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by u90g4u8904 2942 days ago
There's a problem with that argument.

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/05/23/birth-rate-drop

Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College:

"I think the most important and concerning thing about this is not the number of people who are voluntarily childless, but the tremendous gap between the number of children women said they wanted to have and the number that they will probably have. Early this year, the gap reached its highest level in 40 years. I think we need to think very seriously about what it is that pushes people into this kind of 'delaying.'"
1 comments
sametmax 2942 days ago
There is a problem with that argument.

You often need a man to make the baby.

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u90g4u8904 2942 days ago
huh? What part of my comment are you replying to?

Edit: I see we're talking past eachother. I was responding to your claim that "Also a lot of people don't want children." I'm pointing out that, while that's true, the real problem is people who report wanting children but not having any.

I wasn't responding to your comment about male birth control. Although if you want my opinion, I think it will be good for men to share the burden of family planning. But I doubt it will cause the birth rates to plummet much. Men want children too.

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sametmax 2942 days ago
> but the tremendous gap between the number of children women said they wanted to have and the number that they will probably have

If you interrogate only women, it's completely off.

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u90g4u8904 2942 days ago
https://www.thecut.com/2015/03/when-men-want-kids-and-women-...

"In a nationally representative survey of single, childless people in 2011, more men than women said they wanted kids."

"A different poll from 2013 echoed those findings, with more than 80 percent of men saying they’d always wanted to be a father or at least thought they would be someday. Just 70 percent of women felt the same."

Granted, I don't have tons of studies, and some of this data is a few years old (but still after the 2008 recession,) but I think it's reasonable to conclude that the drop in birth rate can not be explained solely by a decline in the number of men or women who want kids. For sure, that is a big part of it. But the fact that couples who want kids are not having them, and that this gap grew after the recession, leads me to think there are structural issues with our economy at play.

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sametmax 2942 days ago
Fair reply. Not representative of my surrounding, but it's a bias small sample.
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