5 ms·

I would love this to be true. But as always, I'm very skeptical of all social/psychological studies. Provided it turns out to be true, I guess there still is so

by tomp 11y ago

I would love this to be true. But as always, I'm very skeptical of all social/psychological studies. Provided it turns out to be true, I guess there still is some hope for the human race!

pen2l 11y ago
Yeah, these numbers to me don't look right too. Relatedly (and I'm sorry I'm saying this - I feel terrible saying this): women really really need to have children earlier, preferably before age 28. 30 years ago you saw only 7.2 deaths of mothers per 100,000 live births in the US, in 2011, despise tremendously better healthcare, it was 17.8 deaths per 100,000 births. One of the reasons for the jump is women postponing having kids. And completely separate from this, risk of chromosomal abnormalities in babies goes up very high when having them at a later age. Men and women both need to have children early, for so many reasons. It is a great pity that it's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and age.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  It is a great pity that it's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and age. Elaborate.
  - pen2l 11y ago
    Having children is reaaaaaally expensive. Much more than people would expect. Most 25 year old couples don't have this money, in this day and age. It would require out of them that they both work hardcore hours... but then when baby has come, who will take care of it? Babysitters? Daycare? They're expensive as hell. Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc. all add up to something humongous. This is not to mention the mental toll of getting up each damn night at 3a.m. to calm crying babies. Daycare often times costs more than what one of the parents make, it's that expensive. For whatever reason Americans want to get away from their parents after getting married (unlike a lot of Asian countries), so if you can't rely on your parents to help out it's really difficult and it'll exhaust you out before you know it.
    - ashark 11y ago
      > Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc. The real killers are health care (should your kid need more than the norm in the first couple months—and many do) and childcare. Plus the less-obvious, very high cost of having to live in a decent school district or else pay for private school. Those areas are pretty much always more expensive. No more cheap rent/mortgage for you :-( Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist. You can recover a lot of that money when you're done with the things by selling them, at a small time cost.
      - pen2l 11y ago
        Yeah, you're absolutely right. > Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist. Or even better, from friends and family. :) They only need baby clothes, car seats for a few years, take it from them. And pass it on when you're done.
        ohazi 11y ago
        Car seats and bike helmets -- don't get them used.
        radicalbyte 11y ago
        Buy new, or get them from people you trust.
        jtheory 11y ago
        Yeah, this as well! Cultivate relationships with friends/family who have good taste, and kids 2 years older than yours or so. ;) This is pretty easy, actually... people also actively want to get rid of clothes rather than store them; and young kids in particular fly through clothes much faster than they can wear them out. About other stuff -- my wife & I were stubborn about avoiding all of the "default" baby purchases unless we really felt we needed them. No value judgement intended on people who buy e.g., strollers! Sometimes a stroller would have been pretty handy... But we wanted to travel a lot with our kids, light, so we needed lightweight habits at home first. So: no upgrade from the 2-door hatchback (though we did spring for good carseats). No strollers; we learned a few good ways to tie a sling instead. No separate kids' rooms (and no furnishings and decorations of such rooms). No crib. No disposable diapers (we broke this rule for compostable diapers at night when each child was over 6 months or so... more pee to absorb... and much of the time when traveling). Potty-training quite early (from a few months old) with no deadlines or pressure, etc.; that worked out pretty well. No bottles, no sippy cups. (Yes to small cutlery, though). We did use cheap glasses when they graduated from nursing to drinking from glasses, and lost a 2-3 per child as expected. The girls learned not to let them fall. Toys: we bought very few and still ended up with a ton; family & friends give gifts, and they'd be sad if you told them to just stop. So we just tried to avoid electronic "made to be broken" stuff, generally. Books: we have tons of books. No intention of reining this one in!
  - obvithrow1910 11y ago
    The other replier gives good reasons, but it's worth considering why things have gotten this way. If one parent wasn't working, all the money spent on daycare wouldn't be an issue -- the other parent just takes care of the child. Why do both parents have to work? Because you can't afford a house somewhere where you'd want to raise kids without. Why can't you afford a house without both parents working? Because dual-income households drove up this housing stock to absolute boundary of affordability. This is basically the thesis of Elizabeth Warren's "The Two-Income Trap". See here [1] for a good synopsis. It's a shame that so many of the children of these educated mothers are going to be autistic because of advanced maternal age. Not so good for our future. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-trap/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-inc...
    - pjc50 11y ago
      I upvoted you before I got to "going to be autistic because of advanced maternal age" - I'm going to have to ask for a citation there, as the etiology of autism is not well advanced and we're still recovering from the last guy who blamed it on vaccines.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Eh. It's also: what the heck do you do after the kids are older and don't need nor want full time care? Most people still have half their working lives left, but are permanently off the career track. There are lots of people who could easily afford to take off 5-6 years when their kids are little but don't because it's career suicide.
- DanBC 11y ago
  The other factors are the rise in obesity (which poses serious risks of harm for the mother and the child); and stigma around mental health problems. Suicide is currently the leading cause of death in mothers in the perinatal period (in the UK). I agree that women need to have children younger, and that society makes it difficult for that to happen.
- unchocked 11y ago
  Your only quantitative argument is an additional 1 in 10,000 risk of the mother's death. So what? It's almost nothing. Why would anyone advance parenthood by years to avoid such a small risk? Furthermore, your allusions to chromosomal abnormalities are a eugenic argument. That could be interesting if uncomfortable, but to present it so casually is disappointing. If you're going to go there, please do it with arguments that are well considered and framed in a way that is subject to refutation.
  - douche 11y ago
    Age of the mother is one of the prime factors in the incidence of Down Syndrome, for instance. http://www.ndss.org/Down-Syndrome/What-Is-Down-Syndrome/ http://www.ndss.org/Down-Syndrome/What-Is-Down-Syndrome/
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      I think the age of the father may also have something to do with it.
      - douche 11y ago
        It appears that that is true, although all I can find is this abstract[1], and it sounds like it might have as much to do with both parents being older. In general, it appears that waiting into your 30s or later to start having children is riskier than doing so earlier. It'd be nice if we could rejigger society to reflect that - if people had their children first and entered the workforce at 30, they'd still have thirty or so productive years. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12771769 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12771769
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  The use of antidepressants during pregnancy is also likely a factor.
kelukelugames 11y ago
People are incredibly critical of papers that challenge their world view. But they give a pass to studies that agree with them. I am extra skeptical of studies that prove a politically correct idea. Criticizing them upsets many people, so maybe I should be smarter and keep my mouth shut. Edit: It's like when news articles say "Cure for Cancer found!" And then you read the linked paper and it doesn't support the headline at all.
- bnegreve 11y ago
  I'm not sure what you would consider politically correct here, but this article has some political involvement. This for example: European Commission published a special report on women in decision-making positions, suggesting legislation to achieve balanced representation of women and men on company boards. Some countries – such as Norway, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands – have already taken legal measures in that direction. [...] we find, however, that while highly educated women had fewer kids than women with lesser education in the US until the 1990s, it is no longer true today. Seems to address the question on whether there should be more regulation to help pregnant women.

by tomp 11y ago

I would love this to be true. But as always, I'm very skeptical of all social/psychological studies. Provided it turns out to be true, I guess there still is some hope for the human race!

pen2l 11y ago

Yeah, these numbers to me don't look right too. Relatedly (and I'm sorry I'm saying this - I feel terrible saying this): women really really need to have children earlier, preferably before age 28. 30 years ago you saw only 7.2 deaths of mothers per 100,000 live births in the US, in 2011, despise tremendously better healthcare, it was 17.8 deaths per 100,000 births. One of the reasons for the jump is women postponing having kids. And completely separate from this, risk of chromosomal abnormalities in babies goes up very high when having them at a later age. Men and women both need to have children early, for so many reasons. It is a great pity that it's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and age.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
It is a great pity that it's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and age. Elaborate.
- pen2l 11y ago
  Having children is reaaaaaally expensive. Much more than people would expect. Most 25 year old couples don't have this money, in this day and age. It would require out of them that they both work hardcore hours... but then when baby has come, who will take care of it? Babysitters? Daycare? They're expensive as hell. Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc. all add up to something humongous. This is not to mention the mental toll of getting up each damn night at 3a.m. to calm crying babies. Daycare often times costs more than what one of the parents make, it's that expensive. For whatever reason Americans want to get away from their parents after getting married (unlike a lot of Asian countries), so if you can't rely on your parents to help out it's really difficult and it'll exhaust you out before you know it.
  - ashark 11y ago
    > Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc. The real killers are health care (should your kid need more than the norm in the first couple months—and many do) and childcare. Plus the less-obvious, very high cost of having to live in a decent school district or else pay for private school. Those areas are pretty much always more expensive. No more cheap rent/mortgage for you :-( Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist. You can recover a lot of that money when you're done with the things by selling them, at a small time cost.
    - pen2l 11y ago
      Yeah, you're absolutely right. > Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist. Or even better, from friends and family. :) They only need baby clothes, car seats for a few years, take it from them. And pass it on when you're done.
      - ohazi 11y ago
        Car seats and bike helmets -- don't get them used.
        radicalbyte 11y ago
        Buy new, or get them from people you trust.
      - jtheory 11y ago
        Yeah, this as well! Cultivate relationships with friends/family who have good taste, and kids 2 years older than yours or so. ;) This is pretty easy, actually... people also actively want to get rid of clothes rather than store them; and young kids in particular fly through clothes much faster than they can wear them out. About other stuff -- my wife & I were stubborn about avoiding all of the "default" baby purchases unless we really felt we needed them. No value judgement intended on people who buy e.g., strollers! Sometimes a stroller would have been pretty handy... But we wanted to travel a lot with our kids, light, so we needed lightweight habits at home first. So: no upgrade from the 2-door hatchback (though we did spring for good carseats). No strollers; we learned a few good ways to tie a sling instead. No separate kids' rooms (and no furnishings and decorations of such rooms). No crib. No disposable diapers (we broke this rule for compostable diapers at night when each child was over 6 months or so... more pee to absorb... and much of the time when traveling). Potty-training quite early (from a few months old) with no deadlines or pressure, etc.; that worked out pretty well. No bottles, no sippy cups. (Yes to small cutlery, though). We did use cheap glasses when they graduated from nursing to drinking from glasses, and lost a 2-3 per child as expected. The girls learned not to let them fall. Toys: we bought very few and still ended up with a ton; family & friends give gifts, and they'd be sad if you told them to just stop. So we just tried to avoid electronic "made to be broken" stuff, generally. Books: we have tons of books. No intention of reining this one in!
- obvithrow1910 11y ago
  The other replier gives good reasons, but it's worth considering why things have gotten this way. If one parent wasn't working, all the money spent on daycare wouldn't be an issue -- the other parent just takes care of the child. Why do both parents have to work? Because you can't afford a house somewhere where you'd want to raise kids without. Why can't you afford a house without both parents working? Because dual-income households drove up this housing stock to absolute boundary of affordability. This is basically the thesis of Elizabeth Warren's "The Two-Income Trap". See here [1] for a good synopsis. It's a shame that so many of the children of these educated mothers are going to be autistic because of advanced maternal age. Not so good for our future. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-trap/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-inc...
  - pjc50 11y ago
    I upvoted you before I got to "going to be autistic because of advanced maternal age" - I'm going to have to ask for a citation there, as the etiology of autism is not well advanced and we're still recovering from the last guy who blamed it on vaccines.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Eh. It's also: what the heck do you do after the kids are older and don't need nor want full time care? Most people still have half their working lives left, but are permanently off the career track. There are lots of people who could easily afford to take off 5-6 years when their kids are little but don't because it's career suicide.
DanBC 11y ago
The other factors are the rise in obesity (which poses serious risks of harm for the mother and the child); and stigma around mental health problems. Suicide is currently the leading cause of death in mothers in the perinatal period (in the UK). I agree that women need to have children younger, and that society makes it difficult for that to happen.
unchocked 11y ago
Your only quantitative argument is an additional 1 in 10,000 risk of the mother's death. So what? It's almost nothing. Why would anyone advance parenthood by years to avoid such a small risk? Furthermore, your allusions to chromosomal abnormalities are a eugenic argument. That could be interesting if uncomfortable, but to present it so casually is disappointing. If you're going to go there, please do it with arguments that are well considered and framed in a way that is subject to refutation.
- douche 11y ago
  Age of the mother is one of the prime factors in the incidence of Down Syndrome, for instance. http://www.ndss.org/Down-Syndrome/What-Is-Down-Syndrome/ http://www.ndss.org/Down-Syndrome/What-Is-Down-Syndrome/
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    I think the age of the father may also have something to do with it.
    - douche 11y ago
      It appears that that is true, although all I can find is this abstract[1], and it sounds like it might have as much to do with both parents being older. In general, it appears that waiting into your 30s or later to start having children is riskier than doing so earlier. It'd be nice if we could rejigger society to reflect that - if people had their children first and entered the workforce at 30, they'd still have thirty or so productive years. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12771769 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12771769
Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
The use of antidepressants during pregnancy is also likely a factor.

kelukelugames 11y ago

People are incredibly critical of papers that challenge their world view. But they give a pass to studies that agree with them. I am extra skeptical of studies that prove a politically correct idea. Criticizing them upsets many people, so maybe I should be smarter and keep my mouth shut. Edit: It's like when news articles say "Cure for Cancer found!" And then you read the linked paper and it doesn't support the headline at all.

bnegreve 11y ago
I'm not sure what you would consider politically correct here, but this article has some political involvement. This for example: European Commission published a special report on women in decision-making positions, suggesting legislation to achieve balanced representation of women and men on company boards. Some countries – such as Norway, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands – have already taken legal measures in that direction. [...] we find, however, that while highly educated women had fewer kids than women with lesser education in the US until the 1990s, it is no longer true today. Seems to address the question on whether there should be more regulation to help pregnant women.