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I read a message on the departure thread about a (quickly moderated) pasta here being the most disgusting thing that user had read since a post some time ago about "There needing to be more teenage pregnancies."
I do not recall reading that post, I am an infrequent lurker and an even more infrequent poster, but I generally agree with the premise as it is stated. The reason is rather straight forward, the age of birth follows a fairly normal distribution (a quick search shows the average age of first birth shifting from 20-24 in 1960 to 25-29 in 2018) and I would rather live in a pro-procreation society that has to deal with outlier pregnancies tilted too young on the aging curve than too old. I am also just generally in favor of the structure and aesthetics of young people with more energy raising kids, empty nesting earlier in life and seeing their grandchildren grow up than the alternative.
It would be simple to grant a concession preferring society to tilt its incentives toward coupling earlier in life with reproduction beginning in the early 20s while maintaining a strong preference against teen pregnancy but I do not believe that is realistic. A popular folklore told regarding this topic is the proliferation of "Teen Mom" type shows scaring off young girls who grow up watching them. I am skeptical the degree to which this isn't just one small part of the larger societal and cultural shift, but let's accept the premise. Let's say a young girl watched "16 and Pregnant" while she was in middle school and decided she did not want a baby while she was still completing her education. Do you think that attitude even begins to attenuate once she turns 20? Of course not. She may still be in college, for one. But even once out of education, society is currently structured to have people believe they are 'young' as long as possible to milk money out of them on frivolous consumerism, while also persuading them any large life endeavor is impossible because of money and the forbearance of youth (i.e. "can't travel anymore"; the phrase "settle down"). Some of those concerns may be real - student loans, asymmetrical inflation in healthcare and housing, etc. - but I do wonder how much is the tail of the former wagging the latter.
The 1960 curve appears to show about 15% of women's age of first birth between 15 and 17. 2018 is above 20% for 30-34 and around 10% for 35-39. My peer group (educated UMC but not excessive wealth) is much higher than this and the numbers I've seen support that and suggest the trend will only continue accelerating. What is a greater tragedy, an 18 year old couple with no plan dealing with an accidental pregnancy or a 38 year old being told by her IVF doctor she is unlikely to ever conceive? The answer is clear to me and once you factor in the increase of birth defects after the age of 30 in the mother (from what I recall it becomes significant a bit older but still a factor for the father) I cannot more strongly support "There needing to be more teenage pregnancies."
I don't believe or would suggest we start turning teens into baby factories shortly after menarche or anything of that sort. Simply that the age of births is currently headed in the wrong direction, it needs to be reversed and a result of moving us back to the ideal average age of first birth (IMO, 22) would result in more teenage pregnancies. My mother was 20 when I was conceived, both her and my father came from large families still busy raising their younger siblings and neither had any money at the time. They figured things out, it took her until 25 to graduate and we weren't rich while I was growing up but they're still happily married and many years later are doing quite well financially after raising a couple kids. I believe this should be a goal to strive for and accept the consequences that come with it.
I understand the initial premise sounds a bit like one of Robin Hanson's off-putting thought experiments but what are the arguments against? I reject revealed preferences as one, at least until we have "35 and Infertile" or "30 and Miscarrying" as counterbalances to current societal pressures.
The issue with encouraging teen pregnancy is that two teens can’t raise a baby together- can’t earn enough to support a family, and generally need at least one real adult in the couple for a variety of reasons.
You can get around this by either raising the age of first pregnancy or normalizing at least a subset of teenagers going with adult men. Our society is very squeamish about the latter solution, and I do not think it’s viable without bringing back arranged marriages, which in turn means, basically, getting rid of women’s lib, which has far reaching society wide consequences.
Young people have low earning power but punch above their weight at taking care of kids.
You still need money, so this is something an extended family (or a village in Hillary Clinton terms) can do. But I would be extremely sus about a community that deliberately keeps its young women pregnant. It leads to Warren Jeffs situations very easily.
I think there’s enough historical and foreign examples that we can safely say that it’s possible to have a functioning, high equilibrium society in which girls/women marry in their teens very frequently, and to say that most women/girls are capable of adjusting to and fulfilling a wife and mother role by their mid teens with little inherent difficulty.
I do think there is a completely negligible amount of evidence against the received wisdom that girls and young women are incapable of making wise choices about who to partner with.
I also think there is a very negligible amount of evidence against the received wisdom that men/boys are incapable of fulfilling a father/husband role until much later in life than girls are.
It seems completely reasonable to the point of being self evident to me that ‘girls are married off in their teens to older men’ basically means getting rid of women’s lib.
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I feel like there's some kind of revisionist history going on with this whole conservatism is actually just fine with not being prepared to have kids, you'll learn it along the way!
That was absolutely not the impression or messagw I got growing up in the '80s and '90s. It was considered quite important to be prepared to have children. You don't just pump one out and hope for the best.
First off, I agree. I used to hear conservatives say things like "she shouldn't be having four kids if she can't afford them" or "you shouldn't have children if you're not prepared to raise them." I don't hear it so much anymore. But I think that's a good thing.
What does it even mean to be "prepared" to have kids? Nobody is ever prepared. Ever. "Preparing" for kids, so-called family planning, is just some shit that popped up in WEIRD countries since the pill came along. The jury is still very much out on the entire concept. And given our demographics the verdict does not look promising, at least from a societal health angle.
Anyway, what are the criteria? How old do the parents need to be? How much money do they need to have saved? How big should their house be? How far along in their careers should the be? How emotionally mature should they be? I guess all that depends on the bare minimum "quality of life" that one (personally!) thinks the child should have. But that's just kicking the can down the road -- I can't think of anything more subjective than "quality of life" outside of outlandish situations like the Omelas kid.
So "nuts" to people who want to dictate who is and isn't prepared to have kids.
Tl;dr this asshole isn't prepared to have kids. Having kids and raising them right requires maturity enough to put yourself second to them and maturity and devotion enough from mom and dad to sustain a healthy relationship through its hardest trial. Its not about money. Aside from the potential loss of Mom's income, kids are basically free and the state's various benefits nearly offset their costs.
We have another thread about extremely extended adolescence. 17-year-olds used to be mature enough by necessity to raise a family, go to war, sit on a factory job for 8 hours, work a field for 14 hours.
Overall it is probably good that our 17-year-olds do not need to do that any more. But they can still crank out babies like 17-year-olds did 300 years ago.
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The "more teenage pregnancies" has an archive here; that itself was just controversial, but the author also started linking hundred+ page PDF links with hardcore NSFW content that made the moderators have to deal with it and just generally making clear that they were either trolling at best, and... well, "turning teens into baby factories shortly after menarche" was the only reasonable read of their post, but it was way closer than I'd like to be anywhere near.
For the more general problem, I think there's definitely too much emphasis on later child-rearing in ways that are counterproductive both for those who can't or don't conceive at 30+, and even not great for those who do (both in health outcomes for the child, available energy, age-related issues for both parents). I think clearing up a lot of (charitably) miscommunication about those matters is probably going to be more effective.
(or, uh, institutional support for surrogacy on massive and probably also incredibly controversial scales.)
That said it's probably worth noting what a lot of the post-1960 curve is responding to. While a lot of US state laws date back to the Civil War era, enforcement and social norms largely treated those as tools for very limited sets of circumstances, rather than general rules. There was a lot more treatment of 16-year-olds as 'adults' for these purposes, and they stopped (and changed a variety of federal laws!), for a reason through the early 1970s. There's a few different causes, but one of the biggest was that most of the male half of such cases were not themselves teenagers, and that quite a lot of this turned out to be incredibly predatory. Anything that even risks bringing that sort of problem forward is going to (rightfully!) be a major landmine.
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Median age of marriage, US
The gap has narrowed recently but it seems for a very long time, women have generally been in serious relationships with men a few years older.
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The sexuality and sexual experiences of our children is one of those few times where a clear bias exists within each and everyone of us and if the science gave us an answer the was counter to that bias then we would deny and burn down the science department. That is to say, it's one of the few dark spaces in scientific discourse where the science becomes irrelevant by the end of the day due to extreme public blowback.
So honestly by the end of the day all I can say on the subject is that you will almost likely never get a satisfactory discussion on the subject matter if you go against the current acceptable standard at any point in history, and arguing for or against even neutrally is not worth the social status loss risk of doing so.
And just to further clarify, my statements here are not from a they don't want to hear they are wrong about 16 being too young position, rather my lack of joy is from a I hate science having dark no go spaces when it clashes against social beliefs and comfort zones.
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This strikes me as an observation from another planet. The young people I know (including myself) have large savings, rent cheap apartments and only spend money on budget travel where they couchsurf or stay in hostels. The adults in my parent generation did things like buying Gucci handbags, fancy cars or taking out a [4x monthly income] loan to buy a designer sofa, and all of these things were specifically because they believed that as adults they have to prove their socioeconomic status by way of ostentatious consumption. At least in my cultural neighbourhood, imposing the "adult" societal role would be by far the most efficient way to get people to engage in frivolous consumerism.
Rate of miscarriage does not seem to really pick up until 38 or so, and I'd be interested to know how that correlates with number of prior pregnancies and lifestyle choices.
Right. It would be nice if the trads could both stick it to neoliberalism but also sire a cozy family, but in practice you are definitely more enmeshed within consumerist capitalism when you go the marriage and children route. It matches my own observations of people my age who are married. Buying drones, Amazon Prime membership, Disney+, two homes, new cars, Vrbo rentals.
Tangentially, the people I know who become successful enough to actually live something of a life the boomers got to enjoy are more into progressive nostrums, not less. It kind of makes sense; the more professional success - required to have a family - the more you're not able to turn a blind eye to woke rituals but actually must participate. Kids in schools, ditto.
The most conservative guys I know are single.
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That message was mine. The thread I was referencing was this one:
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/rebmfk/comment/ho8gyfi/
Most unsettling line follows:
Ok fair enough, I cannot read the original post that started the topic but can guess based on that comment and the click through to a forum where he appears to be shouting into the void that there isn't much to work with there. The specifics suggested aside, I don't have much time for infeasible thought experiments when achieving the feasible but productive already appears akin to mountain moving.
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