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.”
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.
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…
You must be joking if you think “I genuinely don’t understand why the oligarchs are mad kids aren’t having babies…”
Honestly I’m concerned just why that’s the age range the “Oligarchs” are specifically calling out, not having enough babies. All I’m saying is, why is it up to the kids, and not the adults who have JOBS and MENTAL stability.
And I’ll go back on my first sentence, WHO in their right mind, in 2026, is like "Yeah, the economy is in such a great place today, that I think I’ll raw dog my wife until she becomes pregnant, and in 9 months I’ll dish out thousands of dollars just for her to birth a child, and then dish out even more thousands of dollars for doctor bills, diapers, formula, etc. And that’s just their infancy. Ok. Not everyone is financially stable to raise a child, even as a full grown adult. And not everyone is mentally stable, to raise a child.
But we’re wondering why the kids aren’t having kids.