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Comment by homeonthemtn | Hacker News Reader

Everything about this thread is weird and woefully online.

As an n of 1, we are surrounded by so many births that we just trade baby gear since we are either a handful of months ahead or behind many other parents. Our assumption was that we were in a stealth baby boom. Truly everyone we know has a minimum of one very young child with a high number of parents with between 2 and 4.

It certainly runs counter to many online discussions but reality often does.

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After putting it off for many years, many millenials are finally settling down and starting the families that perhaps more traditionally we began 15 years earlier - but outside ones with fertility issues, we are getting on with it. Im in the same boat as you, left leaning with left leaning friends, mostly late 30s and we're all getting on with having or raising young kids at this point - so n=2 from real life observations

You might be interested in the link I provided in a sibling post.

A larger percentage of births are to older women, but total number of births are still dropping accross all ages.

Just a thought, based on my own experience. If you have children, or is about to have a baby, you start being around more parents or "parents to be". Either as part of parenting groups, in conjunction with daycare, schools or parents of your children's friends. Because this centers around your child, the children around you tends to be roughly the same age, plus or minus a few months.

I agree with you, but this is not the case. It is very much a trend with people in their mid 30s right now. The overlap is there yes, we have friends who have children, but for instance my wife announced her pregnancy and had 4 friends announce shortly there after. We certainly did not conspire with them on conception :)

It is an odd time for everyone to be really into kids but perhaps that is a species trigger for all we know

I'm not in the US but it's been years since I had a coworker with more than 2 kids (or they're so many departments apart I simply don't know). None of my closer friends has more than one kid (ok, that might be a bit of an exception). None of the families in my huge apartment building has more than 2 kids. I'm actually hard pressed right now to name 5 people I know who have 3 or more kids or 2 siblings (and the kids/siblings being younger than 30). (and I am including all my US acquantainces (sorry, no real friends over there for me))

I just don't understood what this has to do with "online".

This still runs contrary to national statistics, which would include these births unless there is a wave of children/births unregisted with the state. There is good public data on this, for example here:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr74/nvsr74-3.pdf

That said, I think there is a perspective issue at play. It may seem like lots of people are having kids. A lot of our friends are too. However, I dint live through the 70s or 40's to have a comparison for what that seemed like when the fertility rate was higher.

This report is from 2.5 years ago. I am talking about within the past year to 2 years. So this might actual lend credit to my theory of a stealth baby boom happening. Perhaps I should have clarified "happening right now"

It would have to be very stealth because the US CDC says numbers have only gone down since (including 2026).

> Our assumption was that we were in a stealth baby boom.

That somehow evaded fertility statistics?

Where are you and what percentage of your neighbors go to church and similar.

Ha none. We are not "conservative" in the least bit, or even politically performative.

Where are you?

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