I would love this to be true. But as always, I'm very skeptical of all social/psychological studies. Provided it turns out to be true, I guess there still is some hope for the human race!
I am extra skeptical of studies that prove a politically correct idea. Criticizing them upsets many people, so maybe I should be smarter and keep my mouth shut.
Edit: It's like when news articles say "Cure for Cancer found!" And then you read the linked paper and it doesn't support the headline at all.
This for example:
European Commission published a special report on women in decision-making positions, suggesting legislation to achieve balanced representation of women and men on company boards. Some countries – such as Norway, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands – have already taken legal measures in that direction.
[...]
we find, however, that while highly educated women had fewer kids than women with lesser education in the US until the 1990s, it is no longer true today.
Seems to address the question on whether there should be more regulation to help pregnant women.
Relatedly (and I'm sorry I'm saying this - I feel terrible saying this): women really really need to have children earlier, preferably before age 28.
30 years ago you saw only 7.2 deaths of mothers per 100,000 live births in the US, in 2011, despise tremendously better healthcare, it was 17.8 deaths per 100,000 births. One of the reasons for the jump is women postponing having kids. And completely separate from this, risk of chromosomal abnormalities in babies goes up very high when having them at a later age.
Men and women both need to have children early, for so many reasons. It is a great pity that it's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and age.
Elaborate.
Most 25 year old couples don't have this money, in this day and age. It would require out of them that they both work hardcore hours... but then when baby has come, who will take care of it? Babysitters? Daycare? They're expensive as hell. Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc. all add up to something humongous. This is not to mention the mental toll of getting up each damn night at 3a.m. to calm crying babies.
Daycare often times costs more than what one of the parents make, it's that expensive. For whatever reason Americans want to get away from their parents after getting married (unlike a lot of Asian countries), so if you can't rely on your parents to help out it's really difficult and it'll exhaust you out before you know it.
The real killers are health care (should your kid need more than the norm in the first couple months—and many do) and childcare. Plus the less-obvious, very high cost of having to live in a decent school district or else pay for private school. Those areas are pretty much always more expensive. No more cheap rent/mortgage for you :-(
Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist. You can recover a lot of that money when you're done with the things by selling them, at a small time cost.
> Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist.
Or even better, from friends and family. :) They only need baby clothes, car seats for a few years, take it from them. And pass it on when you're done.
This is pretty easy, actually... people also actively want to get rid of clothes rather than store them; and young kids in particular fly through clothes much faster than they can wear them out.
About other stuff -- my wife & I were stubborn about avoiding all of the "default" baby purchases unless we really felt we needed them. No value judgement intended on people who buy e.g., strollers! Sometimes a stroller would have been pretty handy... But we wanted to travel a lot with our kids, light, so we needed lightweight habits at home first.
So: no upgrade from the 2-door hatchback (though we did spring for good carseats). No strollers; we learned a few good ways to tie a sling instead.
No separate kids' rooms (and no furnishings and decorations of such rooms). No crib.
No disposable diapers (we broke this rule for compostable diapers at night when each child was over 6 months or so... more pee to absorb... and much of the time when traveling). Potty-training quite early (from a few months old) with no deadlines or pressure, etc.; that worked out pretty well.
No bottles, no sippy cups. (Yes to small cutlery, though). We did use cheap glasses when they graduated from nursing to drinking from glasses, and lost a 2-3 per child as expected. The girls learned not to let them fall.
Toys: we bought very few and still ended up with a ton; family & friends give gifts, and they'd be sad if you told them to just stop. So we just tried to avoid electronic "made to be broken" stuff, generally.
Books: we have tons of books. No intention of reining this one in!
It's kind of a vicious circle.
Talking about the US or EU, I guess?
Any idea why it was that way, back then (also, when was "then"?) and not so now?
It seems like runaway costs, more than anything. Tuition and room and board have nearly quadrupled[1], while the amount of money that it is possible to earn in the kind of low-level, part-time work that a college student is capable of fitting in has sort of stagnated. I was able to earn $5-6k over the course of a summer working, which isn't a whole lot different than what my father, for instance, was able to earn in his summers in the 70s. That might pay my tuition for part of one term, whereas it paid his whole year. Meanwhile, housing costs have rocketed up as well, and the price of gas was $4/gallon, rather than $.50.
[1] http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-table...
It's a shame that so many of the children of these educated mothers are going to be autistic because of advanced maternal age. Not so good for our future.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-inc...
I agree that women need to have children younger, and that society makes it difficult for that to happen.
Furthermore, your allusions to chromosomal abnormalities are a eugenic argument. That could be interesting if uncomfortable, but to present it so casually is disappointing. If you're going to go there, please do it with arguments that are well considered and framed in a way that is subject to refutation.
In general, it appears that waiting into your 30s or later to start having children is riskier than doing so earlier. It'd be nice if we could rejigger society to reflect that - if people had their children first and entered the workforce at 30, they'd still have thirty or so productive years.