Seriously. I wouldnt use the term “luxury good” to describe a child, but having kids is far too expensive. My wife and I want to have more, but we can barely afford one. The hospital bills even with insurance are ridiculous, paid parental leave in this country is practically non-existent, and daycare is expensive (to the point where it is often cheaper to have one parent work and one stay home with the kids than to have both parents work and place the children in daycare). Housing for families is also incredibly expensive and can be hard to find. My city is building apartments like crazy but the vast majority are one and two bedroom luxury apartments, not three or four bedroom units than can accommodate families. Our housing market has also completely rebounded so houses are too expensive.
This is the real reason fertility rates are dropping. Children are unaffordable in many places in the country and as work requires more out of all of us with stagnated wages, we don't have the time, money, or required health insurance to participate in raising a child.
I'm late 20's and I want a child, but I just can't see myself ever being able to afford one. It's certainly a luxury to responsibly have a child.
>We don't have the time, money, or required health insurance to participate in raising a child.
What would happen if 2 out of 3 of these issues were solved, or at least greatly reduced? In Europe they have much more generous maternal/paternal benefits, as well as universal healthcare. Yet despite this, their birthrates are even lower than ours.
I can’t speak for anyone but ourselves, but we would have more children if we have paid parental leave and universal healthcare (also free college tuition). Financial reasons are why we can’t have more kids.
It's a value choice you are making, and "financial reasons" probably have little to do with it. The money issue is an excuse.
Europe generally has the paid parental leave and universal healthcare. Some parts even have the free college tuition. Where are the kids?
People who focus on families don't need paid parental leave. There is a full-time parent permanently at home. Not that everybody needs to go to college, but that is often cheap if you start with a community college AA degree and then transfer to a state school. Most people don't have much of a healthcare problem.
> This is the real reason fertility rates are dropping.
One of them at least, children are also fairly disruptive and a huge responsibility if you assume you're actually becoming responsible for the education and upbringing of a human being.
Generally speaking mainland europe has low hospital bills, paid parental leave, subsidised daycare and education, but the fertility rates are still extremely low, and children are still horrendously expensive.
Your opinion is almost certainly clouded by your particular circumstances. I will counter it with my own clouded opinion shaped by my particular circumstances.
Children are not unaffordable. They require sacrifice. In my culture (within the U.S.) it is common to have 4+ children, often in single-income, middle-class homes. Raising 4-6 children on an income of $60K doesn't attract any attention at all.
To read posts like the gp that claim they can't afford a single child seems ridiculous from my perspective. I grant that my perspective is ignorant of their specific circumstances. But my wife and I welcomed our first two children while we were starving college students making < $20K/year.
I don't own a Tesla. My children have worked to pay for their college debt free (as did I). I don't have a home in the Hamptons. I don't live in California. I've never been to Europe. My kids haven't gone to Stanford.
But I have the most amazing children in the world. I wouldn't trade any of them for a Tesla. Or a MBP. Or equity in whatever startup you are slaving away at.
I am glad there is Tesla in the world, and people with MBPs. I don't think my choices are necessarily better than your choices. I don't regret my choices, and I flatly reject most claims by people that they don't have a choice.
Youre mentioning a lot of real luxury goods but these arent the costs OP is referring to I believe. Its more about the necessities in that regard for ensuring their children have a good future: healthcare, private schooling, a college tuition fund, etc. I agree a lot of people in this country spend too much on things they shouldnt, then complain they dont have enough for more of the essentials, but I think in this case the original point is valid: raising children in a metropolitan area is pretty expensive JUST for their necessities.
Please re-read my comment. My children have earned 3+1/2+1/4 college degrees, debt-free. I did not pay for that. They did. I expect at least 2+1/2+3/4 college degrees to follow. They went to public schools (+ 1 private college). They play violin and cello and bass and guitar and percussion and brass. They are insured.
They played youth soccer, and high school sports. They have learned foreign languages. They've worked as janitors and at supermarkets and as research assistants.
I'm not sure what "necessity" they have not enjoyed.
Raising children in metropolitan areas includes raising children in Memphis and Dallas and Boise. It doesn't have to mean San Francisco. And for that matter, who says you have to raise children in a metropolitan area? That is not a necessity.
As I wrote before, it doesn't bother me if you choose not to have children, or if you choose to live in San Francisco, or if you choose to raise children in San Francisco. It just bothers me to see the claim that it is impossible to provide the necessities to children today.
Children are expensive. No doubt. That is true in NYC or the Himalayas. I believe that to raise a child properly will require sacrifices. That is true for a parent who makes $16K or $16MM.
But I reject the claim for the vast majority of people that raising children properly is out of financial reach. When I read that claim from 20-somethings making twice my current salary, I shake my head. I translate that claim to, "I am not willing to give up my current lifestyle to have children." That is a much different statement.
If you have a typical STEM job or better, your employer covers nearly all the cost of healthcare for your family.
You only need private schooling if you are in a city and don't have a stay-at-home parent. Suburban schools are usually OK. You can homeschool.
In most states, you don't need a college tuition fund. For example, a student in my state can get an AA degree for about $5000, and can then upgrade it to a BS degree for an additional $15000. If you birth a kid every 2 years, you'll end up with 2 kids in college at once and the cost will be $10000 per year. That is 1/6 of a typical family income, or about 1/12 of a typical STEM job.
Could it be possible that in the 24+ (?) years since you had these children that things have perhaps changed, and your views on the affordability of children are a quarter of a century outdated?
Sure. That's a valid point. Things have changed a lot since my oldest child. But my youngest children are still at home costing me money. My own financial situation has improved, of course. But my recent college grad children step into jobs making 80% of my current salary. And they're not making SV money. So again, I turn the volume down on millenials who complain about the cost of children.
I had my first children when I made less than 1/3 of what I make now and new college grads are making 4/5 of what I make now. And I'm still raising children. You can argue about inflation or whatever you want. I don't buy it.
Just admit that you are not willing to give up anything to accommodate children.
I'm not saying that you should give up anything. Those are your choices. But you do have a choice.
I have neighbors who make $40K and raise children--yes, more than one. Right now. Today. In the U.S. No welfare.
It is within the reach of most everyone on HN to become a middle school math teacher in Kansas and raise a family. Very few make that choice. But they do have the choice.
>You can argue about inflation or whatever you want. I don't buy it.
This is literally ignoring factual evidence. Inflation has happened, there's no denying it. Wages have stagnated since the early 70's with a good portion of the country making less than they did in the 70's, or are making exactly what they made in the 70's. Chances are your "less than 1/3 of what I make now" was probably what you make now, or was at least worth much more than that same salary would be today. The cost of almost everything that's necessary & essential has risen by insane amounts since your children have been born.
I think this is out of touch. I make near $60k outside of Seattle and can barely afford to take care of myself in the slightest of comfort possible. I don't get luxuries, and I haven't been on a vacation since I started my working life. I'm away from home for 12 hours every work day, not by choice. There is no way to responsibly care for even a single child at this income in a non-rural area in 2018. I can't even responsibly get a dog.
I think as a poster said below, your views have probably not been updated for a very long time. The cost of everything essential has gone up since you had your children.
You have chosen to take a job outside of Seattle. Seattle is crazy expensive right now. A $50K job 140 miles away in Yakima might be a better value. Or look 300 miles away in Pullman or Spokane.
Eight hour days, 15 minute commutes, ...
Gonzaga is looking for IT Techs. WSU is hiring into IT like mad right now. May be a pay cut for you. May drop your cost of living 50%. Definitely gives you more time to responsibly care for a child if that is your priority.
BECU is looking for a Security Tech Admin. Banner Furnace and Fuel needs an IT Specialist. Not as prestigious or glamorous as your current job? Well, if that's your priority...
I went to a somewhat poor high school and an extremely
prestigious university. My fellow university graduates who are now making lucrative engineer salaries are the ones with teslas and MBPs, and from what I've seen they are not raising children by choice (most of them are not even married or have long term relationships. I'm married but my wife and I decided we want to wait a few years so she can finish her PhD and start her career first. Our goal is to start having children before we are 30). While my wife and I are struggling with the prospect of never owning a family-sized property in our high CoL city because it is so expensive, it's not the main reason we haven't started a family yet. Much bigger are concerns about how it will impact my wife's career, and if she will be forced out of the workforce forever if she takes a few years off until the children are old enough for school.
From my hometown (edit: just to be clear, this is a low-CoL city and my friends mostly 24-27 years old), no one that I know owns a tesla or similar luxury object. A larger percentage of my friends from back home are married compared to my friends from university, but still almost none of them have started families. I can't speak for them all, but the impression I get is that the people who are on track for something that could be considered a career (teaching, for example) are focusing on their careers. Those who didn't end up with a career but did go to college are more or less drowning in college debt. Those who didn't go to college are trying to work their way up to a higher education through part-time community college and what not.
In other words, I agree with your central thesis that this is by choice that the birthrate is declining. In particular, the fact that women now have the choice to start careers and earn money instead of going to college for an "MRS" degree and then starting a family (I know exactly one person in my high school class who wanted to do this, and she does indeed have two beautiful children today). But difficulty getting debt-free for college graduates, and difficulty owning property, are certainly contributing factors, because it provides external pressure on couples that they need to spend more energy+effort on their career. As I understand, raising children requires a considerable amount of energy+effort, so the conflict there should be quite obvious.
I am interested in the experience of your corner of the world. I'm a millenial who "can't afford a child" (but am making a lot more than a ton of households with children are in my area). Is there an email address I can reach you at? I would like to know your and your community's stance of things like how to have stable families, feelings of loneliness or contentment, and whether your children intend to follow the same path and have the same kind/size of family.
I think that this is a false argument. Just look at the poorer nations or even poorer populations. They tend to have plenty of children.
Kids are expensive, that is true, but I think that most people arguing that it is too expensive to have children actually mean that they are not willing to change their lifestyle or standard of living to have kids.
I agree. Everyone wants to live a certain kind of lifestyle, and kids aren’t worth the sacrifice for many.
Without fail, the people I see having kids are all people who grew up with an economic head start, and further distanced themselves with extremely high paying jobs (private equity, hedge fund, commercial real estate, VC, big tech).
I don’t know anyone with kids where the husband is not killing it financially, and they all still complain about having limited money.
This is true in the Bay Area, where I live now, and back in Texas (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio), where I’m from.
Your story is so anecdotal and influenced by the people you know that it is practically irrelevant. Not trying to jump down your throat, but "people I see" and "I don't know anyone" renders your statement useless.
What if it’s not an unwillingness to sacrifice, but an unwillingness to take on risk and uncertainty that increases with financial success?
We now have an entire generation that has been saddled with crippling debt and has been given little to nothing in the way of tools to escape. Many of them saw something similar happen to their own parents, watching them struggle to keep the boat floating as they grew up. Is it really so strange that this group would approach having children with great caution and only commit once they acquire some level of assurance of reliable and reasonably strain-free access to resources? This is especially true for those who’ve “made it” to some extent and have managed to procure freedom from debt — they’re going to do everything in their power to avoid winding up in those circumstances a second time.
I don’t know, to me the attitude reads as more calculated and responsible than anything else.
True, but people in poor countries have very different priorities when it comes to children. In many agrarian countries, a child is an extra hand that can work after several years. Depending on the country, there is little to no expectations of education. By comparison, how many yuppies in SF would choose to have an additional child if it meant they couldn't pay for good education for them? Or if it meant raising 2 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment?
I think that it is mostly about what the person values and what they are willing to sacrifice. If having children is a priority they will usually make the sacrifice. If not they will choose accordingly.
As far as how a culture values their children you can have good parents and bad parents either way. Just because a child is raised on a farm and helps the parents out when they are capable doesn't mean that that is a bad life. They can still be happy and productive and live a good life.
I agree, but I think families are making that sacrifice by choosing quality over quantity. Families are choosing to have a single child and dedicate more resources towards raising him or her, rather than having multiple kids. And while it's true that one can't reliably quantify the quality of someone's childhood and subsequent life, the reality is that as countries develop and economies become more advanced the feasibility of having a productive life performing manual labor without much in the way of education reduces. Hence why developed wealthy places tend to have fewer kids and dedicate more resources towards them.
I think the quality of someone's childhood and subsequent life is partly determined by siblings. Even the miserable times with siblings, such as childhood fights, are teaching you. Later in life you have long-term connections with other human beings. These connections will likely survive even across career changes and long-distance relocation.
I used to work in a small midwestern city with a large immigrant population. One day, one of my Sudanese customers came in somewhat distraught. I asked him what was wrong, and all he said was "In my old country, children were a blessing. In America, they are a burden."
No, that is not true, at least not beyond the first child. There recently was a report by the Dutch national statistics department that concluded essentially that more children are becoming a status symbol within the same socio-economic stratus. In other words, being able to afford three children now means that you can afford to have one spouse work part time or not at all. I don't think there is an English version of this report and I'm not claiming it's a universal phenomenon, but it does show that there are (much) more complex factors at play than just 'more is higher status' or 'less is higher status'.
That report sounds interesting. I have not read it but I would be suspicious of any report from a government. In my opinion government report tend to only look at people as economic units. If a certain type of upbringing does that translate into a higher producing unit then it must be less desirable.
To be fair though the more kids you have the more it will cost to feed them so the argument does fail at a certain point. I have four daughters and it does cost a lot to feed them. However the cost is not too bad because we can just use "hand me down" clothes, toys, etc for a long time. We just have to be more frugal than we would otherwise.
There are plenty of safety nets when you're low income if you take advantage of the available benefits. Your children will be taken care of with medicaid/medicare, you'll receive food stamps, housing assistance. If you're not low income, you're on your own, which can be really tough for people in a middle income range slightly above being able to get those safety nets.
I think it's because the proportional cost of children actually increases as you move up the income ladder. Probably only starts to reverse once you hit the mid-high hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kids are cheaper for poorer families, because they dedicate less resources towards kids. If someone lives in a place where housing is cheap and don't expect anything beyond public primary and secondary school then another kid only really costs some extra groceries and clothes. By comparison if someone expects to give their kid a private education, subsidize their college education, and afford to house them comfortably in an expensive neighborhood, then kids can be incredibly expensive.
Lower income people often trend towards the former, higher income people towards the latter. Of course there are exceptions - some lower income people dedicate great resources towards their kids, some wealthier families don't.
> I think it's because the proportional cost of children actually increases as you move up the income ladder.
The opportunity cost as well. Having and raising a child means there are things you can't do because you have to raise/take care of the child.
> If someone lives in a place where housing is cheap and don't expect anything beyond public primary and secondary school then another kid only really costs some extra groceries and clothes.
At the end of the day, even for people with low COL raising a child to adulthood is still on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Planning might also be a factor there, it's likely more present higher up the income ladder, meaning the wealthier segments see the kind of costs associated middle/long term and go "maybe not yet".
Yeah, buts tens of thousands of dollars over the course of nearly 2 decades isn't all that much money. If your kid takes the bus, goes to public education, and you don't need childcare then the cost of a kid just boils down to room and board. Contrast that with a parent that sends their kid to private school, and wants to pay for a private undergrad. That's going to be on the order of at least the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Probably close to half a million.
Raising a kid to the expectations of an upper or even upper-middle class family costs orders of magnitude more than raising a kid to the expectations of a poor family. But said upper middle class family probably doesn't make a proportionally larger amount. I'd consider someone "poor" if they make 20-25k a year and "wealthy" if they make 200-250k+. But the costs of raising a child to the expectations of the latter is probably more than 10 times greater. Probably 20-30 times greater. Thus why kids are more proportionally expensive for higher income class people.
The ridiculousness of what you’re saying becomes readily apparent if you substitute cars for children. For instance: cars are more expensive for rich people, because a top of the line Mercedes costs $100k, rather than $15k for a used Toyota. No, cars (and children) cost the same for everybody. Some people choose to spend more because they have convinced themselves that anything less simply would not do.
Except cars aren’t comparable to children. There is a significantly different expected return on investment of a child that goes to high performing schools and has a network of other high performing high net worth individuals than for a child that isn’t given those opportunities.
The best predictor for someone’s economic security in life is the zip code they grow up in.
Kids don't work like cars. For cars, you can trade them in and buy a new one when you feel like it if you have the cash. You can buy a clunker, treat it poorly, and then when it dies nothing is stopping you from buying a Lexus to replace it (if you have the money). Kids don't work like that. You can't give a kid a mediocre childhood for until 10th grade, and then throw enough money at it to make it as though your kid had a great education, upbringing, and enrichment opportunities throughout all of childhood.
Of course there are people who don't have much money and still do their best to raise their kids as best they can. But the reality is that things like education and upbringing do have a significant impact, and often getting the best out of those things takes a significant mount of money.
The material living standard for a middle class family in the West is better than the material living standard of anybody who ever lived, at any socio economic class, before 100 years ago. And here you are arguing that somehow the reason middle class people aren’t having more children is because they can’t provide adequately for their children?
No, it's because parents in the West don't want their child to end up with the global average standard of living. They want a good standard of living as per their expectations of growing up in the West. The globsl median household income is under $10k per year. This is destitute for an American. The prospect of one's child endind up in such a situation is not appealing.
Hence, why Westerners are waiting to have kids and dedicating more resources towards them. Furthermore things integral to raising children like education have actually increased in cost over the past several decades.
My Nana is the first-born of six children. Somehow we got to talking about the link between poverty and birthrates and her guess was that sex tends to be the first and last vice available to a person after losing everything else.
I met super conservative friends of my parents the other day. They blamed the falling fertility rates on narcissism and social media.
I'm like uh.... what about cost of living outpacing salaries? Cost of medical care? Education debt?
All the young people I know aren't avoiding pregnancy because of their social media engagement, they are however wondering out loud in conversations with me if they can afford children.
I bet the poor households are using Facebook just as much as the richer households. Whatever the root causes are, I seriously doubt social media the single most important cause.
Socialized Medicine and Education are often discussed in this context. However, if we look at Europe where student debt is minimal, and medicine is provided by the state fertility rates are even lower.
Although social media might be the wrong thing to take aim at, I would argue that rising expectations for standard of living definitely have helped to reduce the amount of (relatively, but not ridiculously, wealthy) couples who wish to have kids. Narcissism tends to drive the expected standard of living, whether exploited through advertisements or broadcast through social media itself.
Might also be the narcissism of wanting enough time to invest in a child's rearing. Like, in theory, I might have been capable of popping out 3+ kids. Would I have enough time towards invest in all their personhood development needs? Nope, I don't think so. Barely enough time for work and myself. It's kind of why I didn't get a dog. Takes a real asshole to go outside one's species then fail to take care of the doggo. Also real assholes cause a child to be born when the person does not have the stability or desire to do a proper job with a vulnerable little kid.
I liked how the article presented a diverse set of political opinons; Left, Right, and Crazytown.
"Economist Lyman Stone has blamed the United States’ less-than-generous parental leave and pay policies. Human Life International, a missionary group, blames “pro-abortion population control groups like Planned Parenthood.” Tucker Carlson claims it has to do with immigration, arguing that immigrants drive wages down, which hurts the attractiveness of men as potential spouses — “thus reducing fertility.”"
Yep... medical care and child care are expensive. Not to mention my employer-provided insurance has ridiculous co-payment, co-insurance and deductible limits
The thing is, children don't make economic sense. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have them: it means that you should have them despite it not making economic sense (just as we do many things which don't make economic sense but do make ethical sense).
Folks should just have children. They'll discover that they will make it work, just like their parents made it work, and so on back down the line.
Or not, I suppose, if they have some philosophical reason not to have kids. But if they want to have them, they should have them, and adjust their lives accordingly.
>The University of Pennsylvania’s Hans-Peter Kohler, who studies fertility and birthrates, said the data indicated that many shifts affecting fertility are occurring “in the transition to adulthood.” The biggest recent drops in birthrate have been among teenagers as well as people in their 20s. In 2016, the teen birthrate hit at an all-time low after peaking in 1991.
This... doesn't sound like bad news to me?
It seems like the #1 "issue" is that teenagers have stopped having kids. That's a good thing, is it not?
Young 20-year-olds not having kids could be easily explained with the higher amount of people going to college, and starting life later.
If the 25+ age group has stopped having kids, that'd be a bad thing for sure. I guess its important to keep the overall fertility rate in mind for future economic reasons, but a severe decrease in teenage pregnancy seems like a good thing overall... even if it may cause an economic issue in the future.
Depends on your culture of course. Teens get pregnant so readily because they're designed that way. The US obsession with avoiding teen pregnancy causes problems of its own I'm sure.
Are you American? If not, its easy to see why it seems like common sense like this would work. But in America, especially the Southeast, those are taboo things.
The shape of the human penis is 'designed' to scoop out the sperm that competing males may have recently left, but I rarely hear arguments that monogamy is unnatural and 'going to cause problems of its own'. I don't find the appeal to biology and 'design' particularly convincing. Perhaps you could give some examples of the problems you foresee, while keeping in mind than avoiding teen pregnancy is not the same as delaying having children until the age of 45?
> The shape of the human penis is 'designed' to scoop out the sperm that competing males may have recently left
That's myth ( or we don't know for absolute certainty ). If that was true, it would scoop your own semen out better than your competitors. The shape has more to do with arousing females and making it easier for your sperm to reach the eggs than anything else.
> but I rarely hear arguments that monogamy is unnatural and 'going to cause problems of its own'.
Monogamy or polygamy is a far better male competitive "design" than the shape of the human penis. The best way to ensure you impregnate a woman is through monogamy or polygamy rather than semen displacement. Most male sex competition is geared towards preventing other males to mate with a female rather than scooping it out after your competitor mates with a female.
> Perhaps you could give some examples of the problems you foresee, while keeping in mind than avoiding teen pregnancy is not the same as delaying having children until the age of 45?
The best time for a female to procreate is 19 to 26. It's their peak biological fertility years. When they're most fertile and when their children are least likely to suffer from defects. Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.
> That's myth ( or we don't know for absolute certainty ).
I think there's a rather big difference between myths and things we don't know with absolute certainty. If you're open to the possibility that something is true, while knowing there isn't absolute certainty, calling it a myth seems misleading at best.
> If that was true, it would scoop your own semen out better than your competitors.
I haven't done a poll, but I suspect many males stop thrusting after orgasm. Assuming that is true then there isn't really any downside to scooping out your own old semen if you only do it in situations where you're just going to make a fresh deposit 30 seconds later.
> The shape has more to do with arousing females and making it easier for your sperm to reach the eggs than anything else.
I'd be interested in seeing the research supporting this idea. I'm not saying I think it's false, but I've heard the 'sperm-scooping' theory before, but never the 'arousing females' one.
> Monogamy or polygamy is a far better male competitive "design" than the shape of the human penis. The best way to ensure you impregnate a woman is through monogamy or polygamy rather than semen displacement.
By polygamy I think you specifically mean polygyny? Because polyandry sounds like the kind of situation where the sperm scooping would be pretty effective. And just because one mechanism to achieve something exists does not mean that other mechanisms are useful. The best way not to die of poison is simply not to consume poison, but I'm pretty happy the body is able to vomit if you (accidentally) consume poison anyway.
> The best time for a female to procreate is 19 to 26. It's their peak biological fertility years. When they're most fertile and when their children are least likely to suffer from defects. Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.
To quote your own article:
> Team member Dr David Dunson explained: 'Though we noted a decline in fertility in the late 20s, what we found was a decrease in the probability of becoming pregnant per menstrual cycle, not in the probability of eventually achieving a pregnancy.
So it sounds to me that although women in their late twenties are slightly less likely to get pregnant on any given menstrual cycle than women in their early twenties, the effect does not seem to significantly affect their odds of procreating.
> Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.
But since we're linking studies, I would like to refer to some research by the CDC [1] that shows that infant mortality is lowest for mothers between the ages of 30 and 34 (inclusive), and the infant mortality for mothers younger than 20 is the highest of all, significantly surpassing that of women over 40. Based on a report from Australia [2] which includes some information about the risk of mortality for the mother it also looks like having children before the age of 20 is inadvisable at best. Risk of death for the mother is lowest in the 20-24 range, but mysteriously the 25-29 range is at a higher risk of death than women in the 30-34 range.
Regardless, based on the data I don't think it's self-evident that the best time for women to procreate is between the ages of 19 and 26. I'll admit I haven't included numbers about birth defects. Another thing we haven't examined is the ability of the parents to raise and support their children. I suspect a 30 year old women may have the advantage over one 10 years her junior in that particular department. It is short-sighted to consider only biology when discussing the 'best' age to have children.
> A woman waiting til their 30s to have offspring is like an nba player waiting til they are ...
> I think there's a rather big difference between myths and things we don't know with absolute certainty.
Except when we have a preponderance of evidence indicating otherwise. Your claim is akin to someone claiming that the pinky was evolved to pick your ear and your index finger to pick your nose. We have preponderance of evidence indicating otherwise, but it's nearly impossible to prove it with absolute certainty.
If your myth was true, then there is no benefit to the penis shape. The only benefit is have sex last in orgies. That's not how human mating happens. Ever.
> Assuming that is true then there isn't really any downside to scooping out your own old semen if you only do it in situations where you're just going to make a fresh deposit 30 seconds later.
It's a bit of a downside. There certainly isn't any upside.
> By polygamy I think you specifically mean polygyny?
Obviously because polyandry hardly exists.
> Because polyandry sounds like the kind of situation where the sperm scooping would be pretty effective.
Except polyandry is practically nonexistent and in a few fringe communities it exists, the woman isn't engaging in orgies. The dominant form of mating is monogamy with a small bit of polygamy.
> So it sounds to me that although women in their late twenties are slightly less likely to get pregnant on any given menstrual cycle than women in their early twenties, the effect does not seem to significantly affect their odds of procreating.
I didn't say women in their thirties couldn't procreate. I said it was more difficult.
> But since we're linking studies, I would like to refer to some research by the CDC [1] that shows that infant mortality is lowest for mothers between the ages of 30 and 34 (inclusive),
And? Infant mortality is lower for wealthier fathers and mothers too. What does that matter in biological terms?
> Regardless, based on the data I don't think it's self-evident that the best time for women to procreate is between the ages of 19 and 26.
It isn't a matter of debate. It's a matter of science. Biologically that's a woman's prime reproductive years. Societally, things might be different.
> I suspect a 30 year old women may have the advantage over one 10 years her junior in that particular department.
Which has nothing to do with biology. And this is also why historically, women married established men 10 to 20 years older with the means to provide.
But my point was, biologically, women's prime birthing years are 19-26 or around that time range. It's science and biology. You are arguing about society. Which I wasn't.
Is a shrinking population actually bad in the long term? I'm taking on the order of centuries here. While it does introduce the dilemma of reducing spending on the elderly or increasibg taxes to care for the latter aging population, a shrinking population seems like it'd reduce environmental impact and global resource consumption in the long run.
While this may be true, it's not that much of an exaggeration to say that capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. At the very least our current economic system is dependent on continuous growth, including population growth, and when that ends there will be a world of hurt.
> and when that ends there will be a world of hurt.
First world countries' with shrinking populations aren't falling apart. Sure places like Japan, Italy, and Spain have economic troubles associated with a growing retirement population, and shrinking workforce. But they're still pretty good places to live in.
While global growth would decline, I'm dubious of the claim that per-capita wealth would go down. With the same pool of resources spread across fewer people, the opposite seems likely. The labor force would reduce in size, too, so manufactured goods and services may not see their prices go down. But things that are zero-sum like natural resources, real-estate, etc. should drop in cost as fewer people are competing for them.
I take the argument that from an economists view point negative population growth is a very bad thing indeed. But from an individuals point of view actually not. Because the economist only cares about total 'GDP' and is absolutely uninterested in quality of life. Because quality of life can't be monetized.
From an individuals point of view lower population means fix resources are spread less thinly. There is less competition for jobs so you can command a large share of the pie.
Old people often don't use that many resources either at least while they are in good health. Most of the costs are associated with the last year or two of life. SO that expense is already committed to when they born.
The sole problem from population contraction, is replacement tax dollars for existing entitlement-type programs that are built on a ponzi scheme approach to ever larger inflows of tax revenue to support them over time.
Most of the developed world has the same problem on that front. The desperation by these countries when it comes to figuring out how to patch up the finances of those programs will increase by the year.
Robot (productivity) taxes will be one small answer. Another will be ever higher income taxes, also eventually including heavy wealth taxes (that comes last). Most of the developed or semi-developed world is starting to get hit on demographics at the same time. The weaker economic nations are being forced to respond first, as in Russia having to raise their pension ages so high it starts to cut people off at the life expectancy line (plunging Putin's popularity numbers in a rather startling fashion, which tells you how important the pension promises were). France is being forced to confront similar problems, with Macron trying to dress that up as market reforms. The US is temporarily avoiding it thanks to its ability to run absurdly high budget deficits for now.
I agree with the economic implications. Countries that experience an ageing population need to face the fact that they either have to raise taxes considerably, or reduce the care and benefits they extend to the elderly.
I also disagree heavily with the last paragraph. Creating disincentives for automation is the last thing a country needs when its workforce is shrinking. Automating jobs is a way of expanding the amount of labor available without actually needing more people in the work force. If anything, countries that are experiencing a population decline need to invest in more automation to maintain their economic output.
The US doesn't work that way. Taxes and spending have only the loosest correlation. As long as the US Dollar is the worlds reserve currency, it appears there doesn't have to be anything connecting the two.
Huh? Social Security, for example, is definitely a Ponzi scheme in the sense benefits paid out far exceed amounts previously collected, saved, and invested. Numerous government programs rely on this logic, which only works if the population of working age people is expanding.
Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme in the sense that there was fraudulent intent. Nevertheless, a lack of political will to finance current benefits does burden future generations. "Adjusting benefits downwards" won't sit too well with people who worked 30 or 40 years and expect to enjoy a certain standard of living.
Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme?
"Social Security has a funding gap equal to 0.7 percent of GDP over the next 75 years. We could wipe that gap out by lifting the payroll tax cap (right now, payroll taxes only apply to the first $107,000 of income) or by adjusting benefits downwards."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/is-soci...
The other difference is that a true Ponzi scheme is fundamentally unsustainable, whereas social security is not. It may need adjustments, it’s not like you have exponentially growing divergence.
> Total expenditures in 2014 were $859 billion. Total income was $884 billion, which consisted of $786 billion in non-interest income and $98 billion in interest earnings. Asset reserves held in special issue U.S. Treasury securities grew from $2,764 billion at the beginning of the year to $2,789 billion at the end of the year.
You’re looking at inflows and outflows, which in the early stages of a ponzi scheme can also be similar. The way that social security in the US is a ponzi scheme is that the benefits paid out are not interest or earnings on the amounts paid in by the people receiving the benefits. They are paid for by new people paying in to the system. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
Which the generally accepted way of analyzing insurance programs is by looking at the inflow and outflows plus interest on reserves.
> which in the early stages of a ponzi scheme can also be similar
The Social Security Act passed in 1935.
> The way that social security in the US is a ponzi scheme is that the benefits paid out are not interest or earnings on the amounts paid in by the people receiving the benefits. They are paid for by new people paying in to the system. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
No that is the exact definition of an insurance program. Insurance programs are not investments they are about spreading risk. Which the Social Security Program in the US does a perfectly fine job of.
No, insurance is categorically different. It protects you against a loss of some kind, and only provides that protection while you are paying for it. As such, only a difference between the predicted and actual risk covered by the insurance policy can cause an insurance program to become insolvent. A change in the number of people buying insurance from year to year will have no effect on the solvency of the insurance program, as long as the actuaries predict the risk covered by the insurance correctly.
Social security is a pension. It guarantees a future stream of income in return for payments now. It is subject to the same actuarial risk as insurance (so, predicted payout period ends up being longer than expected, or returns on payments are lower than expected), but it is subject to an additional risk if it is unfunded (which Social Security is). That risk being that inflows become insufficient in the future to cover the outflows promised 40 years prior.
There is a difference between term life insurance, which you’re referring to, and universal life insurance. Social Security is indeed similar to universal life insurance.
Thank you for providing an actual example of insurance that works this way. I actually looked at the insurance article on wikipedia and it was describing what I was describing (unless I missed something about universal life insurance). And I actually had auto, property, and health insurance in mind more than life insurance.
That being said, the important distinction still stands: Social Security is unfunded, which makes it subject to a kind of risk that funded insurance programs are not exposed to.
You’re still not addressing the main reason that comparing social security to a Ponzi scheme makes sense: being unfunded means that people will get royally fucked if the number of people paying in starts shrinking.
For one thing Social security’s structure is transparent, so no it’s not a Ponzi scheme at all in that a Ponzi scheme is by definition a subset of fraud and requires investors to be unaware of the fact the money coming to them is from new investors and not profits from investing in a product or portfolio of companies.
For another, it’s still not a Ponzi scheme. It makes no promises for returns, and simply requires working age people to set aside money for retired people. If the ratio changes, there is no requirement for the retired people to be paid the same money they were a year ago.
It’s not a Ponzi scheme in any fashion. It’s pretty much a direct, transparent transfer of wealth from the young to the elderly.
Not really; a ponzi scheme has a very specific definition. A form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.
Social Security isn't a ponzi scheme for a number of reasons, first it's not a security. Second there is no nonexistent enterprise. Instead it's structure is entirely that of an government mandated insurance program.
It's not just entitlement programs, retirement in general is a Ponzi scheme.
The only way that anyone can retire is to rely on the productivity of people who are still working. Saving up money for retirement does not avoid this. Your saved up money just lets you buy someone else's future productivity, you can't actually live on it.
Exactly! Imagine a future in which 100% of the population is in retirement. Who is going to run the farms that produce the food? The only way to get food is by stockpiling it during your working age and somehow preserving it for decades until you have reached your retirement age.
This clearly isn't viable so instead we have kids that take care of us when we become old.
> While it does introduce the dilemma of reducing spending on the elderly
We live in a Democracy, and the elderly have the most free time and seem to be the biggest population right now (Baby Boomers). As such, the elderly are always going to be the most powerful voting block (doubly so now that Boomers, the biggest generation by population, is hitting retirement age).
Good luck "reducing spending on the elderly" in the coming years. Its politically infeasible on population dynamics alone.
When the "lack of children" issue starts to hit 40 years from now, Millennial are going to be retiring. Millennials are the 2nd largest population after the Boomers. So the same issue will hit us again in the long term.
The elderly may be a powerful voting block, but the percentage of people over 65 is still relatively low (~15% in the US). Even in countries with ageing populations, it's nowhere near the majority (Japan is 27%).
If taxes to pay for the elderly do become very onerous, 85-75% of the population is going to be against them politically. There are relatively fair measures to pay for their healthcare, like wealth taxes for people beyond retirement age and increasing estate taxes. Or a more politically feasible measure is to make social security means-tested.
By far the best solution would be to mandate people to pay into their own retirement funds - Singapore does this. But of course, that would have had to be put in place decades ago.
Financing isn't the real the problem here. If 30% of the population works and 50% are retired then there are simply not enough workers to produce all the things you have saved up money for which will increase prices and inflate away your money. You can't "save" food and lots of other products the same way you can save money. It will spoil. This is why a home is actually a pretty good investment for retirement. If you buy it in your 40s then you will still have it in your 80s.
More output while at the same time reducing workers means more productivity is required and to increase the productivity per worker we need far more automation. Things like truck/taxi automation might cause a temporary mass unemployment problem for unskilled workers but at the same time also solve the worker shortage that will happen when the population starts aging massively.
Automation yes, productivity is not necessarily improving, wages (in purchasing power) are mostly stagnant. There has been a lot of outsourcing going on in the last 15 years too, including moving a lot of factories to China, India. That can give a false premise that there has been a lot of automation going on, but in reality, globally there was little improvement.
No, outsourcing is included in the estimate. Outsourcing occurs when a process hasn't scaled up enough to be worth automating i.e. cheaper to hire overseas hands to do the process. When factories come back to America for instance, its because the process got large enough to warrant automation, which can be expensive. It bring nearly no jobs 'back'.
And productivity is funny. When folks move down the economic spectrum (from technical to office to labor etc) its called 'full employment' but almost by definition productivity of point-of-sale or labor is very low. Definitely there's no improvement for the individual.
I dont really buy the argument that the elderly vote more solely because of the extra free time, or that the younger don't vote because of the lack of thereof. I suspect it's more to do with the different levels of understanding of the electorial process.
>Is a shrinking population actually bad in the long term?
Technically speaking, for all known biological species, the size of population is the primary indicator of health and well-being. Shrinking population indicates either inability to adapt, or some kind of malaise.
A new equilibrium with a smaller population, after the problem of an old population had passed, would still imply less room for specialization, and therefore less per capita productivity, and ultimately lower quality of life.
Instead of more natural resources available per person, a less productive economy eventually provides for fewer resources in terms of goods, services and capital like installed infrastructure per person that are necessary to thrive.
That's a moot point for as long as we still have 3.5 billion people engaged in subsistence level farming. All of them need to be brought into the modern economy, and taught a specialty. In other words, if 50% of the human race is still wasting its time with farming practices that have barely changed since the Neolithic, then there are still a lot of ways to grow the economy, even if the population is falling.
According to the article you link to : (biologically the best age to have a baby is 19 because the...) "oocytes are fresh and the body’s reproductive and other systems are at a youthful peak"
I stopped reading after that. There's no such thing as 'fresh' oocytes.
The author is just making stuff for his purpose as he goes along.
The ideal age for having kids lies somewhere in the range of late 20's to early 30's. Here both biological and sociological advantages convene.
Actually, and I didn't read the article, but responding to your last sentence... Apparently the primary oocytes in a female human body are all created before she is born, and available evidence says it's likely no more are produced after that:
> Mitochondria in oocyte aging: current understanding
> The oocyte is the largest cell found in multicellular organisms. Mitochondria, as the energy factories for cells, are found in high numbers in oocytes, as they provide the energy for oocyte maturation, fertilization, and embryo formation via oxidative phosphorylation. Failure of assisted reproduction is mainly attributed to oocyte aging and increased aneuploidy.
>So there is an unsolvable problem here, you have to compromise one way or the other.
This seems addressable by biotechnology, artificial wombs and so on. At a certain level of technological sophistication, all problems become engineering problems.
35-39 year olds have slightly higher rates of complications, but the rates are still lower than in teenage mothers. This rank ordering persists even after adjusting for demographics, type of birth, and comorbidities (table 5).
Is it a truly a bad thing for teenagers to have children and then remain within their extended families and communities for support? Not forever, of course, but for a handful of years. I'd say that the claim 'teen pregnancy is bad (or not good)' requires a lot of evidence to back it up, rather than taken as a given.
This issue probably has very little to do with sperm quality or the availability of abortion, but with our culture in general. The assumption that teen pregnancy = bad, the stigma around it, etc. In your comment, the mentality that life starts later. Like, life starts at birth.
I'd imagine that same mentality is responsible for the loneliness epidemic written about in the same places. This idea that life is some achievement to be gained after doing things like going to college. Like, you can't live your life until you've completed some rites of passage, except they get increasingly more detached from reality every decade. And as we read about in the WaPo and other sources, has the college rite of passage really served the amount of people who have gone through it? Student loan debt, bad job prospects, starting life later...
Another interesting fact, younger couples have healthier children. Not like, 13 young, but late teens early 20s young. As couples age, the risk of genetic faults and things like autism rise.
tldr, it's not sperm count or abortion. Our rites of passage into adulthood suck.
There is abundant evidence that teen pregnancy has a severe negative impact on the economic prospects of young women. Many of these women will drop out of high school and almost none will complete college degrees.
And yet, we’re having a discussion about a fertility crisis. A discussion that is happening in parallel with a discussion about whether or not the benefits of a college education are worth the costs, for either gender. And a political climate where a demagogue rose to power on a promise to return to a time when these weren’t discussions. A general lack of respect for tradesmen and blue collar workers - despite the many benefits they provide to the economy. An epidemic of loneliness, the destruction of communities all across the country. For a great number of people in the US, there’s a longing for a return to traditional values. The answer is somewhere in between both extremes. Not every man or woman need to start life later. Economic outcomes would be a lot better for a lot of people (and the US in aggregate) if that wasn’t the narrative being sold to them.
Of course, for a lot of other people, college, and starting life later is absolutely the right answer, economically, socially, etc. I’m not saying that everyone needs to strive for the traditional nuclear family and forego college, I’m saying that there’s an incredible lack of respect for the people that do, much to everyone’s detriment. Does a woman who enjoys the idea of being a mother and a homemaker really need to go to college? Is it ok for women to want to be president, or to bake cookies for their family. It seems like we’ve really told them ‘no, if your goal is to bake cookies and make a warm home, then you’re pretty much a garbage proletarian.’
Disclaimer, I’m a man, talking about what women can or can’t do, so take it with a grain of salt, hopefully a woman can provide a perspective based on experience.
Now of course the question is what exactly are traditional values and who would loose if we returned to them. And who would win.
Because for all the nostalgia, teenage girls who got pregnant and their children were heavily stigmatised and paid the price. People who married as teenagers divorced more often. When divorce was not available due to laws, the nad marriage remained bad including domestic violence and such.
It is not just that she won't get education even if she had brain for it. She will have hard time getting and keeping job. She will be completely dependent of help of other people and such situation royally sux. Which does not mean she won't be lonely, because when you depend on people they are less likely to treat you like an equality friend.
Lack of respect toward blue colar translates into much less respect for both pregnant teenager and homemaker. The reality is, the warm homemaker happily making cookies is largely rose colored fiction. It kind of ignores reality of it all, for both genders. Men prefered being with male friends over warm home anyway and women were butt of joke anyway.
Speaking about loneliness, being stay at home mom can be loneliest experience ever. Lonely guys who have jobs and online games are not nearly as lonely as homemaker situation.
Edited to add: you know the stereotype of women being on the phone so much and being extremely talkative? Both are because homemaker is completely alone whole day doing everything alone except when she is on the phone and thus talks more in social situation or when husband comes home.
Agreed, traditional values are often seen through rose-colored glasses. We trade one set of problems for another. Domestic violence, unhappiness, worse economic outcomes absolutely necessitated women’s empowerment. I agree with all of your points, but wonder if we threw out the baby with the bath water in some ways. Like, in the past, traditionally defined gender norms left little choice for people who wanted something else for the lives. And now, maybe our newly constructed gender norms are restricting the choice for people who might want something else - something more ‘traditional’.
My whole point is that people, men and women, shouldn’t be stigmatized for following traditional gender norms any more than they should be stigmatized for creating new ones, and I feel like that may not be the case today.
All of this hinges on my initial point that lowered rates of fertility are caused more by culural reasons than lowered sperm count or the availability of abortion. I’ve got no real evidence to back that up, maybe it’s just plastic in our water. Doesn’t seem like any of the researchers in the article know either.
My points were not about what who wants, but what happens after they get it. A guy may want traditional marriage, and still may grow resentful when it leaves him stuck in job he hates while wife does less and have additional demands on him at home. The wife at home won't really appreciate his issues, because she has zero experience with any of that.
The traditional roles split worked as long as there was a lot of real home work and not much choice. Then it worked as status symbol for a while, but it was status wifes who eventually rebelled.
Unmarried teenage pregnancy is not what people generally means when they talk about traditional role of gender. Unmarried pregnant teenager is better off now compared to whatever you means by traditional time.
Large reason for lowered teenage pregnancy rates is sexual education - kids know about contraception and know to use it. Conversely sexual discussion being taboo in the past meant more teenagers pregnant.
Having children at all is a severe negative impact on the economic prospects of women of any age. Once you have children you're out of the career grind for a few months and you get back into the game with a lower participation rate (fewer hours, for example).
The impact on education is easily avoidable by doing exactly what the parent commenter suggested: having children in extended families so the mother isn't the sole or primary caregiver for the new child. This frees the mother up to finish school, continue her career, etc.
Economic prospects aren't everything. Life is more than that, and many people place a high value on family.
Lots of the trouble with "teen pregnancy" is really not about age. It's about not having a stable marriage with a decent breadwinner. Pregnancy in the mid-late teen years is biologically ideal.
Dropping out of college or even high school isn't so bad. It makes perfect sense if you value children and think that family comes first. You have to start early if you want to have a big healthy family.
I’ll wager the vast majority of teenage pregnancies don’t come from a stable marriage with a decent breadwinner. This reads to me as practically naive to make a worldly claim.
And if that family does not work out the way old school romance books write about, then you are f-ed along with children. The father is f-ed too for that matter. Parental stress is game change for children who are more likely to become target of parental frustration. The divorce rates for young marriages are higher then those for people who marry older.
High school drop outs with or without children do very badly in this economy. But when you have children while relying on unstable minimum wage income from irregular hours, then it is all triple harder.
Lastly, teenage years are not biologically ideal. Teenagers have more pregnancy complications, including expensive ones and dangerous ones. As in, having child during your twenties is healthier for you and child. Both under 18 and over 35 are associated with more risks.
The situation is normally happily-ever-after for people who choose to make it so. FWIW, I know a pair of couples who started dating in middle school and married as soon as legally possible, and they are happy decades later. It helps to have a strong sense of duty and responsibility in your culture.
Not that the current economy is bad, because it isn't and many high school dropouts are getting jobs now, but I'm not seeing how that relates to the economic well-being of a full-time mother. The father could be a decade older, settled into a career as a petroleum engineer or stock trader.
It's a given that a study of pregnancy age will fail to compensate for factors unrelated to age. The big and obvious one: on average, there is something different about the personality of a person who gets pregnant at that age. (and thus unhealthful choices, etc.) I do not accept any claims to have properly accounted for non-age factors. The ideal age is going to depend on your DNA (when do you reach full size where it counts?) but FWIW that is likely near age 16 for many people.
Children are public goods with massive positive externalities. I think it would be a shame if the population declined.
My favourite policy to increase birth rates is to give parents a percentage of their children's income tax revenue. Standard econ says we just need to internalize some of these positive externalities. This has the advantage of scaling with the wealth of the parents, as economic productivity has a significant heritable component.
Though this policy triggers an intense moral disgust response in everyone I've proposed it to, so likely not possible unless things get very desperate. But I think it has a chance of working, which is more than I can say of most natalist policies I have seen.
That's certainly an interesting proposal. I voluntarily do this with my parents by helping them out with their living expenses. I imagine this would be difficult to implement with people who have strained relationships with their parents/ step-parents.
I'm not sure if it would be stable or not. After a couple generations I sort of feel it would be, as even if you hate your parents if you have kids you would still benefit from the policy. In fact, if economic growth continues you would benefit more than your parents did. And most people do love their parents.
I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing, given that more and more people are working non-physical jobs and can continue to do so as they get older. Personally, I have no problem with anyone that worked physical labor their whole life retiring earlier with benefits while I continue to work. I like my work, and it's been a pretty easy life, comparatively.
I would have had more children if childcare was more heavily subsidized. Make it a tax deduction up to a fraction of the amount you pay in taxes to keep it from incentivizing those without financial means to have children.
I found this article written oddly, as if it were a phenomena that is only affecting the US. Fertility rates have been collapsing world-wide, ever since the 90s if not longer. Yet this article doesn't mention that Europe has had below replacement rates since the 90s, and the rest of the world is having significantly less children per woman than it did back then too.
For each of the specific things it suggests it might be, it would have to be something that is affecting the whole world, maybe at different rates around the world but the whole world nonetheless.
Hans Rosling in one of his videos said we see the birth rate drop when women are educated and have economic opportunities outside the house.
I found one of the comments very thought provoking: "The declining total fertility rates are children not born in the moment, but the hope is that they are delayed, not forgone".
I hadn't considered it before, but a gradual change in what age people choose to have children would show up as a temporary drop in fertility (for an easy example, think about everyone delaying their next child for five years). A quick google search show's a strong correlation between steeply increasing age of first child and low apparent birth rates. In particular, US fertility rates were even lower in the 1970's, another time when age of first child was increasing rapidly.
Back of the napkin math shows that we'd see (very roughly) 80% of true fertility if not adjusted for, making the true fertility rate slightly above replacement levels (about 2.2)
Yeah, but women can’t delay forever and previous generations have already pushed age of first child back way past where it once was.
Anecdotally, I look at my Facebook and there are a lot of women on there who will really have to kick things into high gear ASAP to hit two children (since they’re all in their mid 30s and childless).
The idea that you can have a kid in college in your mid 30s is pretty fascinating. Maybe sociologically it is not easy or ideal to have kids very young but being relatively young while your kids are grown is better than being old.
Daycare is 300 dollars a week, everybody's got a massive mortgage payment, not to mention the college loans.. why would you expect a lot of babies being born? Of course the fertility rate is falling. Society puts all its greatest costs squarely on young people of child rearing age. I mean, duh.
$160 a week?! ROFL. Try $450/wk for full time day care. This is in a non-coastal, non-major city for standard licensed day care, not Montessori or high end. Standard rate in the town I live in, could maybe save $50/month if I doubled my commute. Waitlist for daycare? 8months+. We enrolled shortly after we conceived.
I feel for you! Good luck! We do have it easy compared with many folks. We do have the same kind of waitlist though, in fact it's more than a year in many places. I always wonder, now if it takes 9 months to make a baby, and the waitlist is a year, then someone out there has way better planning skills than I'll ever have.
Edit: just checked.. ha! We're paying 300 not 160.
That's like 20k a year. So you'd need something like a 30k salary (before tax) just to break even. How much income would you be foregoing if one parent just stayed at home?
I've known people who chose to work even though most of their income was going to daycare, commuting costs, etc. The argument was that in 3-5 years when the kids are in school they'd be another rank or 2 up the ladder and their net earnings over that decade would be higher overall. If they took the time off then they'd probably be returning to work a rank or two below where they left.
It's also insurance that you'll be able to support yourself if something happens to your partner or you split up.
Ya I think thats a calculation many families have to make. I strongly agree with the other comment in terms of opportunity cost years down the road. I really see this with a lot of our friends. The wife often quits her job and stays home because our society really makes it hard to work as the mom of an infant and biologically that is typically easier (don’t even get me started on the cost of formula vs breastmilk). But they do miss out on those critical career years. Luckily we are both software engineers at well paying jobs and so the daycare isn’t as much as an issue for us. But it is hard to see others have to make these really hard decisions, so I guess I am outraged on their behalf. It is especially brutal because of most of the women leaving their careers haven’t finished paying off student loans. In this era of gender equality we have constructed a financial system where it doesn’t make fiscal sense for many women to get a college degree if they want kids. Anecdotally, teachers can’t afford to work and have a kid and nurses just barely can. These are by no means bad careers and its really just a very tough situation, not all of of us can be software engineers making Facebook/Twitter apps.
As contraceptives becomes well understood and taught kids are opting to have a better quality of life and not reproduce. They put it off so they can build a career.
When they build a career they get used to a certain quality of life. And so by mid thirties they don't want to have 3 kids. Of course they delay having kids till they are financially stable enough to have kids and not worry about money and hardship. Because who wants to voluntarily go through extreme hardship.
And so as cost goes up and pay goes down with available contraceptives people are just not having kids until they have the financial stability which many might not have.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadI'm late 20's and I want a child, but I just can't see myself ever being able to afford one. It's certainly a luxury to responsibly have a child.
What would happen if 2 out of 3 of these issues were solved, or at least greatly reduced? In Europe they have much more generous maternal/paternal benefits, as well as universal healthcare. Yet despite this, their birthrates are even lower than ours.
Europe generally has the paid parental leave and universal healthcare. Some parts even have the free college tuition. Where are the kids?
People who focus on families don't need paid parental leave. There is a full-time parent permanently at home. Not that everybody needs to go to college, but that is often cheap if you start with a community college AA degree and then transfer to a state school. Most people don't have much of a healthcare problem.
And, you know, make your kids get a fucking job and pay for their own education.
One of them at least, children are also fairly disruptive and a huge responsibility if you assume you're actually becoming responsible for the education and upbringing of a human being.
Generally speaking mainland europe has low hospital bills, paid parental leave, subsidised daycare and education, but the fertility rates are still extremely low, and children are still horrendously expensive.
Children are not unaffordable. They require sacrifice. In my culture (within the U.S.) it is common to have 4+ children, often in single-income, middle-class homes. Raising 4-6 children on an income of $60K doesn't attract any attention at all.
To read posts like the gp that claim they can't afford a single child seems ridiculous from my perspective. I grant that my perspective is ignorant of their specific circumstances. But my wife and I welcomed our first two children while we were starving college students making < $20K/year.
I don't own a Tesla. My children have worked to pay for their college debt free (as did I). I don't have a home in the Hamptons. I don't live in California. I've never been to Europe. My kids haven't gone to Stanford.
But I have the most amazing children in the world. I wouldn't trade any of them for a Tesla. Or a MBP. Or equity in whatever startup you are slaving away at.
I am glad there is Tesla in the world, and people with MBPs. I don't think my choices are necessarily better than your choices. I don't regret my choices, and I flatly reject most claims by people that they don't have a choice.
They played youth soccer, and high school sports. They have learned foreign languages. They've worked as janitors and at supermarkets and as research assistants.
I'm not sure what "necessity" they have not enjoyed.
Raising children in metropolitan areas includes raising children in Memphis and Dallas and Boise. It doesn't have to mean San Francisco. And for that matter, who says you have to raise children in a metropolitan area? That is not a necessity.
As I wrote before, it doesn't bother me if you choose not to have children, or if you choose to live in San Francisco, or if you choose to raise children in San Francisco. It just bothers me to see the claim that it is impossible to provide the necessities to children today.
Children are expensive. No doubt. That is true in NYC or the Himalayas. I believe that to raise a child properly will require sacrifices. That is true for a parent who makes $16K or $16MM.
But I reject the claim for the vast majority of people that raising children properly is out of financial reach. When I read that claim from 20-somethings making twice my current salary, I shake my head. I translate that claim to, "I am not willing to give up my current lifestyle to have children." That is a much different statement.
I agree it’s a lot easier to raise kids when you started 20+ years ago when stuff was cheaper and you make them pay their own way through college.
You only need private schooling if you are in a city and don't have a stay-at-home parent. Suburban schools are usually OK. You can homeschool.
In most states, you don't need a college tuition fund. For example, a student in my state can get an AA degree for about $5000, and can then upgrade it to a BS degree for an additional $15000. If you birth a kid every 2 years, you'll end up with 2 kids in college at once and the cost will be $10000 per year. That is 1/6 of a typical family income, or about 1/12 of a typical STEM job.
I had my first children when I made less than 1/3 of what I make now and new college grads are making 4/5 of what I make now. And I'm still raising children. You can argue about inflation or whatever you want. I don't buy it.
Just admit that you are not willing to give up anything to accommodate children.
I'm not saying that you should give up anything. Those are your choices. But you do have a choice.
I have neighbors who make $40K and raise children--yes, more than one. Right now. Today. In the U.S. No welfare.
It is within the reach of most everyone on HN to become a middle school math teacher in Kansas and raise a family. Very few make that choice. But they do have the choice.
This is literally ignoring factual evidence. Inflation has happened, there's no denying it. Wages have stagnated since the early 70's with a good portion of the country making less than they did in the 70's, or are making exactly what they made in the 70's. Chances are your "less than 1/3 of what I make now" was probably what you make now, or was at least worth much more than that same salary would be today. The cost of almost everything that's necessary & essential has risen by insane amounts since your children have been born.
Try an inflation calculator: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
I think as a poster said below, your views have probably not been updated for a very long time. The cost of everything essential has gone up since you had your children.
You have chosen to take a job outside of Seattle. Seattle is crazy expensive right now. A $50K job 140 miles away in Yakima might be a better value. Or look 300 miles away in Pullman or Spokane.
Eight hour days, 15 minute commutes, ...
Gonzaga is looking for IT Techs. WSU is hiring into IT like mad right now. May be a pay cut for you. May drop your cost of living 50%. Definitely gives you more time to responsibly care for a child if that is your priority.
BECU is looking for a Security Tech Admin. Banner Furnace and Fuel needs an IT Specialist. Not as prestigious or glamorous as your current job? Well, if that's your priority...
But you have a choice.
From my hometown (edit: just to be clear, this is a low-CoL city and my friends mostly 24-27 years old), no one that I know owns a tesla or similar luxury object. A larger percentage of my friends from back home are married compared to my friends from university, but still almost none of them have started families. I can't speak for them all, but the impression I get is that the people who are on track for something that could be considered a career (teaching, for example) are focusing on their careers. Those who didn't end up with a career but did go to college are more or less drowning in college debt. Those who didn't go to college are trying to work their way up to a higher education through part-time community college and what not.
In other words, I agree with your central thesis that this is by choice that the birthrate is declining. In particular, the fact that women now have the choice to start careers and earn money instead of going to college for an "MRS" degree and then starting a family (I know exactly one person in my high school class who wanted to do this, and she does indeed have two beautiful children today). But difficulty getting debt-free for college graduates, and difficulty owning property, are certainly contributing factors, because it provides external pressure on couples that they need to spend more energy+effort on their career. As I understand, raising children requires a considerable amount of energy+effort, so the conflict there should be quite obvious.
Without fail, the people I see having kids are all people who grew up with an economic head start, and further distanced themselves with extremely high paying jobs (private equity, hedge fund, commercial real estate, VC, big tech).
I don’t know anyone with kids where the husband is not killing it financially, and they all still complain about having limited money.
This is true in the Bay Area, where I live now, and back in Texas (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio), where I’m from.
We now have an entire generation that has been saddled with crippling debt and has been given little to nothing in the way of tools to escape. Many of them saw something similar happen to their own parents, watching them struggle to keep the boat floating as they grew up. Is it really so strange that this group would approach having children with great caution and only commit once they acquire some level of assurance of reliable and reasonably strain-free access to resources? This is especially true for those who’ve “made it” to some extent and have managed to procure freedom from debt — they’re going to do everything in their power to avoid winding up in those circumstances a second time.
I don’t know, to me the attitude reads as more calculated and responsible than anything else.
Lower income people often trend towards the former, higher income people towards the latter. Of course there are exceptions - some lower income people dedicate great resources towards their kids, some wealthier families don't.
The opportunity cost as well. Having and raising a child means there are things you can't do because you have to raise/take care of the child.
> If someone lives in a place where housing is cheap and don't expect anything beyond public primary and secondary school then another kid only really costs some extra groceries and clothes.
At the end of the day, even for people with low COL raising a child to adulthood is still on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Planning might also be a factor there, it's likely more present higher up the income ladder, meaning the wealthier segments see the kind of costs associated middle/long term and go "maybe not yet".
Raising a kid to the expectations of an upper or even upper-middle class family costs orders of magnitude more than raising a kid to the expectations of a poor family. But said upper middle class family probably doesn't make a proportionally larger amount. I'd consider someone "poor" if they make 20-25k a year and "wealthy" if they make 200-250k+. But the costs of raising a child to the expectations of the latter is probably more than 10 times greater. Probably 20-30 times greater. Thus why kids are more proportionally expensive for higher income class people.
The best predictor for someone’s economic security in life is the zip code they grow up in.
Of course there are people who don't have much money and still do their best to raise their kids as best they can. But the reality is that things like education and upbringing do have a significant impact, and often getting the best out of those things takes a significant mount of money.
Hence, why Westerners are waiting to have kids and dedicating more resources towards them. Furthermore things integral to raising children like education have actually increased in cost over the past several decades.
I'm like uh.... what about cost of living outpacing salaries? Cost of medical care? Education debt?
All the young people I know aren't avoiding pregnancy because of their social media engagement, they are however wondering out loud in conversations with me if they can afford children.
"Economist Lyman Stone has blamed the United States’ less-than-generous parental leave and pay policies. Human Life International, a missionary group, blames “pro-abortion population control groups like Planned Parenthood.” Tucker Carlson claims it has to do with immigration, arguing that immigrants drive wages down, which hurts the attractiveness of men as potential spouses — “thus reducing fertility.”"
Folks should just have children. They'll discover that they will make it work, just like their parents made it work, and so on back down the line.
Or not, I suppose, if they have some philosophical reason not to have kids. But if they want to have them, they should have them, and adjust their lives accordingly.
This... doesn't sound like bad news to me?
It seems like the #1 "issue" is that teenagers have stopped having kids. That's a good thing, is it not?
Young 20-year-olds not having kids could be easily explained with the higher amount of people going to college, and starting life later.
If the 25+ age group has stopped having kids, that'd be a bad thing for sure. I guess its important to keep the overall fertility rate in mind for future economic reasons, but a severe decrease in teenage pregnancy seems like a good thing overall... even if it may cause an economic issue in the future.
That's myth ( or we don't know for absolute certainty ). If that was true, it would scoop your own semen out better than your competitors. The shape has more to do with arousing females and making it easier for your sperm to reach the eggs than anything else.
> but I rarely hear arguments that monogamy is unnatural and 'going to cause problems of its own'.
Monogamy or polygamy is a far better male competitive "design" than the shape of the human penis. The best way to ensure you impregnate a woman is through monogamy or polygamy rather than semen displacement. Most male sex competition is geared towards preventing other males to mate with a female rather than scooping it out after your competitor mates with a female.
> Perhaps you could give some examples of the problems you foresee, while keeping in mind than avoiding teen pregnancy is not the same as delaying having children until the age of 45?
The best time for a female to procreate is 19 to 26. It's their peak biological fertility years. When they're most fertile and when their children are least likely to suffer from defects. Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-112136/The-female...
A woman waiting til their 30s to have offspring is like an nba player waiting til they are 40 to join the NBA.
I think there's a rather big difference between myths and things we don't know with absolute certainty. If you're open to the possibility that something is true, while knowing there isn't absolute certainty, calling it a myth seems misleading at best.
> If that was true, it would scoop your own semen out better than your competitors.
I haven't done a poll, but I suspect many males stop thrusting after orgasm. Assuming that is true then there isn't really any downside to scooping out your own old semen if you only do it in situations where you're just going to make a fresh deposit 30 seconds later.
> The shape has more to do with arousing females and making it easier for your sperm to reach the eggs than anything else.
I'd be interested in seeing the research supporting this idea. I'm not saying I think it's false, but I've heard the 'sperm-scooping' theory before, but never the 'arousing females' one.
> Monogamy or polygamy is a far better male competitive "design" than the shape of the human penis. The best way to ensure you impregnate a woman is through monogamy or polygamy rather than semen displacement.
By polygamy I think you specifically mean polygyny? Because polyandry sounds like the kind of situation where the sperm scooping would be pretty effective. And just because one mechanism to achieve something exists does not mean that other mechanisms are useful. The best way not to die of poison is simply not to consume poison, but I'm pretty happy the body is able to vomit if you (accidentally) consume poison anyway.
> The best time for a female to procreate is 19 to 26. It's their peak biological fertility years. When they're most fertile and when their children are least likely to suffer from defects. Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.
To quote your own article:
> Team member Dr David Dunson explained: 'Though we noted a decline in fertility in the late 20s, what we found was a decrease in the probability of becoming pregnant per menstrual cycle, not in the probability of eventually achieving a pregnancy.
So it sounds to me that although women in their late twenties are slightly less likely to get pregnant on any given menstrual cycle than women in their early twenties, the effect does not seem to significantly affect their odds of procreating.
> Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.
But since we're linking studies, I would like to refer to some research by the CDC [1] that shows that infant mortality is lowest for mothers between the ages of 30 and 34 (inclusive), and the infant mortality for mothers younger than 20 is the highest of all, significantly surpassing that of women over 40. Based on a report from Australia [2] which includes some information about the risk of mortality for the mother it also looks like having children before the age of 20 is inadvisable at best. Risk of death for the mother is lowest in the 20-24 range, but mysteriously the 25-29 range is at a higher risk of death than women in the 30-34 range.
Regardless, based on the data I don't think it's self-evident that the best time for women to procreate is between the ages of 19 and 26. I'll admit I haven't included numbers about birth defects. Another thing we haven't examined is the ability of the parents to raise and support their children. I suspect a 30 year old women may have the advantage over one 10 years her junior in that particular department. It is short-sighted to consider only biology when discussing the 'best' age to have children.
> A woman waiting til their 30s to have offspring is like an nba player waiting til they are ...
Except when we have a preponderance of evidence indicating otherwise. Your claim is akin to someone claiming that the pinky was evolved to pick your ear and your index finger to pick your nose. We have preponderance of evidence indicating otherwise, but it's nearly impossible to prove it with absolute certainty.
If your myth was true, then there is no benefit to the penis shape. The only benefit is have sex last in orgies. That's not how human mating happens. Ever.
> Assuming that is true then there isn't really any downside to scooping out your own old semen if you only do it in situations where you're just going to make a fresh deposit 30 seconds later.
It's a bit of a downside. There certainly isn't any upside.
> By polygamy I think you specifically mean polygyny?
Obviously because polyandry hardly exists.
> Because polyandry sounds like the kind of situation where the sperm scooping would be pretty effective.
Except polyandry is practically nonexistent and in a few fringe communities it exists, the woman isn't engaging in orgies. The dominant form of mating is monogamy with a small bit of polygamy.
> So it sounds to me that although women in their late twenties are slightly less likely to get pregnant on any given menstrual cycle than women in their early twenties, the effect does not seem to significantly affect their odds of procreating.
I didn't say women in their thirties couldn't procreate. I said it was more difficult.
> But since we're linking studies, I would like to refer to some research by the CDC [1] that shows that infant mortality is lowest for mothers between the ages of 30 and 34 (inclusive),
And? Infant mortality is lower for wealthier fathers and mothers too. What does that matter in biological terms?
> Regardless, based on the data I don't think it's self-evident that the best time for women to procreate is between the ages of 19 and 26.
It isn't a matter of debate. It's a matter of science. Biologically that's a woman's prime reproductive years. Societally, things might be different.
> I suspect a 30 year old women may have the advantage over one 10 years her junior in that particular department.
Which has nothing to do with biology. And this is also why historically, women married established men 10 to 20 years older with the means to provide.
But my point was, biologically, women's prime birthing years are 19-26 or around that time range. It's science and biology. You are arguing about society. Which I wasn't.
First world countries' with shrinking populations aren't falling apart. Sure places like Japan, Italy, and Spain have economic troubles associated with a growing retirement population, and shrinking workforce. But they're still pretty good places to live in.
While global growth would decline, I'm dubious of the claim that per-capita wealth would go down. With the same pool of resources spread across fewer people, the opposite seems likely. The labor force would reduce in size, too, so manufactured goods and services may not see their prices go down. But things that are zero-sum like natural resources, real-estate, etc. should drop in cost as fewer people are competing for them.
From an individuals point of view lower population means fix resources are spread less thinly. There is less competition for jobs so you can command a large share of the pie.
Most of the developed world has the same problem on that front. The desperation by these countries when it comes to figuring out how to patch up the finances of those programs will increase by the year.
Robot (productivity) taxes will be one small answer. Another will be ever higher income taxes, also eventually including heavy wealth taxes (that comes last). Most of the developed or semi-developed world is starting to get hit on demographics at the same time. The weaker economic nations are being forced to respond first, as in Russia having to raise their pension ages so high it starts to cut people off at the life expectancy line (plunging Putin's popularity numbers in a rather startling fashion, which tells you how important the pension promises were). France is being forced to confront similar problems, with Macron trying to dress that up as market reforms. The US is temporarily avoiding it thanks to its ability to run absurdly high budget deficits for now.
I also disagree heavily with the last paragraph. Creating disincentives for automation is the last thing a country needs when its workforce is shrinking. Automating jobs is a way of expanding the amount of labor available without actually needing more people in the work force. If anything, countries that are experiencing a population decline need to invest in more automation to maintain their economic output.
Someday, though...
Stop repeating propaganda please. Entitlement programs are just simple insurance programs. There is nothing ponzi about them.
Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme in the sense that there was fraudulent intent. Nevertheless, a lack of political will to finance current benefits does burden future generations. "Adjusting benefits downwards" won't sit too well with people who worked 30 or 40 years and expect to enjoy a certain standard of living.
Why Was Social Security Designed Like A Ponzi Scheme? https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2015/08/13/why-was-...
Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? "Social Security has a funding gap equal to 0.7 percent of GDP over the next 75 years. We could wipe that gap out by lifting the payroll tax cap (right now, payroll taxes only apply to the first $107,000 of income) or by adjusting benefits downwards." https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/is-soci...
Social Security is an insurance program. That you don't understand how insurance programs work is your problem.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2015/tr2015.pdf
> Total expenditures in 2014 were $859 billion. Total income was $884 billion, which consisted of $786 billion in non-interest income and $98 billion in interest earnings. Asset reserves held in special issue U.S. Treasury securities grew from $2,764 billion at the beginning of the year to $2,789 billion at the end of the year.
This is not in any shape or form a ponzi scheme.
Which the generally accepted way of analyzing insurance programs is by looking at the inflow and outflows plus interest on reserves.
> which in the early stages of a ponzi scheme can also be similar
The Social Security Act passed in 1935.
> The way that social security in the US is a ponzi scheme is that the benefits paid out are not interest or earnings on the amounts paid in by the people receiving the benefits. They are paid for by new people paying in to the system. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
No that is the exact definition of an insurance program. Insurance programs are not investments they are about spreading risk. Which the Social Security Program in the US does a perfectly fine job of.
Social security is a pension. It guarantees a future stream of income in return for payments now. It is subject to the same actuarial risk as insurance (so, predicted payout period ends up being longer than expected, or returns on payments are lower than expected), but it is subject to an additional risk if it is unfunded (which Social Security is). That risk being that inflows become insufficient in the future to cover the outflows promised 40 years prior.
That being said, the important distinction still stands: Social Security is unfunded, which makes it subject to a kind of risk that funded insurance programs are not exposed to.
No.
> It protects you against a loss of some kind,
Social security protects you against outliving your savings when you can no longer work.
> and only provides that protection while you are paying for it.
This is an argument from ignorance. And it's incorrect.
For another, it’s still not a Ponzi scheme. It makes no promises for returns, and simply requires working age people to set aside money for retired people. If the ratio changes, there is no requirement for the retired people to be paid the same money they were a year ago.
It’s not a Ponzi scheme in any fashion. It’s pretty much a direct, transparent transfer of wealth from the young to the elderly.
Social Security isn't a ponzi scheme for a number of reasons, first it's not a security. Second there is no nonexistent enterprise. Instead it's structure is entirely that of an government mandated insurance program.
The only way that anyone can retire is to rely on the productivity of people who are still working. Saving up money for retirement does not avoid this. Your saved up money just lets you buy someone else's future productivity, you can't actually live on it.
This clearly isn't viable so instead we have kids that take care of us when we become old.
Like the stock market, then. And pension funds.
We live in a Democracy, and the elderly have the most free time and seem to be the biggest population right now (Baby Boomers). As such, the elderly are always going to be the most powerful voting block (doubly so now that Boomers, the biggest generation by population, is hitting retirement age).
Good luck "reducing spending on the elderly" in the coming years. Its politically infeasible on population dynamics alone.
When the "lack of children" issue starts to hit 40 years from now, Millennial are going to be retiring. Millennials are the 2nd largest population after the Boomers. So the same issue will hit us again in the long term.
If taxes to pay for the elderly do become very onerous, 85-75% of the population is going to be against them politically. There are relatively fair measures to pay for their healthcare, like wealth taxes for people beyond retirement age and increasing estate taxes. Or a more politically feasible measure is to make social security means-tested.
By far the best solution would be to mandate people to pay into their own retirement funds - Singapore does this. But of course, that would have had to be put in place decades ago.
More output while at the same time reducing workers means more productivity is required and to increase the productivity per worker we need far more automation. Things like truck/taxi automation might cause a temporary mass unemployment problem for unskilled workers but at the same time also solve the worker shortage that will happen when the population starts aging massively.
The idea that, the number of human being working is important at all, is rapidly becoming an obsolete issue.
And productivity is funny. When folks move down the economic spectrum (from technical to office to labor etc) its called 'full employment' but almost by definition productivity of point-of-sale or labor is very low. Definitely there's no improvement for the individual.
Technically speaking, for all known biological species, the size of population is the primary indicator of health and well-being. Shrinking population indicates either inability to adapt, or some kind of malaise.
Instead of more natural resources available per person, a less productive economy eventually provides for fewer resources in terms of goods, services and capital like installed infrastructure per person that are necessary to thrive.
Sociologically is probably 35+.
So there is an unsolvable problem here, you have to compromise one way or the other.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/cusp/201211/whats-th...
Men are biased towards younger women because they don't bear the risks of pregnancy.
I stopped reading after that. There's no such thing as 'fresh' oocytes. The author is just making stuff for his purpose as he goes along.
The ideal age for having kids lies somewhere in the range of late 20's to early 30's. Here both biological and sociological advantages convene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oogenesis#Oogenesis
> Mitochondria in oocyte aging: current understanding
> The oocyte is the largest cell found in multicellular organisms. Mitochondria, as the energy factories for cells, are found in high numbers in oocytes, as they provide the energy for oocyte maturation, fertilization, and embryo formation via oxidative phosphorylation. Failure of assisted reproduction is mainly attributed to oocyte aging and increased aneuploidy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5506767/
This seems addressable by biotechnology, artificial wombs and so on. At a certain level of technological sophistication, all problems become engineering problems.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418963/
35-39 year olds have slightly higher rates of complications, but the rates are still lower than in teenage mothers. This rank ordering persists even after adjusting for demographics, type of birth, and comorbidities (table 5).
This issue probably has very little to do with sperm quality or the availability of abortion, but with our culture in general. The assumption that teen pregnancy = bad, the stigma around it, etc. In your comment, the mentality that life starts later. Like, life starts at birth.
I'd imagine that same mentality is responsible for the loneliness epidemic written about in the same places. This idea that life is some achievement to be gained after doing things like going to college. Like, you can't live your life until you've completed some rites of passage, except they get increasingly more detached from reality every decade. And as we read about in the WaPo and other sources, has the college rite of passage really served the amount of people who have gone through it? Student loan debt, bad job prospects, starting life later...
Another interesting fact, younger couples have healthier children. Not like, 13 young, but late teens early 20s young. As couples age, the risk of genetic faults and things like autism rise.
tldr, it's not sperm count or abortion. Our rites of passage into adulthood suck.
Of course, for a lot of other people, college, and starting life later is absolutely the right answer, economically, socially, etc. I’m not saying that everyone needs to strive for the traditional nuclear family and forego college, I’m saying that there’s an incredible lack of respect for the people that do, much to everyone’s detriment. Does a woman who enjoys the idea of being a mother and a homemaker really need to go to college? Is it ok for women to want to be president, or to bake cookies for their family. It seems like we’ve really told them ‘no, if your goal is to bake cookies and make a warm home, then you’re pretty much a garbage proletarian.’
Disclaimer, I’m a man, talking about what women can or can’t do, so take it with a grain of salt, hopefully a woman can provide a perspective based on experience.
Because for all the nostalgia, teenage girls who got pregnant and their children were heavily stigmatised and paid the price. People who married as teenagers divorced more often. When divorce was not available due to laws, the nad marriage remained bad including domestic violence and such.
It is not just that she won't get education even if she had brain for it. She will have hard time getting and keeping job. She will be completely dependent of help of other people and such situation royally sux. Which does not mean she won't be lonely, because when you depend on people they are less likely to treat you like an equality friend.
Lack of respect toward blue colar translates into much less respect for both pregnant teenager and homemaker. The reality is, the warm homemaker happily making cookies is largely rose colored fiction. It kind of ignores reality of it all, for both genders. Men prefered being with male friends over warm home anyway and women were butt of joke anyway.
Speaking about loneliness, being stay at home mom can be loneliest experience ever. Lonely guys who have jobs and online games are not nearly as lonely as homemaker situation.
Edited to add: you know the stereotype of women being on the phone so much and being extremely talkative? Both are because homemaker is completely alone whole day doing everything alone except when she is on the phone and thus talks more in social situation or when husband comes home.
My whole point is that people, men and women, shouldn’t be stigmatized for following traditional gender norms any more than they should be stigmatized for creating new ones, and I feel like that may not be the case today.
All of this hinges on my initial point that lowered rates of fertility are caused more by culural reasons than lowered sperm count or the availability of abortion. I’ve got no real evidence to back that up, maybe it’s just plastic in our water. Doesn’t seem like any of the researchers in the article know either.
The traditional roles split worked as long as there was a lot of real home work and not much choice. Then it worked as status symbol for a while, but it was status wifes who eventually rebelled.
Unmarried teenage pregnancy is not what people generally means when they talk about traditional role of gender. Unmarried pregnant teenager is better off now compared to whatever you means by traditional time.
Large reason for lowered teenage pregnancy rates is sexual education - kids know about contraception and know to use it. Conversely sexual discussion being taboo in the past meant more teenagers pregnant.
The impact on education is easily avoidable by doing exactly what the parent commenter suggested: having children in extended families so the mother isn't the sole or primary caregiver for the new child. This frees the mother up to finish school, continue her career, etc.
Lots of the trouble with "teen pregnancy" is really not about age. It's about not having a stable marriage with a decent breadwinner. Pregnancy in the mid-late teen years is biologically ideal.
Dropping out of college or even high school isn't so bad. It makes perfect sense if you value children and think that family comes first. You have to start early if you want to have a big healthy family.
High school drop outs with or without children do very badly in this economy. But when you have children while relying on unstable minimum wage income from irregular hours, then it is all triple harder.
Lastly, teenage years are not biologically ideal. Teenagers have more pregnancy complications, including expensive ones and dangerous ones. As in, having child during your twenties is healthier for you and child. Both under 18 and over 35 are associated with more risks.
Not that the current economy is bad, because it isn't and many high school dropouts are getting jobs now, but I'm not seeing how that relates to the economic well-being of a full-time mother. The father could be a decade older, settled into a career as a petroleum engineer or stock trader.
It's a given that a study of pregnancy age will fail to compensate for factors unrelated to age. The big and obvious one: on average, there is something different about the personality of a person who gets pregnant at that age. (and thus unhealthful choices, etc.) I do not accept any claims to have properly accounted for non-age factors. The ideal age is going to depend on your DNA (when do you reach full size where it counts?) but FWIW that is likely near age 16 for many people.
My favourite policy to increase birth rates is to give parents a percentage of their children's income tax revenue. Standard econ says we just need to internalize some of these positive externalities. This has the advantage of scaling with the wealth of the parents, as economic productivity has a significant heritable component.
Though this policy triggers an intense moral disgust response in everyone I've proposed it to, so likely not possible unless things get very desperate. But I think it has a chance of working, which is more than I can say of most natalist policies I have seen.
https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/10/11/an-evolutionary-project...
For each of the specific things it suggests it might be, it would have to be something that is affecting the whole world, maybe at different rates around the world but the whole world nonetheless.
Hans Rosling in one of his videos said we see the birth rate drop when women are educated and have economic opportunities outside the house.
I hadn't considered it before, but a gradual change in what age people choose to have children would show up as a temporary drop in fertility (for an easy example, think about everyone delaying their next child for five years). A quick google search show's a strong correlation between steeply increasing age of first child and low apparent birth rates. In particular, US fertility rates were even lower in the 1970's, another time when age of first child was increasing rapidly.
Back of the napkin math shows that we'd see (very roughly) 80% of true fertility if not adjusted for, making the true fertility rate slightly above replacement levels (about 2.2)
Anecdotally, I look at my Facebook and there are a lot of women on there who will really have to kick things into high gear ASAP to hit two children (since they’re all in their mid 30s and childless).
How so, whizkid?
Edit: originally said 160 not 300, was incorrect
Edit: just checked.. ha! We're paying 300 not 160.
It's also insurance that you'll be able to support yourself if something happens to your partner or you split up.
Working young people are looking at the "will I ever be able to afford to live in a house" problem.
It is not at all uncommon for a 30 year old to be living with random individuals.
Child rearing? You may as well ask a starving man his opinion on gluten free bread.
As contraceptives becomes well understood and taught kids are opting to have a better quality of life and not reproduce. They put it off so they can build a career.
When they build a career they get used to a certain quality of life. And so by mid thirties they don't want to have 3 kids. Of course they delay having kids till they are financially stable enough to have kids and not worry about money and hardship. Because who wants to voluntarily go through extreme hardship.
And so as cost goes up and pay goes down with available contraceptives people are just not having kids until they have the financial stability which many might not have.