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.”
Capitalism contributes, yes. But, if humanity stays below replacement rate, humanity goes extinct.
Also, no matter how you distribute resources, there are periods of life when your productivity is less that what you need to survive. Everyone has this for many years at the beginning of their life, and those lucky enough to live long enough will have this toward the end of their lives, as aging is the disability that comes for us all. The proven method to sustain persons during those periods is to have enough people in their productive years; it generally requires more than the replacement rate. And, if that doesn’t happen, the less productive suffer and die more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
All that said, I’m against encouraging teenage pregnancy, and for full bodily autonomy – no one should be forced to let anyone else use their uterus.
The Earth’s population has nearly doubled in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure we’re not quite endangered yet. I’ll also point out that poor countries that tend to spawn brown players are well above replacement levels if you count those as people.
Yeah, I’m not worried about running out of humans globally, and I do think immigration is a fine way for a country to choose to maintain their population.
There’s probably something to be said around cultural preservation, and maybe that’s a bit easier for “native born” persons. But, I don’t know the steelman version of that argument, if there is one.
I’m against encouraging teenage pregnancy
Encouraging teenage pregnancy isn’t the problem. The problem is the encouragement in general. As said, full bodily autonomy - it should remain a right for all.
The problem is the encouragement in general
I don’t see why that’s a problem. I think it could come in the form of actual benefits, not a just verbal haranguing / extolling based on (not) having children, but that it’s good for the birth rate to be slightly above replacement and correcting any divergence should be encouraged.
You’re sabotaging your own argument here. You stated full body autonomy to be a right to then dismiss that within this statement.
Also,
no one should be forced to let anyone else use their uterus
Tell me, how does this relate to your current argument?
“full body autonomy” includes but is not limited to “no one [is] forced to let anyone else use their uterus”. I don’t believe I am sabotaging my own argument, but I’m an idiot, so maybe you just need to be more meticulous in explaining how I am (doing that).
I bring it up because authoritarians often try to restrict bodily autonomy, particularly around uteruses, when trying to do population control (up or down). In fact, while it may not be a acceptable, mainstream view, you don’t have to look to hard to find a USian on the right claiming that abortion must (become/stay) illegal because of the “birth rate crisis”.
But, if humanity stays below replacement rate, humanity goes extinct.
I don’t think this is a real risk. And if it were, it certainly won’t be anytime soon. Fewer people means fewer mouths to feed, fewer homes to build/maintain and less consumption in general, which given how the planet is struggling to continue balance with current human resource consumption, a gradual decline in human population would probably be beneficial in the long run.
To actually threaten humanity’s continued existence the number of humans would need to dwindle so low that the societial and the medical infrastructure that permits/causes the declining birth rates would completely collapse and people would naturally start having more kids again in order to keep up with the work on the farms that most people would need to work on at that scale of society
Edit: Put more susinctly, the current declining birth rates are a because of societal changes, not biological ones
it certainly won’t be anytime soon.
Agreed. I think globally we are still above replacement rate.
Fewer people means fewer mouths to feed, fewer homes to build/maintain and less consumption in general
Yes, but no. As the video I linked points out, because of the time delay you get fewer people with maximum productivity while still needed to support people that have sub-self-sustaining productivity. Eventually, you might get to a smaller population that choose to return to above replacement rate, but the demographic squeeze don’t got away for another 20-30 years. Once it starts you are stuck in a demographic squeeze, it makes it even harder on everyone, making that choice “harder”.
That is a simplification. Sub-self-sustaining productivity doesn’t exactly track with age, and how much it takes to sustain a joyful life varies based on a lot of factors; it sort of tracks downward but can also go up if economies of scale shirk or when a new essential utility is introduced by technology.
Kinda puts the abstinence only sex ed in a different light. I guess we were just supposed to push out babies and live in trailers the whole time.
Well yes, actually. There’s data from the 1400s that abstinence isn’t sex education and results in higher teen pregnancy rates.
If the goal was ever to stop teen pregnancy they’d just encourage porn use among teens and free condoms in any third space they congregate.
Prisons are better for their profits.
I don’t get what is so fucking hard for these pedophile conservative fucks to understand. When you make life fucking impossible to live, no one wants to bring a child into the world.
Instead, their response is, “if we fuck children, we can raise the birth rate.”
Fuck these ghouls. They just all need to die already.
Fuck these ghouls
Absolutely not.
Also I’m not young enough for them apparently.
They dont care how hard life is for people, they desperatly need more lives to ruin.
People lived horrible lives in previous ages and still had lots of kids. Of course the answer to that was plenty of rape. Buuuut they don’t see that as a problem so…it isn’t about understanding, it’s about a complete lack of empathy.
People lived horrible lives in previous ages and still had lots of kids. Of course the answer to that was plenty of rape.
Actually, lack of reliable contraception was a much bigger contributer to the higher birthrate than rape.
“Not enough teenagers are being locked into poverty with unwanted children. This is bad for the oligarchs.”
not enough meat for the grinder, we got too many wars on the books keep them babies comin!
I feel like that’s kind of the core of the birth rate panics across the whole age spectrum by the billionaires. None of these fuckers think 20 years in advance to care about a smaller future workforce, but what a low birthdate impacts immediately is the financial solvency of those potential childrearing parents. Fewer and later births means one fewer pressure they can use to exploit workers.
When you’re trapped in an uncaring machine that demands you toil for the rest of your life or die penniless on the street, one of the only ways you can fight back is to just stop participating. The machine may have me but I won’t feed it more.
Fewer girls to rape. Their worst fear.
I have a female coworker and her daughter is currently eight months pregnant at 14 with a 17-year-old father. She couldn’t be happier. She is also a hardcore republican and a diehard Trump supporter.
Ruin your kids life early that is the republican motto. Trap them in never ending wage slavery.
Yep exactly, it runs in her family. She was pregnant with her first baby at 15 and her husband was in his early 40’s. Her husband is older than her dad by 5 years. She is currently 41 and her husband is 73. She also has a younger sister like 5 years younger and I believe she basically did the same thing being pregnant at 15-16 with a much older man.
Being a teen mom sky rockets the chance your children will become parents as teens
Yep, my best friend had his first child at 17 and now that child is 18 with 2 kids already.
My wife has one branch of her family where 4 generations occured in a 60 year period, the 5 generation photos are pretty neat, and also I’m really happy for the last generation which broke the cycle.
I don’t like your coworker.
WTF
Sounds like she has a sweet trailer.
Actually, no, she lives in an old rundown house that has a bunch of Trump Flags and signs and she lives across the street from a Mexican restaurant and she absolutely hates the Mexicans, but loves eating there every night.
Damn these (slur) and their delicious food and beautiful decor and lovely music! Damn them! Get out get out get out! And dont come back! (But i would like a refill on my horchata please)
That is almost 1:1 what she says.
I hate them as real things, but thryre amazing jokes.
Mentally insane
I knew someone who was by her own description baby-crazy as a teen and basically seeked out someone to knock her up. Hormones are wild things sometimes. Her child did not repeat the cycle fortunately
I’m going nuts. I’m from Russia, and Russian officials say insane stuff, and then I read news from the US, and it’s the same shit, side view.
Why? Its insane, and it only gets worse. When I lived in the US during Tramp’s first term, it wasn’t that crazy, despite having± same names in high places. Now, it’s like another country, and too much alike my insane motherland. USA, you’re becoming what you hate the most!
Looneytunes, all of them. ☠️
USA, you’re becoming what you hate the most!
For ~40% of Americans, this isn’t true. They hate Democrats more.
Trump was not daring to go as far as now but most importantly he only learned what the safeguards of rule of law and state institutions are. So even if he tried, there were too many people in too many positions pushing back hard enough for him to hit a wall. So for his second term he used the Republican party to purge all those upright and reasonable people from all those administrative positions. As far as he could anyway. After regaining power, that purge of course vastly accelerated using presidential powers. Also the Supreme Court has a solid Republican majority now, with judges that will go very far in rubber stamping previously considered unconstitutional stuff (maybe not everything but almost as much).
This will also not go away when Trump is finally going to hell. The destroyed structures are destroyed and the tech oligarchy teamed up with the thecoratic extremists behind him will take over control directly, via Vance or some other guy. It is a lot of the Russian playbook, translated for US cinema.
Excuse me while I go barf.
They truly want a third world economy
A third world economy is quite nice for the folks on top. Until they’re deposed and replaced.
I feel it is important to point out that a third world economy is not necessary for things like that!
Yes but you and I are far smarter than the current US government.
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No, they want a capitalist economy
The replacement rate is down to 1.56, meaning every couple is having, on average, 1.56 children in the United States. We need two or above to keep the population at the same amount.
There’s actually another way to keep the population up, and it’s great for America economically and culturally, and it makes the world a better place at the same time.
Or maybe we give up on an economic model that requires unending population growth? Since you know, we live on a finite planet?
We have to find a path to degrowth. Stop repeating talking points that imply population growth is our only path forward.
Did you not understand that I was talking about immigration? Which is one of the ways we solve that. All of that.
Besides which we’re actually talking about keeping the population stable. A declining population is bad for everyone economically. Luckily population growth naturally slows down in modernized societies, which is why allowing people to immigrate is good for everyone.
Global population growth is happening. Slowing down, but looks inevitable for at least several more decades. Given that baseline, it is optimal for all countries involved to allow immigration from countries with population growth (reduces strain on government services, adds to the economy with remittances) to countries with lower birth rates (tax revenues support social service budgets, increased entrepreneur rate of immigrants increases job growth, etc.)
Economies can transition to population decline while maintaining standards of living for sure, if handled in a planned way. Some short-term pain during the transition, then fine later. But why go through a combination of short-term pain right now, at the same time as incredible cruelty is required to keep out migrants?
A path to degrowth will be needed globally in the medium-term future (finite planet), but trying to implement that now at just the US locally isn’t going to help the planet at all.
great for america
Oof. Not the selling point you think it is.
makes the world a better place
Theres your problem.
There’s nothing wrong with doing things that are (legitimately) great for America. I’d love to do things that are great for Russia and Israel too… but it’s unlikely that the leadership in those countries would consider them “great” actions.
Im saying they dont see it as a selling point. Im speaking of a third party’s perspective here. This is a really really basic level of abstraction imusing here, cmon.
Who are the “they” that you are referring to? MAGA? Other countries?
This is incredibly tedious. What the fuck?
He’s advocating for girls under 18 to have children? 18 is the age of majority. If he’s advocating for sexual contact with children, he needs to be put on a list.
Unfortunately, child marriage is still legal in a shocking number of states
He’s probably already on a certain list. Should we check?
Yeah. Republican donors.
Is it illegal between two underage people? Seriously asking, not from us.
It can be. Even just taking a nude photo of your own body as a minor is a crime in the US.
Most places in the united states have ‘romeo and juliet’ style laws, where two people who are within a certain age range (usually 1-4 years) aren’t (necessarily) breaking the law, even if one is underage.
It depends on the jurisdiction.
Depends on the state, but I think mostly yes.
Like many laws, statutory rape is often inconsistently applied. The most likely scenario is that someone with societal power uses it as a lever to impose their will. Cops rarely, if ever, go looking for someone to protect through enforcement of the law.
Usually, but in sane places it isn’t enforced in most cases.
This is one of those things that just can’t be true. (Regarding consensual sex)
WHY are Children NOT having Kids?
-Protect The Kids TM Republicans!
Gentle reminder that their main concern is not having enough targets to rape.
“We beat teen pregnancy!” - “Oh no!”
Elaborated: “Oh no! Fewer poverty-locked consumer slaves! Who do we convince breast feeding is unhealthy and peddle formula to? How will we paint immigration as a bad thing if unemployment goes down? What if - heaven forbid - social mobility goes up?”
How do we blackmail people with no children to work shit jobs?
These were the same morons that decried teen pregnancy 20+ years ago
Sure, they didn’t need it then. Apparently now they need it. Times change. 😮
Someone should check that doctor’s hard-drives.
All they gonna find there is this. Nothing really interesting…
I think not having kids is the only realistic way to fight those capitalistic overlords. They can’t continue to get richer if the workforce, who does all the dirty work for them, keeps shrinking.
The issue, though, is that when only Conservatives have kids, the next generation grows up even more Conservative.
