When I was 30, I remember my FIL saying, “I really worry about kids your age. Things are so much harder for you than for my generation.” And he was a teenager during the depression!
@PurpleTitan I’m going to assume you are male. “Give it a few decades” doesn’t not work for a 24 year old woman and having children.
There’s more to marriage and committed partnership than birth rates and economic outcomes. I hope not too many look at a career as a substitute for long term fulfillment, emotional support and happiness.
I want my d to have love and support in those ultimate down times - and hopefully the many years post career.
We are social beings. Nothing is more assuredly bad for long term health outcomes than loneliness imho.
Children are a more personal decision. I can’t imagine the full arc of my life without a child to love and the love I get back. But I can understand if someone decides that’s not for them. They’ll never know ultimately if it was a good decision. That’s unknowable.
@intparent, true. Ideally, you can get the kids to save their eggs/sperm. Might be a tough sell, though.
@ucbalumnus,
“Replicating that does not seem optimistic overall”
Some tough times, yes, but it was also a time of widespread adoption of cars, washing machine, the dishwasher, other labor-saving devices, the eradication of polio and other childhood diseases, antibiotics being invented, labor protection laws being enacted, and a general massive increase in health, wealth, and living standards.
Someone born in 1900 in the US who lived until 1980 would have been born in a world where infant and birthing mother mortality rates would have been shockingly high by modern standards; higher than in third world countries now. If he/she went to walk the streets of major cities, men with missing limbs would be common sights as workplace accidents were so frequent. Other than the rich, who had servants, married women would have spent almost all their waking hours, cooking, washing, cleaning, and tending to a brood of children. Most native-born Americans lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. Stuff like pneumonia would kill completely healthy hale men in their prime.
All of that would have been completely different by 1980.
Saving egg/sperm? Again, so much easier form a guy’s perspective. Harvesting eggs is a painful, invasive procedure with potentially serious side effects. The college paper here back in the day ran ads… one procedure netted the donor $50, and the other $1,000. Guess which one paid more?
I think there are a few other things that may skew the results.
While the article acknowledges that more African-Americans and Hispanics are going to college, I don’t think it recognizes that these groups, especially Hispanics, constitute a larger percentage of 30 year olds than they did in 1977. I think the percentage of Asians is also higher. I think the percentage of those who are first generation Americans is also higher. Do these factors skew the results? I don’t purport to know, but I suspect they do. If we compared white, non-immigrant Americans in 1977 and 2016, I think the differences might be fewer. And whites made up more of the age cohort studied in 1977 than in 2016.
Are we referring to the same time ranges? The conventional definitions are:
1877-1896 - Gilded Age
1896-1920s - Progressive Era
Polio and other infectious diseases were not eradicated with vaccines until much later (1970s). Antibiotics did not become readily available until later. Also, did dishwashers and washing machines become common that early?
@ucbalumnus, what are you talking about? Penicillin was in widespread use in the US soon after WWII.
Polio cases in the US were almost zero by 1961.
Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-guest-edits-wired-essay/