It’s becoming unfashionable to have kids

Is it?? Can you elaborate?

I feel like society is very much not geared towards people with children, which makes it all the less appealing to prospective parents.

Eight billion of us on the planet, no shortage of people to family up with, you don't need to breed your own!

Women used to judged for not having kids (or not getting married).

Nowadays, I feel less women get judged for not having kids or getting married.

I don’t think it’s fashionable.
It is just not judged as harshly.

Well yes.. if all your examples are from your children's school and toddler group they will all be parents 😂 Surely that's a given and obviously not a reflective sample of society as a whole

It’s become less of a taboo to not have kids. In the past it would lead to people being pitied and looked down on if they didn’t. Am awful lot of people ended up having them by default, rather than because they actually wanted them. Would you prefer that?

I think it’s a very healthy redressing of the balance, personally. You can have a wonderful and highly productive life without children and I think we should celebrate the fact people feel able to embrace that.

There would have been a lot more childfree people in the past if it had been a choice. A woman's only way of staying cf was to be single forever in a time when women were expected to marry.
I find the stats on how many women stay cf difficult to believe, in most gatherings I'll usually be the only cf person there.

Same. Nice and comfortable. Planned exit in a comfortable environment.

Are you also aware of the drop in fertility rates ? Opposed to unfashionable ?

Oh this is so true. Growing up in the 90s we were constantly told getting pregnant was the absolute worst thing ever...so much so I know women in their thirties who were terrified to tell their parents they were pregnant 😂

Oh yes I get people questioning my sexuality constantly too!

And other female friends have had the same. Apparently a childless unmarried woman can only be that way because she is a closeted lesbian! (Same as you my childless self was due to lack of a suitable partner and no desire to take up any of the partnering options that were available to me. And I don’t date because dating is The Ghetto so that’s that!)

I understand being unable to trust again too. A friend of mine from uni met her fella at uni and thought he was The One. Travelling together, purchasing homes and planning marriage till he completely betrayed her and broke her heart and she never recovered enough to date again. So she remained single and childless.

Lots of parents have to do a lot more work for kids into adulthood though.

Whether disability, divorce, single parenthood, addiction, mental illness.

Being a parent is forever.

@HowIrresponsible That’s very sad, your poor friend.

But that’s not the case for the vast majority of parents, is it? Your parents were lucky, as mine were and I am. To suggest that becoming a parent inevitably leads to this isn’t realistic.

But this is what happens with newly co-habiting couples. They start off with getting a pet as a joint commitment, before going on to have children a few years down the line. I did this when I married, years ago. Got a couple of cats with my dh before going on to have dc four or five years later.

Parents are now expected to sacrifice their entire lives for their kids but the kids are not expected to show any gratitude to, or care for, their parents. So having children is a mug's game.

I am sure the other elderly residents find a way to make it work though.

People forget its likely in future than euthanasia will be legalised. If I become unwell and am alone, i don't plan to sit in a care home. I will sign up for euthanasia and go gently.

The whole of society is geared to people with children. Women especially are looked down upon if they have no children. More common, a little, fashionable no.

The UK (and indeed virtually every developed country) birth rate is falling for multiple reasons, I don’t really think fashion is much to with it OP.

Yes, you have lots of teens/ twenty somethings online and in RL saying they’d never have kids due the the environment/ carbon footprint, but I suspect it’s also emotional too - most people felt that way at that age as children seemed far too big a commitment! Time will tell if they all still feel that way in their thirties when their biological clocks really start ticking.

Anecdotally as a woman in her early 40’s with an only child (IVF baby), I’ve met a lot of women in a similar boat to me - they are either childless (not by choice) or they only have the one child due to secondary infertility or because they can’t afford it financially. High cost of living and starting too late fertility-wise (due to careers or not finding the right partner) are the main reasons for people having fewer or no children imo.

Even with all that said though, again anecdotally I still find the most commonplace thing is for people to have had 2 children by their late thirties. 3 or more children is definitely less commonplace than it used to be though, unless in mixed/step families.

Me too, got let down badly by a bloke and never recovered enough to trust another to have kids with. But its amazing how people have judged my circumstances since - been mis accused of being gay a few times for being single and childless

That is true in my case. My widowed mother (living with dementia) is in a care home in another country. Me and all her other dcs (my siblings) live abroad from her. My mother says she likes her friends in the home, which is a residential-like setting with full time on-site carers and other elderly residents.

However, despite being far away, us kids still support her every way we can. I manage her finances. My brother manages her medical care. We visit her with our families when we can (at least once a year), facetime her, ask the care home how she is doing and her condition, buy her supplies and fave foods. There are elderly residents living in the home who do not have family like my mother has.

Emotionally and qualitatively, family even if far away does make a difference. Flesh and blood counts. Cannot speak for other family dynamics of course.

I think calling it “fashionable” is doing an incredible disservice to people who’ve made an informed choice to be childfree. It reduces their decisions to a shallow whim. It’s not the same as not wearing a coat, fgs.

Might be one of those instances where a non-mainstream idea gets an iota of attention and people start claiming it’s “taking over”!

*dead

I also have a theory the ‘teenage pregnancy’ message was so hammered home in the 90s/00s, you have a whole generation of people absolutely terrified that having a kid will completely ruin their life.

You spend people’s formative years telling them the worst possible thing they could do is have a baby, then are surprised when they don’t want kids.

I dont think its "unfashionable",

humans are designed to reproduce.

the only issue is I think its just too damn scary to bring children up these days. This cost of living crisis doesnt help either.

Mammals have a biological urge to mate/have sex. Apart from humans, I don’t think they think much about what the result of that is likely to be.