To tell you that if a UK woman has not had her first child by 28, there is a 50% probability she will never have children.

I did all the right things. Got a university degree, travelled, pursued a career in another country, dated on and off and always ensured I took birth control seriously as I didn’t want an accident. I somehow just assumed that children were a part of my future but put no active thought into finding the right partner, I just thought it would happen when the time was right. When I met my now DH he had been married previously with 2 kids and a vasectomy. We tried to have kids through ivf but I was already 40 by then making it tricky.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I wasn’t so responsible in my youth? It wasn’t for lack of sex that I didn’t have children.

You are reading the rambling of a porn addicted male who spends his life listening to single men spouting nasty shit about women on podcasts. He’s now come on a primarily female site to dress his misogyny as ‘discussion’ to tell us everything is our fault.

Childfree millenial here. We were teenagers in the noughties when teenage pregnancy was rife. In order to tackle this, the media constantly fed us the narrative that pregnancy is a life ruining event. I remember watching tv shows such as Teen Mom, Underage and pregnant etc that depicted young mothers in hardship who were often perpetuating generational cycles of poverty. They showed life as a parent unfavourably with many scenes of screaming babies in cluttered homes in states of disarray. I truly believed that my life would be over if I became pregnant; I ensured that I had long-term, foolproof contraception in place.

The mission to reduce teenage pregnancy rates was effective as there has been a 50% drop. I believe that the narrative enforced on us in our formative years has been sufficient to put many of us off for life. To this day, child rearing remains an unattractive option for so many reasons, we know the financial and career implications and that most households need two good incomes to stay afloat, let alone bring a child into the mix.

We also often see unruly children running riot in public with parents doing very little to stop the behaviour and actually discipline their kids. This is partially due to the rise in screen time and lack of discipline/prevalence of gentle parenting. Yesterday, my quiet swim after the gym was ruined by children screaming and bombing in the pool. I popped to Tesco after this and was surrounded by children screaming at the top of their lungs running around. If I had DARED to scream in the 90's in a public place, my mother would have removed me from the situation immediately and I would have been disciplined.

But it won't get them to commit.
As the old saying goes, why buy the cow if the milk is free?

Part of the issue is women not wanting to have babies with inadequate men who won't commit.
The other part is affordability and housing.

I think marriage used to be the only career option available to many women until recently. Having kids became part of that.

now women have much better options and also higher standards. A lot of men expect a lot from women while giving little in return.

The survival of the human race isn't important. We have fucked the planet up, and now we are in decline. AI is going to make most of us redundant in time, so fewer people needing work will be good.

I’m not disagreeing with you. Infantalisation is a negative word. Both men and women are delaying adulthood for whatever reason.

The world is overpopulated with humans.

I had no impulse /desire whatever to have children. I always felt the world is a horrid place to bring a child into… & really still do.
My 1st was born when I was 29 & then had 2 more, (the 2nd only because I was worried that 1 child would be lonely without a sibling.)

Part of the reason why many women are deciding men aren't worth it.

Whether we call it infantilisation, exploring your passions or extending youth I think it’s great women are choosing not to settle down with kids and a partner at a time where it doesn’t feel right for them .

And whether that’s because they don’t desire that or it’s because they know they haven’t found the right partner or they don’t like the state of the world - I’m grateful for the options we all have.

ETA: same applies to men too actually! If they don’t want kids yet I’d rather they didn’t instead of having them THEN deciding they want a year of solo travel lol

Good for them! Young women aren't baby-making machines. They should be encouraged to live for themselves as well as others.

Having children is a huge commitment and our society is set up in a way that means that many women struggle to get to the gym after having a baby, even if they'd like to go, let alone to a weekend away with friends. Travelling is usually out of the question.

Yes, these didn't used to be options but now they are and young people have the freedom to have all sorts of experiences that wouldn't previously have been available. Why shouldn't they grasp them when the alternative is drudgery, a stressful job and a huge mortgage for a tiny home?

All these men want children but don’t want to be parents.

What the actual fuck am I reading??

Thank you. I think exactly the same as this. There are plenty of people, the pressure they put on the environment is insane. The problem is economics. We're fixated on a model that might have worked when it was set up but doesn't now. We need to think again about how to finance our changing population. An ever growing population is not the answer.

One reason childlessness is a problem is that 4 out of 5 women who never have children are biologically fertile and would have liked to have had children, but just never made it happen.

This doesn't ring true for me. I know quite a few childless women, some who are single and some in long term relationships. I only know one who wanted children and wasn't able to have any. It's very much been a considered choice for the remainder.

It’s interesting you threw in the ‘men have the upper hand in dating when women hit 30’ trope. This is a manosphere line. See also ‘men age like wine and women age like milk’ and ‘women hit the wall at 35’.

None of which are true. Men do not stop bothering women after 30. The age range of the men simply changes. Women do not have trouble dating at any age. What changes is women who have not settled and had children become wiser and see the way men routinely treat women and often decide, with all the additional economic pressure modern life brings, that taking on kids, a full time job and a man that likely won’t pull his weight and cheats is simply not worth it.

Men are telling women they ‘hit the wall at 35’ and they’d better hurry up but fail to consider women don’t stop getting older because they get married. Women don’t want to be cheated on and left carrying the baby. Especially with the utter disdain single mothers are spoken about by men.

Women have more choice and we are choosing better. It’s really that simple.

It’s not infantilisation but young people are extending their youth into their late twenties sometimes with the popularity of travel, gap years, university (this wasn’t always an option for most). This is fact.

Yeah it’s not a good thing for teens/children to be getting married. To go straight from childhood to parenthood seems ill advised and unnecessary in today’s world where life expectancy is 75+

What about some time to develop as a single/unmarried adult?

There are exceptions but these super young marriages have such a high rate of breakdown and no wonder. So many people are very different between say 17 and 24. And many regret the abrupt end of their childhood.

It’s also not great for girls /women specifically as realistically speaking they are the ones often left carrying the children, and possessing little qualifications or work experience if/when their husband leaves them in their 30s and 40s.

That said I know 3 couples from my childhood church married before 21 (both the man and woman were of a similar age in each couple) I wouldn’t advise marriage for 16-21 year olds generally and usually from what I’ve seen it’s a shit show. However what I liked about how these 3 couples did it is they didn’t have kids until way into their late 20s or even early 30s.

So despite coupling young they still enjoyed that romance and life of a couple without kids and each being able to focus on their careers and personal development, so they were in a great place to be parents when the time came. Some went to uni, some traveled together, set up business etc before they had kids.

And they also got a really good chance to assess if their partner was worthy of being a father/ mother to their future kids! Because having kids will tie to you to a person forever far more than marrying will.

Interesting that the focus is always on the women, not the men who IME of being single and childless (but not by choice) run away from responsibility and commitment. Too many Peter Pan men.

It is men who need to be better educated so that they reach maturity in their 20s as well-rounded human beings who will be dependable, kind, helpful and considerate. They will not be looking at porn or eyeing other women. They will offer to help out around the house without being asked. We are sadly lacking such mature men who are strong in character without being lazy and demanding, who do not raise their fists against women because they want their own way but instead protect their family unit. Women would then feel more secure to go ahead and have children when at the moment they either do not or end up aborting their unborn child because of this or that concern.

Generational stretch will also lead to falling population because if 2 women born in Year 0 have children at 33 vs 20 ( just examples) then within 100 years there will be 5 generations born vs 3. Therefore even if family size and proportion of women who never have children stays the same, population growth is lower under an older mother scenario ( assuming life expectancy the same in both scenarios)

I’d completely forgotten about that - thanks for the reminder!

I will walk over hot coals before I allow my DD to marry at 17.

It's not about infantilisation, it's about having time to learn who you are, what your passions and interests are and to build your independence and career prospects before your wings are clipped by the day-to-day drudgery of having to focus on meeting the needs of others. To know that you yourself are worth investing in.

There's a reason why highly controlling and misogynistic societies are usually in favour of marrying young girls off early. Keep them powerless, limit their economic independence and ensure they're easy to control.

*@GameWheelsAlarm

• the chief purpose of a woman is not to bear children. That's misogynistic wank. A woman without children is of no lesser value and has many ways toto be proud of a life well lived. Oprah Winfrey, Rosa Parks and Katherine Hepburn to name a few.*”

So true!

I feel some men (usually men over 30) are basically saying now “oh you should start thinking about popping out babies from age 25 or you might never have one” and women are like “okay we might never have one” shrugs and heading out to live their best lives.

And the men are like “huh? Wait that’s not how that chat was meant to go waaaah blah blah misogynist twaddle something something”

I met DH at uni, we didn't have a dc until 30. Our relationship in our 20s was strong but we focused on careers and getting a property. I wanted to be in a position where I was secure before I considered it.