UK fertility rate drops by 18.8% in 12 years

Well, i can't work due to both mental and physical health issues, so even if i was able to cope with having a kid, i don't think tax payers would appreciate being the ones paying for me to get a council house to move out from living with my dad who def wouldn't want a baby in the house, and paying all the costs of looking after and raising said child in benefits.
Given the housing market, inflation, cost of living, childcare costs etc i doubt many people can afford to have kids.
Add on the fact the planet is massively over populated and dying under global warming etc the last thing it needs is more people living on it.
Throw in the fact several countries are at war and the significant threat of it descending in to world war 3, why would anyone want to bring a kid in to this world anyway.

It's not just the cost of childcare. It's also the fact that almost all parents are forced into paying these enormous childcare costs because it's no longer viable for most families to survive on one salary.

Perhaps it's no longer seen as an expectation by women, and they wish to do other things.

Isn’t artificial intelligence around the corner and going to fix this issue

my friend says his seo/freelance writing job is already being cut thanks to ChatGPT

soon there will be no need for existing humans

I can't afford a child so haven't had any

I think its the environment/micro plastics/screens/chemicals were exposed to.

Loads of chemicals impact the endocrine system including makeup, cleaning products etc.

Cost of living, housing crisis, female education etc have all played their part but a cause that's often left out is the near-eradication of teenage pregancy

This. And with climate change too, why the hell would we want to reverse the trend? Do we really need more humans about the place?

Well I and some people I know who were put on the pill age of 12/13 did it because of horrific periods.

the kind painkillers won’t touch

later diagnosed with endo

they need to do something about endo, take women’s health seriously, so many go 10 plus years to get a diagnosis, being fobbed off, by the time they diagnosed, women are infertile

To throw out a social reason, men are not settling down til later, if at all, which is getting late for women to have larger families. I realise someone women delay starting families too for career reasons, but I feel like the balance of power is with men who are happy with porn and dating apps.

Well if it’s a question of fertility, it seems to be down to processed food, endocrine disruptors in day to day products, alcohol and caffeine.

If it’s generally just about people having fewer children, people are waiting longer for a number of reasons - most of them relate to expense.

Birth rate rather than fertility rate, surely?

The astronomical cost of housing! And childcare.

I dont actually want the trend to reverse the planet is over populated and we have to stop relying on ever increasing growth in populations.
The whole economic model is a mess. I actually we need global shift in what is valued in terms of the jobs paid good salaries and the expectation of constant capitalist 'growth'

It’s all the snarky posters on Mumsnet saying, “Don’t have children if you can’t afford them,” and then vast swathes of the population reading the posts and thinking “shit! They’re right!” and changing their life plans.

As someone with a large family I feel sad to read stories like this. I love having a large family and couldn't imagine life without them. I live in a part of the UK though where housing is affordable. I know many with at least 3 children per family.

Our society certainly isn't made up for families with more than 2 children. Most cars cannot fit 3 car seats, a family hotel room is for up to 4, a trip somewhere on a family ticket is 2+2 and you can't sit next to more than one child per parent on rides.

I have 2 and have no idea how people manage more! We only managed 2 as we had a lot of grandparent help in the years before school and a deliberately larger age gap to avoid nursery fee crossover. Also got onto the property ladder before 2013, so it was a lot cheaper back then. No way I could have bought a house if started 10 years later.

People have the choice now - they can travel, not have kids, have kids, have them early, have them late etc

It's not how it used to be - married and kids by 20!

I also think the long term contraceptive use of current 20-30 year olds is a big factor - the first generation to be put on the pill at 11+!

Is anyone on here is put off by the fear that the next generation will have harder lives than we do?

I'm mid 20s I think it's two fold

On one hand people my age have the choice now and we can see just how tough parenting is and some of us are saying that's not for me. I'm just choosing not to have children.

On the other hand, I think it all starts with the housing crisis, increasingly my friends are in old can no longer afford to even rent a one bedroom apartment they are flat sharing as a couple, they can't save for a deposit and renting with children as hell a lot of Landlord will refuse people because they can get more money from a HMO.
Then, if you get over the issue of housing childcare is so expensive, and flexibility with employers. I also think a lot of women just see how the burden always falls on them and saying yeah I don't want to do that. I'd rather be in a couple with dual income but no kids.

but if the government was serious about this, they would really just start building social housing on mass, it's costing councils more to put people in temporary accommodation than it is just to go on a mass building program of social housing. Labour parrot on about how we will get more building done but developers won't build if people can't afford them, and they're not going to increase the supply that much that it brings house prices down

I also think culturally the UK is not a family friendly place. People are actually quite hostile to children in a way they're not in other countries.

I’d love to see data on what is causing the “low birth rate” numerically. Is it more people having no children at all (that could be cost or other worries, not finding the right partner in time, but also much more acceptance of being child free), or much more people just having one, or it being increasingly rare to have three or more. Obviously it’s a combination of those, but it would be interesting to know if one is more responsible for the overall lowering than others.

I'd have loved another baby if I could have afforded it. Can barely afford the cat!

Definitely financial. Major reason why we aren't having the three children we talked about as a young couple 10 years ago.