In the 1960s, the U.S. fertility rate was around 3.5, but dropped to 1.7 by 1976. It rose to 2.1 in 2007 before falling again. The rate in 2023 was 1.621, and dropped to an all-time low of 1.599 in 2024

The number of births will continue it's overall decline because major sea-changes in parenting and childhood aren't being considered.

We ruined parenting. And we ruined childhood. And even if we pretend those catastrophes never happened, the economy still says No to families.

    Parenting time is up 20x from a few generations ago. 
    Was a few hours a week. Is now ceaseless.

    We've wiped out kids free roaming area to satisfy car culture
    and trespassing culture.
    We've ended adult-free, peer based, social growth hours.

    It's impossible for most couples to pair off
    in a 4-income economy.

The last one might get resolved in a decade or two. The first two won't.

The most annoying part of all the discussions had on fertility rates is: absolutely I'm going to see the word "economics" or "afford" or other such crap.

It is such a reliable farce, involving such intentional ignorance towards past-present income and fertility differentials, and poor-rich country differentials, that my running theory is that this behaviour itself is likely connected to the fertility rate issues.

I.e. that the true reason is, as we all know, that people just don't want the perceived hassle and reduced freedom that comes with kids, and everyone has formed an absolutely pervasive and fortified contraceptive culture aligned with that, but they want an fake excuse that's maximally far from that that sounds defensively plausible.

Why is it even a problem if fertility falls much faster in rest of the world and US also has massive immigration unlike almost all other countries? American immigration is also almost entirely Christian and whitest of immigration to any other large country, so it's not even making America genetically worse. It's only a one-generational integration problem, which always existed and America knows how to handle it very well, it's been there since inception.

And well, majority of fertility decline is a consequence of successful handling of a major social ill - teenage pregnancies. People stopped having entirely unwanted kids at the time in life when they couldn't handle it. And yes, a result of this (but not the cause!) is the massive increase of parenting time/workload - not because past generations thought that letting their kids fend for themselves was a good idea, but because they were fucking teens who tried to figure their lives at least minimally with unwanted kids on their backs! Those kids were constantly beaten up, neglected, and grew up drug addicts who stole stereos from cars and dealed crack in 1980s. Thank God that kind of fertility is gone.

There is absolutely zero rational motivation to have kids.