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    [OC] American Women Are Having Children Later and Later
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    [OC] American Women Are Having Children Later and Later

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    36 Comments

    2. The_Bill_Brasky_ on

      No shit. The rentier economy and the ruling class are sucking every penny out of us for everything, and now they get more tax breaks on the backs of disabled and poor people.

      I hate it here and I hate our conservative governments actively harming as many people as possible per bill.

    3. NectarineSufferer on

      Not American but yeah idk if it’ll happen for me. Can barely support myself

    4. ac9116 on

      Our household views a child as a luxury good and we aren’t planning on trying for a child until we have secured our financial future through aggressive saving at a young age.

    6. ChipmunkNamMoi on

      When women have access to education, legal rights, and birth control than time and again most women, like most men, choose to focus on their jobs, personal lives, and education before starting a family. That shouldn’t be surprising.

      Women without options tend to have children younger. Which is also why modern women raised in fundementalist and conservative religions, are more likely to have children younger.

    7. argument___clinic on

      I would not have guessed that the highest total birth rate was for women born in 1974. That means there are quite a lot of Zoomers I guess.

    9. Footstepsinthedark1 on

      This chart is a little confusing. But is the tempo effect basically saying women in 1984 had more kids than women in the 1950’s? I always thought the birth rate was declining.

    12. planko13 on

      Lots of really interesting information here:

      -No idea that 1974 was “peak fertility” birth year for women

      -Teen pregnancy is WAY down. This is fantastic news, but also seems to correlate strongly to lifetime fertility.

      -Millennials are netting out to almost as fertile as boomers. Big surprise to me considering the headlines.

      -Damn near linear decrease in fertility from Millennials onward.

      Excellent visualization. No pixel is wasted IMO.

    13. Phemto_B on

      So while the Pyramdists panic that the fertility rate is going down, it’s not actually established that women are having fewer children over the full course of their lives, just that they’re not getting knocked up while still is school and while trying to establish their careers.

    14. SciFi_Wasabi999 on

      This graph is very confusing. What is “cumulative fertility”? The baseline is a 1950s woman, but how many kids are we talking about? An 80% decline means what, in real terms? What do the colors signify, proximity to current day? What is the dotted line?

      I get that this is summarizing some complicated comparisons, but I’m not  sure what this visualization is trying to illuminate. 

    16. No_Shopping_573 on

      Finally a data illustration that’s not just colorful and displays a clear trend but actually has a title, labeled X/Y, labeled data lines, a source, and relevant insights.

    17. JetMike42 on

      Okay, so yes, it takes a while to get what the graph is showing. But once you do, it’s a lot of really interesting info displayed in a very neat way.

    23. texasrigger on

      I’m so glad the wife and I bucked this trend. It’s not for everyone but having kids young worked out really well for us.

    24. skiboy12312 on

      This graph is awesome. Takes a moment to comprehend, but I am not sure how else you would get the same information density.

    25. airwalker08 on

      Charts are supposed to make data easy to understand. This chart manages to make it more difficult to understand.

    26. Matails on

      Is “Fertility” really the right label? The decision to have or not to have a child is not the same as the ability to bear children.

    27. optimisticRamblings on

      Its a miracle American women are consensually having them at all

    29. icelandichorsey on

      Alternative title: American women used to have kids too early and now that they can choose, things have changed.

      (I know that’s simplistic but it’s a title and I’m entitled to this take. I know for some circumstances like affordability are at play and it’s complicated..)

    30. Careless-Confusion58 on

      With the middle class shrinking and everyone needing to have both partners working, raising costs of everything, this isn’t surprising. This is the result of capitalism. Have to keep working harder to make more money to keep the billionaires richer and the rest of us can’t afford to have kids.

    31. NameLips on

      For some reason the right is intent on casting this as a result of women’s rights and freedoms. It’s a global problem, even in places with few women’s rights.

      In America I think it’s more of an economic problem. Life has gotten so expensive it’s impossible to have a stay at home parent even if we wanted to. Children take time and money, and we have been squeezed dry of both.

      Ironically it seems like the 1% is most concerned about falling birth rates, when, in my opinion, it is their massive accumulation of wealth that is most contributing to it.

      We need a society where a single earner can support a household. I think a lot of people wish they had the time and money for kids.

      Redditers also say they don’t want kids because the world is fucked, and they don’t want their kids to grow up in a blasted hellscape. That’s valid, but I think that opinion is much more prevalent on Reddit than in real life.

    32. texas1982 on

      You see how the women born in the late 70s and early 80s don’t tightly fit the trend and tend to have just a few more babies than predicted? That’s because the the hot popularity of Ace of Base and the song All That She Wants.