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.
replyAfter 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
replyYou might be interested in the link I provided in a sibling post.
replyA larger percentage of births are to older women, but total number of births are still dropping accross all ages.
> Our assumption was that we were in a stealth baby boom.
replyThat somehow evaded fertility statistics?
Where are you and what percentage of your neighbors go to church and similar.
replyThis 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:
replyhttps://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.