Blog/2025-08-06/The Latent Demand For Babies
Julie, our friend Esther, my daughter Astra, and I went to pick up some dim sum in Chinatown on Monday. We've been many times, so we took the T train up to the station. Since we had the stroller with us, and we didn't want to unnecessarily occupy too much of the elevator, Julie and Esther took the escalator.
As most parents in San Francisco experience, people love looking at your baby and smiling, but going to Chinatown I realized just how much people love seeing children. Many people walking by would remark "cute baby" or some variant of the sort. One elderly couple also waiting for the lift told me "You are a good father, taking your daughter out to see things!" which I thought was rather sweet. Since we're on that train line, they'd seen Julie and me walk Astra around the neighbourhood before, they said.
Outside on the street, I did see a couple of other strollers over the next half an hour as we picked up food, so we weren't alone in having our infant out in Chinatown. I'd guess that all the women who stopped to talk to me about my daughter were in their 30s or older, except for one Filipina, but they all gushed over her and asked me how old she was and so on as I waited for the stroller outside while Julie picked us some food.
The whole thing reminded me of something my friend Ben said about people encountering babies making them want them. I think he's probably right. There is a latent demand for babies and children that may activate when encountering babies and children. The enthusiasm strangers showed for my child seems to indicate that this is the case.
The United States is quite old at a median of 39 years, but the county of San Francisco is older still at a median of 40.7 years. Perhaps there is a spiral where absence of children in some environment never activates this latent demand, resulting in fewer children, ad inf. Well, Astra did her part that day!
