Cartoon: The Birth Rate is Always a Crisis

“Teen mothers are increasing!” has been a common “everything is getting worse!” my whole life – until recent years, when “fertility is down!” has replaced it. Like this CBS News headline: “Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: “It’s a crisis”.”

Once upon a long-ago message board, I had an argument with a Christian sociologist who was arguing that more and more Black teens were becoming mothers. I pointed out that his claim just isn’t true – the percentage of babies born to Black teen mothers had gone up, but the actual number of Black teens giving birth were going down. (The discrepancy was because the number of post-teenage Black women giving birth was going down a bit faster.)

Much to my surprise, he became very angry with me, growled that I was missing the whole point, and quit the argument. It’s one of these disconnects that can happen easily with text-only disagreements: I thought we were having a fairly dispassionate discussion about fertility statistics, but it turned out we were having a passionate disagreement about… I’m still not sure.

There is a real argument that we need an increase in young workers to keep our economy and demographics healthy. The solution for that shouldn’t be nagging at young women to have more babies, but to allow in more immigrants.)

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus a tiny kicker panel under the bottom of the cartoon. Each of the four panels show the same two people taking on a sidewalk. The first is a woman with short black hair, wearing an open yellow shirt over a light orange shirt, and knee-length purple shorts. The second is a young man with reddish brown hair parted in the middle, dressed more conservatively in a button-down men’s shirt tucked into blue pants. Let’s call these two SHORTS and PANTS.

PANEL 1

Shorts is walking down the sidewalk when she’s startled by Pants, who is waving his arms around and yelling.

PANTS: Teenagers having babies is a crisis! A catastrophe!

PANEL 2

The two of them talk calmly, Shorts making a “just explaining things” hand gesture, and Pants looking a little surprised and worrying his fingers.

SHORTS: Actually, the birthrate among teens has been plummeting for years.

PANTS: Really?

PANEL 3

A shot from over Pants’ shoulder, as he peers at the screen of Shorts’ smartphone, which she’s holding out to show him.

On screen, we are looking at a website with the “CDC” logo, and the headline “TEEN BIRTH RATE REACHES ANOTHER HISTORIC LOW.”

PANTS: Hmmm

PANEL 4

Pants rears back, hands clasped to his head, a huge expression of panic on his face. Shorts, still holding up her smartphone, rolls her eyes.

PANTS: Gasp! The birthrate is down! This is a CRISIS! A CATASTROPHE!

TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE BOTTOM OF THE CARTOON.

Pants is talking to Barry (the cartoonist). Pants looks stern, with his arms crossed.

PANTS: Whatever the birthrate is, people need to know women are doing it wrong!

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

In ye olden days, when cartoonists stuck in irrelevant details for fun, the term for that was “chicken fat.” Nowadays we call this “easter eggs.” Apparently the term for this must always relate to poultry.

PANEL 1: A shifty-looking bunny, smoking a cigarette, is peering out from behind a tree.

A newspaper littering the ground, with a masthead saying “Daily Background,” has the headline “Cartoonist Subsidy Bill Passes!” and a subheadline saying “‘About damn time’ –Nation.” The photo accompanying the story shows a happy cartoonist who looks kinda like me holding a huge bag with $ written on the bag.

A scrap of paper on the ground says “Good people read this.” So there, don’t go saying I’ve never said anything nice about you.

A rat is napping in the gutter. One of the rat’s paws rests on an open bottle with a label saying “X,” but using the logo of the company that used to be Twitter.

PANEL 2: On the side of the tree, a realistically drawn squirrel is staring face-to-face with Woodstock from “Peanuts.”

PANEL 3: On the CDC’s website, there are two smaller stories at the bottom of the smartphone screen. The first says “Poll: Americans want Scientists & Government to Pretend Covid is Over.” with the subheadline “‘We don’t want to know. Anyway, what harm could it do?’ says public.”

The second story says “Study: Most Studies In Tiny Print Don’t Actually Exist.” And the subheadline says “Headlines like this one are just cartoonists making stuff up to fill in backgrounds.”

In the lower left corner of the panel, a little man, with blue skin and a purple mohawk, sits on the panel border grinning at the reader. He has a sign which says “I’m not relevant.”

PANEL 4: A bird flying in the background is wearing an eyepatch.

PANELS 1, 2 and 4: In panel 1, the tattoo on Shorts’ forearm shows an unhappy young person with big hair. In panel 2, the same tattoo shows the person with shorter hair, some brow wrinkles, and a still sad expression. In panel 4, the tattoo person is now bald and old, but has a happy expression.

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