cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45445434
Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19.
On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates.
Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”
Interestingly, Canada, which has free health care has a lower birth rate than the U.S. where births can cost between $3000 and $70 000.
Maybe if you just imprison fertile women and give them to rich couples to fuck and impregnate, that will solve the problem? You could call them handmaid’s to distract from what they really are!
We had kids in our 30s and one of the delivery ward doctors we spoke to told my wife “Your age classifies you as geriatric but don’t take the label too hard. You’re just not 15 anymore.” And I remember saying “15? Gee do you see a lot of 15 year olds having babies in here?” And she said oh yes, all the time, and “They’re the superstar athletes of giving birth. In, out, easy, done.”
I guess my point is that while we consider sex a crime before 18, nature doesn’t care and 15 year olds are not merely eligible but in some ways at human peak for fertility.
It’s uncomfortable, but it’s biology. I am not surprised if 15yos are making a real contribution to fertility rates in aggregate. I’m not saying that’s right and we should encourage it. Again, just uncomfortable realities here.
Fertility rates are an issue for capitalism not humanity
They want every woman to be a Michelle Duggar - get married as a minor, start popping them out ASAP, and keep the Xerox machine running until someone dies.
Matt Gatez says ‘I’m doing my part’
I distinctly remember a time when boomers and talking heads would automatically respond to concerns about issues with the cost of having kids with:
“Don’t have kids if you can’t afford them.”
“If you couldn’t afford kids then you should’ve kept your legs closed.”
“Don’t expect a handout, nobody forced you to have kids.”
“Healthcare and child care are too expensive? Tough shit snowflake, that’s the free market! Work harder!”
“Why are my taxes paying for a public school when I don’t even have any kids that go there?”
So nope, no sympathies. And no, you can’t have your child sex brides, either.
They are still saying this when it’s convenient for them. The only consistent thing for such people is their cowardice in the face of responsibility.
They’re saying the quiet part out loud and why they’re anti-abortion. The younger the better for a quick turnaround:
They need the poors to fight their wars and work on their factory floors.
I frequently just stand outside and look at the sky and think, yep, we weren’t meant to work all day. We were meant to pick berries and mushrooms and take naps. I feel better about my station in life, knowing those oligarchs can never be satisfied, and all I have to do to feel right is take a walk outside.
Didn’t we always hunt?
Yeah, that’s why we can run
Edit: Distance running that is. Humans have better endurance than almost any land animal, so we can chase prey to exhaustion. It helps that we’re crafty enough to carry water and snacks with us
Not an expert, but that would depend on the location, probably. Smaller game, certainly, but not everyone had large animals roaming around. Likewise, there were probably people who hunted and didn’t gather that much because there simply wasn’t that type of plant around.
But the point made still stands: modern life is not something natural to our evolution.
Yeah, Ill sit in a deer stand all afternoon, or pick blueberries. Both are better than email.
Who the fuck wants to be having kids in this day and age anyway. Also why is it up to the underage teens to push out babies to keep the population up. Yeah let’s put pressure on them to ruin their entire lives before they even get to live it. Love the American standards.
The dude was conflating a number of things.
Teen birth rate is down the most, at 7% in 2025. 70% since 2005. Overall births are down slightly last year.
Overall we have a sub replacement birth rate of 1.53 per woman.The last one is a societal problem. But just saying we need women to have more kids isn’t a solution. You need to find out why people don’t want to have as many kids. Which I would bet is almost entirely economic. Kids are a large long term expense. And if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, with an uncertain financial future, a kid is a scary prospect.
The problem is the sub replacement birth rate of 1.53 per woman.
This is not actually a problem, except we want to keep the completely unsustainable economic system unchanged.
Economy or not, having one person who needs to take care of two elderly parents, themselves, and 0.75 kids isn’t great. That’s not the goal
Society doesn’t have to work that way.
Of course not. That’s the point. We don’t want it to work that way
Birth rates are down all over the developed world with Japan being the hardest hit
Most of the developed world has the same societal problems that boil down to, no one has the money, time or energy to have kids.
I agree with the 1st sentence, but you cant expect people to wait until they are 30 to have kids
Its better to marry than to whore around… regardless of age, thats why “child” marriage should be legal but challenged by the families and test if there is actual love or nut
Live fast die young was most of human history, and I like it
We have way too much order, that it gets in the way
Think about that for a few years.
What reality are you living in? Are you 16?
whoring around is so fun tho
I cant tell if those are rhetorical questions because you’re upset…
Or if you genuinely don’t understand why the oligarchs are mad kids aren’t having babies…
COSTS ARE TOO HIGH, THE FUTURE LOOKS BLEAK, AND NOBODY WHO CAN FIX THOSE THINGS SEEMS TO GIVE A SHIT.
Go ahead and spend a bunch of money on analysts, though. Ignore the root causes. We’re used to it.
Fixing the birthrate is pretty simple in theory. The government needs to meet the needs of people having kids. The details are a little more complicated.
In order to have more kids in their 20’s people need:
A higher income in their 20’s. If they work full time they deserve to be able to afford a 3 bedroom place, food, etc…
A place to live - Build affordable housing that people can own and build a life. These need to be 3-4 bedroom places that one income can cover.
Medical care: free quality medical care to cover little things like birth cost and the doctor visits a child needs.
Time: Hard to make babies when you are working 60+ hours a week. Mandatory 40 or less work week. 2 months of vacation every year.
Childcare - Free or heavily subsidized childcare for working parents. Currently childcare for 2 children is more than the net average income for one person in many areas. Earlier retirement programs are also highly effective.
Quality schools and education: ban private schools, invest heavily in public schools increasing teacher wages and requirements, reducing classroom sizes, and providing quality educational material. Free college and trade schooling as well.
Hope: Stop fucking up the planet for temporary gains. If we started to reverse our environmental damaging behaviors more people would be willing to have kids
When standards of living rise, birthrates drop.
Western countries, japan & korea all have low birthrates and all developed them as av. income rose. China too but one-child made it a less clear example. Even within a society, middle and upper classes have smaller families than the working class.
Declining birthrates can’t be fixed by improving living standards, but that’s fine because low birthrate is a good thing - a sign of a society doing well.
If a high income/low birthrate society needs more citizens, immigration from low income/high birthrate areas is the only viable option. Endless expansion is a fools errand anyway.
There is the question if the birthrates just dropped because the market now expects both people in a relationship to be working, making it impossible for the parents to care for their kids by reducing hours and childcare costs being more or close to what one person earns, especially in lower paying jobs. The effects on lifetime income for a mother are still devastating, and domestic work is still VERY undervalued. Fix this, and I am sure that birth rates will go up. But that would mean that our corporate overlords will make less.
Maybe if the population numbers in the US crash hard there will be a rethinking of priorities. The combination of xenophobia and economic pressure to keep working without having kids will take care of that in the next decade or two.
But none of the low income / high birth rate countries are mostly white and Protestant 😭😭
Considering the average age of father’s for teen pregnancy, It can keep dropping
I wonder how much breaking up the trump-epstein ring lowered the fertility rate of 15-19 year olds.
Good!
I feel like we’re in the upside down…
