"The first is the most important and may be obvious: Today's teens enjoy better access to contraception and more convenient contraception than their predecessors, and more of them are taking advantage of innovations like long-acting injectable and implantable methods that can last years over a daily birth control pill. But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited and acting only on hormones -- are having less sex."
That's interesting, but lets just take a long look at the FIRST cause, which has come at the cost of endless political fights and only exists through that constant fighting. There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem.
You'll have better arguments if you understand why your opponents hold the views they do than if you just stare at them incredulously.
Why would anyone be skeptical of contraception? Perhaps because the normalization of contraception has come at the same time as a dramatic increase in single motherhood, from single digits in 1950 to about half of all children today [0]. If we are tempted to think that single motherhood is a problem of access to technology, it is sobering to think that we are worse at it than medieval peasants.
At the same time, total fertility has fallen to sub-replacement rates in every Western country [1]. This creates top-heavy societies that are dependent for young workers upon cultures that don't share our enlightened attitudes.
Is it certain that both of these trends can be attributed wholly to contraception? No. Do they suggest that Western cultures have adopted attitudes towards sex and reproduction that are proving incompatible with their own continued existence? Well...
Hello new player. It sounds like instead of pointing out what was "incredulous staring" you seem instead to have offered a new accusation of "patronizing".
This runs counter to the belief that many have that when given higher access to contraceptives, teens will have more sex. Another knock against abstinence-only sex ed!
My kids get abstinence-only sex ed and it makes me laugh. If abstinence-based education was effective, they could eliminate the problem with childhood obesity by just telling kids to ignore their urges to overeat.
To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten.
> To avoid dealing with bullshit from parents, the school hires an outside company to teach sex ed. Sometimes they failed in funny ways. In my daughter's class, they handed out a few Skittles and told kids to pass them around as the class went on. After a while they stopped to talk about the candy that had been handled by everybody and asked who would want to eat the now sticky, gross candy. They underestimated how picky kids are when it comes to Skittles - all were eaten.
Reminds me of this time at my Baptist (yes, the upper case C christian kind) university where someone did the same thing by biting a cookie. I ate the half-bitten cookie just out of spite. People are not cookies!
(this is not meant to me inflammatory, but rather an honest rumination)
Keeping the feminism/SJW/manosphere shenanigans in my peripheral vision, there's been a huge backlash rallying against single mothers in recent years. There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package.
Shaming single mothers for being on state assistance or child support only seemed to increase feminist resolve, but a tangible impact in reduced desirability in the larger dating pool may be pushing women to be more responsible.
> There's even some anecdotal evidence in dating sites/posts that single mothers are increasingly more open of their demanding that men "man up" and accept another's child/children as part of the package.
If you're going to seriously date a single mother, what other option do you have?
I'm not suggesting that you meet the kids on the second date, but if you're seriously romantically involved with someone for six months, you're not going to be able to continue that relationship with the single parent without having some involvement with the kids, too.
It seems crazier to me to have the option of opting out of the kids in this scenario. Do you just live separately until they turn 18?
I think the prevailing attitude is to completely disregard single mothers (in spite of their overwhelming numbers) as viable dating candidates to begin with. Women are noticing this, then shaming men with the whole "real men yadda-yadda-yadda..." lists seen on posts.
This explanation, if you want to call it that, doesn't seem to be borne out by anything in the study. More to the point, since most of these teens are unable to or unlikely to get married to begin with, I don't think any of the "single mother" nonsense applies to them.
Additionally, most people, but especially teens, don't think about some future "dating pool" when they decide to have sex. They usually just believe two of the oldest lies out there: "we're not gonna get pregnant" and "he's gonna still be around in 9 months".
So basically: your opinion is invalid, and it's also slightly insulting since it seems to put everything on the women in the relationship and blames "single mothers" for choosing the wrong gender, I guess, since they wouldn't be in the same situation by your logic if they did the exact same thing but were male.
Its basically a dynamic system oscillating and settling into some steady state (until the next shock) where what men want and what women want is rebalanced and more accurately represented.
I thought there were fewer single mothers because we have been decreasing the prison population. Lots of mothers were single because our Nixon era drug laws were aimed at locking up as many minority men as possible.
For all I know, that could be the primary factor. I'm not well versed enough to speak with any authority. I just tossed an idea out there based from my sphere of online observations over the past 5 or so years.
Or... Contraceptives are stopping some pregnancies...
And teens being too busy texting and not comfortable enough actually engaging with others are having less sex... Or religion... or being busy feeling #TheBern... or stopped having sex after feeling #TheBurn... Or are too fat... Or...
Mathematically, sure, that's fine. Empirically/theoretically, you've dug yourself into a hole that is difficult to get out of. You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.
It's not clear to me how (and if) Occam's Razor should necessarily be applied in this context. We are not choosing between a very simple, and a vastly complex alternative. Rather we are choosing between an unintuitive and probably complex option (contraceptives are causing less copulation - this does not sound at all like a simple suggestion to me), and admitting that our models and data may not be complete. Either way we need more research to be able to more clearly identify the root causes.
And Occam's razor is really more of a 'which one should we test first' kind of criterion, rather than 'this one is automatically true as it's the simplest.'
Teens are known to be rebellious and to like toeing the line
By making things more accessible and banal, you remove the urge to do it just to spite authority.
That simple argument justifies that teens who can sample alcohol at home are less likely to binge drink, and that kids who have ample access to sex ed and contraception are less likely to go and have sex both logistically and emotionally unprepared
What bugs me is that if abstinence only sex ed pushers are going to defy the obvious, they should at least make their claims more entertaining. Virginity will grant you the ability to fly and speak to birds. Contraception causes vampires. Having sex outside of marriage will make your skin split and a 20-foot tall bright red demon will emerge from your fleshy husk. Kissing gives you polka-dot leprosy.
I mean, if you're going to be unbound by facts or reality, why be boring?
How much actual evidence is there that this has anything to do with contraception? I'm getting old now, and from what I can tell contraception was just as available when I was a teen as it is now.
There is _more_ contraception options now available to teens. I know for a fact that IUDs were not being given to teens a decade ago, they were barely just being given to adult women in the U.S. Access to the Morning After pill has greatly increased for everyone. Then you have options like Depo-Provera.
On top of that, the stigma around using the pill decreases all the time. Parents are willing to get the pill for their daughters.
There is more access for contraception for women. Sadly no real changes for men. Although now you buy condoms online which reduces the stigma many young people have about buying them in person.
Their latest update was a survey saying that the reversibility trials were proving less successful in their baboon studies after great success in previous studies. They sent out a survey asking for comments on the importance of reversibility about a month ago.
From the email:
> A key goal for the first Vasalgel studies, in addition to demonstrating the contraceptive's safety and effectiveness, was to establish its reversibility. Vasalgel was reversible after a year in rabbits, but as we've reported, reversibility has so far been elusive in large-animal studies.
> We suspect we simply haven't found a suitable large-animal model; for example the baboon vas deferens is smaller and more fragile than that of the human. We're cautiously optimistic that everything will be much easier in human trials, because the human vas is larger and sturdier. And we're hard at work trying some other things too. But in the meantime, the first clinical trial will be designed to include just men who aren't counting on reversibility, while we sort out those issues.
> Thousands of people would like to be in the first trial, but there are only a few spots. And the researcher will have to pick local men who are the best candidates and want vasectomy anyway. So we're trying to keep everybody's focus on the ultimate prize: getting Vasalgel to market, with availability to ALL. If trials go well, then the sky's the limit: we'll seek approvals to bring Vasalgel to market, starting in the U.S., E.U., and Canada... and expanding from there.
Yes, but you still had to get them shipped home, where parents would ask you what you've ordered. Now with amazon it takes 3 clicks, and you can get them delivered to a drop-off location anywhere(at least here in UK I can get amazon parcels delivered to a nearby corner shop for example).
Teens could get a range of contraception, for free, often without their parent's knowledge.
The rules about whether a child has capacity to make their own decisions around medical procedures - Gillick Competency - is named after Victoria Gillick, who didn't children to be prescribe contraceptive pill without the parent's knowledge.
I had a debit card that could be used online when I was 13, with my own account, and that was 15 years ago. I know debit cards are not as popular in the US, but I'm fairly certain 13 year olds can have them nowadays.
Debit cards are extremely popular in the US; every checking account by default comes with one, which can be used in any ATM or till that can process transactions on either a credit or a debit network. It is by far the most common means of paying for purchases, and has been so since the advent of the capability. (And, yes, we're getting chip-and-PIN now, too.)
I didn't get my first checking account (and bank card, which only worked in ATMs) until I attained legal majority and started my first adult job, but that was quite a few years ago now. I would be entirely unsurprised to learn that many, many teenagers today have bank accounts and debit cards of their own, even if it's only their allowance that gets deposited there.
>Most teens do not have a credit card or access to their parents' on Amazon.
You would be surprised how many 5 year children make one-click purchases on their parents account. Suddenly all their favorite toys begin to appear magically at the door.
Education probably plays a good part in it. When I was growing up, and I'm only 30, we didn't get much sexual education in school, were taught to simply not have sex and many of my friends thought many untruths like pulling out is fine, douching is a form of contraception and even one unfortunate friend who thought ziplock bags were just as effective as condoms.
I am 35 and in the US we had very detailed sex ed including how to use a condom, how wide the contraceptive window was ect starting around 12ish. IMO, this is really more an issue with many local schools being horrible than anything else.
I'm 33 and grew up in the Bible belt. Looking back, I'm shocked at how good my Sex Ed was. We were taught that abstinence was the only 100% effective choice, but also about condoms and birth control pills, as well as things like the sponge (which was not recommended, but still covered) and long term hormonal implants. The biggest misinformation we were given was stuff that was genuinely believed then (and still believed by many) like there being a high likelihood of pregnancy from pre-ejaculate.
But I am also confused how there are/were actually sexually active teenagers who think things like "Ziploc bags are as effective as condoms". Maybe the trickle down effect of decent Sex Ed was responsible for dispelling these kinds of beliefs before we were at the sexually active age. I certainly didn't know anyone who thought (or at least expressed) an opinion this ignorant in high school. If nothing else, having sex through a Ziploc bag sounds miserably uncomfortable.
But then, I did know a guy in college who apparently thought the condom was supposed to be stretched over the scrotum, so this ignorance is out there (or at least was).
I'm 34, and was in a religious, conservative, school. They did one sex ed class (a single one hour, one off thing). In it they mentioned how condoms fail a majority of the time, that you could get pregnant from oral sex (that semen could leak from the digestive tract to reproductive), and that mutual masturbation could also cause pregnancy (as in a guy could ejaculate in just the right way).
It's like they went out of their way to spread misinformation.
> It's like they went out of their way to spread misinformation.
I'm not as on top of modern psychology as I'd like to be, so I'd love to see a formal study on the subject, but I'm pretty confident that most people's decisions are guided by the belief (subconscious or otherwise) that the end justifies the means.
Of course there are also some really stupid people out there. One of my earliest memories is of debating my elementary science teacher, who insisted that NASA had a room with perfect vacuum for gravity free training (her position being that air pressure and gravity were the same thing).
> But I am also confused how there are/were actually sexually active teenagers who think things like "Ziploc bags are as effective as condoms".
I had many stupid friends in high school :). But the schools were not highly rated as well. I do remember many new mothers in my 11th and 12th grade years and also a few who were pregnant during the graduation ceremony. So I don't think they did a good job but I don't know how much school education helps compared to at home education in regards to sex ed.
Wait, grade school? I certainly hope no one in your grade school was sexually active. If we're talking about things 4th graders believe, they believe all kinds of ridiculous things because they're little kids.
Huh. Today I learned the term "grade school" refers to elementary school (typically K through 5). I had always used it to mean school up to grade 12 (typical graduation).
> I'm 33 and grew up in the Bible belt. Looking back, I'm shocked at how good my Sex Ed was.
So did I, and so am I. Ours consisted mainly in a full-color slideshow of various genitals horribly mutilated by unchecked venereal disease, with absolutely nothing held back. Granted, as teenagers, most of us found it as fascinating as we did appalling, and I can attest to the fact that it did little to discourage our burgeoning interest in sexual activity. But it wasn't what you would call useful.
It is certainly local as there are some school boards and states that use religiously defined criteria to define their coursework. Hence creationism debates and elected officials that believe that women can "shut that whole thing down" to avoid being pregnant.
Very minor point: the withdrawal method (can't believe I'm actually talking about this on HN...) is actually pretty okay, and about as effective (comparing both perfect use, and imperfect use) as condoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_me...
With a caveat: If you're a teenage boy with poor self control and an even poorer sense of how your own body works, it's probably not for you. If you're a woman who doesn't completely trust her partner and his ability to do this correctly, it's probably not for you. And, obviously, it doesn't prevent STDs in the same way that a condom would (although it likely decreases HIV transmission).
That's the big reason that, if it is mentioned at all in an educational context, it's to tell people not to do it, and play up the dangers. Scare the kids (who are at higher risk of the method failing) into no using it. Obviously, there are much better methods of birth control, but the withdrawal method gets a lot more flak than it deserves, IMO
So many years ago, I knew an acid chemist who provided abortions as a favor for friends, using ergometrine aka d-lysergic acid beta-propanolamide. But forgone profits were huge, given the potency differential ;)
I have an old friend who works for social service in the UK in a deprived area.
Without wanting to be too crude, he told me that partly the reduction in teen pregnancy is down to the prevalence of porn and how it ends in a facial rather than a vaginal ejaculation.
I would tend to agree. More information about sex (the reproductive "risks" as well as contraception availability, shift in acceptance of oral sex (as alternative when contraception is not available) as well as the acceptance of same-sex sex experimentation by these teenagers as well as young adults.
It's astounding how before the wide availability of information, people believed in "folk" contraception.
I'm 35, American, middle class, Northeast of the country. I remember people in my early TEENS who thought you could not become pregnant from your first sexual experience, among other "folk" tales. It is, as you say, astounding. What makes it so absurd though, is that for decades it's been a largely artificial state of ignorance enforced by people who forgot what it was like to be young.
I want to believe in that model for human nature, but I think you would only have a minority of people actively avoiding their parent's mistakes. Too often, things like cycles of bad parenting (from lack of discipline and care, all the way along the spectrum to abuse and neglect) seem to repeat. It's not that people want to do these terrible things as they were done to them, but often we don't know any better or it's what feels familiar.
That, and poverty and bad education are big risk factors for teen pregnancy, and being born to poor, poorly educated people isn't likely to lead to you riches and a fine education.
If I were gonna bet on it.. the first explanation I would gravitate towards would be that these teens might have been the children of single teenage mothers/fathers themselves.. and lived through the hardship of that situation first hand.
> the first explanation I'd gravitate toward is universal, easily-accessed, high-quality pornography
Also games and social networks - they drive teens crazy and tempt them to lock themselves in their homes for much of their free time. When you stay at home, you get less sex.
On the whole, teens are replacing sex with more computer time.
On the one hand, I can definitely see that happening. On the other, is the observed phenomenon of children following in their parents' (parent's?) footsteps whether they mean to or not (perhaps because outcomes are commonly the emergent result of different behavioral and attitude markers that are harder to shake). I don't know which of those influences wins out more often, but unfortunately (for disadvantaged children) I suspect it's the latter.
I'm surprised no one has brought up lead - childhood lead exposure leads to more rash behavior, and the drop in teen pregnancy starts roughly when the first children who were born after the removal of lead from gasoline and paint started would have become teenagers.
Delaying coitus long enough to consider the economic consequences of an unwanted pregnancy is some pretty hard-core adulting. If I remember anything about that age it was the manic ache to fuck. No, I'm pretty sure access to porn has something to do with it.
Good point. Porn for lots of boys, and celibacy for lots of girls. But hey, maybe they'll just grow out of it. My generation eventually grew out of promiscuity. Or maybe "aged out" is more accurate ;) HIV was a huge bring-down, too :(
I read about a study where they were trying to see if there were differences between people who viewed internet porn and people who didn't, yet on the university campus they could not find a single person in their surveying who hadn't viewed porn at least once.
Despite teenagers having mobile unrestricted access to all sorts of supposedly corrupting media available to them at all times, they still make rational decisions regarding their bodies. This is very encouraging to all those that value freedom.
> I can only assume that technology has created more social isolation
I can only speak anecdotally but from observations it has increased social interaction for those who seek it - as social networking makes the process easier - while reduced it for those who don't seek it or want to take the path of least resistance. Technology merely accelerates individual desire. SJ's old chestnut: computers are like bicycles for the mind - well you could say the internet like is a bicycle for desire.
We know that as the standards of living (reduced mortality, longer lifespans, education etc) improve, the number of children produced decreases. That's one considerable factor.
With regards to Hispanics and Blacks in particular, as someone who grew up in a relatively poor household I quickly grasped how much my parents resented what having children did to their social mobility. They couldn't afford childcare, so only one parent could work. Despite having only a single income until we were teens, they could still afford a good-sized home relatively close to the city. Try doing that on two middle-of-the-road incomes today - not impossible but not easy, and very difficult with kids. The reality is that children have an anchor effect on the lower-middle to lower classes, while barely any affect on the upper middle to upper classes. Teens from poor households are probably well aware of the struggle ahead if they wish to have children.
This. If you think that technology has done a good job of informing teens about the risks of pregnancy and the importance of contraception, you are probably being far too optimistic in the face of a dire situation (i.e. mass estrangement).
I don't know - could there be some observation bias given the forum we're discussing this in? It also undermines digital relationships which have their own positives aspects. Here we are having a civil conversation about an important topic without having to commit to meeting at a certain time or place or without knowing what shared interests we have.
The internet can act as a social lubricant of sorts which is valuable. The legacy social lubricant is alcohol.
> The internet can act as a social lubricant of sorts which is valuable. The legacy social lubricant is alcohol.
That is a very interesting point, though I suspect we'll never actually be able to retire that legacy. If we do, I think it'll take at least a century.
Edit: honestly I think the social lubricant is actually pseudonymity, empowered by the network.
> The internet can act as a social lubricant of sorts which is valuable
Whether or not this is true depends upon the ability of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street to exact change. Things are not looking empirically good for "internet society."
Although I think it's safe to allow for the possibility of an immanent "death of Facebook" which could give rise to the social lubricant you're describing, since I don't think Facebook served the Arab Spring very well.
You're conflating obesity with teen birth... why exactly?
You're saying technology didn't spread the idea of having less sex; I don't even think the commenter you're responding to claimed as much, merely that for all the chatter about sex and violence on TV and video games and other media, teens are still doing a good job at not making stupid choices. Which is contrary to what many people believe today.
I don't think technology has very much to do with it, more the idea that if you're born into a household with five other starving kids, you're less likely to repeat what your parents did.
And, absolutely not. Tinder is legitimately causing hookups that probably wouldn't have otherwise happened so easily, just as an easy example.
"You're conflating obesity with teen birth... why exactly?"
Maybe they were taking the line "still make rational decisions regarding their bodies" out of context. (Overeating is no more rational than risking unwanted pregnancy.) I'm neither agreeing nor defending, just looking for a connection.
Because young people have higher personal accomplishments to strive for that would be hindered by having children too early.
The reason some choose to enjoy food more than others have in the past might be just because they enjoy food and are willing to give up their health for the enjoyment of eating. I'd rather be obese than a teenage parent.
The article specifically says so: "It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited and acting only on hormones -- are having less sex."
Teenagers now engage in more virtual interaction over social media, and the number of teens with driving licenses has decreased dramatically over the same period - I think the scope of their social interaction has increased, but they have significantly less physical privacy. They spend more of their time in contexts where adult monitoring is possible.
I also think the availability of porn and the increased pressure to adopt a low-time-preference mindset also alters the risk/reward calculus of potentially procreative sex. With the disappearance of much well-paid blue-collar work, both in reality and the public consciousness, derailing the fast track to college is much more costly than it was in the past.
On a more speculative note, I can't help but wonder what the effect of more widespread hormonal contraception has been on female sexual desire, and maybe even on the prevalence of environmental estrogens potentially affecting males.
The thing that will save the world from overpopulation- the internet. Both as a source of information, and perhaps as a way of abstracting social interactions that otherwise would have more opportunity to be acted out in sweatier ways.
A while back I saw some study said that said women who grow up with a TV in the house have on average, 1 less child than their mother. And this was holding even as we go into the 3rd generation of kids with TVs at home.
The Internet, and especially mobile Internet, are like TV * 5. So maybe this is right.
There is a theory that, in Brazil, the popularity of telenovelas (ie soaps) have directly caused a decrease in the number of children that women choose to have [1]. Quote:
"The secret sauce of influence is the telenovela's subtle promotion of extravagant materialism by means of a smaller family as opposed to the relative poverty of large families. It's also had the effect of promoting urban lifestyles."
I don't know how directly relevant this is to teenage pregnancy, but there does seem to be evidence for media consumption affecting reproductive outcomes.
Of course- the internet's effect (as information source) on population rise is presumably largely mediated by contraceptives, but this in itself isn't inconsiderable. With access to information, people can use contraception more effectively and overcome ideological biases that inhibit its use.
> Veronica Gomez-Lobo, director of pediatric gynecology at Children’s National Medical Center, said the trend of abstinence has been mostly among younger teens rather than older ones. While there's not good data on why this is happening, she thinks of it as a “contagion” factor. So many teens are waiting to have sex, she suggests, that the peer pressure goes the opposite way than it might have in the past.
OK, so the interesting question is whether the birth rate for this cohort will increase as they get older. Hypothesis: Sex has become unworkable for many young people, and they will just opt out of reproduction. In recent decades, birth rates have dropped in many Western European countries, Russia, Japan, etc. The reasons have been diverse. Too many other options. Social disruption. Whatever. But time will tell ...
> But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited and acting only on hormones -- are having less sex.
Could rising childhood obesity be contributing to this as well?
They are talking about huge declines over the last 10 years. Declines that are much larger than the change in childhood obesity over the last 10 years.
Conservatives claim it somehow has negative externalities while I'll happily claim it has positive externalities (happiness, less rape, less pregnancy, etc.).
I take it that the gas station bathroom didn't have them? In ND, every gas station seemed to have had the same condom dispenser. I've always wondered what company was responsible for them and who stocked them.
Almost certainly the gas station itself maintained them. Just buy a dispenser, buy condoms, have an employee fill dispenser when you're cleaning the toilets anyway, make profit. You'll get some sales from people too embarrassed (or in a hurry) to bring condoms up to a cashier.
Funny thing is I don't remember them ever selling them in the gas station itself. I'm not so sure it wasn't the same model as Coke/Pepsi showing up and refilling the machines.
Were they stocked ;)? I'm always doubtful about public policies since I discovered that the 3 suicide lines in France were only open during certain hours, and certainly not at night.
As of this post, three of the 20 comments on this story conjecture that obesity plays some role, and a full half of the comments are on subthreads discussing this hypothesis.
Interesting because I've never heard this hypothesis before and other online discussion of this article does not mention obesity.
It's also a bad hypothesis because the article is talking about changes that occurred over the last 10 years, and childhood obesity rates (including teenagers) have stabilized over the last 10 years.
It seems a little silly to me. Especially because when we talk about obesity, most people visualize morbid obesity. There are plenty of textbook definition "obese" people who can still attract mates.
I wonder how big a role obesity plays in all of this. It may be that teens are having less sex because so many of them have effectively taken themselves out of the sexual marketplace.
C'mon - when I was a teenager I would've had sex with the crack of dawn if I knew it was interested. I doubt anyone capable of getting pregnant is truly 'off the market' for every teenaged boy in their vicinity.
It's more likely that popular representations of teen pregnancy in the media gradually taught enough kids that having a baby in their teens will seriously screw up their life. You only need to see one episode of Teen Mom to know that's nowhere you want to be.
The article was talking about drastic declines in the last 10 years. Childhood obesity rates have been stable for the last 10 years (childhood obesity rates include teenagers).
I was just thinking in terms of attractiveness. Kids today have an unlimited supply of videos of beautiful people having sex. Not only are their expectations rising, but their choice of attractive mates is falling.
It's not so much that they'd rather watch porn. It's that porn sets their expectations regarding what sex is and with whom they expect to have sex.
If I'm a 4 and I won't settle for less than an 7 (which is a step down from what porn is teaching me about averages), it's likely I'm not going to father many children.
Yep, that was the case for me. But two things: One, it's not the boys who decide when sex happens, for the most part, and two, the amount of effort a boy (or a man) is willing to put into wooing a woman depends in some part on how attractive she is to him.
Parenthood provides virtually no economic benefit in modern industrial society. More so now, with mobility and weakening of family ties. Children cost a lot, and they probably won't help when you're old. So why bother?
I think you underestimate the extent to which pregnancy was always considered an Unthinkably Bad Thing by teens. And also overestimate the extent to which teens are rational.
On the other hand, there is evidence showing that overweight teens engage in riskier sexual practices. That's the problem with this who hypothesis - it's nothing more than an ungrounded "Just So Story" with no evidence.
From the perspective of someone who would have to run a study like this, a tremendous amount of pregnancies end before detection. To do actual pregnancy-initiation studies, you have to do absurdly intensive things like have women collect their urine on a frequent basis for analysis. Birth is a much less difficult outcome to collect for a large scale population estimate, as it usually just involves a data pull from vital records.
Births are what matter, as a pregnant teen can get an abortion, resulting in skewed statistics if you're trying to figure out how many teens are having babies, which (imo) is the thing society should actually care about, as unready parents tend to be a drain on collective/social resources.
>Births are what matter, as a pregnant teen can get an abortion, resulting in skewed statistics if you're trying to figure out how many teens are having babies...
That's true, but if your argument is the lower number of births is due to widespread availability of contraception, you have to address pregnancy and not just births.
Teen pregnancy rates will be higher than teen birth rates in jurisdictions that are not hostile to abortion. But teen birth rate is probably a far easier statistic to gather.
This article doesn't mention the religious communities where young people commonly marry and start having children before age 20.
A friend of mine grew up in one such fundamentalist community in rural Iowa; she married at 20, but some of her peers were already moms by that age. I wonder whether they include this type of parent in the statistics, or are they only talking about unwed mothers here?
There seem to be a lot of rural counties in the first quintile of teenage pregnancy, and I venture to guess that some of them, the ones not in large cities or general urban areas, are traditional or fundamentalist communities where teenage girls often marry.
Unfortunately, our socio-economic system (outside these specialized communities) is just not set up to accommodate pregnancy at the age when we are most fertile. It's too bad, given how many of us are delaying having children until our 30s, even 40s, and running into all sorts of issues for both the mom and the child; I have personal experience in this.
Anyway, this looks like a good trend, that kids are either finally "getting it" or else they're simply too distracted by technological toys to be fooling around like they used to!
> Unfortunately, our socio-economic system (outside these specialized communities) is just not set up to accommodate pregnancy at the age when we are most fertile. It's too bad[cut]
I'm not so sure: I feel like I wouldn't have been mature enough to raise children correctly in my twenties..
IMHO the ideal age for raising children is your 30s: not only you're mature and young enough but if your parents had you in their 30s, they can also help raising the children especially if they just retired: win-win.
The ideal age for raising children probably is the 30s. In traditional societies, the grandparents had a large role in child rearing. It makes sense; the young'uns are fertile, strong and energetic; perfect age to bear children. The oldsters are well qualified to teach and provide guidance.
I think we've lost something, a certain quality of life, as a result of the dispersal of families. 100 years ago, it was common in both rural and urban America for extended families to be under the same roof or at least nearby.
Now, kids move away, sometimes very far away, wait until their 30s to have kids, when the grandparents are getting too old and tired to help (except maybe financially) and the kids miss out on the rich multigenerational experience that was how people transmitted their wisdom, experience, and traditions.
Counties where abstinence-only sex ed is common lead in teen birth rates.
It's kind of like that (public) high school in the Midessa region of West Texas, the one that had an abstinence only sex-ed policy and a chlamydia outbreak. Or Mike Pence shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics in rural Indiana which led to an HIV outbreak (and Pence having to sign a needle exchange bill to limit the spread of HIV).
Wow. If you treat teenagers like the young adults that they are, and not talk down to them like children but rather give them solid information, they rise to the challenge of taking personal responsibility for their lives.
People rise to the level of expectations placed on them. The concept of adolescence is a relatively new invention. For most of human history there has been childhood, adulthood, and old age.
Didn't freakonomics write about the reverse relationship? Contraceptives helped reduce unwanted pregnancies... unwanted pregnancies turn in to unwanted babies/children that eventually have a higher probability of turning into criminals.
The lead hypothesis is really interesting and certainly plausible, but I don't think it's been proven. I would like something more substantial than "the graphs look similar".
The paper based the freakenomics study was based on only looked at US data but crime was dropping in the 90's globally. A global drop in crime would be hard to explain based on US policy changes with regards to abortion while lead was removed globally at different times.
The abortion hypothesis was also correlation study (i.e. These graphs look similar) but didn't control for leaded gasoline. Also later studies failed to find more direct links such as higher rates of abortion in high crime areas that would explain the magnitude of the drop.
A later study by the author of the paper suggesting lead as the driver of violent crime did a follow up study that incorporated lead, abortion and other variables found that lead was the dominant contributor and abortion a secondary contributor.
I haven't seen this one mentioned yet, but the trend may also be due in part to choices the women are making about whether or not they want children. Most of the comments assumed that all of these pregnancies were "accidents" to begin with, but if you're a teenage girl, living in poverty, what kind of role models do you see, and how might you envision your own future and goals? Just like teenagers in some places can/could only have a life of their own by getting married, it is and was very common for other teenagers in some cultures to see having a baby as the only way out of their current situation, as a way to have a better life, as a necessary step for building a life with and getting support from a romantic partner, as a way to have more importance or influence in their community, and add meaning to their own lives.
Anecdotally, I knew a few women in high school who got pregnant, and it seemed to add a great deal of excitement and hope for their future, rather than the other way around. If you have nothing going for you, having a kid can seem like a good plan.
If you start giving people other options, other things to work for, and exposing them to other cultures, they might find better alternatives. Heck, this whole thing might still be caused by the Internet! But not for the reasons some other people said...
What about the fact that anal sex is now less-taboo than it used to be? Most of my straight friends are having it these days. I can only imagine what teens are doing with their backdoors these days.
Anal sex has got to be the best form of contraception, although it definitely isn't "safe".
I guess the phenomenon of netflix and chill. Is more like "netflix and safe-chill". Either that or people are taking it too literally and actually chilling.
That's interesting, but lets just take a long look at the FIRST cause, which has come at the cost of endless political fights and only exists through that constant fighting. There are still a LOT of people who think that access to birth control is the problem.