AIBU to think a big reason to birth rate is falling is because mothers are made to feel they must do more for their children than in previous times?

Do you actually WANT to send your 6 yo out in the world with a key around their neck and just cross your fingers and hope for the best? If yes, then there are work arounds , and while some things would be frowned upon, you can drop a lot of balls. No one can force you to attend even parent’s evening, much less every single event at the school. No one can force you to bake cakes or send them in dress up. No one can force you to parent or spend time with your kids.

Yes I do a million times more parenting than my mother ever did. However, I actually enjoy some of those things and the others, well… I actually want DD to be safe and well raised.

Your life sounds lovely. I don’t know anyone who had grand parents who owned their own home or where the grandmother did not need to work full time and usually doing extra wok at night or weekends.

I think there is also a set of expectations we all hold without necessarily knowing that we do - and in this situation, smaller family sizes or even having no children has become more normal.

The pressure in women having a career has not been matched by a shift in society to support that. Nurseries are super expensive, schools stop at 3.45-4, loads of holidays, fathers are not doing 50% of child rearing, so women have never worked as hard as ever before.
there is a lot of pressure in getting kids to activities, top schools etc but nearly always it’s all on mums.

Very interesting! I agree, we are made feel guilty and feel the constant pressure as parents.

I wonder if it would help to separate the things that put people off children altogether and the things that make people have less than they might have wanted. The second group are more fixable, like improving maternity care so less women are traumatized and never want to do it again. The former much less so, people who don't want kids have reasons that you can't really argue with.

No, I meant if the state school had been better (or even just safe), I wouldn't have needed to pay for private education, and could have afforded two dcs rather than just one.

Thank goodness we have managed to break that link!
But fundamentally the desire to fornicate is driven by the hormones created by our reproductive organs. Physiologically the two are one and the same.
Our brains differentiate between fornication and procreation - but (without intervention) our bodies do not, never have and never will.

‘for most living creatures there is a natural inbuilt need to procreate.
I don't think that's true.
There's a natural desire to fornicate which often leads to procreation - that's why sex is pleasurable. We have managed to break that link though.
I don't see much that biology will do about that, though cultural factors might make yet make child-bearing a high-status role if breeding rates continue to plummet.’

Thank goodness we have managed to break that link!
But fundamentally the desire to fornicate is driven by the hormones created by our reproductive organs. Physiologically the two are one and the same.
Our brains differentiate between fornication and procreation - but (without intervention) our bodies do not, never have and never will.

It can be really awful. There was a whole section on it in that birth trauma inquiry I mentioned upthread.

I had people trying to harvest colostrum from me when I’d just had 3 blood transfusions and was not even really conscious (I couldn’t hold the baby properly to latch him). I still think about it a lot 18 months later and it does put me off ever being on a postnatal ward again tbh.

In the end I successfully combi fed (about 80% BF) for a year, which was lovely, but I did get a lactation consultant in and pay for a private tongue tie revision because I was essentially written off for not being able to do it exclusively from the beginning.

edited: Also just to say that is really interesting about the huge aristocratic families! I had never thought of that but it makes sense.

If my 3rd has been the 1st I wouldn't have had more children. Caring for new parents are really been downhill the last years.

So if you haven't got free time to rock up to the school for cake events you are not supporting your child? I guess that's a view from a place of privilege.

My kids felt safe at school. We live in an fairly affluent area with good schools. My youngest has just graduated. Didn't miss out as I wasn't baking bloody cakes

Yes sometimes support can be shockingly bad. I don't think it would put many people off more children though but perhaps I'm wrong?

I was more objecting to the idea (from a few other posters) that exclusively breastfeeding is some kind of modern helicopter parent fad as opposed to, pretty much, the norm for millenia. Obviously wet nursing has always been a thing for rich people but safe formula is a 20th century thing.

Interestingly: Extended nursing would have been used as a contraceptive and to space out children in the past (it's less effective now our diets are higher calorie). Which shows people have always tried to restrict family size. This is probably why you get these huge aristocratic families as the mothers wouldn't nurse themselves. But they aren't always representative of wider human experience. Hunter gatherers have on average 4 year age gaps due to extended feeding.

The relentless pressure to BF exclusively without really doing anything to help besides demonising bottles is quite traumatic for women who have trouble with it. The HVs and midwives use a very stringent checklist from the World Health Organisation to check that you’re doing it ‘properly’. I know of 3 people within my circle whose babies have become quite ill from dehydration/ jaundice because their concerns were brushed off.

That's fair enough but not the ethos of our youngst child's school. I want my child to feel safe at school with parents supporting her. But it's not the discussion.
The point was a lot of schools expect a lot from parents today and people might not be able to see themselves with full time jobs and large families because of this level of taking part in school life as parents. I am very happy to see our youngst through school as yes, university is expensive but ask very little of the parents.

Women have always worked

Mothers were less likely to work full time with young dc though.

I do not agree that working women are responsible for raised prices, althpugh i have seen this raised a lot on the internet, usually by men who like to blame women for everything starting with original sin.

Women have always worked. Every so often men push a few back out of paid work again for one excuse or another, but that only takes money away from women and makes them dependent on men. The money is still there, merely given to men instead.

House prices rose as buy to let was encouraged, as mass immigration began and financial regulations were decreased enabling foreign money to flood the country. Other factors were the increasing tendency of boomers to live alone because they could. Those are the historical facts. Buy to let raises prices because suddenly you have far more people chasing properties, as of course does immigration. Similarly more people wanting their own space boosts demand.

But far easier to blame women and have another movement of making them dependent on male charity and promises to not thump too hard as long as they get their dicks pulled regularly.

Theo Clarke, who authored an extremely harrowing birth trauma enquiry which was released a month after the (traumatic) birth of my son, was on the Today programme recently talking about how we just keep doing maternity inquiries without legislating for any change. Then somebody was on straight after talking about the ageing population and how the birth rate is a worry. I do wish somebody in charge would join the dots and see women’s health as a pressing issue that needs to be addressed NOW so we don’t end up in some Children of Men scenario. There’s lots that can be done- why can’t we get AI trained up to make growth scans loads more accurate so people don’t end up with unnecessary c-secs or (in my case) having to birth ginormous babies that blow the doors off on their way out? Why are we still just measuring bellies with a tape measure? Also making the postnatal wards less like being in the middle of a warzone would be welcome. And telling us about the long-term complications of not resting up properly after birth and neglecting our pelvic health ideally before our vaginas fall out would be great. I always wanted a couple of kids but I’m pretty sure I’m one and done after my massacre of an experience.

There’s other stuff too- anecdotally almost every mum I know had one or two miscarriages before they had their child. I had two. It’s also increasingly common to have problems conceiving, which Dr Shanna Swan says is linked to chemicals and microplastics in everything. (It sounds very tinfoil hatty but has been factchecked on Snopes.)

That’s before you even get into the social issues.

as I said I was working and a single parent. Exactly how was i meant to be piffling about with school stuff while working or caring for my other kids, with no other parent to do stuff

So if for example I was at one child's school of an evening doing this , what was i meant to be doing with the others?

As for cake, we'll its probably best, baking is not my forte Although school only allowed shop bought cakes sealed anyway

I can only speak for myself not all childfree women but I think my experience is pretty common.

I started work long after 1975 and when women were allowed their own bank accounts and mortgages. I was therefore living independently without issues and simply spent too long thinking about children and so never had any. I mean, if you actually think about it logically you'd never do it. So I didn't.