diamond has a lot to say bout this in Guns,Germs,and Steel. My grandfather was raised on a farm, where at the age of 16-18 he was fully employed without a college education or debt. Today, parents plan their families with a view toward paying for college. Corporations own the housing stock and get between people and equity, pushing up the cost of housing. It's so many things, I sure hope to hit that stability and start a family. No one makes plans to struggle economically.
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