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They're lower than the current statistics, but overall births are going down and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate

They're lower than the current statistics, but overall births are going down and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. There are likely lots of cohabiting parents but also lots of families with various levels of paternal involvement. The statistics obscure more than they show, I think.

derefr 4y ago
> and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. Doesn't sound complicated to me? People think of "get married and have kids" as a single, atomic life stage. People not only wait to have kids until they get married; they wait to get married until they're ready to have kids. But really, it's not that either of those is the blocking factor per se; rather, they just don't identify yet as being "an adult" of the kind that gets married and has kids — i.e. they don't think that they're yet at the maturity+stability threshold that they observed the previous generation of "adults" as having while growing up. (One crucial factor in that model per the current generation modelling on the previous generation: "can I buy a house to have a family in?" Keeps getting more out-of-reach!) Until they pass this threshold into whatever their mental-schema-model of adulthood entails, they will probably continue to think of themselves as "a young adult" — a very accessible concept in our culture — even well into their 30s. "Young adults" don't get married or have kids; they just work for a living, have fun in the evenings, and try to find someone to cohabitate with. As long as people identify more closely with the "young adult" schema they've built than the "adult" schema, the "young adult" things are all they'll do. Once they do pass this threshold and identify as "an adult", though, they're fine with doing the things that "adults" do. (One thing that makes this narrative/hypothesis compelling, to me, is that in cultures that place an emphasis on religion + family values + etc, where there isn't really a concept of a "young adult", people are much more willing to both get married and have kids as soon as they're teenagers — because by doing so they aren't skipping a societally-glorified "young adult" stage, but rather just stepping into the stage they expect to come next after teenagerdom: "adulthood".)
anovikov 4y ago
Interesting. If we correct for this factor (increase of proportion of out of wedlock births), how does the dynamic of fertility of married vs unmarried women look like over years? Is it still decreasing, or is the whole decrease of overall fertility is explained by increase of proportion of unmarried women? If so, decline in fertility is not a bad thing at all.

derefr 4y ago

> and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. Doesn't sound complicated to me? People think of "get married and have kids" as a single, atomic life stage. People not only wait to have kids until they get married; they wait to get married until they're ready to have kids. But really, it's not that either of those is the blocking factor per se; rather, they just don't identify yet as being "an adult" of the kind that gets married and has kids — i.e. they don't think that they're yet at the maturity+stability threshold that they observed the previous generation of "adults" as having while growing up. (One crucial factor in that model per the current generation modelling on the previous generation: "can I buy a house to have a family in?" Keeps getting more out-of-reach!) Until they pass this threshold into whatever their mental-schema-model of adulthood entails, they will probably continue to think of themselves as "a young adult" — a very accessible concept in our culture — even well into their 30s. "Young adults" don't get married or have kids; they just work for a living, have fun in the evenings, and try to find someone to cohabitate with. As long as people identify more closely with the "young adult" schema they've built than the "adult" schema, the "young adult" things are all they'll do. Once they do pass this threshold and identify as "an adult", though, they're fine with doing the things that "adults" do. (One thing that makes this narrative/hypothesis compelling, to me, is that in cultures that place an emphasis on religion + family values + etc, where there isn't really a concept of a "young adult", people are much more willing to both get married and have kids as soon as they're teenagers — because by doing so they aren't skipping a societally-glorified "young adult" stage, but rather just stepping into the stage they expect to come next after teenagerdom: "adulthood".)

anovikov 4y ago

Interesting. If we correct for this factor (increase of proportion of out of wedlock births), how does the dynamic of fertility of married vs unmarried women look like over years? Is it still decreasing, or is the whole decrease of overall fertility is explained by increase of proportion of unmarried women? If so, decline in fertility is not a bad thing at all.