Y'all are literally complaining that not enough white children aged 15 to 17 are getting pregnant.
Do you even hear yourselves?
You know y'all are saying this out loud right? And that other people can hear you?
I'm running out of ways to tell you that this is a good thing.
I don't know how much you know about anatomy or biology, or how long 9 months is... but the things required for a 15 year old to give birth, are not good.
These people are less concerned about maternal mortality than Margaret Beaufort. The one who died in 1509. "Medieval" would be a step up for the white supremacists.
@mekkaokereke The same people who decry "illegal immigration" but refuse to do anything about it are also freaking out about low birthrate and refusing to do anything about it.
Imagine having a worldview where there are only problems.
👴🏻But growing our population through immigration ain't natural! We should grow it like we've always grown it: through good old American procreation!
🧔🏿♂️A) Don't procreate with children. Not debating this.
🧔🏿♂️B) No, that's not how the US population grew
Shout out to all my fellow Americans that still believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and that the US population got to 350 million mostly white people, in only 400 years, due to the "hard work" of a few boatloads of frisky settlers.
🐇🐇💘
@mekkaokereke Maybe not so much of a problem in the US but I'd add provide affordable housing. Having more than one room is a bit of a prerequisite for having children amha
@derle@mekkaokereke I came here to say the same thing. 30 years ago someone 20 years old could afford a modest apartment in most of the US on a shit-wage job. Now a lot of 20 year olds in the same position live with their parents. Not negating or arguing your other points. But I was there, and I see how bad housing has become for young Americans.
@gkemp@derle@mekkaokereke When I was growing up, our parents made it very clear to us that as soon as we became legal adults, we were on our own. All our peers were in the same situation. Either they WANTED to leave, or were EXPECTED to, at 18. We shared apartments, and sometimes even rooms, but we got out from under our parents. And yes, it cost A LOT. We didn't all make enough to manage it, so side-hustles.
@thepoliticalcat@gkemp@derle@mekkaokereke in England it varied across ethnicities - white folk tended to leave home earlier whereas Asian and Black communities stayed in the family home longer, but nowadays multi-generational households are widespread for everyone (plus "boomerang" returns of young adult offspring when house shares and relationships fail or the young adults have financial problems)
@mekkaokereke but Mekka that's not the point they only need more births because they want more worker drones for the factory. Why give the drones expensive things like health, housing and education. When all you need to do is remove their access to birth control and abortion. Force them to have children then workers are plentiful and easy to replace when they die due to awful conditions.
@mekkaokereke not a woman but as an adult who can give birth, I fucking would if I could afford to have kids right now. Because of capitalism, I probably can't for a long time and maybe not ever. But if I could just be a stay at home parent or afford kids while working part time, I would. I know plenty of people in this category, but it's really not about birth rates and entirely about control. Forcing adults to know nothing but work and forcing kids to have kids
@mekkaokereke Maybe some of the people who are against those things are against them because they know if women have those things, the women will not choose to reproduce with them or their sons.
@adambkaplan@mekkaokereke In Quebec, subsidized (and regulated) daycares helped increase labor participation, particularly among single parents, and it lifted a lot of families out of poverty. This, in addition to a year of parental leave that can also be split between parents.
The program has flaws re: the early childhood education aspect, but did what it was supposed to do.
@mekkaokereke excellent post! It seems like the red states are hoping to "solve" the falling birth rate "problem" by banning abortion. More child labor! I kinda wonder if young people will rebel by just not having as much sex.
@Npars01@Jennifer@mekkaokereke Considering how hard those procedures used to be to access under 30 until Obamacare included them in the required coverage, watch that the next vector GOP is going to head for is trying to stop access to them unless you have a life threatening condition, have spit out multiple kids already, and are of a certain age (aka beyond ideal child bearing years).
I remember my mom telling me about how she'd asked for a tubal after my brother was born (her second child) and the doctor actually started to argue with her about it because she was still under 30 and well within her prime to have kids. She got it in the end, but the fact that it was still a fight after she had two healthy kids? Fuck that noise. We need to be prepared to defend this front for the kids coming up behind the zoomers, to make sure the door doesn't get closed for them again.
@mekkaokereke@Npars01@Jennifer I think that was one of the arguments the doctor tried to throw at my mom. I've also heard from people in the childfree community where doctors would being up hypothetical husbands as well:
"What if your future husband wants kids?"
"You mean the one I haven't even met because I'm not dating anyone? Then clearly he's not the right husband for me."
"But."
"No."
Used to be that the husband's consent was needed for abortions in some states too.
When I say that a lot of straight men don't even like women, I'm not talking about sexual attraction. Yes, they are sexually attracted to women. But they don't like women. They don't want women to have agency, or autonomy. They don't want to have conversations with women.
Women feel that. It's impossible to ignore. So women are choosing not to date men that are so very loud about their "political" stance built around not liking women.
@mekkaokereke Just say no to dating men who think women are beneath them. Nope. Move along. Plenty of decent men out there worth dating, if that's who you're into. Let's not validate the crummy ones or, heaven forbid, give them babies!
@mekkaokereke This always gets me... America is one of the luckiest countries in the world in that millions of people want to come here and work. On average, every immigrant grows the economy and makes Americans richer. We can completely dodge the "demographic crisis" facing rich countries by just letting the people who want to come here in.
Are you a patriot who wants a strong and prosperous America? Then you better not be an anti-immigrant xenophobe.
@chasseur@mekkaokereke Modern American history just seems to be replete with folks only to happy to work and vote against their own interests.
I'm Canadian, and just taking into account the Syrian refugees by themselves, we've seen many not only do well but start business that then go on and employ dozens of Canadians or more.
Immigration is a win/win/win, but one has to actually want one's country to succeed no matter who's in government and that doesn't work for Conservatives.
@mekkaokereke@chasseur Exactly. Immigration works for everyone. Immigrants hire others, pay taxes and generally enrich the culture. I've always been more of a fan of the cultural mosaic, where everyone brings their own unique style and identity that enriches the whole, as opposed to the melting pot where everyone becomes the same and folks lose a cultural identity.
@mekkaokereke@chriswho@chasseur I get what you are saying, but your description kind of leaves out the fact that Abdulfattah Jandali was from an extremely wealthy family.
@mekkaokereke I am super annoyed that a lot of liberals have accepted beefing up border enforcement as synonymous with “immigration reform” when what we really need is to expand USCIS and revamp processing to fix the kind of problem you are talking about, so people can get legal residency more easily among other things.
@MisuseCase@mekkaokereke real immigration reform would also involve significant aid packages to other countries paid for by imposing severe consequences on US companies that caused the humanitarian and environmental crises in other countries in the first place. And somehow convincing the CIA that human rights movements aren’t the red menace.
@MisuseCase@mekkaokereke but also holy crap about the falling birth rate thing! I knew that teen pregnancy was down, but I didn’t know that’s what these people were complaining about. Yikes!
When I was a first year college student in 1974 I remember looking through my high school yearbook & one out of 3 (rural white & native) girls who had graduated with me a few months earlier was pregnant, had a child, was married, or/& was dead.
The past was not bucolic glory. Twas widespread fear, resignation, & despair, & did not build character.
You are right. Sex ed works. Contraception & abortion work. Equality works. College aid works. Opportunity works. Progress exists.
@mekkaokereke I’ve said it before in mazillions of ways but the second someone starts taking about being talking that the “birth rate” is down is some kind of valid human survival concern I simply say:
“Call me back when the human population of the Earth has dropped down to 3.5 Billion, and I’ll still laugh at you because that was the population the year ‘the population bomb’ was written predicting massive famine deaths in the ‘near future’ (1970’s) due to overpopulation.”
@mekkaokereke@tfardet
So I can't argue back at "environmentalists" saying we need to get the population down (I read that as "people on a dollar a day need to have less kids", which doesn't have that much effect) by saying rising standards of living will take care of that? Well bum.
This is unrelated to standards of living, or "overpopulation," (which is always thinly veiled racism).
You can lower the teen birth rate just by giving kids access to contraception, teaching them about sex education, that they are in control of what happens to their own bodies, that some youth pastors are creeps, and most importantly, that they can choose to be a wife and have kids, or, they can just... choose to not do any of that, and it's all fine either way. Choice.
@mekkaokereke I don’t understand the last parapgraph. Does that mean that 25% of girls/women that were 15 in 1991 gave birth before they turned 21?
Or that in 1991 specifically, 25% of birthing girls/women were under the age of 21? But in that case I don’t understand where the 15 years old comes from.
@mekkaokereke While I don't consider either birth or immigration rates to be in "crisis", and I'm glad teen pregnancy is down, the vast majority of births in the US involve neither teens nor folks over 40.
We can't just look at fertility rate by age cohort. We also have to look at the percentage of population that is in that age cohort, to determine impact.
Most people in the US are white, and most white people are old. The most common age for a white US person is ~58.🤷🏿♂️
The chart you shared above shows that the birth rate for women aged 30 to 39 was increasing slightly. The chart below shows that women aged 30 to 39 account for 45.9% of all live births in the US
@mekkaokereke There is a bit of a drop-down in the 20s, especially the late 20s, which is saying something about economic conditions. But hot damn is it now about "make more babies", more a "maybe this can be a proxy to show some economical shitshow are having impact on people".
And also, urgh, the whole racist "we need more white babies" shtick. Fucking racists.
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