cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45445434
Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19.
On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates.
Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”
There is the question if the birthrates just dropped because the market now expects both people in a relationship to be working, making it impossible for the parents to care for their kids by reducing hours and childcare costs being more or close to what one person earns, especially in lower paying jobs. The effects on lifetime income for a mother are still devastating, and domestic work is still VERY undervalued. Fix this, and I am sure that birth rates will go up. But that would mean that our corporate overlords will make less.
Maybe if the population numbers in the US crash hard there will be a rethinking of priorities. The combination of xenophobia and economic pressure to keep working without having kids will take care of that in the next decade or two.