It’s becoming unfashionable to have kids

Ah, yes course. Worded poorly, I meant more their attitudes/plans towards having kids.

Women in particular are choosing to have less or no children because this is one of the first times in history that they actually can make that choice.

I think as others have said, it’s a range of factors. You can use Call The Midwife to track how society has changed and how certain progresses have certain implications, eg for increasing freedom of choice for women (a good thing!!!) that means freedom to delay motherhood which meets biology which can mean fewer children. Or greater social mobility (a good thing!!!) but now the village you really need to raise kids is one you probably have to fight to create or press on without.

A lot of my friends don’t have kids; for only one of them is it a conscious choice, for the others it’s circumstances.

Oh god I hate the “dog mum” crowd- nope you’re a dog owner!

This is true.

Generally there is social pressure on women in particular to have children and then social pressure on them to accept a lower social and financial status and accept the career motherhood penalty for having done so.

The number of threads on here voicing the internalised belief that having become a mother a woman should put the wishes of her extended family on both sides with regards to the child before her own convenience and wishes are in stark contrast to anything women without children are told to put up with (and generally once a woman has children she will be told regularly to "be grateful" for things which go against her interests in a way no other category of person is).

This has always been the case though.

Couples stumble into parenthood because it's the "next step" a lot of the time, without seriously analysing whether it's what they want. Other women conceive accidentally and decide to keep the baby or do so out of inertia, and of course others desperately want to be parents and do actively plan their pregnancy. I'm pretty sure though that "because it's fashionable" has never ranked high on the list of reasons for getting pregnant.

Whilst the numbers of childfree by choice and childless not through choice have probably both increased in wealthy countries, what's mainly happening is women are having fewer children rather than none. Where women who do have children might once have averaged closer to 3 children (or the old 2.5 children trope), the average is now closer to 1 (1.4-1.8 average in many countries).

As I said family is more than kids. It’s friends, siblings, cousins, aunts

If people have less children then future generations won't have siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. One child families becoming the norm will create a much more linear family

Isn’t that just because they are under 25? I think having children super young is not the trend for a variety of reasons.

I was at uni till I was 22. On a gap year at 24 and only started a serious career job at 25. Not to mention I was very immature. Having children under 25 would have been a mad decision for me.

I have some great friends but I have lost great friends in the past too. Imo it’s not the same as family, and I say that as someone who was orphaned at 20 and knows how shit a lack of family feels. Would I leave my children’s concert to go comfort a friend- no, would I lend a friend thousands of pounds - no. Would I do these two things for my sister- yes!

That's not fashion, that's common sense. I was nearly 30 before I even considered kids cos I wanted to have a few years under my belt in work.

I was a mess up to about 24. I would not have been in any fit place to be a parent.

It’s utterly unaffordable for people to have children under 25.

If it’s ‘fashion’ it’s driven by financial necessity / likelihood of being settled down etc.

The average nursery cost will be as much as the average salary of a 25 year old.

Really ? Corporal punishment used to be legal in school and many died from preventable disease in infancy before the advent of modern medicine.

You really think the world is getting worse for children...

I agree with you OP, particularly amongst the middle class under 25s. Lots of young couples with "fur babies" though.

I don't know that it's "unfashionable" to have kids so much as it's more acceptable not to have kids. At the same time people are recognising the lifestyle factors you sacrifice having kids in terms of money, consumables and holidays.

I can also confirm I've never been less cool than when I'm wrangling 2 toddlers and trying to avoid being smeared in food, snot or poo so I'm doing nothing to make motherhood look cool.

It's become 'fashion' to be unable to afford to buy a house or even rent, what are young people thinking!

I find this so utterly appalling. How awful.

Birth rates are falling globally.

My family and my mother put enormous pressure on me to be a carer for her when she was terminally ill. She needed full time hospice care and was perilously ill. It was not a responsibility I wanted to take on or could take on. I worked full time.

I as the child free daughter got so much abuse from family about it to take mum home and called lazy and selfish and who cares if it messed up my work.

It's abhorrent to have a child to expect it to be there for you in old age.

I agree, and wish I'd have been a bit more observant about such things before I had my two.

Oh she mentioned the childfree people she knows have childfree siblings. Hence me mentioning them. Obviously if you have no siblings it’s very different!

Definitely. My elderly next door neighbour never had kids (I don't know why - choice or couldn't), and I pop in and see her regularly, along with, occasionally, my kids (10, 14 - not so much the 14yo now though).
My own mother, I barely see (partly geography, partly personality clash). I do help my mother out of a sense of obligation, but I run moreerrands for my elderly ndn.

Back to the OP, I think you are on to something. I am happy for the population to decline, and when I am old, if I am reliant on help that isn't available, I'd be content to toddle off to meet my maker (see thread on euthanasia concurrently running) rather than be a burden to my own kids.

It’s not a nice world and seems to be getting worse, I wouldn’t want to bring children into this so that’s why I haven’t

Not so much career I reckon as its an expensive world and you need money.

I notice many of my friends have other cultures have much more of an engrained expectation to marry and have kids still. That might change in a few generations but might not.

Plenty of people still seem to be having children, but dogs are definitely the 'in' thing around where I live. My dog is treated like a celebrity wherever we go, my children not much!

Where is having a career considered more important than being a parent?