American women are having fewer children, and seem to be getting "worse" at successful healthy birth when they do, according to this article on NPR. We are the most medicalized society ever to exist. We treat everything with drugs whose side effects are longer than a CVS receipt. We've added vaccine after vaccine after vaccine not only to infants through teens, but to pregnant mothers. When my mother gave birth to my siblings and me, there were few contraindications to pregnancy.  Then we hit the "zero tolerance" years when I had my children in the 1990s-2000. I avoided so many foods, certainly alcohol, I never smoked but I'd run from a room if there was secondhand smoke. I wouldn't' even stand near a microwave!  I had zero vaccines while pregnant. (If I'd been offered one to protect my baby, I would have taken it at least for my 1st two pregnancies. It never occurred to me that vaccines could harm when I was vax-uneducated.)

The article below has some fascinating stats. And frightening. Teen birth rate is down, which is a good thing. Women in their 40s are the only group to show an increase in birthrate.  (A lot of you just crossed yourselves, right?)

Young men and women leaving college are saddled with debt, surely this delays marriage. And childbirth. Women have more choices and less reliance on a man to provide.  There must be major socioeconomic reasons as well as health-related reasons. 

U.S. Births Dip To 30-Year Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

For the third year in a row, both the preterm birthrate and the low birth weight rate rose. The CDC said that the 9.93 percent rise in preterm births was due to late preterm births and that the early preterm rate had not changed from 2016's 2.75 percent.

Low birth weight — defined as newborns that weigh less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces — rose slightly above the highest level previously recorded, with 2017's 8.27 percent topping 2006's 8.26 percent.

The overall cesarean delivery rate nudged upward in 2017, rising to 32 percent from 31.9 percent – still below the all-time high of 32.9 percent in 2009.

In addition, young people are reported to be having LESS SEX. I know we're said to be "Anti-science" here at AofA.... but I've listened to the Makin' Whoopie song many times and I know that you have to have sex to make a baby.  In March, media outlets ran article about the drop in sexual activity in our nation (I almost wrote country but then I laughed out loud and had to change it to nation.) We live in the days of TINDER and hookups.  How is it that 28% of MALES younger than 30 aren't having sex??  Is this the videogame addicted online porn in the hairy palm of men's hands world at play - or NOT at play? Perhaps our old companion autism spectrum disorder is playing a role?  This group of males is also where we see angry school shooters.  What has happened to the male brain, libido and desire or ability to secure a sex partner?

From The Washington Post story The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high

For most of the past three decades, 20-something men and women reported similar rates of sexlessness. But that has changed in recent years. Since 2008, the share of men younger than 30 reporting no sex has nearly tripled, to 28 percent. That’s a much steeper increase than the 8 percentage point increase reported among their female peers.