It’s becoming unfashionable to have kids

What could I do? Keep going and carry on. Unfortunately my parents died young and lots of my extended family have now passed away...I am also an introvert and not brilliant at making friends and putting myself out there. Even though I do have some great friends, I find vast majority, even the childfree ones, are hugely busy with their family..by family I mean grandparents, parents, siblings, other extended family and relatives. I wonder if the next generations may be more open to friendships which are closer as family size dwindles.

JHound
Of course not. For obvious reasons.

It’s not “condescension” it’s life experience. It’s very easy to say you don’t want children when you are surrounded by others living their young, single, childfree life. It’s a very different experience when you are older and surrounded by couples with children. I am probably older than you and can assert that of the women I know who were adamantly not wanting to ever have children in their 20s precious few chose to remain so in the 30s.

You still don't get it, it's nothing to do with age or life experience. Some of us have always known we never wanted kids and have never had this biological urge/need or desire to have kids. Absolutely nothing, it's missing and I'm 35.

I'm from a massive family, loads of younger siblings and cousins I have plenty of experience looking after kids and seeing people with them. I still don't feel anything. I've never once in my life looked at a newborn or a child of any age and felt like I needed or wanted one. I can appreciate if they are cute, or have funny endearing personalities but I just feel nothing about having one.

Maybe it's an evolutionary thing and some of us are meant to feel nothing about having children so that the world has taken longer than it could have to overpopulate? Also allows families to have more children if some of us have none? I don't know but imagine if every single woman on earth had a child or multiple children where would we be then? I have absolutely no idea why I don't have any urge to have kids and don't understand this feeling of "need" others have, just like people that need to have them will never be able to understand how I feel.

ETA bold quote

There is nothing bizarre about it. Just my own life experience that most of the people I knew who were adamantly ChildFree in their 20s went on to have planned kids in their 30s+.

I don’t say anything. I don’t insist “you’re wrong”. I just silently wait to see if they have the same view when older. (I also do advise people to think carefully about whether the decisions they are making today will suit the person they will be in 10/20 years time).

And to be clear I myself also don’t have children.

That's fine. I was just asking what you would do if you found yourself in the position of not having family.

Point is children have their own lives, they may move away etc. I know loads of Brits in Oz who left elderly parents behind in the UK. In person support is therefore not possible.

If you want more women to become mothers, then remove some of the mother-load.

The amazing thing isn't that so many women are opting out, it's that there are women who still want to have children at all in the society that we've created.

The best alternative (and probably the best we can hope for at this stage) is a managed demographic decline.

I've known since my early teens that I never wanted children. Some people do just know.

No I'm not saying that at all. Nor am I blaming anyone or castigating those who don't have children for whatever reason. Society has changed. It is interesting. A middle aged adult today will have parents from the much older generation who often comes from big families and therefore have larger extended families but this will soon be a thing of the past. They are seeing this happen in china now due to the one child policy. You can acknowledge this and find it interesting without proportioning blame.

We appreciate it but also appreciate there is nothing to be done. You cannot force people to have more children.

I'm in my sixties and for me it's being able to be alone at last. I have umpteen cousins - Mum was the youngest of ten, several of whom had large families - but I've never met most of them, or ever wanted to. Not everyone feels this "they're my ReLaTiVeS" bond or like it's something they're missing out on. So what if there are people out there with the same bloodlines as me? Does that mean I'd even like them if I met them, or have any common interests, or want to spend time with them?

I'm less lonely now than I've ever been, because I have made friends and see them regularly.

@Comedycook Your life has worked out that you have your family. What if it had not? Would you just give up on life? I have considered doing the latter. You post similar thoughts on almost every thread about children and families condemning only children and those without children to a life of sadness and loneliness. You might be right, that's what I feel I am facing. As I say, I've thought about just giving up.

Whereas I’m 52 and while I did have a child at 40, many of my friends and three of my siblings, in their late 40s to mid-50s, remain childfree by choice. And looking pretty fulfilled on it.

Maybe try listening to what people are saying to you instead of condescending to them? Having a pet, for many, has nothing to do with parenthood or desiring it.

But many people choose their ‘families’, put their emotional efforts into friendship, and, while they’re on perfectly cordial terms with their families, blood bonds aren’t their primary link to other people. My wider family couldn’t be less important to me, for instance.

No it won’t. Children cost money.

I do wonder about loneliness within society in the future...if people don't have children or stick to one child, then future generations will not have aunts/uncles, cousins and wider family. Families will be much more linear... grandparents, parents and child. I know lots of childfree adults in their 30s/40s...they are still very much part of a family unit with their parents and siblings but once their parents die, I fear they may feel cast adrift. I think it is an interesting societal change.

But who pays for it then?

Of course not. For obvious reasons.

It’s not “condescension” it’s life experience. It’s very easy to say you don’t want children when you are surrounded by others living their young, single, childfree life. It’s a very different experience when you are older and surrounded by couples with children. I am probably older than you and can assert that of the women I know who were adamantly not wanting to ever have children in their 20s precious few chose to remain so in the 30s.

I don’t have children and am in my late 30s. I am myself an only child. I am at a crossroads and have two possible options:

• Try to have a child with my partner (also an only child). Child would likely be an only too and would have very little family (no aunties, uncles, cousins etc). No guarantee that the child wouldn’t have additional needs either which would make their life more difficult and increase my worry about them being alone in the world once my partner and I have gone.

• Accept not having children and try to build my life and community in other ways. This would involve retiring early, and then getting more heavily involved with charity and voluntary work and hopefully making some close friends. I am also working to establish a couple of groups related to hobbies I have. I have read so much online, especially on Mumsnet, about loneliness. I like the idea that I could use my time and skills to create something that might help bring others together.

I feel option 2 is the less selfish one.

I think this is a good point. If we talk about 'biological imperatives', I wonder if there's a subconscious decrease in that inbuilt. Species with higher birthrates tend to be the more vulnerable small prey creatures.

To a certain extent, you can see this in human behaviour historically. Baby booms are synonymous with high fatality/high need. When there's high infant mortality, the birth rate is much higher, logically and understandably.
From a national point of view, an ageing population that needs care indicates we need more young humans, yes. But from a biological perspective, an ageing population equates to less need to replace humans because so many are living longer.

Our understanding of shorter lifespans in the past is skewed by the volume of babies and mothers dying in childbirth. People still made it to their 80s and older, it just that fewer people made it out of childhood in the first place and fewer women made it out of childbirth alive.
Having multiple children if you were able to made more sense in an environment where the majority of parents would expect to lose at least one child to disease or in childbirth. Women who could carry babies to term and survive themselves would be having as many as possible to make up for those that couldn't.
On a conscious level, yes, as others have said, contraception, education of women, etc, but maybe we shouldn't ignore the subconscious imperative that might have driven us to improve methods of contraception in the first place.

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I can confirm that I am precisely as empathetic after having DS at 40 as I was before having him. I didn’t turn into a secular saint as soon as I expelled the placenta.

Yes, and apparently it's bad to give a home to another animal after one has died. Of course OP refers to this only as buying, as if fostering and adoption don't exist. Wonder if she has any objection to the human trafficking that's euphemistically called surrogacy?

Which is all the more interesting given the "parents are empathetic!!!" claim has, iirc, been demonstrated to be false - yes, they are empathetic to their own children (which one would think is a low bar to set) but not necessarily to other people's children.

Yep. And in many countries they are incentivising children - literally paying people to have them, offering mothers a lump sum for every child and cheaper mortgages etc. It’s still not working, because people clearly do not want a lot of children anymore! Apart from either very poor countries with bad education, or countries where women have few rights and choices.