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My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin. Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very
by decafninja 4y ago
My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin.
Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time.
Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affect a woman's fertility.
My wife and I have been trying for a kid but have been unsuccessful. Many of our friends are experiencing the same, and are resorting to clinical fertility procedures like in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination.
I don't know how true it is, but one of my friends outright said that the majority of women in Korea are conceiving through some kind of fertility procedure, and that if we really wanted a baby, not to waste our time and just go ahead and do the same.
One thing that makes me believe him is that there are a ton of twins amongst the couples in our social circle. My understanding is that naturally twins are a rare phenomenon, but much more likely if doing something like in vitro or artificial insemination?
Us, we've already decided that push comes to shove, we'll most likely adopt.
- internet_user 4y agowhy adoption instead of IVF?
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoIt gives a child a normal childhood and saves them from a system of foster care that can never fully meet the needs of a child?
- nxm 4y agoMuch respect to those who adopt, but bloodlines matter
- decafninja 4y agoYeah, this is not to be underestimated in the context of Korea and Korean culture. Thankfully, in our case, our parents don't care, and neither do we. I'm also an only child, as is my wife, so this means both our branches of our families' genetic bloodlines are effectively ending (albeit the onus for this is on the male side). But again - we don't care.
- tstrimple 4y agoIf you place value on them and decide they matter, sure.
- mullingitover 4y agoCounterpoint: our species has very little genetic diversity, we’re all pretty closely related. The odds that there’s there’s something unique or special about any one person’s lineage is pretty low.
- decafninja 4y agoIn this context, it's probably more of a matter of personal and familial pride and honor rather than promoting the benefit of humankind.
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoThe more genetically similar we are, the more socially valuable the relative differences become.
- mullingitover 4y agoIt depends on the difference, because genetic differences aren't always beneficial. The Hapsburg Dynasty's Charles II famously had an inherited birth defect due to the heavy inbreeding[1] among the ruling class, for example. It was of no value to anyone. The true reason for valuing lineages is more about social rank/class protectionism. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/distinctive-habsburg-jaw-was-likely-result-royal-familys-inbreeding-180973688/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/distinctive-habsbu...
- internet_user 4y agoThe value of that intermarriage was ability to maintain an empire of significant power and influence, as well balance relationships with nearby royals, who were all cousins. "no value" here is probably in tens, maybe hundreds of trillions of dollars in the present time PPP basis.
- nunb 4y agoI heard the most bizarre & unexpected opinion first-hand from an obgyn. Prior to this I was firmly in the nurture camp of nature/nurture, but this obgyn's opinion on adoptions shocked me out of my complacency. I am hoping Sapolsky's latest book may shed some light on the subject without the Wade/Murray "bell curve" implications.
- decafninja 4y agoCurious as to what you mean. I think you're implying that the personality makeup of the adopted child that comes from his/her biological parents is not to be underestimated? Is that really a questionable or controversial topic though? The thought has occurred to me. I would describe both my wife and I as being stable mannered and not prone to rash decisions. Odds are a biological child of ours might resemble that personality. I also acknowledge a child we adopt may have had biological parents with very different personalities than us, and therefore the child may be very different from us in personality. At the same time, I don't believe that just because the child's biological parents might have been wild and crazy, the child is doomed to the same fate even with our care.
- JamesBarney 4y ago> At the same time, I don't believe that just because the child's biological parents might have been wild and crazy, the child is doomed to the same fate even with our care Tell me you haven't read many behavioral genetics papers without telling me you haven't read many behavioral genetics papers :).
- d0100 4y agoSome wild and crazy behavior comes by because of genetic "features" that translate into mental issues But I do believe nurture can help to prevent or exacerbate those issues
- random314 4y agoWhat was the opinion?
- Bancakes 4y agoNurture > nature. Bloodlines are an archaic form of currency since there's no influence/treasury/crown to inherit.
- green-eclipse 4y agoIVF is incredibly expensive and certainly not guaranteed to be successful. Might have something to do with it.
- nxm 4y agoIf a couple wants something that is priceless so badly, then it’s worth even the multiple rounds of ivf
- decafninja 4y agoIn our case, we are not that desperate. We do know some friends that were though, and did do exactly that. Also IVF is significantly cheaper in Korea? We know some friends who are low income that had the procedure done there.
- yardstick 4y agoMove to the UK and IVF is free for your first child. After that it’s about £15-20k per attempt.
- ridgered4 4y agoThe same is true of adoption unfortunately.
- decafninja 4y agoWatching her friends and my friends' wives go through it, we've been scared off. Add to that, the usual HN phenomenon that we're observing how the world and our countries (USA & Korea) seem be going down the toilet, and that makes us feel hesitant to bring a new human being into the world, especially when there are kids already here that could use a loving family.
- DSingularity 4y agoWhy not one kid and try to use the excess parenting bandwidth to equip him/her to face the new world and maybe even fix it a bit?
- Dalewyn 4y agoNot to detract, but "one kid" would only make the problem worse because a woman needs to give birth to at least two children in order for population counts at large to maintain parity. That is, one kid per woman halves the population. If the axiom is at least maintaining, ideally growing the population, every woman needs to give birth to at least two and ideally three or more kids. Of course, this isn't to say I'm telling other people what to do regarding offspring, because I hate that kind of intrusive attitude. I've already decided I'm having no kids, because fuck the human world; and anyone who comes bitching at me about it one way or another can take a hike and pound sand. So I'm not going to be hypocritical and turn around and tell other people what to do in the bedroom. But if the purpose for all the noise behind childbearing is to take population count trends out of the negatives, advising "one kid" not only doesn't help solve the problem but actively makes it worse.
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoRegarding twins, doctors like to implant two embryos to give a better chance of successful insemination per procedure.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI was told by an OB that this was no longer done in the US since the Octo mom spectacle.
- decafninja 4y agoThis could be true. I know for a fact that at least some of our friends here in the US have gone to Korea to have the procedure done, not in the US, due to cost reasons. And obviously our friends still in Korea would have had it done in Korea. That could also explain why I don't notice the prevalence of twins amongst our friends of other nationalities here.
- jonhohle 4y agoIt certainly is still done in the US. The Dr. may prompt you to ask and then feign concern about complications to CYA. Source: I'm a dad of 8yo fraternal twins.
- lbwtaylor 4y agoI can confirm what another commenter wrote - what I was told by my doctor is that this is very uncommon now, at least in California, where the guidance is to only do it in very limited circumstances. On the other hand, even one IVF embryo has much more likelihood of splitting and creating twins than natural. I saw the science at 10X chance but a quick Google search shows slightly lower.
- wrp 4y agoI know of this problem in Korea and even know one couple affected. I've thought that it may be caused by the stressful nature of Korean life. Is this difficulty in conceiving also prevalent among persons of Korean ancestry raised in America?
- decafninja 4y agoA big part of our social circle consists of recent immigrants from Korea (< 10 years) - my wife included (I've been here 30+ years). But it does seem to affect Korean-Americans that have been here longer too. Even amongst our close family, my cousin is affected, two of her cousins are affected. All three were born and raised in Korea to adulthood and came here within the past 10 years. My cousin has an American (Caucasian) husband, her two cousins have born-in-the-USA Korean-American husbands. Interestingly enough, our friends of other nationalities don't seem to be as affected - or maybe they just don't talk about this subject as openly? Either way, I have not noticed the twins phenomenon there.
- lettergram 4y agoTo be honest, this sounds environmental in nature… I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional. That said, all I have is the constant drum of “the world is over populated” by leaders around the world to back up my reasoning for potentially being intentional. Plenty of non-intentional possibilities as well.
- Thorrez 4y agoWhat do you mean intentional? If people are intentionally trying to limit births, why would that lead to a large amount of fertility procedures?
- lettergram 4y ago> If people are intentionally trying to limit births, why would that lead to a large amount of fertility procedures? Those fertility procedures are not the desired way to go about having a baby. The vast majority of the time it's a procedure of last resort (i.e. can't get pregnant another way). These procedures are expensive and often don't work. It could be intentional that a government, organization or pharmaceutical / chemical company is knowingly sterilizing / making it more difficult to conceive. This could either be through a willingness to look the other way (i.e. a side effect) or intentional (North Korea for instance may do some sabotage or government is intentionally pushing population reduction) For instance, the US government gives funding to Planned Parenthood which provides birth control, abortions, and other drugs to support people looking to not have children. This organization advertises and gives a lot of birth control out for free or low fees. That's an overt intentional act of reducing population growth. Similarly, a concern I have is purposefully downplaying the risks of long-term birth control via "the pill". Then having policies that make that pill easy to acquire (without being knowledgeable of said side effects) AND with the ability for minors to obtain them without parental awareness. Those are intentional policies intended to reduces fertility.
- lettergram 4y agoAs soon as you hit 30-32 the rate of issues conceiving and issues with the baby grow exponentially. How long have you been seeing this trend? There’s a lot of experts who have been arguing that everything from pesticides to vaccines will slowly degrade our ability to produce [healthy] offspring. The general reasoning is fairly straight forward - if one thing damages your DNA or what have you, then it might be anywhere from 0 to 3 generations for issues to crop up. There’s also social factors - fear, stress, isolation, etc will all impact willingness to reproduce (imo that’s not it). Finally, there’s general stagnation. Ie if your not eating well, working in a field, etc you’re not going to be healthy. Reality is probably a combination of everything, BUT women should also seriously research side effects of birth control. I have a sneaking suspicion birth control mediating hormones will have many long-term effects. I know women who were impacted by this.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago> As soon as you hit 30-32 the rate of issues conceiving and issues with the baby grow exponentially. The "exponential increase" is still very low in absolute terms
- refurb 4y agoAverage fertility rate for women at 35 years old is half of what it is in their 20's. It basically goes from it's maximum to near zero during the 30's, that's a very rapid and significant decrease.
- kamaal 4y ago>>There’s a lot of experts who have been arguing that everything from pesticides to vaccines will slowly degrade our ability to produce [healthy] offspring. Basically anything that can kill bacteria, mosquitoes or rats, can also kill tissues in your body. Nobody knows what tissues because body is a complicated structure of pathways. Most of the things we take in have an entry through mouth and nose, but no real exit path. They could kill things in your body. Now many times that's tissues in your pancreas, or thyroid glands. Which perfectly explains diabetes and thyroid epidemics in countries like India. Add to this the micro plastic pollution.
- shrubble 4y agoAny views on the 8Goddess scandal and the pushing of certain views on the Korean population? Did it have an effect or no effect?
- phlipski 4y agofather of twins (10 Y/O) via medical help here. 10 years ago our doctor said, "30 years ago the natural rate of twins was 3 sets per 1000 births. Now it's 3 sets per 100 births". After a quick search I couldn't find any data supporting a 10x increase in twins over the past 40 years but plenty of articles showing something closer to a 2x increase in the rate of twin births. I suspect the rate of twins amongst our peer group is skewed though since we're upper middle class surrounded by similar peers who can all afford fertility treatments so it appears that there are way more twins then ever...
- yomkippur 4y agoWOW. that is a huge jump. what is going on? twins are generally not favored in Korean culture I believe, not sure what the attitude is outside of it.
- HFguy 4y agoIt is from IVF.
- purpleblue 4y agoI know personally 20+ families with twins. Of my close personal friends, ie. those that I see regularly and chat with regularly, 7 of them have twins. My neighbors on both sides of my house have twins. There are so many families with twins these days, it's nuts!
- Thorrez 4y agoWhat type of adoption are you thinking of? From what I've heard, adopting a newborn is very difficult.
- decafninja 4y agoNot expecting a newborn at all, not do we think we want one. Either a toddler or around kindergarten age seems realistic, based on what I’ve seen with other couples who’ve adopted in our social circle.
- aszantu 4y agoif you're eating a lot of plants, look into phyto-hormones, those might be preventing fertility. There are a few anecdotal stories from the carnivore/keto forums, that fertility came back after cutting out carbs. Edit: Some Artificial hormones are found in plastic, rates go up when it's recycled plastics.
- yomkippur 4y agoso soy protein, dried or boiled soybeans, tofu, tempeh, and meatless soy products....but Koreans have been eating it forever. perhaps the processing in mass industrial scale has impact? yeah I heard of the plastic theory and I think the air pollution in Korea is an overlooked factor. The fine dust particulates must have some impact on the reproduction system. maybe even Ramen? Koreans consume a ton of instant ramen. High rate of alcohol? I am interested to hear more about the impact of plastic. It is unavoidable and its widely used in Asia. ...what I really think is contraceptives is having an impact and that we are politically blocked from discussing it. What happened in Korea since 2010s? Huge amount of contraceptive pills were sold as society adopted a more laissez faire attitude towards sex. 10 years later those women are not trying to have babies and cannot. Is this too far fetched? We are seeing the same issue in most western countries that correlate with high contraceptive usage. There is just less children being born but not an issue where contraception is tough.
- christkv 4y agoIf it’s contraceptives it might be possible to create a comparison group with some stricter religious group that does not take contraceptives and measure fertility levels between that group and a group that did take contraceptives.
- nunb 4y agoDisclaimer: I am quite firmly in that camp now, although at first I considered them all nutters. Some thing has been driving global ill-health in our post-disease world (excluding viruses) from 1920 onwards... imho there's clearly a complex ætiology with factors such as: - carbohydrate (especially fructose) vs animal-protein/-fat consumption - types of fat (our bodies only contain certain kinds) - xenœstrogen & hormones of all types not just phyto-œstrogens - Vitamin D, Magnesium, ferritin, pre-eclampsia, anæmia (lack of hæme iron consumption) - more recently the whole statin-cholesterol debacle, Goodhart's law in action
- nunb 4y agoI find this topic very interesting. My observation (anecdata-lly, but I would love to see RCTs or perhaps a cleanly designed ANOVA study) is that these symptoms of infertility are particularly (world-wide) prevalent in people who have (usually undiagnosed) metabolic syndrome & low cholecalciferol. In almost all South-east Asian countries in particular, I have noticed high levels of sucrose consumption so I am curious if Korea is the similar to SEA, or if either of these factors apply to either of you? Koreans have famously long working hours, but as you are not there, those stress factors should likely not apply to you. Another point to note is that I have heard adoption is at least as difficult as IVF, emotionally & financially speaking, although there's less physical pain. At least IVF can point you to where the problem lies (the knowledge of that can be disconcerting) providing you perhaps avenues to mitigate/ameliorate those factors, which could improve your overall QoL and also lead to better health-outcomes.
- decafninja 4y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted. I'm Korean born, but spent most of my life in the US. My wife is a much more recent immigrant so she is a product of the Korean education system as well as the Korean corporate world and all that entails. We have some friends that have adopted, so are aware of the potential issues. Most of them seem perfectly fine, but one had some initial problems with the child adjusting to his new life. These were all toddlers (3-5 years old).
- nunb 4y agoProbably because it comes through as tall claims based on anecdata? But I've lived in Europe, America, Asia, ME & Australia (also visited every SEA country) and the prevalence of male feminization & rich-people obesity (esp central adiposity) in certain regions is quite staggering. And almost every single person I know personally with difficulty conceiving (various races, various countries, various diagnoses including ectopic/fibroids/undiagnosed) had some obvious-to-me metabolic-syndrome/cholecalciferol/ferritin issues going on, particularly Asian-sub-continentals in northern sun-starved climates who were not supplementing cholecalciferol. Aside: How does one tell downvotes? I suppose I should look in the FAQ. IIRC only established members can downvote. Despite my account being from HN's 2007 inception, I do not have enough established-karma to have my own downvote button. So I generally don't bother about it, as it's a bit of a circular dead-end karma-spiral which I had thought the HN mechanics were supposed to avoid.
- tcj_phx 4y agoOne problem of modern medicine is the use of fake-hormones. When Progesterone USP (bio-identical) is applied to the skin, it gets into circulation and avoids first pass metabolization by liver. When the appropriate solvent is used to dissolve the Progesterone USP powder, the progesterone is transported through the liver. Steroidogenesis refers to the process whereby the body makes steroids for itself. The key jump - from cholesterol to pregnenolone - is facilitated with Vitamin A and thyroid (T3). Know a couple who were trying to conceive, after suppressing her fertility with fake hormones (and an IUD) for maybe 8+ years. Lots of miscarriages. They eventually went for IVF, which didn't work either. They gave up and started getting their house ready for adoption. Then they got surprised. I don't think she used topical Progesterone, just the megadoses in Prometrium (liver can't destroy it all on the first pass). Best wishes to you & your wife.
- verisimi 4y ago[flagged]
- bruce343434 4y agoIt sounds like a hormonal anti-conceptive side effect.
- verisimi 4y ago[flagged]
- elteto 4y agoThe problem is that there is not much to “talk” about. Do you have scientific evidence in the form of published papers in scientific journals? That is the baseline here. If anything, the problem with vaccines and why it has become politicized is that there’s too many people “talking” about it. Talk. Talk. Talk. But zero scientific discourse.
- 4y ago
- Gatsky 4y agoIncreasing age of women at attempted conception probably explains most of this I think. SK has the oldest first time mums in the world: https://photius.com/rankings/2020/population/mothers_mean_age_at_first_birth_2020_0.html https://photius.com/rankings/2020/population/mothers_mean_ag...
- collegeburner 4y agoits going to keep getting worse everywhere when it takes this long to accumulate assets for a house, car and financial cusion.
- ars 4y agoYou don't actually have to do that before having a child, you can do that while having a child. If you are not wasteful (constant new things, fancy vacations etc), young children are not expensive. It really only gets expensive when you have to pay tuition.
- FLT8 4y agoAnecdata point: my wife and I chose not to have kids for the reasons outlined in the GP post (and more). Mortgages are so large these days that for people lucky enough to even be able to own a home, becoming comfortable enough with ones financial position that you feel you could give a child the kind of upbringing that you'd want for them (equivalent to your own, for example), takes long enough that the window of fertility is past. Plus, honestly, the world seems pretty bleak at the moment to myself and a lot of my smart friends. It's raining PF[AO]S, the climate is an unsolvable disaster, microplastics are everywhere, we're on the brink of war, inflation is rampant, housing is completely unaffordable, politics is a polarised mess, who'd want to bring a kid into a world like that without at least some kind of solid financial certainty? (There are positives, the world has it's amazing moments too, but hoo boy there are a lot of challenges to be solved).
- ars 4y agoYour list is basically "recentism" where current things seems much worse than old things. In modern history the world has never been cleaner, never been safer, never had less war than it does right now. The climate is not going to be a disaster, the worst that will happen is a ton of people will need to move - but the climate will change so slowly you'll barely notice. Inflation has been worse in the past, and while polarize politics makes me quite upset, I suspect it's been worse in the past.
- yardstick 4y agoHave you thought about some basic, non-intrusive tests to identify some possible issues? Blood tests, sperm counts, etc.
- Reason077 4y ago> "My understanding is that naturally twins are a rare phenomenon, but much more likely if doing something like in vitro or artificial insemination?" There are various factors that increase the chances of having fraternal (non-identical) twins. Genetics (a women who is a twin herself is more likely to have twins), age (older women are more likely to have twins), and, of course, fertility drugs which stimulate ovulation can result in more eggs being released and thus more likely to produce twins. Identical twins, on the other hand, are a natural phenomenon that occurs in about 1 in 250 pregnancies. There are no known factors that increase the chances of identical twins.