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Comment by onetimeusename | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised to find that just as recently as 1970 the median age of first marriage for men was ~23 and ~21 for women.[1] The average age at first child birth for women in 1970 was ~22.[2] There was a change that took place in the late 70s it looks like, probably acquiring education, that started to pretty dramatically raise the age of first marriage and first childbirth. So for me this was realizing that there was nothing natural or inevitable about postponing children. People back then probably would think delaying it was unnatural and this really wasn't that long ago.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...

[2]: https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/gu...

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You have a huge confluence of societal changes over the course of the 20th century to explore here, that each ultimately contributed to women having actual choices and options in life other than just getting married and being a homemaker.

Women in Poland in 1980s (when I was born) mostly worked full-time jobs and mostly had children.

> There was a change that took place in the late 70s it looks like,

Birth control.

And abortion.

That's absurd. Remind me again what the ratio of abortions to pregnancies is?

I remember reading that in certain areas/communities in the USA, it's pretty close to 50:50.

Almost 1/3 of all pregnancies worldwide are ended via abortion: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion

About 73 million annually worldwide, or roughly equal to the total death toll (civilian and military) of WW2 every single year.

And the oil shock.

> There was a change that took place in the late 70s it looks like

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

In 1970, a single minimum wage income can raise a family and save up for extra.

In 2026, a single minimum wage income can barely survive by themselves with no saving in most part of the US.

as professional with a professional salary, wages are not enough. we need abundant housing. Imagine taking a year or two dedicate to helping your mate through pregnancy and early childcare? Or, taking a year or two get your dating life in order. This second one might be important in city with bad traffic or for demanding jobs. This is not possible right now for 99% of people because housing is too expensive.

> In 1970, a single minimum wage income can raise a family and save up for extra

Absolutely not true. Minimum wage has never been sufficient to raise a family. It is (was) sufficient to keep one person out of poverty.

In 1970 minimum wage was $1.60/hour, equating to about $3.3k a year. A typical mortgage was about $126/month. Car payment, around $100. You weren't raising a family and saving on minimum. Median income was about 3x that for a family, so you could definitely raise a family and save at the median. Note, these come from querying AI, but they match my recollections as a child a few years later.

Today, family income is up about 10x, but costs have risen much more than that.

In my opinion the two greatest factors on the reason, in the US at least, for the changes, and not having children were - birth control became widely available in the US in the early 70s, and women entered the workforce in great numbers. This greatly increased the amount of family income, but costs quickly rose to basically eat up all the extra income.

Not really.

My parents married in 1972 at age 18. Rust belt. Both worked. While comfortable, we were always worried about money and layoffs.

Friends whose parents didn't do as well as mine or who were single income households fared far worse. Definitely didn't end up with saved "extra" money.

The 1970s had a whole different level of poverty than we have in 2026. As in, the normal poverty of the 1970s largely doesn't even exist today in the US. The poor today would have been middle class back then, ignoring differences in technology. The standard of living is not comparable.

A single minimum wage was definitely a poverty wage in the 1970s even at the 1970s standard of living. I have no idea where you would get the idea you could raise a family on that.

> In 1970, a single minimum wage income can raise a family and save up for extra.

My memory seems to think that wasn't true.

However, there were a ton of manufacturing and manual labor jobs that were capable of supporting a small family and they didn't need a college degree.

So, you had most young people earning positive money for four years at a very biologically fertile age rather than going into soul crushing debt at that age.

  Then I got Mary pregnant
  And, man, that was all she wrote
  And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat

Bruce Springsteen -- "The River" -- which was apparently a fictionalization of his brother-in-law

Birth control was illegal in the USA until the late 1960s (other than condoms, which is what sailors used with prostitutes). It takes a while for changes to propagate through society.

Also, consumer credit was illegal until the same time period, and only legalized for people with vaginas in the mid-1970s. That alone might have made all the difference with marriage and fertility (which after all are only mildly related).

Imagine how your choices would expand if unlike your mother, you did not need to become Mrs. John Doe to be able to move out of your father's house.

So you're saying that the median marriage was forced back then? I don't see why the same reasoning wouldn't apply to men as well or who was forcing people into marriages besides some vague idea about "the patriarchy or something".

I was responding to OP's point about how our bodies are better suited to have children when we're younger. I think that's scientifically supported. My main belief would be that having children when you have peak fertility probably goes hand in hand. Birth control is a good hypothesis, you could say it broke this link.

house prices

> in the late 70s

As usual...

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Weird site, seems to completely ignore the oil shock and following grave errors with loose monetary policy. Goldbugs gonna goldbug I suppose.

Anyway I'm sure the current oil shock and (assuming the clowns get their way) loose monetary policy will be different this time!

the website's concluding statement is obviously propaganda but all these effects are real. Something clearly happened in the 1970s.

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