Baby Bust: 2015 had lowest U.S. fertility rate ever, down 600,000 births

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stylteralmaldo
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Stylteralmaldo

Guest
Hard to really know about these things, but family formation is not inexpensive. It really takes the efforts of two adults, and it takes one or both combined making a wage sufficient to support and educate children.

Of course, the more government stifles the economy and the more it takes out in taxes and the more it causes costs like health insurance and utilities to go up, the less are people able to afford family formation.

So, no surprise to this. The U.S. is joining the rest of the developed world in preventing working people from earning and keeping enough resources for family formation. Perhaps it’s intentional, and perhaps it’s only incompetence.
 
We live in a culture where politicians and media love contraception, same sex marriage, freedom to abort, gender confusion and materialism. Meanwhile people dont care, are we too busy to see this? We can see how having a good God fearing society is so important. The population is only going to go down as the family is taking a huge hit. This is vey very sad.

Did you hear Hilary Clintons last speech. It was the most pro abortion speech I have ever heard. Of course it purposely done as a Saul Alinsky tactic.
 
I don’t think this has anything to do with the economy. In the past there have been plenty of times when the country had a weak economy and we still have lots of babies. This has to do with a new mindset – a mindset that puts self first, and things like marriage and family well down the list.
 
irishpatrick said:
I don’t think this has anything to do with the economy. In the past there have been plenty of times when the country had a weak economy and we still have lots of babies. This has to do with a new mindset – a mindset that puts self first, and things like marriage and family well down the list.
Click to expand...
True. The US standard of living is higher than some places that have higher birth rates, and higher now than times in the past when our own birth rate was higher.

This is the Me era.
 
Low birth rates cannot continue indefinitely without adversely affecting economic growth. Fewer incoming workers in the workforce supporting an increasingly aging retired population on social security and Medicare. It’s a guarantee of slow growth stagnation.
 
So many like Donald Trump because he laughs and does well against Saul Alinsky tactics.
 
commenter said:
True. The US standard of living is higher than some places that have higher birth rates, and higher now than times in the past when our own birth rate was higher.
Click to expand...
There’s an inverse relationship between number of children and standard of living. One thing I noticed growing up is that those who had children earlier or has more were less well off.

Also, children just “happened” as a result of the embrace. Even excluding abortion a couple gets to decide the likely outcome. And frankly I don’t think there is as large a desire for children as nature otherwise provides.
 
irishpatrick said:
I don’t think this has anything to do with the economy. In the past there have been plenty of times when the country had a weak economy and we still have lots of babies. This has to do with a new mindset – a mindset that puts self first, and things like marriage and family well down the list.
Click to expand...
👍
 
I wonder if there will come a time when a minimum amount of children is enforced.

Genealogically speaking, if our modern sensibilities had their way, I guarantee most of us wouldn’t be here. History isn’t full of two or three-child families. I’m thankful my parents are pro-life! That’s not snarky, that’s just the grateful truth! I’m the fourth of five (fifth miscarried), and the older I got, the more aware I was that people thought I came from a big family! It baffled me to no end that people thought four kids was a lot. It seemed pretty modest to me, and when I was a child, I thought we had more fun as a family than other families. ;). But, it’s a lot of work. Don’t they say that good things require hard work though?
 
irishpatrick said:
I don’t think this has anything to do with the economy. In the past there have been plenty of times when the country had a weak economy and we still have lots of babies.
Click to expand...
There was a massive drop in the birth rate during the Great Depression. It recovered during the baby boom but there was a similar-in-magnitude and permanent drop in the decade after the introduction of the birth control pill. There’s been a slow and steady decline since but the biggest drop since the '70s happened after the 2008 crash.
 
The only thing that gives me heart, when I read things like this, is that most of the people declining to have families (or those with just 1 or 2 kids) seem to be the “progressive ones.”

The workforce may be smaller in the future as a result, but it may very well be more religious and conservative one.
 
TyburnTreeHuggr said:
The only thing that gives me heart, when I read things like this, is that most of the people declining to have families (or those with just 1 or 2 kids) seem to be the “progressive ones.”

The workforce may be smaller in the future as a result, but it may very well be more religious and conservative one.
Click to expand...
That was the case at one time, especially among Mormons. I don’t think that it is the case so much anymore. Youth in general have become very secularized when it comes to accepting the sexual mores of the greater culture, which tends much more toward individual expression of one’s inner sexual life and feelings rather than being religiously directed into conforming to the sacramental path of marriage and family.
 
Older women aren’t willing or around to help mothers, so women have fewer children overall. This is less true for recent immigrants, but they eventually adopt the norms of American society too. Women need other women to have large families feasibly.
 
Perhaps one benefit of demographic winters is the opportunity to focus attention towards poor children and youth? Feedback?
 
ThePCWife said:
Older women aren’t willing or around to help mothers, so women have fewer children overall. This is less true for recent immigrants, but they eventually adopt the norms of American society too. Women need other women to have large families feasibly.
Click to expand...
Agreed. 🙂
 
TCEL said:
I wonder if there will come a time when a minimum amount of children is enforced.
Click to expand...
Would that even be possible, from a logistics point of view?

Assuming it would be enforced by incurring some sort of harsh penalty for non-compliance, this would be extremely cruel to couples who suffer from infertility or to couples who must avoid for serious reasons.
 
Javan said:
Would that even be possible, from a logistics point of view?

Assuming it would be enforced by incurring some sort of harsh penalty for non-compliance, this would be extremely cruel to couples who suffer from infertility or to couples who must avoid for serious reasons.
Click to expand...
Who said it would be anytime soon? But now we live in the era of IVF and surrogacy.
 
ThePCWife said:
Older women aren’t willing or around to help mothers, so women have fewer children overall. This is less true for recent immigrants, but they eventually adopt the norms of American society too. Women need other women to have large families feasibly.
Click to expand...
Bring back the extended family. This way parents will not be overwhelmed with a large amount of children. At least they have help from other relatives.

Another factor:

Our highly mobile society nowadays where people have to live far from their hometowns or even homelands for jobs discourages the putting down of roots and settling and having children. I personally know lots of young people who have moved several times because of job loss and the search for work that it was hard to grow a social network much less find a potential spouse.

Add to that the contraceptive mindset and you have the perfect scenario for plummeting birth rates.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top