U.S. Birth Rate Reaches Record Low [why have the women given up?]

HHS | June 2003 | Centers for Disease Control

[ex-snook]

U.S. Birth Rate Reaches Record Low
Births to Teens Continue 12-Year Decline; Cesarean Deliveries Reach All-Time High

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, June 25, 2003

The U.S. birth rate fell to the lowest level since national data have been available, reports the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) birth statistics released today by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.  Secretary Thompson also noted that the rate of teen births fell to a new record low, continuing a decline that began in 1991.

The birth rate was 13.9 per 1,000 persons in 2002, a decline of 1 percent from the rate of 14.1 per 1,000 in 2001 and down 17 percent from the recent peak in 1990 (16.7 per 1,000), according to a new CDC report, “Births: Preliminary Data for 2002.”  The current low birth rate primarily reflects the smaller proportion of women of childbearing age in the U.S. population, as baby boomers age and Americans are living longer.

There has also been a recent downturn in the birth rate for women in the peak childbearing ages.  Birth rates for women in their 20s and early 30s were generally down while births to older mothers (35-44) were still on the rise.  Rates were stable for women over 45.

Birth rates among teenagers were down in 2002, continuing a decline that began in 1991. The birth rate fell to 43 births per 1,000 females 15-19 years of age in 2002, a 5-percent decline from 2001 and a 28-percent decline from 1990. The decline in the birth rate for younger teens, 15-17 years of age, is even more substantial, dropping 38 percent from 1990 to 2002 compared with a drop of 18 percent for teens 18-19 years.

“The reduction in teen pregnancy has clearly been one of the most important public health success stories of the past decade,” Secretary Thompson said. “The fact that this decline in teen births is continuing represents a significant accomplishment.”

More than one fourth of all children born in 2002 were delivered by cesarean; the total cesarean delivery rate of 26.1 percent was the highest level ever reported in the United States. The number of cesarean births to women with no previous cesarean birth jumped 7 percent and the rate of vaginal births after previous cesarean delivery dropped 23 percent.  The cesarean delivery rate declined during the late 1980s through the mid-1990s but has been on the rise since 1996.

Among other significant findings:

In 2002, there were 4,019,280 births in the United States, down slightly from 2001 (4,025,933).

The percent of low birthweight babies (infants born weighing less than 2,500 grams) increased to 7.8 percent, up from 7.7 percent in 2001 and the highest level in more than 30 years.  In addition, the percent of preterm births (infants born at less than 37 weeks of gestation) increased slightly over 2001, from 11.9 percent to 12 percent.

More than one-third of all births were to unmarried women.  The birth rate for unmarried women was down slightly in 2002 to 43.6 per 1,000 unmarried women, reflecting the growing number of unmarried women in the population

Access to prenatal care continued a slow and steady increase.  In 2002, 83.8 percent of women began receiving prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, up from 83.4 percent in 2001 and 75.8 percent in 1990.

Data on births are based on information reported on birth certificates filed in State vital statistics offices and reported to CDC through the National Vital Statistics System.  The report is available on CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics Web site.

[ex-snook]

You raise a good point. ?"How is assimilation possible in NYC public schools? "

When I graduated from HS in NYC there were many 1st generation (but not new immigrants). Assimilation of 'the willing' took one generation and then we were all off to the military to complete the job.

Many of the DINKs were I live now have dogs instead of kids so I just refer to them as DIPSs (Double income, pooper scooper).

[Siamese Princess]

"Why have kids -- You can spend all of your money on yourself and the government will take care of you in your old age, disability, etc."

You can't afford to have kids; the government takes half of your money to throw it away on those who won't work, and there will never be enough government money to support us in old age. Who are you kidding?

Hey, I agree with you. But the federal government has been promising to take of us since the time of Joe Stalin's good buddy Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ironically, the more you are taxed to provide for your own support, the less able you are to provide for yourself, thus rendering you more dependent on the government. Neat trick, huh?

A couple of weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh was discussing two magazine articles he read about the fact that the members of the baby boom generation are spending their money as fast as they can make it, not saving up for their old age, and will demand that the government (which means the working taxpayers, of course) support them in their retirement in the style they are accustomed to. This alone could bankrupt the country.

[StormEye]

"What is the result? No more caucasian race."

At the beginning of the 20th century whites were
thirty percent of the world population. At the
start of the 21st century whites are now down to eleven
percent of the population. Two world wars, some minor
wars, "life style" choices, taxes, prices, the
general cultural attacks on marriage, divorce and
most of all the PILL and ABORTION are killing off the
white race around the world. One would think with the
standard of living of the Western (white) world there
would be no problem maintaining population levels.

[LizardQueen]

I guess I'm not clear on your ultimate point. My point is that we are humans, in a society, and judging usefulness or uselessness by the standards of nature alone seems to be foolish.

By nature's rules alone, a welfare mother with 10 neglected kids by different fathers who never works and sponges off the government for life is a greater "success" than a self-supporting woman with one well cared-for child.

But in human terms, the welfare mother is not a success at all - in fact, most of us here would regard her as relatively useless. And her children may well contribute more to the destruction of the civilization into which they have appeared than they contribute. Her DNA has managed to transmit itself into the future, but how much more DNA transfer will their presence inhibit rather than promote?

We are humans, not Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

LQ

[Antoninus]

It's a recipe for the eradication/marginalization of the West, and there ain't a damn thing to be done about it - capitalism and personal freedom do indeed tend to sow the seeds of their own ruin.

Capitalism? Please. Try socialism and the left's Anti-American agenda, imbecile. High taxes, ridiculous entitlements, and the promotion of the "if it feels good, do it" deathstyle will be what kills the West if anything does.

[Antoninus]

I don't doubt that I COULD be a good mother. I'm smart, successful, caring, and entirely conservative. My felines and the Dread Boston Salty are my children - admittedly, I spoil them rotten.

Surrogate children, I call them. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances have them. Why? They're substitutes to fill the vaccuum of their lives that a spouse and children would otherwise be filling.

However, I also lack patience, and I rely entirely on logic and reason (instead of emotion) in my dealings with people. Having children requires tons of patience. Using logic on toddlers doesn't work. (Nor does it on dogs. The cats are open to reasoning, however.)

That may be the weakest excuse I've ever heard. You should use your reason to figure out that in 10-20 years, depending on how old you are, you will no longer have the option to have children. At some point after that date, I can almost guarantee that you will regret it bitterly.

Couple that with a quick temper, and you have a recipe for family unhappiness.

Come on, you've got a million excuses. You will have to learn patience, but I have no doubt that if you are as "intelligent and logical" as you claim to be, you'll soon see that it does no good to blow up at a crying 6 month old.

Seriously, would you rather I had one, and just hope to wake up one morning as a good parent? Or would you rather I left it up to my happily married sister and her very excellent husband, both of whom are completely cut out for parenting?

Marriage, pregnancy, and children change one's life in a profound and intangible way. Women especially, thanks to the wonderful world of hormones. You will have no idea what kind of mother you will be until you are one.

I don't know you, but you seem like a very genuine person. Indeed, you're almost the poster-girl for a someone who should be having kids but is either already in a relationship with someone who doesn't want them, or actively shuns the kind of men who do.

[honeygrl]

"What kind of chat room? Religious? "

Not religious. It was a chatroom at the old www.talkcity.com. I use to work with that website as a paid moderator but they went broke and sold it to a new company so it's not the same sort of place it use to be. Several years ago it was a great place to meet people of all types and was moderated to keep out people who were disruptive or cussed. There were kids that hung around a lot of the rooms so they made sure it was family friendly. Of course, the whole place went down into the hole when the owners got greedy. They walked away with millions of dollars and abandoned the original intent of the place. It was very sad to me when it all went downhill because I met so many wonderful people there, most of which I totally lost contact with after the place fell. I do still keep in touch with 10 or so people I met there about 7-8 yrs ago and we chat on another chat server now. They are sortof like my internet family.

[Xenalyte]

I don't know you, but you seem like a very genuine person. Indeed, you're almost the poster-girl for a someone who should be having kids but is either already in a relationship with someone who doesn't want them, or actively shuns the kind of men who do.

I'm glad I come across as genuine. My online persona is pretty close to my real personality. (I'm not QUITE as in-your-face in real life, but close.)

Next week will be six years with Xena's Guy, who wants children more than I do. We've discussed it, and should the time ever be right, we'd like to adopt. However, the patience thing is a big hangup with me.

I pinged Bacon because he's my best friend and can perhaps testify that XG is a decent guy who'd make a better parent than I would. XG has a great deal of patience - he has to, to keep me around for this long. :)

[Henrietta]

"Not all single mothers are welfare moms. "

Hey, unless you are a "single mother with illegitimate brats," I wasn't talking about you, was I? I did not give "hard working single mothers out there a black eye," you simply failed to read the post.

[LWalk18]

It's a recipe for the eradication/marginalization of the West, and there ain't a damn thing to be done about it - capitalism and personal freedom do indeed tend to sow the seeds of their own ruin.

Capitalism? Please. Try socialism and the left's Anti-American agenda, imbecile. High taxes, ridiculous entitlements, and the promotion of the "if it feels good, do it" deathstyle will be what kills the West if anything does.

The birth rate in the West has been dropping about 100-125 years now, from roughly 6 children per woman in the mid 19th century to 3 in the 20th to just under 2 today. The birth rate has dropped in every country that can be even very loosely described as modern, whether they have extensive social programs or not.

[Noachian]

"My point is that we are humans, in a society, and judging usefulness or uselessness by the standards of nature alone seems to be foolish."

The only demand that nature puts on us is that we reproduce. That's it. Life itself is simple: you're born, you reproduce, you die. The first and last parts nature will take of, the middle part is up to the individual.

You and I were born, and someday you and I will die. That's nature doing her thing. Life and death are natural functions. On this point I think we can both agree. It's the middle part, reproduction and its usefullness, that you take exception to.

For some reason you can't understand what is obvious to every species of animal , including most humans, on this planet. That reproduction is natures way of insuring the survival of the species. Without reproduction it's obvious that a species will become extinct, and in natures grand scheme those who pass on their genes are useful for the species survival and those who don't are a waste of time.

Right about now you're thinking about all the ways humans help each other, care for each other, and how all this helping and caring for others makes up for the lack of offspring. It doesn't work that way in the natural world.

Each of us is a unique individual with a unique genetic makeup. Some of the genes you carry in your body go back thousands of years, and include a minute portion of each of your ancestors. Some of the genes in your body have specialized functions that are no longer useful in today's world and so lie dorment within you. These genes at one time helped your ancestors survive and are within you should your own survival, or the survival of your society be at risk. When you bare children you pass along to them the genes that may one day insure their survival and the survival of their society.

So, you see that helping other women have children, or caring for someone elses children, or lending a hand here, and helping out there, being every bit a social person but not bearing children yourself deprives society as a whole of those unique genes you alone carry within you. Put it this way: if all the people in the world died off and only one man and one woman survived, those two would be able to repopulate the earth with the genes they carry inside them. And, that's called survival of the species.

Everything other than birth, death, and reproduction is a social construct that helps us humans deal with the natural world in our own way. Humans judge a person's usefulness by the social constructs they build, but nature has her own way of defining usefulness.

"By nature's rules alone, a welfare mother with 10 neglected kids by different fathers who never works and sponges off the government for life is a greater "success" than a self-supporting woman with one well cared-for child."

That's right. Nature doesn't care how genes are passed along as long as they get passed on. As far as welfare and government goes they're constructions of human society and not part of the natural order of life.

"But in human terms, the welfare mother is not a success at all - in fact, most of us here would regard her as relatively useless."

Human terms means human constructs. That's humans looking at life through their own prism, and has no connection to nature. The woman who passes along her genes many times is more likely to contribute to the survival of the species than a woman who passes them along once or not at all. And, this doesn't take accidental death into account. A woman with one child loses everything should that one child die, and that would put her into the same catagory as a childless woman. In case of the welfare mother with 10 kids accidental death of one child doesn't inhibit her genes from being passed on.

"And her children may well contribute more to the destruction of the civilization into which they have appeared than they contribute. Her DNA has managed to transmit itself into the future, but how much more DNA transfer will their presence inhibit rather than promote?"

No one can say what the destiny is for any child. There were devils and angels in the past of humankind, but here we are. Great men and women have come from humble beginnings, and great savages have come from those humans consider elite.

"We are humans, not Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom."

Yes we are humans, and humankind can be pretty wild at times.

[LizardQueen]

For some reason you can't understand what is obvious to every species of animal , including most humans, on this planet. That reproduction is natures way of insuring the survival of the species

No, I understand it, I just don't agree with what appears to be your "DNA Uber Alles" viewpoint, and with judging the success or failure of humans by the standards of nature alone.

As humans we are more than a species, we are a society. While the species would better ensure it's survival if everyone just dropped everything and had as many kids as possible, the society may be better served by those who want and are capable of raising children having them while those who don't/aren't go do something else productive.

I will grant you that all the helping and caring in the world would make no difference to the survival of the species if everyone were to stop breeding immediately. But do you really consider that likely to happen?

In nature, quantity always wins because of predators, starvation accidents etc (unless of course you outbreed your carrying capacity). I don't know about you, but the teeming slums of Calcutta are the last place I'd consider a human success story, even though nature may consider it just dandy.

I have a sense that we are talking past each other, so I'll stop now.

LQ

[LizardQueen]

Just barging in here with some unsolicited advice :) : Between you and XG, try to come to a resolution on the kid decision as soon as you can. This can be a deal-breaker in a relationship when one half of the couple wants one and the other doesn't.

It's not something that can be compromised on either - no half-kid is possible. Either one person has to have a child they don't want, or the other gets to live in resentment that their partner prevented them from being a parent.

I say this because of my experience: DH and I have been very out of synch on the kid issue our entire relationship. One factor was his issues I mentioned in a post above, another is that we're 12 years apart in age. We didn't talk enough about it either - each of us thought the other's original position on it had remained the same, when it actually had reversed over the years - we started out with him wanting one and me being too young and not ready, and ended up with me wanting them and him not.

So talk to your guy, talk talk and talk somemore and make sure you both know where you're really at on it.

Just my unsolicited $.02.
LQ

[Xenalyte]

Kids and religion are two of the things we'll settle before we get married. Those are fundamental, can't-get-past-it issues.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

I'll take Einstein -- an excellent example of why accepting immigrants instead of indiscriminately pumping out babies is the root of what makes our country the strongest in the world.

Then take him in Germany, because that's where he did anything that was worth the paper he wrote it on.

He accomplished nothing extraordinary while in the U.S. except to generate publicity through the use of his name.

Then you must be unaware of the fact that it was a letter from Einstein to FDR that got the Manhattan project moving. It is quite possible that, were it left to advocacy from more obscure scientists, we would not have gotten around to creating the atomic bomb until years later. In which case millions upon millions of US servicemen would have lost their lives in the invasion of Japan -- and quite possibly neither you nor I nor a lot of other people would be around to post right now! Not to mention that the entire Japanese people might be virtually extinct.

It seems to me that using his prestige to avoid that outcome was something extraordinary.

[thinking]

The tribe with the most babies wins.....

[Age of Reason]

Then you must be unaware of the fact that it was a letter from Einstein to FDR that got the Manhattan project moving. It is quite possible that, were it left to advocacy from more obscure scientists, we would not have gotten around to creating the atomic bomb until years later. In which case millions upon millions of US servicemen would have lost their lives in the invasion of Japan -- and quite possibly neither you nor I nor a lot of other people would be around to post right now! Not to mention that the entire Japanese people might be virtually extinct.

I know all about it.

As I also know about his follow up letter, in which he pleaded that the bomb not be used.

[Age of Reason]

And were it not for the world's expanding population, there would have been no world wars, no need for a bomb, and no need for nuclear power.

No practical use of Einstein's equation.

And no fear like the fear the world has lived under since.

[Woo Way]

"We are so impressed with your rainbow of acquaintances--surely, your life must be a shining example of someone who basks in the sunshine of diversity by having so many wonderful friends from all corners of the earth.
Please, oh please, make up--I mean--gush--I mean--tell us some more tales--err--stories of your wonderful melting pot of friends and their fascinating foods and quaint activities.
They are so convincingly true!"

Well, wiessewurst was the only thing I recognized.
Try going to college, Mr. Reason. You might meet people with new and diverse things to add to our country. Maybe instead of bemoaning low teen birthrates, you should be bemoaning low male graduation rates.
Also, it's worth noting that of the people I have mentioned on this thread, I am the only one who was on financial aid.
Maybe you're right. Maybe we would have done better without those dirty immigrants like Kissinger.
Hey, I'm not talking about letting anyone or everyone join our great nation. I just object to the idea that the lowering of the teenage birthrate is a problem. What are you, some kind of dirty Catholic? (Half Irish, half Catholic Bavarian myself, so don't get insulted. Try reading John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath." These are the people who made us strong. Just like the Mexicans now.)
Maybe the "Not me not now" abstinence campaign that started in my city and spread through the country is taking effect. Maybe the cautions against the disease foolish bigots like you think only happens to homosexual men have had an effect. Wanna be just like Africa, which despite ridiculously high birthrates, can expect a 15-30% decline in population in the next 10-15 years? We can do that -- tell your little girl she should have babies before she is fully adult and able to make sensible decisions about what that boy wants to do to her.
My main problem with this whole thread is: So teenage girls are having less babies? Excellent. When your fifteen-year-old daughter gets pregnant, you'll feel very differently about this issue. When we look like China with their compulsory abortions, you'll feel like a fool. We don't have to worry about low teen birthrates. We should celebrate it.

(PS -- it is true there was a factual inaccuracy there. (Typo.) It was my *Grandfather* who was an Irish immigrant. My father was of Danish descent. Those darn pastry eaters! They ruined our culture!)

-- Woo Way

[Age of Reason]

For someone advising others on what to read, you might learn to read yourself, as it seems everything I wrote went right over your head.

Let me make my stand as simple as possible for you:

WE HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY.

Can you read that?

P.S. I am familiar with Steinbeck.

And I have read his "Grapes of Wrath."

I also know better than to form a world view from reading works of FICTION.

And Steinbeck, for your information, may well have been a commie; commies certainly seem to love him.

Here's a refresher course for you. At the following NPR link, you can listen--so along with most NPR listeners, you don't even need to know how to read (providing you understand the English language, about which I have doubts): http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/grapesofwrath/index.html

They even have pictures for you to look at!

And you can listen to a Woodie Guthrie song inspired by the "The Grapes of Wrath."

And if that is not enough, you can really orgasm there by viewing a video clip of Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad in the movie version.

P.P.S. Don't impugn my understanding of the world, its cultures, and its people, either.

P.P.P.S. And don't tell me in my own country, where to live.