美国国家公共电台 NPR Less Sex, Fewer Babies: Blame The Internet And Career Priorities

Less Sex, Fewer Babies: Blame The Internet And Career Priorities

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

People not having enough babies could ultimately cause the economy to shrink. When a nation's birthrate declines too much, there aren't enough young workers to replace and support those who retire. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says births in the U.S. are at their lowest level in 32 years. NPR's Sam Sanders looks at three big reasons why - careers, money and sex.

SAM SANDERS, BYLINE¹: Let's start with sex.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Americans are in the middle of a sex recession.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Less sex than ever before.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Sex - millennials are not having as much of it as their parents or grandparents did.

SANDERS: For a few years now, America has been in what many are calling a sex recession or a sex drought. The General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, it found that in 2018, almost a quarter of adults under 30 didn't have sex in the last year. Almost 1 in 4 young adults sexless. That's a record high. Part of the explanation is everyone's spending more time alone on the Internet, but also younger people are waiting longer to find a life partner or even cohabitate. For a lot of young men, that's not always by choice. Nate Koch is 23, recent college graduate, lives in Colorado, and he is currently single.

NATE KOCH: When I was in high school, I really liked that show "How I Met Your Mother." I feel like shows like that created this sort of image of what it's like to be in your 20s. And you're hanging out in bars and you're just sort of, like, meeting people in these strange ways and you're a wingman for other...

SANDERS: Koch says everything about online dating today, it feels incredibly less straightforward² than a sitcom³.

KOCH: There's, like, no rules anymore. Like, we don't know what to do on these apps. It feels like kind of like the Wild West.

SANDERS: Koch says online dating in many ways is good. It gives women more power over their dating and sex lives. And he says it's making men question some of the power they've always had. I talked to another young man, also in his 20s, not Nate Koch. And he told me that his dad asked his mom out five times before she said yes. That kind of behavior may sound sweet in retrospect⁴, but today, online, that could be considered harassment⁵. Figuring out these new rules can be hard. For Nate Koch, it's time consuming.

KOCH: I'm literally⁶ applying to jobs at the same time that I'm dating. The similarity between the two is a little bit, like, horrifying⁷ to me. Like, it feels like I'm doing the same thing.

SANDERS: All of this has slowed down Koch's potential baby timeline.

KOCH: I thought that I would probably know the person that I was going to get married to by my age now. Like...

SANDERS: I guess you're saying that you thought at this point you'd be further along that track.

KOCH: What - are you trying to depress me?

SANDERS: More women are dealing⁸ with another reason we're seeing America's birthrate dip so low - career considerations. Rashmi Venkatesh is 30 years old and married. She has a Ph.D. and she works in science research. Her job is kind of her No. 1 priority right now.

RASHMI VENKATESH: Having pictured in the past a fully⁹ formed professional life and a fully formed family life and having realized that for most of us, one of those things has gone by the wayside, and that thing is the family life.

SANDERS: Venkatesh says she's still in that phase of her career where she's moving up the ladder really quickly. So when she thinks of having a kid, she worries that it might hurt her career advancement¹⁰. She tells me she couldn't even imagine taking, like, 10 or 12 weeks off for a new baby.

VENKATESH: Two and a half months off, you would miss something or, you know, the time that I spend in the evening reading up on things, the time that I spend outside of work thinking about problems at work, would now be focused on something else - a child.

SANDERS: On top of all this - money. Venkatesh worries about losing income if she leaves work to have a kid, and she worries about one big new expense a baby would bring - child care. The cost of child care is eating up more of families' incomes than in decades past. Venkatesh says that when she was younger, she imagined several kids.

VENKATESH: The number three always seemed like a good number, like a number that was right.

SANDERS: So then now being 30, do you still think three?

VENKATESH: Realistically, no.

SANDERS: Wow. How does that make you feel?

VENKATESH: It's a bummer. It's a bummer for sure.

SANDERS: The longer women like Venkatesh wait to have a kid, the fewer kids they're likely to have. Jennifer Glass is a demographer¹¹ at The University of Texas at Austin. She says America's baby drought and sex recession, it's happening in other developed countries, too. Some have tried to fix it by urging citizens to get busy. Glass says one commercial from Denmark is the craziest.

JENNIFER GLASS: There were grandparents bemoaning¹² the fact that their children had not yet produced grandchildren for them. And they were going to pay them to go on a holiday. So I thought those were quite amusing.

SANDERS: The end of one of those Danish commercials sounds like this.

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Do it for Denmark. Do it for mom.

SANDERS: Do it for Denmark. Do it for mom. Professor Glass says that stuff doesn't work, but other things do.

GLASS: What we need is a policy that gives you four to six months almost completely paid and is available to both partners. The second thing that works is to have subsidized child care available.

SANDERS: And there's another fix - immigration. Immigrants tend to be younger, the kind of workers aging economies need. And new immigrants often have childbirth rates that are higher than the native-born population.

PHILIP COHEN: We should not worry about the birthrate in the United States.

SANDERS: Philip Cohen is a sociologist¹³ at the University of Maryland.

COHEN: If we want to let those people come to this country, we can solve any problem you can think of related to population size.

SANDERS: America's ongoing¹⁴ debate over just how many immigrants should be coming here - that may not be over anytime soon. So the baby drought seems bound to continue until there is a shift in the workplace, online or the bedroom.

Sam Sanders, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 straightforward   

adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的

参考例句：

• A straightforward talk is better than a flowery speech.巧言不如直说。
• I must insist on your giving me a straightforward answer.我一定要你给我一个直截了当的回答。

3 sitcom   

n.情景喜剧，（广播、电视的）系列幽默剧

参考例句：

• This sitcom is produced in cooperation with Hong Kong TV.这部连续剧是同香港电视台联合制作的。
• I heard that a new sitcom is coming out next season.我听说下一季会推出一个新的情境喜剧。

4 retrospect   

n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯

参考例句：

• One's school life seems happier in retrospect than in reality.学校生活回忆起来显得比实际上要快乐。
• In retrospect,it's easy to see why we were wrong.回顾过去就很容易明白我们的错处了。

5 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

6 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

7 horrifying   

a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的

参考例句：

• He went to great pains to show how horrifying the war was. 他极力指出战争是多么的恐怖。
• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate. 战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。

8 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

9 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

10 advancement   

n.前进，促进，提升

参考例句：

• His new contribution to the advancement of physiology was well appreciated.他对生理学发展的新贡献获得高度赞赏。
• The aim of a university should be the advancement of learning.大学的目标应是促进学术。

11 demographer   

n.人口统计学家

参考例句：

• Professor Antonio Golini is a demographer at the University of Rome. 罗马大学安东尼奥教授是位人口统计学家。 来自互联网
• Demographer William Frey says immigrants with young families will help keep the United States competitive. 人口统计学家佛瑞表示这些年轻的家庭会帮助美国保持竞争力。 来自互联网

12 bemoaning   

v.为（某人或某事）抱怨( bemoan的现在分词 )；悲悼；为…恸哭；哀叹

参考例句：

• They sat bemoaning the fact that no one would give them a chance. 他们坐着埋怨别人不肯给他们一个机会。
• The rest were disappointed, miserable creatures in unwarm beds, tearfully bemoaning their fate. 剩下那些不幸的人，失望的人在不温暖的被窝里悲泣自己的命运。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

13 sociologist   

n.研究社会学的人，社会学家

参考例句：

• His mother was a sociologist,researching socialism.他的母亲是个社会学家，研究社会主义。
• Max Weber is a great and outstanding sociologist.马克斯·韦伯是一位伟大的、杰出的社会学家。

14 ongoing   

adj.进行中的，前进的

参考例句：

• The problem is ongoing.这个问题尚未解决。
• The issues raised in the report relate directly to Age Concern's ongoing work in this area.报告中提出的问题与“关心老人”组织在这方面正在做的工作有直接的关系。