-45F is pretty cold. Last weekend in southwestern North Dakota windchill temps were down in the -70F range. It's -51F in my hometown in northern ND right now.
An interesting tidbit was that with the -70F in ND and it being 92F in Miami at the same time there was a 162 degree temp difference in lower 48 states.
Turns out, actually having to give birth is kind of a drag, even in the best of conditions, and women who realize they have a choice in the matter are more and more likely to nope right out of it.
Or at least nope out at levels less than the current 2.1 children needed for replacement levels.
Passing a head through an opening too small for the task doesn't look appealing at all - I remember an account from Annie Lowery about a doctor cutting open her perineum as part of her delivery.
> The sense of being eviscerated, the room going Technicolor. I did not know I could feel so much pain.
> The extra anesthesia kicked in, so I keeled over in the bed as the doctor explained that he’d performed an episiotomy while wresting the baby out. I was insufficiently anesthetized at the time. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. [0]
And the alternative is getting gutted and sown back up.
But I can't help but suspect that it's the time pressure that really makes it infeasible. We can only juggle so much and it takes a lot of time to keep up with the demands of modern life.
Lack of religion/purpose is also probably huge. With all the reasons not to have kids, you probably need a good reason to, but maybe there isn't one.
Well, yes. Then again, it can also be the most rewarding, purposeful thing in the life of a female (and male) human, an experience of pain but sheer beauty.
Even in highly liberal/socialistic countries with low levels of religion women are opting out.
It all boils down to choice. And women are choosing "No thanks" in high numbers even in countries where you'd think most of the barriers are quite low.
yeah but the question is why are they choosing "no thanks"?
being pregnant and giving birth aren't easy, but we literally evolved specifically do be able to do that -- hence the big hips and other body dimorphism, etc.
it's a function of stress, economics, and loss of social cohesion via things like "the third place" and large family groups.
all of the people I know having kids live in small towns and have tons of relatives nearby, while the doctors and office slaves living in a tech-bro city on the other side of the country from their family struggle to have a cat.
Not sure why you've been downvoted. This seems like as good as any explanation. All the economic hypotheses are weak given historical data, and rely on "just rich enough". Several things happened in a reasonably short period of time that support choice being the reason: medicine, equality, and social change (ie a large, but not total, reduction in pressure to have kids by society and family).
No idea why this is downvoted. It's pushing a bowling ball through a narrow opening, it's REALLY painful. You sh*t yourself, bleed for ages, risk your life, seriously harm your body, you become a milk supplier... Then you need to become a mommy. If a woman isn't 100% with her children then there's constant judgement towards her as a "bad mother".
The reward is motherhood which is a 24x7 thankless job filled with dread about your kids. I'm obviously exaggerating and am happy with my kids, but I 100% get the people who choose not to have any. It isn't a bad choice.
Up until recently, many women felt they have no choice and the clock is ticking. The "you'll regret it when you're older" stuff, can be partially solved by freezing eggs (I know a lot of older mothers and we only started at 32).
Furthermore, in recent years there are many inspirational childless women who show it's perfectly acceptable to not go through that.
Agreed, Its a big risk giving birth to a child. Modern medicine has greatly reduced this though. But why put yourself in a situation where you may bleed profusely because of a tear or having to go through c-section.
In my family, the difference would have been that the good food was from my German relations, who were Lutheran. (as were my Norwegian relations, but they didn't cook as good for funerals).
My wife's family is also German, but they are Catholic, from another part of the state and their funeral food is pretty good too.
Desire to kill may be a bit strong but I distinctly remember sitting with my WWII veteran grandfather in November 1989 (US Thankgiving to be exact) and watching the stories of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the obvious prospect of a united Germany in the near future.
My grandfather and I watched CNN silently and after a while he got up, and as he left the room he remarked "We'll be fighting the bastards within 50 years."
Being Norwegian (occupied by the Nazis during WW2) I'd like to chime in with my anecdata - my grandfather served as occupation police in Germany for a couple of years after the war; when the Berlin Wall came down, I was eleven years old and visiting my grandparents. I had been put to bed, but then my grandfather comes and tells me to come to the living room with this weird, strained look on his face; I duly followed him, expecting bad news - some death in the family or whatever.
He nods to the television and tells me that tonight, I'll stay up until the newscast is over - because tonight, the war finally comes to a close.
My grandfather didn't do feelings very well - but for most of that night, he wept with relief and joy. It is to this day the most powerful experience of my life - seeing the impact this event had on my otherwise stoic, accept-anything-in-its-stride grandfather.
And instead of the "bastards" starting another WW, they're treating French and Italian people sick with the coronavirus [1]. Wouldn't surprise me if in one month or so Germany were to lend a hand to the US too.
I was working for UPS during that strike. We didn't lose a lot of drivers from what I recall because they had relatively nice hourly wages to come back to and could weather the storm a bit.
We lost almost the entire load/unload staff though. The grunts in the truck at 12am unloading semi-truck after semi-truck worth of boxes. They were only getting ~$8/hr and couldn't afford to be out for 2 weeks. Out of 12 guys on the team I supervised I think 2 came back.
They tried something like that. The Kazoo Helmet. It had the unfortunate propensity to briefly stick to an opposing helmet during a collision rather than slide off the other helmet's hard surface causing a wrenching of the neck.
