Reproduction isn't the hard part, from what I can tell! It's everything after the reproduction occurs that is tough.

I'm not so sure about that. Sperm counts are dropping: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/human-sperm-counts...

Maybe we just got better at counting them in the last century and they haven't actually dropped.

I understand the cheekiness of this comment, but reproduction in many societies has indeed become more difficult for many of the same reasons (among several others). The sex hormones that orchestrate lactation and mother-child bonding are largely the same that regulate menstrual cycles, sexual desire, pregnancy, and childbirth. If disruptions to these hormone balances are found to be a major cause in an increase in breastfeeding issues, then this likely correlates strongly with issues effecting the entire reproduction “stack”, if you will.

If you're in your mid-30s or later, reproduction certainly can be tough, even when you're trying.

I read a comment here years ago saying that in ancient times the average woman would have only a few dozen menstrual cycles in her life. Most the time between puberty and menopause you were either pregnant or breastfeeding. Does the book discuss that too?

Or undernourished.

That may have been true for agricultural societies, but it doesn't sound right for hunter gatherers (at least from my memory of an anthropology class I took). Many hunter gatherer societies have strong postpartum taboos and space children at least three years apart.

I thought babies would breast feed for 3 to 6 years. Even today the WHO recommends 2+ years.

WHO recommends _up to_ 2 years. After 6 months in addition to other nutrition.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about - between being a child and having kids of my own, there were practically no children in my life. I’m not unique by any means.

I don’t know what, if any, effect that kind of culture has in breastfeeding, but it sure does seem pretty remarkable.

I have a relative who grew up as the oldest of four children in a very traditional home in a rural setting.

She has had trouble breastfeeding each of her three babies.

Forget the isolation; western civilization all but requires two income earners to have a "median" life. There's remarkably little time or money to raise a child.

Median individual income: $40,000, poverty level for "replacement" families (two adults, two children): $30,000.

worth noting that 2 children is below replacement rate, so someone needs to be having 3 kids too. which is becoming increasingly uncommon especially because of how many things change between 2 and 3 kids. (Notably: 2 carseats fit in ~any vehicle. 3 fit in very few vehicles unless you rush the oldest into a booster seat.)

just want to say that we have had four kids over 6 years in one of the most expensive states in the us, and went from $30k to over $100k in that time frame. It is a huge jump in salary and feel very blessed regardless of the hard work, but just know most of the time was spent below the top end. If you are emotionally stable enough to have a good marriage (and therefore have kids), go for it! You will afford it, and life couldn’t get better!

Did you have a minivan to start with? Lots of support from family? Just wondering how you made it work.

FWIW, the poverty level for a 3 child household is $35k. ($44k in Alaska, $40k in Hawaii)

Probably doesn't count the vehicle troubles, but more the added food, board, and transportation in general.

How is the poverty level lower in Hawaii than in Alaska???

Probably because you're not heating your home a lot of the year in Hawaii

Interesting, hadn't thought of that, thanks!

Replacement fertility rates assume zero net immigration, which does not hold for much of the OECD. For example, Canada's total fertility rate has stayed below 2.1 since the 1970s and has fallen since to its current low of 1.4 (https://datacommons.org/place/country/CAN?category=Demograph...), but its population has been consistently growing since then due to immigration: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/960-fewer-babies-born-c...

“Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%) … “In comparison, 3% of children in China, 4% of children in Nigeria and 5% of children in India live in single-parent households." [1]

[1]https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/single-parent-day.ht...

Children living with both biological parents

Affluent families in 1960: 95% Working class families in 1960: 95%

Affluent families in 2005: 85% Working class families in 2005: 30%

https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1178310819332984832

I don't know if these stats are due to income levels needed for children, I suspect that's only a small part of the issue. But every statistic out there points to the fact that 1 parent children do far worse than 2 parent children. It's like a terrible self perpetuating cycle has taken off in many ways.

Funny enough, Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about it, The Two-Income Trap, in 2004.

I find it funny how middle class people all talk about how it is too expensive to have kids. Meanwhile, a single mother in poverty with 4+ kids is a regular sight depending on what side of town you are on. Yet, "I'm too poor to have kids" is not a phrase you'd ever hear from such a person.

I don't think "poverty level" is the correct term here. I believe once below the poverty level, everything is basically free (if you have kids to claim at least). Free rent, school, food, healthcare, etc. But there are many other "levels".

I know for a fact that 5 years ago in small town Texas you got food stamps and extremely reduced healthcare costs if your yearly take home pay was less than $40k and you had two children. I know because my brother-in-law's wife would give us all the free junk she'd get from the SNAP program that she didn't want. Sugary juice, snacks, etc. We'd throw it straight in the trash. She tried breast feeding but gave up in an hour because she got free baby formula and she could then dump her kids on anyone to babysit without a need to worry about feeding the infant. Once her two boys were 3 and 4 years of age, she qualified to put them on a bus at 7am (they were still in diapers) to be taken to a preschool that was restricted to low income families only. She would then spend the next 8 hours sitting at home and trolling my wife on facebook. My wife only posts pictures, to which this woman would then critique in the most Karen way possible. "Your kids are too small for that car seat", "That car seat should be rear facing", "That doesn't look safe", etc. If we called her out on anything, she'd get mad and spend hours digging through our old photo albums to put the red angry face on whatever she deemed necessary. Felt extremely invasive. Absolute crazy lady. We put up with that for nearly two years before blocking her. Which then made family meetings awkward so we quit going to those as well. Which that just turned us into the "stuck up" "snooty" rebels of the family. But oh well, we are much happier now. No clue why I just typed all this, but what ever.

> Meanwhile, a single mother in poverty with 4+ kids is a regular sight depending on what side of town you are on. Yet, "I'm too poor to have kids" is not a phrase you'd ever hear from such a person

"I'm super happy and am living a great life" is probably also a phrase you'll never hear from this person.

Because what people are really saying when they say "I'm too poor to have kids" is "I would have to sacrifice a great deal of the comfort and stability of my life to have kids" and they are choosing not to do that.

From one perspective it's a selfish choice.

From another, having kids when you can't afford them is the selfish choice.

From yet another, having kids at all is a selfish choice.

Don’t leave us hangin’ with the asymmetry!

From yet another, not having kids is a selfish choice.

And from yet another, who cares about children in the first place?

This, I think, is a perverse effect of feminism. Women wanted to be able to get a job, they ended up being forced to get a job, and men still have to work like they did before, so, who cares for the kids? It is an example of bringing equality by making everyone miserable, and it is not even equal: women still do more household tasks on average, except that now, it is in addition to their job.

The winners in this story are childless singles: women can now have a proper carrer without help from a man, and single men suffered essentially no downside, in fact it is a win since they are not expected to cover every expense the women they meet may have anymore.

Some countries are starting to notice that and are passing laws that give both mothers and fathers equal benefits, like parental leaves, bringing back what the result of feminism should have been: giving the option of stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home dads, also allowing fathers to assist mothers who are recovering from pregnancy or breastfeeding with household tasks instead of being forced to work.

> The winners in this story are childless singles

To each their own, but I'm not convinced they're winning overall either. Humans are, for better or worse, extremely driven to procreate and have families and communities. We're absolutely butchering those opportunities at a grand scale in North America, and so far it seems to be having adverse effects on our mental health. I don't know how this will play out but I have serious concerns.

While the option for mom OR dad to stay home with baby is nice, I worry that it's nowhere near the correction that we need.

I say this with the awareness that everyone wants something a little different out of life and this reflects my take on what that is; not everyone would agree at all. I'm certainly not trying to make a statement about what people should want.

>Humans are, for better or worse, extremely driven to procreate and have families and communities.

But in reality, marriage has fallen off a cliff. It's the lowest ever.

And women are much more money-oriented than men - men want a hot young woman, women want a provider - even if they work themselves, they want a man to make as much or more. Men don't care - they will marry a broke waitress if she looks good to him. And the reality is that men ar dropping out of society - women are earning 60% of undergrad degrees, and I've read that it will be 70-75% in 10-15 years. These women are not going to want to marry men not at their level.

If any woman disagrees here, I'll gladly be the stay-at-home partner while you go work and I play video games all day.

August 2020 Pew report (describing data from 2019): "Half of all solo single people don’t want a romantic relationship or even a date."

A long, long time ago I made the decision not to get married because marriage is a really, really bad deal for the man. I feel that no man should get married, not one. You may say "what would happen to the human race, then?" Well, the world might not be flamed baked like Venus if the human race was to die out in the next 100 years.

Everyone on your street or apartment building cooks, cleans, washes and cares for, ONLY, their little cubicle of people. Even if you're 5 ft away physically our society doesn't allow for sharing of any of that repeated labor - unless money is involved.

We spend so much time solo doing activities that would have been communal or at least shared, which puts more pressure on people as well.

Think about how many millions of years were spent evolving the human brain, human instincts, and human child to adult development process to maximize the survival of children and hence our species. Now think about how psychotic it is, in light of that, to make small children sleep in a separate room from their parents. No wonder they have night terrors.

Our society is utterly riddled with anti-natural facets like that which cause no end of problems.

Having a baby around I can tell you that as far as human evolution goes it’s good we don’t have natural enemies because we’d all be eaten by now.

Baby is tired: I shall make lots of noise so the predators will go away… right.

Eaten I tell you!

I can only assume since we're all here that the survival benefits of incredibly loud infant cries outweigh(ed) the risk of attracting predators. I'm no biologist, but I can imagine how the fact that babies cry promotes formation of close-knit social groups to help defend against predators in numbers.

Having a small kid also got me wondering how chimps cope with the same problems. I mean they’re 98% similar to us, so the babies must go through very similar stages…