Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why. (NY Times)

New York Times ^ | July 5, 2018 | Claire Cain Miller

[Mrs. Don-o]

Jessica Boer, 26, kissing her cat Kip at her home in Portage, Mich. Like an increasing number of people in her generation, she does not plan to have children. “Now we know we have a choice,” she said.

Wanting more leisure time and personal freedom; not having a partner yet; not being able to afford child-care — these were the top reasons young adults gave for not being sure they wanted children, reports a new survey conducted by Morning Consult for the NYT.

About a quarter said they expected to have fewer than they wanted. The largest shares said they delayed or stopped having children because of concerns about having enough time or money.

It is partly about greater gender equality. Women have more agency over their lives; motherhood has become more of a choice.

But it’s also a story of economic insecurity. Young people have record student debt, many graduated in a recession and can’t afford homes — all as parenthood has become more expensive.

[humungous snip]

David Carlson, 29, graduated from college in 2010, when the job market was still rough. He and his wife had $100,000 in undergraduate debt between them. They both work full time — he in corporate finance and she in counseling — but they don’t yet feel they can take time away from their careers.

He said they’d consider adoption if they decided to have children but had waited too long. Another option for having children later in life is egg freezing. Only 1 percent of female survey respondents said they had frozen their eggs — but almost half said they would if not for the cost.

Whether the young generation will catch up later is not certain, but will depend on their capacity to combine work and family.

[Sequoyah101]

And isn’t that interesting? I have a summer hire. Paid him his first check ever last week and also gave him some of what little wisdom I have. One thing I told him is to save 20 to 25% of what you make, live well below your means and invest for the future save for the things you want. I also told him if you can’t do this you don’t have a good enough job or are living beyond your means.

[Sequoyah101]

Yes, things have become much more complex and expensive then they need to be. Up until the early 70s you could fairly crawl around under the hood of a car. Not now, too full of tubes and junk. Too complex and does not get from point to point any better.

I went to buy Kilz the other day. There are now at least 6, maybe 8, versions of that product now. Too much choice and too much complexity.

[tbw2]

Answers:

Student Loan Debt

Many are saddled with insane student loan debt that rivals car and house payments, because they earned useless degrees and even lived at home while going to college (doubling the cost) to feel independent until they have to live at home to pay the payments.

The Retreat of Marriage

Except for black women, married women have more children than single women. As marriage rates decline and “shacking up” increases, the de facto single mother has just one child instead of the two she’d have if married.

The Immigration Conundrum

Most legal and illegal immigrants are low-skill. They compete for low skill jobs, pulling down wages and reducing employment rates for working class Americans. When you have trouble finding a job and earn less in real dollars from it, you can’t afford kids, or at best, one. All while immigrants have more kids here than they would have had at home because this is a step UP for them.

The Feminism Conundrum

Women’s hypergamy instinct is unchanged - the desire to marry men as good or better than them. But by privileging women in college admissions and funding, women are the majority of college admissions and even more likely to finish school. There are about a third more female college graduates than male graduates, and they still complain about it ... as a lack of suitable men to marry.

It doesn’t occur to them that feminism discriminating against men in college at every step of the way resulted in fewer “qualified” mates. Nor do they consider marrying working class men who may make as much as them, because that’s considered a step “down”.

Sacrifice Your Children for the Planet

I don’t think there are very many women who choose to have NO children for the sake of Mother Earth. Many, however, choose to have at most two children for that exact reason.

The Lies about the Price

When you tell people that it costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child, many opt for just one child instead of two. The fact that the poor manage two or three on a lower income doesn’t occur to the responsible people scared into having fewer children.

[Drew68]

So healthcare is free for everyone in the military? Including things like child birth etc.?

Yes, free to see the doctors on base. Referrals are free. Prescriptions are also free. Full medical care for my wife and four children costs me nothing.

I pay a very modest sum for my family's dental care.

[Chickensoup]

What on earth is a technical nurse?

I see many of these divorced or unmarried mothers all over. Most are overweight, stressed and overwhelmed. All are angry.

[Vaquero]

No! “Why come no tattoo”( singular)

I recommend you watch “Idiocracy” for the answer to this and other pertinent questions.

[stanne]

A practical nurse. They take a year long course out of high school and take a job administering medications for eight hours a day. Very tough job. They get in then realize theyre makinf half of what RNs are making. Then they go back to school for that -but while theyre working.

(RNs dont make enough to support a no good baby daddy, a child and a mortgage either.)

Theyre in school. Theyre working. They have dependents (not to call it a family)

These girls are slaves -an example of how blue collar women have chosen the no family path. Their bosses know it. Their mob union pimps know it. The pharmaceutical companies know it.

I wonder what happened to the old, what does he do and how would he support me?- when it comes to choosing a mate

Or just elders guiding young people. These particular young people hate their job (i hear it all day) they hate being away from their kids.

Theyve rejected marriage and family believing it is good to be independent but they are slaves to a corporation and a union

[sheana]

Hubby’s mom and dad offered to give us their house that was built in the 1950’s. I said no for various reasons. #1 was the part of town it was in. That area is a barrio now. It was a tiny 3 bedroom home with a detached garage that had never been updated. It was nowhere near what I wanted.
They raised 2 kids in it.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thanks, for a good, well-thought-out post.

We're on a suicide course.

Now here's the challenge: what do we do to turn it around?

[RedStateRocker]

Part of the equation your are referring to, also, was the genuine need to have children when we were more dependent on small farms. 150 years ago a son could be an asset in a completely practical economic and logistical sense by the age of 10 or 12, to a degree that even the most perfect kid couldn’t be now. Not to mention that with the infant mortality rate many parents needed to have 5 kids so that 2 or 3 made it to adulthood.

[RedStateRocker]

“They’re NOT “forced” my the government...yet; they ARE “forced “ to, when their jobs and/or family members live there. “

That’s how I am about living in California.....

[JamesP81]

Look it’s clear you don’t have a clue about living in a cheaper area.

That's how I grew up bub. God willing, it's how I'll retire too.

6 figures of student debt to change careers??? That’s an excuse and a pretty flimsy one. There are plenty of jobs out there that pay well without the big student debt.

Most of it is blue collar, and yeah, it pays pretty good. Good luck convincing millennials whose mommies told them they had to go to college or they weren't worth spit.

Anyway. Like all social ills, the low birth rate cannot be explained by any one single factor. Economics is definitely a part of it; a very large part. Maybe even the largest single part but even if that were true, it wouldn't explain what we are seeing by itself.

Blaming young people for being selfish, however, is a non-starter. Not only is not really the case as a trend, it's also going to make the problem worse, not better. Creating resentment in your target audience over an accusation that has questionable relationship with reality is going to solve precisely nothing.

I'm too old to be classified as a millenial. I'm technically classified as a GenX, but a young one. I'm not really part of them either, so it's been kind of interesting to have a sort of outsider's view of all this between the boomers and the millenials. Millenials are, as a group and trend, spoiled and bratty. They bear *some* of the blame for it, but someone raised them too. They didn't get this way in a vacuum, and if you teach every kid that they must go to college when a lot of people absolutely shouldn't, you're going to create problems.

Unfortunately, SJW-centric education in the colleges and universities have made the millenial generation resistant to learning the truth on their own as well.

When you told an entire generation to go to college, then the 2008 economic disaster hits just as they're getting out of school, that sort of thing is going to leave a rather deep impression on people. The lesson learned from that fiasco is that all things are temporary, and no matter how well you are doing today you have no expectation of doing well tomorrow.

It certainly didn't help that their parents didn't tell them when in college to get degrees in something that might actually pay them, instead of whatever flavor of SJW Studies is the in thing at the time.

When you're a millenial, if you are a responsible individual, then your job is exhausting and you'll work 60-80 hours a week if you have a job at all. If you do have a job, your spoiled rotten spouse probably spends most of the money you make, so everything you make is spent on someone else, and piss on what you want. The same spouse probably monopolizes everything else in life including your time, of which you have precious little already because of that job of yours.

It's not hard to see how someone in that situation says, "yeah, adding kids to this equation is an incredibly bad idea."

That's if you're a responsible millenial. If you're one of the irresponsible ones, you just mooch off mom and dad or the .gov. You play video games and jerk off to porn all day, and why not? Your buddies doing the responsibility thing are getting beat into the ground on a daily basis. At this point, a lot of them are suffering from failing health at a young age because of excessive stressors combined with poor diet. They're not happy individuals, and you can't even talk to them without hearing stories of how everyhing is going wrong. Whereas Mr Moocher, he can continue to mooch and does whatever he feels like. There are some downsides, Mr Mooch is probably a Level 47 Virgin at World of Warcraft, but quality pron is easily available and his hand doesn't take half his crap when it gets tired of him. This is seen as a better option, because we've trained millenial women into these unpleasant harpies who think they deserve to be with the very top men because of that thing between their legs, not realizing that half the world's population has one and it is, thus, not that special.

So these spoiled little princesses forsake the average guys who do the responsibility thing and seek the top alpha males, who may or may not be responsible human beings. Those guys see it as a free lunch and have a good time. Years later when they can't get the attention of top guys anymore, they freak out and start trying to settle. By then, the average responsible guys have given up the chase and have become satisfied with what they've got, and the moochers are still, well, mooching and jerking off to pron.

That's all very long winded and rotates through several subjects. The point is this: our birth rate is in the toilet and it's not because millenials are stupid or selfish. It's because our social norms discourage responsible behavior and raising of families. It penalizes these activities to the point it's not worth doing...and so people don't. Good God, millenials don't even have much sex of any kind, within marriage or outside. We are not very far from the day that conservative religious leaders are going to start encouraging, probably on the sly, more sexual behavior among young people to do something about the pending demographic apocalypse (note: I don't agree with this idea. Sex is for marriage IMO, it's just a prediction of what I think will happen). This will really kick into high gear once they perfect sex bots.

If everyone wants to continue blaming millenials for all the world's ills, just stop reading here and go back to your cozy world where it's their fault. Otherwise, if you want to start righting the ship, here's some things that need to happen:

1) Reduce taxes and gov regulation. These things increase cost of living and are an economic barrier.
2) Reform family law / family courts. When you have no-fault divorce combined with "the woman gets half his crap and permanent alimony whenever she decides to leave" you are courting disaster. Men aren't going to sign up for that deal, nor should they. I don't think we are getting away from no-fault divorce, so we need an iron clad rule of no alimony, 50% custody, and no CS without compelling reason, and most of the old fashioned judges who sit on these courts need to be forced into retirement.
3) Kind of goes with #1, but major tax benefits to starting families needs to be put into the law.
4) Remove all incentives for divorce from the law, and remove all incentives for starting marriages in the law. People need to get married for the right reasons, not because there is some financial or social reason to do so, and we should not be encouraging divorce with the setup of our legal system.
5) Some people should not get married and have kids. Our social values should afford these people certain privileges that are afforded those who do get married and have kids, for whom that's the right path in life. People who should not get married and have children shouldn't go through with it due to social pressure, so social pressure should provide a place in society that is honorable for them as well.
6) Throw away all this gender studies garbage. Acknowledge that men and women are different and proceed from there.

This is a starting place, not the total solution. It also won't save the millenial generation. If you're still trying to fix their problems, you're doing it wrong. The damage there is done, and few of them are coming back from it. This is to save the following generation, what few of them there will be.

[JamesP81]

And don’t forget that many Millennials majored in garbage “studies”, which hardly helps their debt and job situations.

And what's worse, all they learned in garbage studies was "smash the patriarchy" and "our system is oppressive" and other some such nonsense. Oh yeah, almost forgot..."Marxism is cool". They learned that one not realizing that Marxism is a demonic death cult that destroys all it touches.

[JamesP81]

“Garbage neighborhoods” have lots of people raising good kids. The fact that you think you can't says more about you than them.

It's been done plenty, that's not the point. When you lay out a life plan to a young person which says "You're going to have live in a crap neighborhood with high crime for a while, and that's when you need to have a bunch of kids and raise them in that dangerous, unpleasant neighborhood. And, oh yeah, it's going to take you a lot longer to get out of that place than it did me, because I'm hanging on to my job past retirement because I can't afford to retire, so you won't be moving up for a while."

No one is going to willingly sign up for that plan, and I have no idea why anyone thinks they would.

[JamesP81]

Tillable land isn’t more expensive

Now I know you're talking craziness.

[Tax-chick]

A newly built 50s-style house wouldn’t need the plumbing and wiring replaced ... but I know what you mean.

[nopardons]

Yes, exactly so!

[nopardons]

Many people are in that situation, which some here obviously don't know and refuse to understand; sadly.

And the stupid suggestion, "JUST CHANGE YOUR JOB", is a patently ridiculous one, to boot; as is the idea of leaving one's family ( aging parents, etc. ) so that they can live in some outterslobovia, a supposedly "cheaper" place toi live, in order to have a couple ( more? ) kids.

[nopardons]

Yes, that too.

There are a lot of different reasons why the people who were interviewed are the way they are; however there are Millennials who majored in useful majors, have good jobs, are married and yes, have at least one child ( I know quite a few who have more than one ), have investments and savings. The same can be said about GenXers.

[JamesP81]

We are talking about a trend. Trends don’t tell us about individuals, it only tells us about groups. There are lots of millenials who are just as you say, and we need every one of them.