[crtified]

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 child was had, because it was the done thing. It wasn't a time of simple, easy access to birth control and other procedures.

In the late 90's, my late-teens girlfriend scandalously fell pregnant. Her parents + the medical system swung straight into full control, a termination was a foregone conclusion, and we were simply dragged along by the expectations of society at that time.

I'm heading towards 50 now, and have no children. I guess that "scandalous mistake" is the only real chance some people ever get in life, though they don't know it at the time. And for us, modern society's ways effectively eliminated it.

[UncleMeat]

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.

[Aurornis]

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 or putting forth their own theories without having even skimmed the article.

[ivape]

Maybe it has something to do with the “you are not good enough” treadmill the modern world has everyone on. I don’t think people of yesteryear contemplated if they were ready to start a family. I don’t think they contemplated if a job was the “right fit”, and I doubt they scoured the world looking for their soulmate. So, if you live in our current time period where you are never “complete”, then you may have a hard time feeling confident about any next step.

Obviously the downside to this was that just about any idiot from yesteryear saw themselves perfectly qualified to start a family.

The solution is somewhere in the middle.

[Mawr]

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

[coldtea]

They also didn't contemplates it as something ubearable if they had to live many persons or even extended family in the same small house, including rentals, and if two persons had to work hard. Manual laborers, factory workers, etc, farmers where both father and mother worked, still had many children.

It's not like this only happened in the window between 1940s-1980s where the run-of-the-mill average job let you support your entire family and purchase a big enough house.

[the_real_cher]

People are acting confounded that the birthrate is goong down.

But if people cant afford kids they wont have them.

Its like super simple.

[FeloniousHam]

I don't agree with the premise (data point: I grew up poor, with siblings), but certainly the inverse isn't true.

[htek]

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.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Maybe it has something to do with the “you are not good enough” treadmill the modern world has everyone on.

I don't think so. I think it's because

    A new couple can't support themselves when
    rent=1mo typical wages. It is impossible to pair off.    

    Parenting time is up 20-fold from the 1950s.
    Was a few hours wk. Now it's ceaseless, 24/7 adulting.

    Childhood is effectively ruined due to 
    - eradication of free ranging area thanks to automobile
    and trespassing culture. 
    - eradication of regular hours of adult-free peer time
    where critical social and growth skills are learned.
    Modern childhoods are spent in boxes w/ adults.

    Poor mental health follows and kids cope using devices.
    So adults predictably want to take that away as well.

[ivape]

What is the perfect amount of money and time for you? I suspect many things are not good enough for you and others.

[nothercastle]

That’s what it is for me but also because family life was super scary and uncool. Not a high virtue for the youth.

[navane]

Because there's nothing in the article. It's a couple loosely correlated events around '35-'55 that anyone can Google together in 10 minutes. The article has no more authority that anyone's post around here.

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.

[ascagnel_]

One significant difference between WW1 and WW2, at least in the US -- the country realigned itself for wartime in a way it did not the first time around. You had women entering the workforce in ways they did not during WW1, which meant you had some families earning dual incomes. At the same time, the US instituted a rationing scheme, so even though households were earning more money, they couldn't spend as much.

Two other significant differences: the GI bill for returning vets (which made it significantly easier for them to get higher education) and the rise of automobiles (which in turn unlocked suburbs and mass home ownership) gave households somewhere useful to put their money.

[labcomputer]

The data doesn't exactly support your argument though:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-by-age-of-mother

Just looking at raw number of births by age of mother:

* 15-19 peaked in 1989 and has decreased 35% since then

* 25-29 is higher than at any point in the 20th century

* 30-34 is higher than at any point in the 20th century

* 35-39 is higher than at any point in the 20th century

* 40-44 is higher than the 20th century except the 1960's

[usefulcat]

Bear in mind, those appear to be absolute numbers, not relative to world population.

[121789]

You are looking at the full world numbers, which isn’t really what’s being discussed in this thread. Try filtering for South Korea or the US

[labcomputer]

Sure thing, boss:

If we filter by US,

* 15-19 is down almost 80% (!!!) since the mid-century peak.

* 20-24 is down about 60% since the mid-century peak.

* 25-29 is about flat since mid-century

* 30-34 is higher than any time in the 20th century

* 35-39 is higher than any time in the 20th century

* 40-44 is higher than any time in the 20th century

In other words, the story is about the same as global.

Remember, I was responding to a comment that stated "Reduced teen pregnancies are not the driving factor in recent fertility rate declines at all."

If I was going to steel-man your argument, I would note that 20-24 is the cohort with the largest numerical reduction in the US... but then the argument still rests on splitting hairs that 20-24 are not technically teenagers, and teenage pregnancies "only" account for 40% the total reduction in fertility (while teenage mothers only accounted for 16% of births in 1970).

Of course, it's hard to square splitting those hairs with the definitive statement "not the driving factor [...] at all" (emphasis mine). In fact, the only way it makes sense is if you define "recent" to mean "since 2017", but measuring things like this over a period of less than a decade is silly anyway.

The data is also abundantly clear than older women are having more babies (not just a greater percentage, but actually more babies). In Japan women ages 35-44 had more babies in 2023 than any time since 1950. In Korea, women ages 30-44 had more babies than any time since 1980.

[interloxia]

Change in births, by age of mother, United States

Estimated number of births each year by the age of the mother. 1950-2023 relative change. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-by-age-of-mother?s...

Birth rate by women's age group, United States https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertility-rate-by-age-gro...

[frm88]

The second graph is so interesting. Pulling the slider shows less births but an average increase in the mother's age (which in turn accounts for less births if you're looking at 35+ yo first time mothers you don't expect n more kids to follow for (among others biological/medical reasons)). It would be interesting to have a complementary chart on divorces just to have a look whether existential uncertainty plays a role in age decisions.

[UncleMeat]

I said "a" reason.

[andrekandre]

  > Honestly this entire comment section has a lot of people making guesses or putting forth their own theories without having even skimmed the article.

its a microcosm of our entire political discourse as of late imo: everyone is talking anecdotes and feels and barely anyone is bringing the receipts (and if they do its barely noticed)

[d0gsg0w00f]

But people's anecdotes are part of their life experience. I trust my personal life experience over anything I read, and if I trust a person, I value theirs over anything I read too.

That's just how humans are.

[superice]

I get it, you like stories of individuals. We should figure out a way you can listen to more stories, so you can form an even better opinion! Perhaps we write them out, shorten them a bit. Or perhaps group them by similarity. And then if we count the types of story per category… and boom, we’ve invented statistics!

[coldtea]

And ...boom! we lost the nuance, and shoehorned together disparate elements into a bunch of measurements, as if those explain everything (as opposed to needing explanations and a working theory themselves, and often fitting multiple theories about how they came about).

Not to mention the cases where the numbers are collected or analyzed in bogus ways (from wrong methodologies and false reporting, to p-hacking), and people are asked to cargo cult respect them anyway...

[mensetmanusman]

I know how to use statistics to tell nearly any story though, and I would love to trust statistics…

It has to do with unknown unknowns.

[coldtea]

>this entire comment section has a lot of people making guesses or putting forth their own theories without having even skimmed the article.

The article doesn't make some definitive argument either (I've read it).

It's just serves as starting point for a discussion under the subject, and just like the author the people commenting here have their own theories and hypotheses why that's the case.

As for "the receipts", most of them can be argued in multiple ways. Empirical observations and working theories are still useful.

[mensetmanusman]

A minority of pregnancies end in a birth in nyc among black women. There are 70 million fewer Americans than otherwise.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> 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 through their famines, plagues, and predator massacres such that when those pressures relent their population recovers. There's no known precedent for raising fertility rates that fall let alone so low.

[ambicapter]

You don't have to be an "extinction apologist" or whatever to think that we'll probably solve the problem before we go from 7 BILLION people to not enough humans for healthy genetic diversity. We've rescued animal species from extinction with populations of <100.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>that we'll probably solve the problem before we go from 7 BILLION people to not enough humans for

This just goes to show how little you've ever considered the problem. I don't think you're stupid (probably), so let me get you started...

It's not "from 7 billion to not enough", because right now we don't have 7 billion. We only have the generation(s) that are from 0 to 40 years old... everyone older doesn't even count. 80 yr olds and 55 yr olds aren't potential parents.

We will still have many billions of people even once we become functionally extinct, because you were counting everyone even the octogenarians, when you should've been counting the people who mattered in this regard.

>We've rescued animal species from extinction with populations of <100.

But there's no "us" to rescue us in that manner, and we can't do it ourselves. Why? Because doddering senile geezers don't have the ambition, marbles, or energy to do such a thing and those are the only people who would be left at that point. Not to mention that any such rescue would turn us into franken-people, no thanks. We should all be terrified of the science fiction dreams of artificial wombs and gestation chambers and so forth because just as those might be used for good things, the CCP and North Korea will use them to churn out armies of replicants.

You really are the extinction apologist you think you're not.

[leoedin]

I think it's actually quite likely that quite a few "dominant" cultures - both in terms of nations and groups within nations - will effectively die out.

But humanity almost certainly won't? Why? Because there are sub-groups within humanity who have much higher fertility rates. As long as there are groups of people which are large enough to have viable genetic diversity, and recognise that a high birth rate is crucial for the continued existence of their culture, there will be humans.

Realistically, that means the decline of western liberal ideas and the growth of more extreme religious groups.

[ponector]

>>This just goes to show how little you've ever considered the problem

It's not really considered a problem. A real problem is a wellbeing of the old people, that's why it is financed better then wellbeing of future generations.

Cut elderly support and make a free childcare and education, huge tax rebates for each child, etc.

A huge pile of government debt is another indicator that future generations are fucked.

[pyuser583]

We’ve never come up with a way to correct this. No country has reversed course. That’s troubling.

When it comes to animals - species that refuse to breed have a tendency to go extinct.

[TFYS]

There are some cultures that have sustainable birthrates. Those cultures will become dominant over time and the problem will be solved.

[UncleMeat]

Looming human extinction? The population is still growing.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The beehive's still hatching out larva that were produced months ago... but the queen is dead. It's called functional extinction.

"How can we be out of gas if the car is still coasting forward?" asks the fool.

[lucyjojo]

imminent crash? the wall is still 5 meters away!

[SturgeonsLaw]

> looming human extinction

https://populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Hea...

[coldtea]

Conveniently stops at 2024.

[coldtea]

And of course those animals just have natural temporary dampers to their fertility, not cultural and social ones.

[Zanfa]

I’m sorry, but calling anything but above-replacement birth rates “slow-motion extinction” is ridiculous. This is the equivalent to expecting babies to be 15 meters tall by the time they’re adults from extrapolating their rate of growth in their infant years.

Below-replacement rate might be an economic issue around retirement, but as far as the human species goes, it’s a nothingburger at this scale. We’re not passenger pigeons.

[budududuroiu]

There’s plenty of countries with above replacement level fertility rates. This is a nothing burger

[missedthecue]

The world as a whole is below replacement in 2025

[stevula]

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

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Any fertility rate below 2.1 isn't reduced population growth. It is the literal, factual opposite of population growth... it is population shrinkage/decline/whatever.

These countries we discuss all have population decline. This is masked by multiple factors including immigration and increased longevity.

[Fade_Dance]

Pro-natal cultures have thrived vs less-natal cultures for literally thousands of years. That's how we got here. I also don't see the problem.

(I strictly used the word culture and not anything biological or genetic since I'm not aiming at that line of talk in the slightest, to be clear)

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

This world doesn't have the 500 cultures/civilizations that it had circa 3000 BC. It only has the one culture, it's global, dominant, and ubiquitous. It is the "less natal" culture, it is the only culture. It assimilates any subculture that dares raise its head. When it dies, there won't be another to fill the niche.

This is why, for instance, when immigrants from high-fertility countries (all in central Africa) come here, our culture assimilates them and they're back to low fertility within 2 generations. Not only that, but our culture slowly creeps inward towards the epicenter of that high fertility, damping it down even at its source. The Chinese belt-and-road initiative is likely to murder it entirely within our own lifetime.

This is something different, never seen before. Saying "oh gosh shucks, it happened back in eleventy-twenty-fourven and we survived fine then!" is dismissal, not contemplation. Never before in human history has actual fertility sunk this low (or even really sunk). People didn't ever stop fucking, and they didn't have birth control, or abortion, or a dozen other factors. When population declined historically, it was due to war, disease, and famine. But because fertility remained high, just as soon as those pressures relented, population recovered. When fertility goes below replacement, population can never recover, it can only continue to shrink. When it goes below replacement, every girl growing up learns from the adults around her that low fertility is "normal", and she's not going to grow up and decide to have 8 herself (or even 2). She'll have as many as she saw those adults around her having, or maybe fewer (it acts as a ceiling, but not a floor).

[coldtea]

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.

[exhilaration]

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

[mensetmanusman]

Immigrant countries are experiencing the same trend. Soon countries will be fighting for immigrants.

[coldtea]

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.

[senectus1]

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.

[teitoklien]

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 helped together to give a great childhood to 2 or more children be something we need to bring back (for folks who'll say back then kids didnt have a great childhood, aborted children have NO childhood a death for themselves that they didnt choose). Should premarital intercourse be banned again or shunned ?

Religions have brought tons of miseries causing constant conflicts between communities, wars, allowing politicians and rulers to manipulate masses.

However, they also carried laws and doctrines refined over centuries, on philosophy, morality, and most importantly societal structure.

Monogamy itself and the construct of marriage was refined and finalized in all major religions Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc across several centuries (and in some cases greater than 1000 yrs).

One must consider, why did our ancestors come to certain conclusions globally regardless of faith around societal structure? What conditions did they want to create across society, to bring about prosperity or growth. Why were certain conservative and unpopular opinions regardless were imposed on men and women alike.

We should remove all the horrible stuff, things we can leave behind that our ancestors used to do sure. but throwing everything away is also not going to lead to anything good for us in the future.

Should abortion be readily accessible simply for the sake of liberty and freedom ? Should contraceptives be widely made available and promoted ? , should families force kids to be responsible for their actions again, and first try their best to give their newly born child a better life before allowed to just throw everything apart with divorces, single parent childhood, etc. Should premarital intercourse be banned , to encourage youth to form meaningful relationship instead of coasting between new girlfriends and boyfriends every new year ?

Im not saying we should do X, but these questions will need to be asked sooner or later, if western society or even asian societies want to survive (both have ultra low birthrates, china, japan, korea, russia, even india is now going the below tfr rate and will join them far sooner than was estimated within 20 yrs).

I really love european, american and asian societies and cultures, and i dont want them to die off, or perish away. Even my own culture's TFR is 0.98 for multiple decades and its perishing away quite fast too.

Hard questions will need to be asked in the future. It's not just a matter of what feels right to our emotional minds at a moment, but rather, whats best for society and cultures itself long term.

Not to mention, housing prices need to go way down, it needs to be removed from being a speculative asset or a way to whitewash black money, its wreaking havoc on whatever remaining part of society that does want kids, but cant afford to own a home by age of 30 even with double income household. We have enough land to house the entire world in each of the major countries, yet just out of sheer regulation, greed and laziness from politicians, policymakers, and banks who are afraid of the housing market crashing and causing problems for them, they are keeping this charade up.

There are many problems that need to be solved in coming decades, I hope each of our societies solve it.

[kelseyfrog]

When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist.

It's wild that we find it harder to change the system than to walk away from it entirely. People opt out in a thousand small ways - refusing to have kids, refusing to participate, numbing themselves with distractions, or just mentally checking out. If the core pitch of society is "keep grinding or suffer," it’s not surprising so many people choose not to bring new life into it. Liberty and freedom aren't abstract ideals. Their real absence makes people find coping mechanisms in a world that often feels rigged.

If a society truly wants to persist, it has to give people a reason to stay - something more than survival, more than struggle, more than empty promises about meritocracy or bootstrap fantasies. Otherwise, the logic of self-preservation kicks in, and people will exercise whatever autonomy they can muster, including the right to say, "No, not this."

So, yeah, access to abortion isn't simply about individual rights in the abstract; it's a symptom and a signal. When people would rather not create new life than subject it to the current system, that's not a moral failure on their part. It's an indictment of the system itself.

TLDR; make a better society bruh.

[pyuser583]

Society has been getting better and better. The privations our parents and grandparents went though were insane.

Conscription, poverty, illiteracy, I mean wow.

By almost every conceivable metric, the world is getting better.

[kelseyfrog]

I don't disagree, but better doesn't make up for unfairness.

Inequality isn't an act of nature. No volcano or hurricane is disrupting lives. The source is human, a system we built, the society we live in. If we can't change the system that binds us, then it doesn't deserve us.

The core conceit is, "When I win, it's merit. When you lose, it's fair."

[mensetmanusman]

It’s symptoms all the way down. If the system decides it needs more births it will ban abortion, and that’s not a moral failure on the system’s part, it’s an indictment of the symptoms itself.

[ako]

Hans Rowling found that one of the best way to increase numbers of births is to reduce education for women. Or at least there’s strong correlation between both.

[kelseyfrog]

The system has no morals, but every person operating within it does. If the system demands what it needs from us without regard for morality, it's on us, as moral agents, to refuse compliance. The system can demand what it wants, but no one is obliged to give it anything.

If the point is that the system will coerce what it needs from us, then it deserves not merely to perish, but to be destroyed, actively, deliberately, and ruthlessly. If births are the air it breathes, let us suffocate it by refusing to bear its children. Let it choke on its own demands.

[nothercastle]

Abortion won’t change the game you would have to ban condoms and birth control

[teitoklien]

Things should be made better I agree, But at the same time.

Every single generation before ours had worse life outcomes in everyway than us. They had lower lifespans, struggled with food insecurity, Lack of travel accomodations, no access to education for the majority, nothing.

Yet if you speak to anyone from those generation or even from our generation who have lives similar to them, they have far more positivity and energy. (and higher fertility and birth rates)

More things, "non meritocracy", "bootstrap fantasies", those things arent the problem.

People of our generation and the one before, are just always whining complaining, too lazy. I dont want to believe that either, but it is the truth.

Our freedom to do anything and everything, abort children easily, control birth planning easily, making casual sex the norm, etc, making housing unaffordable to keep this stupid real estate based bubble alive for banks, and politicians alive under garb of "Regulation" and "NIMBYism".

Are 100% much more contributing to all of this. Than nihilism, doomism, etc.

Give people better things, more money, better lifestyle, and more freedoms and no societal pressure to have kids, people are just opting for the "DINK" philosophy, Double Income No Kids.... , spend on expensive cars, better homes, more travel, but no... no kids.

Go observe every major society, the top 10% of each society in almost all of them have a pretty decent life with good savings and sense of security, freedom to not overwork too much. This is the top 10% populist politicians villify as having everything.

Now go look at the birth rates of that top 10% in EVERY major society its lower than the rest of the 90%.

More money, more affordability are not linked to birth rates at all, except for a teensy minority who overthinks things and calculates 1000 different decisions from climate change to their wealth to their partner's loyalty, to decide if they want kids. They are not the majority

No amount of motivation, higher incomes, etc will reverse this trend of birth declines, (however governments and society should strongly work towards giving people higher income, less overworking, more motivation to be optimistic not for boosting birth rates, because it wont, but simply because its the duty of public servants, politicians, policymakers and the state that serves the society in return for the society serving the state with loyalty)

TLDR; make better society yes, but even that will just lead to even fewer kids, make a more responsible society while improving people's lives.

[pempem]

Have you ever seen that meme about having less days off than a medieval peasant?

Yes, I can get chicago, new york, italian, or tokyo style pizza from my phone, in about an hour in a city that is none of those places. Still even my weekends include work. A strong effort in high school, college, grad school and at my jobs has led to fairly regular weekend work and working after putting the LOs down for bedtime, not connecting or socializing.

The answer isn't fewer rights. Its more.

[kelseyfrog]

Empirically, how well does the "we have it better off now" response work against feelings of an unfair system. Does it tend to change perspective in your experience?

[evilsetg]

We have to find a new equilibrium for fertility that does not depend on opression of women. This could very well mean we need more rights, most of all more stable, plannable lifes i think. The old opressive ways of ensuring fertility are gone and without major societal upheaval they will not come back. I think that is good and we should focus on alternative solutions.

[acdha]

> Every single generation before ours had worse life outcomes in everyway than us. They had lower lifespans, struggled with food insecurity, Lack of travel accomodations, no access to education for the majority, nothing.

What’s your definition of our generation? What you described is true of multiple generations, and flat out wrong for things like lifespan in the United States which has been declining.

[thrownearacc]

> folks who'll say back then kids didnt have a great childhood

If you count a 11 year girl child to be raped by and then married to her 60 year old (maybe wealthy) relative then yeah she indeed had a fucking fabulous childhood.

> penalise abortions, and reward births of children

For fuck's sake - there's a difference between a teen abortion and an adult abortion! But then you wouldn't understand why one "aborts"! Oh you do understand but you want that decision to be "society's" - not that person in whose body a fucking foetus is growing!

I mean is the moronity this common? For fuck's sake, freedom to abort is not what is killing the birthrate - it's the way our economy and other aspects of society is going haywire - and the way wealth and benefits are tricking up, not down, the work culture for example the way that is forcing people to work day and night and yet they can't own a house - among other things. Goodness!

[teitoklien]

Who said I'm for or promoting teenage pregnancies ????? No woman should be allowed to be married off to someone until they are 18 especially with that kind of age gap.

Marrying under 18s with 30-40 yr olds is not a solution and diabolical, no major religion even recommends that.

We need to restructure our society so that men and women aged 20-25 yrs old, can have a easy access to owning their own homes, with sustainable careers and occupation.

We need to make children before college postgraduation studies or even higher studies like phd not only more acceptable but the norm.

Pedophilia should not be encouraged and most sane societies have been vehemently against what you're saying (including me).

This cycle of people having kids after 35 yrs old, needs to be fixed that is the disaster.

> I mean is the moronity this common? For fuck's sake, freedom to abort is not what is killing the birthrate - it's the way our economy and other aspects of society is going haywire - and the way wealth and benefits are tricking up, not down, the work culture for example the way that is forcing people to work day and night and yet they can't own a house - among other things. Goodness!

I agree with what you said, but abortion is also causing the issues, its been normalized that its ok if majority of men and women attempt to have their first kid after 30 (it should not be this way). Premarital sex, casual sex and one night stands has destroyed the whole notion of commitment between man and a woman. Our Instagram feeds that constantly glorify unattainable photoshopped beauty from select actresses and actors influencing the masses all the time, has made expectations of men and women delusional.

There are many issues, and some of the main ones are what you described correctly , with it being overworking people, not giving 20 yr old stable careers instead keeping them stuck in gigwork, internships, and no career growth or help. They must be rectified, our society has enough wealth to fix this.

[intended]

Why use a bot to write this?

[teitoklien]

not a single line from it is written by a bot

[Aeolun]

> 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?

[coldtea]

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.

[sebmellen]

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.

[Sohcahtoa82]

When I was 30, I once thought to myself, "When my parents were my age, they had 3 kids and lived on a Navy base in another country. I still feel like a child that has fooled people into thinking I'm an adult."

I'm 43 now and I'm still not convinced that I'm not 3 kids stacked in a trench coat. Despite having a great career that pays for an upper-middle class lifestyle, when I travel first class or go out to a fancy dinner, I feel like I'm merely cosplaying as a functional and respectable adult that has their shit together. When I bought my house at 33 years old, I was thinking "Should someone be calling the state AG or something, they're allowing a child to sign mortgage papers".

Someone once told me this feeling is pretty common and that it goes away once your same-gendered parent dies, but my dad passed in 2019 and it definitely has not gone away.

[kelipso]

My theory is that this feeling is the result of not enough socialization with people of varying ages. Their behavior towards you in aggregate grounds you to your age subconsciously, something like that.

[Aeolun]

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

I think it’s more that we’re all just faking it. The thirty or fourty year old that thinks they know better than the 20 year old is deceiving themselves. The differences between individuals are much larger than the differences between the averages at those ages.

[CMCDragonkai]

Once people take responsibility for their lives and other people's lives, lots of things change. Perhaps the zeitgeist of behaving like a child in your 20s is just an emergent behaviour coming out of a consumerist economy?

[positr0n]

I had the same experience a decade ago being ten years younger than everyone else at the park or birthday party.

[Jaygles]

For most of human history, people didn't have to worry about

- Exposure to exotic chemicals in every day items

- Regularly operating a multi-thousand pound machine just to travel

- Adversaries thousands of miles away working tirelessly to misinform and scam you

- Massive conglomerates working tirelessly to manipulate your behavior

- Being compared to the best in the world (in their skills and hobbies etc.)

- Competing against literally the entire country and sometimes the world for labor

My point is, modern life is getting more and more complicated. New challenges pop up every day. Each subsequent generation is born into an increasingly challenging situation. It makes sense that it takes longer to get ahold of things and feel stable enough to start a family

[adamrezich]

Have you seen Idiocracy, specifically the very beginning of the film?

These excuses sound similar to those made by the “prosperous yuppie couple” (who end up never having children)—contrasted with “trashy” couple, who churn out progeny without a care in the world.

https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Idiocracy.pdf

[Larrikin]

Human biology allows your body to get sick and die from bacteria and viruses, sometimes floating in the air. Human biology let's you get a cut on your hand and die from infection. That was a thing for most of history. Do you think it's weird we don't just let people suffer from those things as well?

[Aeolun]

You say that as if having children is a disease.

If you are old enough to have a child, you are very likely old enough to successfully raise one. Otherwise the human race wouldn’t exist.

[tstrimple]

Having a child under a certain age has all the health risks of a serious disease putting the life of the mother and child at much higher risks. Why shouldn't it be treated as such?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5965834/

[Aeolun]

A 5% chance of your child dying when you give birth at age 15 and lower seems pretty reasonable to me? At least I’d have expected those number to be far higher.

At 16-17 it’s 4% and at 18-19 it’s 3%, which makes it even better, but 19 out of every 20 children surviving longer than 28 days is pretty good.

[kazinator]

I smell an evolutionary argument here that is fallacious.

For eons, tribes/villages raised children; it was not left entirely to the young mothers.

[coldtea]

Yes, I think our cavalier use of antibiotics is a real problem, that could wipe a huge number of people out through the development of populations with huge immune deficiencies and uber-bacteria. Similarly for antiviral resistance.

Plus the need for such drugs itself is overplayed, most of the time the human body can take care of an infection itself. Things like clean water, hand washing, etc, helped for the rest many times over than drugs do.

[Larrikin]

Have you documented your turning down of antibiotics, vaccines, and other medicines so that others can see how tough you are and how modern medicine isn't needed? Have you encouraged your parents and grandparents to do the same? Have you denied your children modern healthcare as well?

[nappingcat]

> Human biology allows your body to get sick and die from bacteria and viruses, sometimes floating in the air.

Not in 99.9% of cases. It's such a twisted disrespect to millions of years of evolution of the immune system. If you had no innate immune system, even being a bubble boy in a hospital with the most advanced equipment could keep you alive only for so long. It's like saying "police lets people get murdered".

[npteljes]

>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 of knowing better, we found that getting pregnant early actually is a detriment to the individual, their immediate surroundings, and society as a whole as well*. So, we do things like birth control and education and things like that.

Which is far from bizarre, if you look at human activity as a whole. Basically every facet of life goes against "biology" or rather basic nature, if you think about it. We augment ourselves and distance ourselves from it to a very large degree - stay indoors a lot, use clothing, learn abstract knowledge, look at screens, eat processed food, observe the myriad of societal rules. Which all are kinda weird - but they also aren't, if you consider the history of humanity.

*https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-...

[Aeolun]

> we found that getting pregnant early actually is a detriment to the individual, their immediate surroundings, and society as a whole

You are citing a source that talks about unintended pregnancies (often as a result of sexual abuse) in developing nations. With nearly half of those being prematurely aborted in some (medically safe or not) way.

I’m inclined to believe that the support system throughout most of history was better than what these girls get.

[coldtea]

>But, us humans like to know better. That's what the entire civilization is all about.

You mean the kind of knowing better that led us to destroy the environment, and appears to be removing whole populations from the gene pool with way below subreplacement rates?

[npteljes]

Exactly that kind of knowing better.

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek because of the multiple interpretations of "knowing better". On one hand, we "know better" in a way that we, as in all humans, constantly try to control nature and the natural flow of things. Our entire civilization and way of life is a result of that.

On the other hand, I mean it a bit sarcastically, because I'm not convinced on a philosophical level that this kind of living is morally, ethically, humanely superior than that of ancient people's living. Often it looks like that progress is just for the progress' sake, an eternal power struggle, a Prisoner's dilemma. In short, when I ask myself "is progress good", I don't feel strongly toward any answer. I meant to encapsulate this by phrasing it as "knowing better".

But the drive to "know better" is there for sure, even though the results vary. I do believe that good can come from it, and that many efforts actually resulted in lessening human suffering, which I consider a good thing. I mean here efforts like equal rights movements, reproductive health and education, and proper access to medical help (to stay on topic).

[navane]

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.

[npteljes]

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/

[Aeolun]

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.

[WarOnPrivacy]

>> actually teen pregnancy wasn't so bad

Except for the negatively impacting the ability to get the education needed for basic jobs.

> I mean, it was a thing for most of human history.

During most of human history there was a broad support system already in place.

For modern new parents, that experience extended support varies from mostly gone to totally gone.

Exasperating that: In markets with jobs, rents are 1mo typical wages.

[fwsgonzo]

Yep, we are new parents and we are almost 40. There just wasn't any moment before where it was possible to start a family. We are comfortable but utterly alone in our box, with no grandparents or extended family in sight. Also, with the expectation that outside is for cars. So, there's 1-2 hours at the end of the day for us which is largely cleaning and de-stressing. If anyone had laid this fully out for us before we made this choice, it would have been an easy heck no.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> We are comfortable but utterly alone in our box, with no grandparents or extended family in sight.

This is how we started out too (mid 20s). Isolated rural area and no family. Both of us were youngest children and had never lived around babies. Not the highest odds to start with. We birthed at home and did cloth diapers - so that tells you a bit about our mindset then.

In our favor: This was >30years ago. It was possible to work multiple entry level jobs and scrape by. That's far from possible now.

[ponector]

>> there's 1-2 hours at the end of the day for us

Not so bad! I feel like "time for us" is all hours you can cut from 8h sleeping time.

[numpad0]

I don't understand why population studies people don't even mention this: we're technically wild animals, competing for survival. In absence of a specific and effective imperative stipulating population must grow, we must subconsciously modify societal frameworks exactly to impede reproduction.

It's crazy that the threshold for kids/adults is right in the middle of fertile age and no one ever questions that.

[moralestapia]

>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.

[sebmellen]

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.

[moralestapia]

>the amount of absolutely vile commentary she had to push through from fellow trainees and program supervisors was absurd

I believe you, it happened to me as well. I'm glad you both pushed through that; it actually is a Level 0 attack, but at the right time it can be quite demoralizing. You are way better than those pieces of filth.

My best wishes to you and your family, may you have a blessed life :D.

[swat535]

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 safe abortions and readily accessible birth control methods, they have regained their bodily autonomy which allows them to skip unwanted pregnancies.

I think that ultimately, liberating women is a _good_ thing because child bearing is difficult and no one women should be forced to go through it.

With all that said, having children can be wonderful. Perhaps a better solution is to both celebrate and encourage families while keeping abortion and birth control accessible. It doesn't have to be a binary choice.

[sebmellen]

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.

[eli_gottlieb]

>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.

People expected a married couple of grown adults to get an abortion by default rather than congratulating you on accomplishing what you were plainly trying on purpose?

[jalapenos]

Simpler than this: how long does an unwanted pregnancy remain unwanted? Basically 9 months tops. After than it's automatically into rearing mode and don't have time to mull such crap. Then as the shock peters off after a year or so, any original thoughts or utterings of "unwanted" get code-of-silence buried til the end of days, and don't ever come back.

[pjc50]

> how long does an unwanted pregnancy remain unwanted? Basically 9 months tops

An unwanted pregnancy can remain unwanted for the rest of your life.

(everyone then walks back to "oh I didn't mean abortion should be banned in cases of rape or medical risk to the mother", at which point we have to point out that the religious conservatives very much do want that.)

[jalapenos]

Only if you're sick in the head. Can you imagine? Little girl or boy running around and all you can think is "damn birth control didn't work". Monsters maybe are like that

The religious conservatives can think whatever crank nonsense they want, the rest of us can comfortably separate out the 99% elective killing case, and leave the remaining 1% cases for the controversy.

[seanmcdirmid]

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.

[sebmellen]

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.

[EmptySocks]

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.

[jalapenos]

Basically the westerner's (narcissist's) dream

[tenebrisalietum]

If you have a child, but don't have a house, you'll probably stay with your parents. They probably would rather you have your own house so they can have privacy and such.

A lot of the "multiple generations of families under one roof" type thinking are only practical if you have a large property, which was more common and much cheaper before the industrial revolution, tract housing, high rise apartments, and $2000/mo. rent for 500 square feet. Even if you think it's OK for 3 generations and 20 children to live in a 500 square foot apartment, most others don't want that.

When you have people with more money than they could possibly spend in their entire lives who wouldn't have to work a day in their life if they didn't want to, telling you that people need to start having babies and oh, also they need to work 80 hours a week and "sacrifice" to pay for them as well, lol no thanks.

[sebmellen]

I had my first child at 24 on a shoestring budget in a 700 sq. ft. apartment and it has been completely manageable. Children are way less expensive than you might think (definitely cheaper than an adult) and if you’re creative you can find good quality, full-time daycare or childcare for $10-15k/yr.

Does this add extra work? Oh yes, absolutely it does. But while having children means you sacrifice certain things, they are an incredible gift and more than make up for the trouble they cause.

It’s appalling to me how heavily we gatekeep parenthood and building a family. There is an unbroken evolutionary thread of more than 4 billion years from the very first organism to you. Your ancestors all managed to do it and they were no smarter, more gifted, or more affluent than you are. Chances are they were younger than you when they started and in a far more perilous situation to boot.

[holy_eggplants]

I think one problem is that it's difficult to share with non-parents that the sacrifice is worth it. It's easier to understand the pain of losing opportunities, losing freedom, losing hobbies, losing sleep, or downsizing living space.

How do you explain that you miss your newborn so much, that when the baby is asleep all you do is look through pictures of him/her? i almost cried the first time my toddler ran up to me and gave me a hug. i cried when i picked him up after the first day of daycare and he said "i missed you" - i didn't even know he knew that phrase!

My (immigrant) parents never explained to me how awesome it is to be a parent. Also they are a 100 times more affectionate as grandparents than as parents. I hope to teach my son that being a parent is the best luckiest blessed thing ever.

[sebmellen]

You completely nailed it. I hope to teach my children the same. And thank you for your beautiful comment.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> and if you’re creative you can find good quality, full-time daycare or childcare for $10-15k/yr.

For people still making only the mid 5-figures, that's a significant chunk of money.

[sebmellen]

That’s completely true. But you can still be creative.

I know a couple who both earn in that range and work around each other’s schedules to do it and take care of their two kids at the same time. Yes it’s a lot to juggle, but it is absolutely worth it.

[seanmcdirmid]

> full-time daycare or childcare for $10-15k/yr.

That's what it cost 5-10 years ago. Today, it depends on the city, but in the Seattle area you are looking at at least $20k/yr.

[sebmellen]

True, I may be biased since I’m in Texas!

[seanmcdirmid]

> Why is it irresponsible to have a child when you're young and financially not established?

Just imagine being the kid in that situation. Your parents are still almost kids themselves, they are working min wage jobs and had to drop out of college. Seriously, this isn't rocket science: we are having kids older because growing up in a financial stable household is just good for kids. If you have a trust fund or are somehow have enough time and money to have kids at 22, then go ahead and have kids. Just most of us didn't.

> Why is it any more irresponsible to do that than to have children at a geriatric age?

You totally ignored the "financially not established" of my statement.

> 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.

Did you just make a straw man? Because I didn't state an "idea that you have to have everything perfectly set up in life".

[sebmellen]

Had first kid at 24 on a shoestring budget in a small apartment with very minimal family support and we handled it. Kids are not that hard or expensive!

[seanmcdirmid]

I’m actually glad it worked out for you. As a previously neglected kid growing up, I wasn’t willing to do the same and had a kid later (and now trying for #2).

[evilsetg]

Maybe we as a society should decide that having children is fine when you don't have a stable career yet and finance it as such. The contradiction that our most fertile years are also the most unstable is something society could and should balance.

EDIT: typo

[seanmcdirmid]

Definitely, but having children when you aren't stable yourself and society isn't going to help out much could wind up in disaster. "Let's play life on hard/hell mode" doesn't really sound appealing to me.

There are things we could do as a society to make this easier: socialized child care (like we do with school) for one thing. Better welfare, making it easier to go to college when you have kids, etc...

But we aren't really doing those, most definitely not doing those in the states, and even in other western countries with better social safety nets. If you want society to have more kids, maybe we have to socialize child rearing more than we do today?

[MagicMoonlight]

Or alternatively, it’s a great idea because your parents can then help raise them and you can then start a career without worrying about having babies. Imagine being 25, already having your kids, and you never need to go on leave.

[redeeman]

are you saying that everyone in poor countries barely making it by are being "just irresponsible" when they decide they want to have kids?

this seems very elitist, possibly racist, and certainly could indicate that your view might be wrong, given the literal billions chosing to do this.

[dyauspitr]

There are also huge probability multipliers in congenital and cognitive problems with late pregnancies.

[squigz]

Don't the difficulties in pregnancy related to age tend to come up around 40 or older?

I don't think the choices need to be "have children at 19 years old" or "have children at 40" - surely having kids at 30-35 is still physically fine and gives you some time to become more financially secure?

[pseudocomposer]

If you know anything about dating and relationships, that’s an extremely narrow window. More so if you want 2-3 kids.

[thrownearacc]

Oh, I’m sure some “anecdotal” stories will come up, painting a perfect picture of the “good old days” — without calling them that, of course. Here's one then:

Take my great-grandfather, for example. 56, falls head over heels for a 14-year-old girl from church, and boom — 30 days later, they’re married. 8 months later, my grandfather’s born. They stayed married for 50 years. My grandmother was 16 when she married my 47-year-old grandfather after a chance meeting in the woods, and, guess what, smooth pregnancy again. My parents? Same song, different verse. Now, fast forward to today: I broke up with my girlfriend (late 30s, early 40s) because we wanted kids, but couldn’t conceive — and back then when were were younger and when we could, I couldn’t afford it. See, back then, the older man was not only virile but also financially set, while the young woman could pop out babies at the drop of pants.

Yeah, those “good old days” sound amazing. Make World Pregnant Again.

[squigz]

Your 56 year old great grandfather married a 14 year old girl and was married for 50 years?

[crtified]

It's actually interesting what underlying prejudices readers project upon the anecdotes of others.

In actual fact, I was merely offering a data point. I have no agenda, I am not in the slightest anti-abortion, I am not against 100% female bodily autonomy, I do not consider past generations to be "the good old days" - the events I described were traumatic for everybody involved - and I do not profess to be qualified to draw any conclusions, or to claim that what happened to me is why the world has changed.

I can only see certain cause and effect chains relating to my own generational situation, and suggested that such changing norms may be one factor in the mix. May.

[Exoristos]

Extraordinary how poverty makes a family impossible but only in certain ZIP codes.

[jalapenos]

I mean, at least you're not propagating that woods-rapist line?

[jeffbee]

I'm not sure this scans really because teenage births as well as teenage pregnancies enjoyed a local peak around 1990. There certainly was not a general pan-American societal instinct against teenage births at that time. The rate has fallen by more than 75% since. Even the mother-under-15 birth rate in 1990 was ridiculous (about 10x more than today, in most states).

[dragonwriter]

The local peak around 1990 was a very small bump from the flat run through the 1980s, and was probably a brief rebound effect of the extreme negative social pressure related to unprotected casual sex stemming from the AIDS crisis fading a bit as that became perceived as less acute of a threat, and there numbers dropped rapidly after that peak, quickly going through the floor they had settled in during the long flat period preceding the brief rise and peak.

So it is not at all inconsistent with a strong social force against teenage births existing and being acted on in the late 1990s, in fact, had that not existed the rise up to the 1990 peak would probably not have been so brief and followed by a rapid drop that went straight through the preceding floor.

[wahern]

Teenage births peaked in the late 1950s, by a significant margin. See https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/02/why-is-th...

It's difficult to find teenage pregnancy rates before 1972, let alone multiple sources, but if you look at Guttmacher's numbers both teenage pregnancy and abortion rates ramped up significantly between the late 1970s and early 1990s. See https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pubs/UST... Teenage abortions rates are even more difficult to find before 1972, but abortion certainly existed in the 1950s, and given the birth rate it's possible teenage pregnancy rates were also higher in the 1950s and 60s.

Also, notwithstanding that the data does coincide with the given narrative, one must also consider socio-economic and cultural factors--pregnancy, birth, and abortion rates aren't homogenous across groups. For example, the OP (or their girlfriend) could have been from a segment of society at the trailing edge of a trend.

[jeffbee]

I don't doubt their personal narrative, I just am not sure the generalized conclusion they drew from it was proper.

[pjc50]

> scandalously

Yes. Society hates teen pregnancy. Some societies will carve out an exception for married teens, which is a whole other can of worms. This is not a change in norms, it's the victory of the norms. People have been told not to have children until they are ready, and finally compliance with that is pretty high.

There were even worse alternatives, like the mass grave at Tuam or the Victorian practice of "baby farming". https://www.bbc.com/news/extra/4ko2zsk2tb/Tuam

The short way to get a baby boom is to make it OK to be a less than perfect parent.

[squigz]

> 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.

[pseudocomposer]

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.

[doright]

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.

[lelanthran]

Watch the first 10m of idiocracy on youtube

[jalapenos]

No, parents just hate not being in absolute control over their kids, and an unmarried teen pregnancy is an extreme case of such non-control.

[MarkusWandel]

I like this. It has nothing to do with the "big picture" in birth rates, but it's a personal story. Mine is simpler. My dad had a societal expectation to be married - a position he was eyeing was only open to married men. My mom was the best bet at the time. Here I am. This, too is a scenario that is no longer applicable.

[mensetmanusman]

My mother was also the product of a failed abortion. Crazy to think how different the world would be. Now I have 8 kids!

[KolibriFly]

It's a perspective that often gets lost in the macro-level fertility discussions: how many births never happen not because people don’t want kids, but because the only off-ramp they might've taken got paved over by modern expectations, norms and etc

[squigz]

In the past, how many people had kids not because they wanted to but because of social expectations, norms, etc?

[sebmellen]

In the present, how many of your daily actions and decisions are made not because you want to but because of social expectations or norms?

Is there any utility to having social expectations or norms that push you to do things that you may not “want” to?

In the past, people had kids because that's just what happened between people. Pregnancy was a natural consequence of human life.

Making childbearing a choice means that you need some social framework to encourage it, otherwise it becomes completely gauche and impractical. In the absence of this supportive social framework, fertility rates will drop, and in many cases precipitously. The long-term consequence of that drop in fertility is, at its most extreme, the collapse of modern civilization.

Compare Israel with South Korea, for example. Both are mostly developed economies. In one of these societies, kids are a status symbol; in the other, they are generally considered a nuisance (e.g. kids will often be banned from restaurants or other social watering holes). Can you guess which one of these societies will survive longer?

[Qem]

I'm sorry for your loss.

[lisbbb]

What loss? It was not her but her "girlfriend" which I don't even know how to correctly interpret these days. Is she saying it was her love interest or just a friend who is female? Heaven knows!

Kids aren't even dating anymore hardly. My son (15) is having a horrible time navigating social interactions. The girls at his school are all horrible people, it seems (not true, I'm sure, but I constantly have to hear about how he is treated like crap by the girls all the time).

[lo_zamoyski]

It goes both ways. Add to this that boys today have been raised on a steady diet of pornography on their smartphones from a young age and never taught to master their impulses and learn genuinely masculine virtue. What do you think this does to their perception and treatment of women? And women are taught to view sex as an instrument of power and control (look at the number of young women with OnlyFans accounts), and raised on a steady diet of viewing men as sleazes by nature, not by condition. They are not taught feminine virtue. What do you think will do to female behavior?

The cycle continues.

The cycle must be broken by admitting that boys can be raised to be self-sacrificing gentlemen who have no interest in bad women, and girls can be raised to be loving ladies who can discern between exploitative jerks and noble men.

[sapphicsnail]

It's not like younger men are great but older men say the grossest things and tend to he way more patronizing.

[csomar]

Pretty sure my interactions with 60+ old man and the younger generation refutes this. Of course this is anecdotal but you also offer no evidence whatsoever.

[tayo42]

Idk if that's anything new. There was a movie about this 20 years ago

[ta8645]

Mad Max?

[pyuser583]

No you are not heading towards 50 if you were born in 1980. You are nowhere near 50, and I refuse to believe otherwise!

[csomar]

Oh it’s sure birth control that’s doing it and not the backward societal norms that are still sticking.

Thanks for pointing out that the baby boom happened by accidental births and confirming it with your own anecdotal evidence.

[moralestapia]

I'm really sorry to hear this, and truly wish things have turned out differently.

Kids are a phenomenal experience.

I concur with you, social pressure is a defining element on having/not having them.

[ponector]

Better to have abortion than unwanted child. Usually it's quite miserable childhood for a kid.

[eli_gottlieb]

> In the late 90's, my late-teens girlfriend scandalously fell pregnant.

And whose fault was that, eh?

[crtified]

Partly her parents, for refusing to allow her to go on birth control as a preventative in advance. She did ask. Back then, in my country, parental approval was required by law for people under a certain age. That has since changed.

Unfortunately it took a lot more than asking (i.e. it took "a pregnancy") before they took her seriously.

But primarily, yes, my fault and her fault.

[lurking_swe]

Actually i think it’s mostly the parents fault. Sure you physically played a part but teens in general are dumb. That’s just how most teens act…no shame in that. Very little impulse control and lots of hormones.

A parents job is to TEACH their child how to navigate the world safely, and that includes how to not have an unwanted pregnancy. One can encourage abstinence, but it’s also important to realize that kids are not property. They will do what they want, and only follow abstinence if they want to. If you child refuses to follow your advice, at least help them practice safe sex. Safe sex is better than unsafe sex.

[jalapenos]

Congratulations on not having been killed

Shame you didn't ensure the same for your own kid

[crtified]

I am not sure how you think a 17 year old kid with ZERO legal or social rights or family support or money was somehow meant to overpower the iron will of the girl's furious parents (who in turn intractably convinced the girl herself), whose roof she still lived under - being in the final years of high school - and the medical fraternity, and the laws of my country, and the will of society. What was I supposed to do? Lock her in a tower?

But congratulations on shallowly judging people as murderers on a whim. Perhaps you might consider how that is a less than ideal characteristic, if caring about the lives of human beings is your actual goal here.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

My grandmother was scandalously had. If abortion had been legal her entire family tree wouldn't exist. Me, my dozen or so cousins, my father, aunts, all gone.

That's why my father is against abortion.

[lazyasciiart]

What terrible reasoning. Does that mean that if he were the child of rape he’d be pro-rape? Anything that would have prevented his existence is bad?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Why don't you show some tact or compassion?

[refurb]

Underrated comment right here.

When the baseline belief in society goes from “make it work” to “better to end the pregnancy” it shouldn’t be surprising that overall the number of birth goes way down.

[groby_b]

The US sees about 20K teen pregnancy abortions.

That's probably not why the number of births is way down.

Number of births in the US are ~3.6M right now. We also have 1M abortions per year. That's - if abortions were the sole problem - 4.6M births / 330M people.

Except... It was 4.3M births / 177M people in 1960. Double the current rate. It dropped off sharply right after the 1960s. Not coincidentally right when the pill was introduced.

It never was about "better end the pregnancy". It was always about women having a say, instead of being default-delegated to brood mare.

We landed in a ~stable equilibrium with that, with a TFR of 2.1 in 1990. And then live births dropped again, like a stone. And, oddly, so did abortions. Which implies that the likely problem is a drop in pregnancies in the 1990s.

Teen abortions are a tiny irrelevant side show compared to this. So maybe let's not speculate on "baseline beliefs of society" based on what's noise in the statistics.

[refurb]

Nobody said anything about teens?

[d0gsg0w00f]

No telling what contraceptives have contributed.

We didn't really use contraceptives and we had three "oopses". Those three oopses are pretty awesome.

Nothing like a kid to help you get your head out of your ass. Probably why people report feeling happier, because you can't think about the stupid stuff you used to worry about.

[groby_b]

Hey, I'm not arguing against having kids. I think they're awesome, too, even though life didn't allow them for me.

I'd just like discussions to be rooted in actual data instead of sentiment.

[salawat]

>Nothing like a kid to help you get your head out of your ass. Probably why people report feeling happier, because you can't think about the stupid stuff you used to worry about.

Not all of those things were stupid, and not in need of being worried about and worked on. Though childless myself, I try to remind those who are currently rearing the next gen all those problems they "don't have time to worry about" are still there. Do your children a favor and maybe worry about problems bigger than you still. You, as opposed to me (the childless), have a materialized interest in the future. I get odd looks because I spend an awful amount of time worrying over everyone else's futures even to the detriment of my own; but if y'all aren't looking forward for them, someone else has to.

[rsync]

I thought your anecdote was interesting and thought provoking and I appreciate that you posted it. Thank you.

I am disappointed at the hostile reaction it provoked in some others ... as if you, or your anecdote, reminded them of something that angered them and they lost track of the difference.

[crtified]

Thank you! I have taken any off-tone responses in stride, on the understanding that child-bearing is a very contentious and emotional issue for many.

[Yeul]

Only until recently women were basically property who got no say in what they wanted.

You either got married to a man who protected you or you got raped. That's it.