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Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks
- dpweb 11y agoAs a teenager in the 80s, (as a joke) tried to buy condoms. Guy wouldn't sell them to me said I was too young.
- protomyth 11y agoI take it that the gas station bathroom didn't have them? In ND, every gas station seemed to have had the same condom dispenser. I've always wondered what company was responsible for them and who stocked them.
- tajen 11y agoWere they stocked ;)? I'm always doubtful about public policies since I discovered that the 3 suicide lines in France were only open during certain hours, and certainly not at night.
- todd8 11y agoPrivate companies own and stock the machines in the United States.
- coldpie 11y agoAlmost certainly the gas station itself maintained them. Just buy a dispenser, buy condoms, have an employee fill dispenser when you're cleaning the toilets anyway, make profit. You'll get some sales from people too embarrassed (or in a hurry) to bring condoms up to a cashier.
- protomyth 11y agoFunny thing is I don't remember them ever selling them in the gas station itself. I'm not so sure it wasn't the same model as Coke/Pepsi showing up and refilling the machines.
- bitJericho 11y agoHey I'm in ND too! I'm on skype under this username if you wanna start a local hn club :P
- protomyth 11y agoprobably a couple around - I get the feeling a meet up would be in the east.
- bitJericho 11y agoYep! Hit me up on Skype or steam and we can talk shop sometime.
- bko 11y agoDespite teenagers having mobile unrestricted access to all sorts of supposedly corrupting media available to them at all times, they still make rational decisions regarding their bodies. This is very encouraging to all those that value freedom.
- rustynails 11y agoThis theory doesn't make sense (and I read three articles that repeat what you say). If you use contraception, you won't have pregnancy. So why are the rates down? Health? Then why are 25% of kids obese (I looked up those figures). I can only assume that technology has created more social isolation.
- JacksonGariety 11y ago> technology has created more social isolation This. If you think that technology has done a good job of informing teens about the risks of pregnancy and the importance of contraception, you are probably being far too optimistic in the face of a dire situation (i.e. mass estrangement).
- icanhackit 11y ago> a dire situation (i.e. mass estrangement) I don't know - could there be some observation bias given the forum we're discussing this in? It also undermines digital relationships which have their own positives aspects. Here we are having a civil conversation about an important topic without having to commit to meeting at a certain time or place or without knowing what shared interests we have. The internet can act as a social lubricant of sorts which is valuable. The legacy social lubricant is alcohol.
- eric_h 11y ago> The internet can act as a social lubricant of sorts which is valuable. The legacy social lubricant is alcohol. That is a very interesting point, though I suspect we'll never actually be able to retire that legacy. If we do, I think it'll take at least a century. Edit: honestly I think the social lubricant is actually pseudonymity, empowered by the network.
- Aelinsaar 11y ago"The first is the most important and may be obvious: Today's teens enjoy better access to contraception and more convenient contraception than their predecessors, and more of them are taking advantage of innovations like long-acting injectable and implantable methods that can last years over a daily birth control pill. But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited and acting only on hormones -- are having less sex." That's interesting, but lets just take a long look at the FIRST cause, which has come at the cost of endless political fights and only exists through that constant fighting. There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem.
- andreasklinger 11y agoYou could also argument that it has been fixed by "constant fighting" But society's pov, politicians or simply all teens haven't catched up yet
- seizethecheese 11y agoThis runs counter to the belief that many have that when given higher access to contraceptives, teens will have more sex. Another knock against abstinence-only sex ed!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- eru 11y agoPerhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?
- dangerlibrary 11y agoMathematically, sure, that's fine. Empirically/theoretically, you've dug yourself into a hole that is difficult to get out of. You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.
- koolba 11y ago> But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited and acting only on hormones -- are having less sex. Could rising childhood obesity be contributing to this as well?
- vox_mollis 11y agoPlausible. The recent advent of ready, instant, and varied access to video simulation of sex is also plausible. Both are unpopular hypotheses, however, because all bodies are beautiful and sex positive porn has zero externalities.
- Nadya 11y ago>The recent advent of ready, instant, and varied access to video simulation of sex is also plausible. Not to mention easier to purchase/discreet shipping of sex products/toys.
- morgante 11y ago> sex positive porn has zero externalities Who claims porn has zero externalities? Conservatives claim it somehow has negative externalities while I'll happily claim it has positive externalities (happiness, less rape, less pregnancy, etc.).
- learc83 11y agoThey are talking about huge declines over the last 10 years. Declines that are much larger than the change in childhood obesity over the last 10 years.
- maxander 11y agoThe thing that will save the world from overpopulation- the internet. Both as a source of information, and perhaps as a way of abstracting social interactions that otherwise would have more opportunity to be acted out in sweatier ways.
- nsxwolf 11y agoI think low birth rates are doing that and those started with widespread contraception, not the internet.
- maxander 11y agoOf course- the internet's effect (as information source) on population rise is presumably largely mediated by contraceptives, but this in itself isn't inconsiderable. With access to information, people can use contraception more effectively and overcome ideological biases that inhibit its use.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pjdemers 11y agoA while back I saw some study said that said women who grow up with a TV in the house have on average, 1 less child than their mother. And this was holding even as we go into the 3rd generation of kids with TVs at home. The Internet, and especially mobile Internet, are like TV * 5. So maybe this is right.
- stephengillie 11y agoThis might have more to do with medical advancements in the past 100 years, than with the social impact of television.
- morgante 11y agoThat sounds more like a confirmation of the well-established link between family income and teen fertility.
- gozur88 11y agoI wonder how big a role obesity plays in all of this. It may be that teens are having less sex because so many of them have effectively taken themselves out of the sexual marketplace.
- orky56 11y agoAre you referring to obesity in terms of attractiveness or ability to conceive?
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoI'm not parent but I wonder if it could be both? Though I think the former was the original intent but I hadn't thought about the latter.
- orky56 11y agoMy wild hypothesis is that teens may be more aware of the rising cost of parenthood and may rationally be avoiding the situation altogether.
- mirimir 11y agoParenthood provides virtually no economic benefit in modern industrial society. More so now, with mobility and weakening of family ties. Children cost a lot, and they probably won't help when you're old. So why bother?
- gozur88 11y agoI think you underestimate the extent to which pregnancy was always considered an Unthinkably Bad Thing by teens. And also overestimate the extent to which teens are rational.
- gozur88 11y agoI was just thinking in terms of attractiveness. Kids today have an unlimited supply of videos of beautiful people having sex. Not only are their expectations rising, but their choice of attractive mates is falling.
- personjerry 11y agoIsn't it typically "teen pregnancy" rather than "teen birth"? Is the nuance between pregnancy and birth significant? Also, this wording can seem confusing (i.e. you can't give birth to a teen!).
- tetrep 11y agoBirths are what matter, as a pregnant teen can get an abortion, resulting in skewed statistics if you're trying to figure out how many teens are having babies, which (imo) is the thing society should actually care about, as unready parents tend to be a drain on collective/social resources.
- gozur88 11y ago>Births are what matter, as a pregnant teen can get an abortion, resulting in skewed statistics if you're trying to figure out how many teens are having babies... That's true, but if your argument is the lower number of births is due to widespread availability of contraception, you have to address pregnancy and not just births.
- throwawaybookst 11y agoTeen pregnancy rates will be higher than teen birth rates in jurisdictions that are not hostile to abortion. But teen birth rate is probably a far easier statistic to gather.
- bobbytherobot 11y ago
- throwawaybookst 11y agoAs of this post, three of the 20 comments on this story conjecture that obesity plays some role, and a full half of the comments are on subthreads discussing this hypothesis. Interesting because I've never heard this hypothesis before and other online discussion of this article does not mention obesity.
- nsxwolf 11y agoIt seems a little silly to me. Especially because when we talk about obesity, most people visualize morbid obesity. There are plenty of textbook definition "obese" people who can still attract mates.
- esaym 11y agoI think the point is that obesity causes infertility....
- learc83 11y agoIt's also a bad hypothesis because the article is talking about changes that occurred over the last 10 years, and childhood obesity rates (including teenagers) have stabilized over the last 10 years.
- pjc50 11y agoHN's misogynist underbelly is showing particularly badly here.
- ryanmarsh 11y agoDelaying coitus long enough to consider the economic consequences of an unwanted pregnancy is some pretty hard-core adulting. If I remember anything about that age it was the manic ache to fuck. No, I'm pretty sure access to porn has something to do with it. "widespread availability of broadband Internet" LOL
- mirimir 11y agoGood point. Porn for lots of boys, and celibacy for lots of girls. But hey, maybe they'll just grow out of it. My generation eventually grew out of promiscuity. Or maybe "aged out" is more accurate ;) HIV was a huge bring-down, too :(
- ryanmarsh 11y agoGirls look at porn. Times have changed man.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- astrodust 11y agoI read about a study where they were trying to see if there were differences between people who viewed internet porn and people who didn't, yet on the university campus they could not find a single person in their surveying who hadn't viewed porn at least once.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoI think the joke goes that there are two kinds of people: those who look at porn, and those who lie about it.
- flubert 11y agoHmm. I wonder if there could be some societal change 20 years ago that could have an effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Wo...
- mirimir 11y ago> Veronica Gomez-Lobo, director of pediatric gynecology at Children’s National Medical Center, said the trend of abstinence has been mostly among younger teens rather than older ones. While there's not good data on why this is happening, she thinks of it as a “contagion” factor. So many teens are waiting to have sex, she suggests, that the peer pressure goes the opposite way than it might have in the past. OK, so the interesting question is whether the birth rate for this cohort will increase as they get older. Hypothesis: Sex has become unworkable for many young people, and they will just opt out of reproduction. In recent decades, birth rates have dropped in many Western European countries, Russia, Japan, etc. The reasons have been diverse. Too many other options. Social disruption. Whatever. But time will tell ...
- milesf 11y agoWow. If you treat teenagers like the young adults that they are, and not talk down to them like children but rather give them solid information, they rise to the challenge of taking personal responsibility for their lives. Whodathunk? ;)
- blue_dinner 11y agoTeenagers still don't have the wisdom or experience of someone in their 30s and I would hardly call them 'young adults'. I knew so many kids that had parents that would treat them like adults..and they still made all of the stupid mistakes as the rest of us. It's most likely a culture change. So many teenagers are becoming non-social and filling their time with the phone rather than sex.
- milesf 11y agoPeople rise to the level of expectations placed on them. The concept of adolescence is a relatively new invention. For most of human history there has been childhood, adulthood, and old age.
- emblem21 11y agoIncarceration rates have no impact?
- afarrell 11y agoI wonder how much lower rates of in-person interaction is a factor here.
- kazinator 11y ago> widespread availability of broadband Internet Right; once Facebook figures out how you can make babies while you're all alone, staring at your mobile device, that rate might be reversed.
- hokuriku 11y agoCounties where abstinence-only sex ed is common lead in teen birth rates. It's kind of like that (public) high school in the Midessa region of West Texas, the one that had an abstinence only sex-ed policy and a chlamydia outbreak. Or Mike Pence shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics in rural Indiana which led to an HIV outbreak (and Pence having to sign a needle exchange bill to limit the spread of HIV).
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoThis article doesn't mention the religious communities where young people commonly marry and start having children before age 20. A friend of mine grew up in one such fundamentalist community in rural Iowa; she married at 20, but some of her peers were already moms by that age. I wonder whether they include this type of parent in the statistics, or are they only talking about unwed mothers here? There seem to be a lot of rural counties in the first quintile of teenage pregnancy, and I venture to guess that some of them, the ones not in large cities or general urban areas, are traditional or fundamentalist communities where teenage girls often marry. Unfortunately, our socio-economic system (outside these specialized communities) is just not set up to accommodate pregnancy at the age when we are most fertile. It's too bad, given how many of us are delaying having children until our 30s, even 40s, and running into all sorts of issues for both the mom and the child; I have personal experience in this. Anyway, this looks like a good trend, that kids are either finally "getting it" or else they're simply too distracted by technological toys to be fooling around like they used to!
- renox 11y ago> Unfortunately, our socio-economic system (outside these specialized communities) is just not set up to accommodate pregnancy at the age when we are most fertile. It's too bad[cut] I'm not so sure: I feel like I wouldn't have been mature enough to raise children correctly in my twenties.. IMHO the ideal age for raising children is your 30s: not only you're mature and young enough but if your parents had you in their 30s, they can also help raising the children especially if they just retired: win-win.
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoThe ideal age for raising children probably is the 30s. In traditional societies, the grandparents had a large role in child rearing. It makes sense; the young'uns are fertile, strong and energetic; perfect age to bear children. The oldsters are well qualified to teach and provide guidance. I think we've lost something, a certain quality of life, as a result of the dispersal of families. 100 years ago, it was common in both rural and urban America for extended families to be under the same roof or at least nearby. Now, kids move away, sometimes very far away, wait until their 30s to have kids, when the grandparents are getting too old and tired to help (except maybe financially) and the kids miss out on the rich multigenerational experience that was how people transmitted their wisdom, experience, and traditions.
- BurningFrog 11y agoLot of guesswork in the text. I'll add my own. The fall in this statistic looks quite similar to the fall in crime. Both are reckless shortsighted behavior, and I'd bet there is a common cause.
- losteric 11y agoDidn't freakonomics write about the reverse relationship? Contraceptives helped reduce unwanted pregnancies... unwanted pregnancies turn in to unwanted babies/children that eventually have a higher probability of turning into criminals.
- slv77 11y agoOther studies later refuted it and attributed the drop in violent crime to phasing out of leaded gasoline.
- TorKlingberg 11y agoThe lead hypothesis is really interesting and certainly plausible, but I don't think it's been proven. I would like something more substantial than "the graphs look similar".
- slv77 11y agoThe paper based the freakenomics study was based on only looked at US data but crime was dropping in the 90's globally. A global drop in crime would be hard to explain based on US policy changes with regards to abortion while lead was removed globally at different times. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615 The abortion hypothesis was also correlation study (i.e. These graphs look similar) but didn't control for leaded gasoline. Also later studies failed to find more direct links such as higher rates of abortion in high crime areas that would explain the magnitude of the drop. A later study by the author of the paper suggesting lead as the driver of violent crime did a follow up study that incorporated lead, abortion and other variables found that lead was the dominant contributor and abortion a secondary contributor. http://www.nber.org/digest/may08/w13097.html http://www.nber.org/digest/may08/w13097.html
- finch_ 11y agoI'm surprised no one has brought up lead - childhood lead exposure leads to more rash behavior, and the drop in teen pregnancy starts roughly when the first children who were born after the removal of lead from gasoline and paint started would have become teenagers. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/unleaded-gasoline-and-teen-pregnancy http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/unleaded-gasol...
- Alex3917 11y agoFor what it's worth, here is the actual chart with blood lead levels: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/biomonitoring-lead-data.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents... IIRC the working draft of that report had a more detailed chart, but I don't see it in the final version for whatever reason.
- ksec 11y agoOr may be in today's world many cant even economically afford to rise a child?
- grahamburger 11y agoIf that were enough to keep anyone from having sex we'd all have died off long ago :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- colmvp 11y agoI like how they don't even bother mentioning Asian birthrates.
- stephengillie 11y agoJapan's replacement rate is a worrying 1.9 children per couple.
- ommunist 11y agoMust be a correllation with smartphones proliferation in the same strata, and increased accessibility of pornsites.
- Hbthegreat 11y agoI guess the phenomenon of netflix and chill. Is more like "netflix and safe-chill". Either that or people are taking it too literally and actually chilling.
- benbou09 11y ago... in the US
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- marchenko 11y agoTeenagers now engage in more virtual interaction over social media, and the number of teens with driving licenses has decreased dramatically over the same period - I think the scope of their social interaction has increased, but they have significantly less physical privacy. They spend more of their time in contexts where adult monitoring is possible. I also think the availability of porn and the increased pressure to adopt a low-time-preference mindset also alters the risk/reward calculus of potentially procreative sex. With the disappearance of much well-paid blue-collar work, both in reality and the public consciousness, derailing the fast track to college is much more costly than it was in the past. On a more speculative note, I can't help but wonder what the effect of more widespread hormonal contraception has been on female sexual desire, and maybe even on the prevalence of environmental estrogens potentially affecting males.
- erroneousfunk 11y agoI haven't seen this one mentioned yet, but the trend may also be due in part to choices the women are making about whether or not they want children. Most of the comments assumed that all of these pregnancies were "accidents" to begin with, but if you're a teenage girl, living in poverty, what kind of role models do you see, and how might you envision your own future and goals? Just like teenagers in some places can/could only have a life of their own by getting married, it is and was very common for other teenagers in some cultures to see having a baby as the only way out of their current situation, as a way to have a better life, as a necessary step for building a life with and getting support from a romantic partner, as a way to have more importance or influence in their community, and add meaning to their own lives. Anecdotally, I knew a few women in high school who got pregnant, and it seemed to add a great deal of excitement and hope for their future, rather than the other way around. If you have nothing going for you, having a kid can seem like a good plan. If you start giving people other options, other things to work for, and exposing them to other cultures, they might find better alternatives. Heck, this whole thing might still be caused by the Internet! But not for the reasons some other people said...
- iamleppert 11y agoWhat about the fact that anal sex is now less-taboo than it used to be? Most of my straight friends are having it these days. I can only imagine what teens are doing with their backdoors these days. Anal sex has got to be the best form of contraception, although it definitely isn't "safe".