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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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.

609 replies

RetiredMan · 20/09/2025 23:47

I just watched the documentary linked below, about falling birth-rates, released on Youtube yesterday, by the guy who did the research.

(The fact in the subject is from an interview, the documentary itself only give the statistic for Japan, where the equivalent age is 26.)

Some factoids for those who won't watch the video (some are from the documentary, some are from two interviews with the maker that I've also watched.)

Birth-rates are below the level needed to keep population stable everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. (It looks like only a matter of time until it's true there as well.)

That the invention of the pill is causing this is disproved by the fact that rates fell suddenly in Japan 20 years before the pill became legal there. They fell at the same time as birth-rates in multiple other countries, so it's not that Japan has a different cause.

Women who do become mothers are not having fewer children than before, the issue is that suddenly a large chunk of women are having no children at all. In other words, the problem is not smaller families, the problem is fewer families. (If I remember rightly, Japan went from 1 in 30 women childless to 1 in 5, in the space of three years. It's now 1 in 3.)

I think I caught a statistic somewhere that 40% of US women are now destined to be childless. (Presumably that is among those becoming adult now. But I might be wrong about this statistic, may have misheard/misunderstood.)

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. Obviously there will also be economic issues, if each 20-year-old entering the job market has to generate enough economic output to support multiple 70-year-olds.

Even though birth-rates are falling. generations already born before births peaked will caused older age brackets to have increasing numbers of people, so for a few decades, overall population will still increase despite births decreasing.

The birth-rate of a population can be 90% predicted by the average age at which a women has her first child. The exact figure has not yet been researched, but it appears to be the case that population will inevitably decline if women who want children do not have their first child by their mid-twenties.

Immigration will not be able to solve the economic problems caused by falling population. There will be nowhere with a people surplus for them to come from. (There was a jokey interview claim that India already has ghost villages, they need immigrants!)

The cause of the decline seems to be a failure of couples to get together in time to have children. The data shows a big drop in birth-rates every time there is a major economic crisis. In response to the crisis, people postpone having children, but once society has shifted to aiming to have children at an older age, it never shifts back to having them at the original age.

A metaphor that explains why couple-formation is down. Imagine you live in a village with a dance-hall that is open for three hours on a Saturday evening. Every young person is there for the whole three hours, and gets to see every other person they could potentially marry had have children with. Now imagine the opening hours are changed to six hours, but most people still only have the energy to go for three hours. Some people leave before the person they should have met and married arrives. Some people are half-way through getting to know one person when another person enters and catches there eye, one courtship is interrupted by a new possibility. Perhaps this disruption kills one potential relationship. If the time-period during which most men and women think they need to mate has changed from maybe as little as five years to as long as 20 years, the likelihood that any potential pair will be on the same page at the same time goes down.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music that you love, upload original content and share it all with friends, family and the world on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/m2GeVG0XYTc?si=rzbxoEDDxcy3hn6d

OP posts:
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LeftieRightsHoarder · 21/09/2025 01:38

Finteq · 21/09/2025 00:00

I think YABU

and the stat about Japan women being childless doesn't make sense.

How can it increase from 1 in 30 to 1 in 5 in just 3 years?

That doesn't make sense.

The world is already overpopulated and increasing all the time. I don't think anyone has to worry about the population level being too low.

Quite. In a world in which the vast human population is forcing other species into extinction, and appropriating every bit of land, a gentle natural decline in our overcrowded numbers would do nothing but good. A brief period of readjustment would be a small price to pay.

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 01:38

The reality is if we want to increase the birth rate, men need to step up. Be better.

But they won't.🙄 If anything they're making themselves more and more unattractive. No woman wants to be with an entitled, helpless, hopeless, possibly abusive, man baby.

So the birth rate will continue to fall.🤷‍♀️

APTPT · 21/09/2025 01:37

I'm 40. I have one child with severe disabilities. I would have LOVED more children but the impact on my career has been devastating from having one. There is barely money for us to get by as it is.

beserene · 21/09/2025 01:33

Why is this an issue? ”Destined to be childless” 😆
Hardly! There are women on this very platform having babies well into their 40s. Besides, not everyone chooses to have children - male or female. Not everyone chooses the contraceptive pill as a form of contraception. Not all families are the same. Not everyone wants kids! It’s not one-size-fits-all.

This documentary seems an echo chamber of itself that neglects to consider the range: some women have chosen to have no children, others 6 children. I know plenty on both ends and many more in the middle. Why should we be worried that birth rates are going down? It’s good for the environment & the world is already overpopulated.

Remember that documentary makers are not necessarily scientists - or qualified to make predictions.

WearyAuldWumman · 21/09/2025 01:32

ruethewhirl · 21/09/2025 01:13

OP I don't understand why you've started this thread. Why are you so invested in telling women what they should be doing with their uteruses?

Maybe we need a thread about men delaying fatherhood until their sperm has diminished and lacks motility.

Trendyname · 21/09/2025 01:32

RetiredMan · 21/09/2025 00:09

There was a suggestion in one interview that government needs to step in and tell young women it will have their back if men let them down, in order to persuade them to have children at a younger age.

Though it was also asked, what would you rather be at 50: a divorced childless women, or a divorced woman with children? Maybe the risk of a bad man is worth taking, if you want children enough. Not for me to say.

There was a suggestion in one interview that government needs to step in and tell young women it will have their back if men let them down, in order to persuade them to have children at a younger age.

So women are seen as the breeder / baby makers, and government should come up with plans to get them to have kids. Sounds a bit like handmaid’s tale. Let women decide rather than manipulating them in thinking if they want to be divorced and childless or divorced with kids, you don’t care about women, you care about manpower for economic growth.

OneCalmFish · 21/09/2025 01:31

I was thinking isn’t the world vastly overpopulated now anyway, at least this option provides choice. Will save any more “manmade” diseases accidentally (cough, cough) being somehow released, might even force the government’s to care about the genocides that occur

Firefly1987 · 21/09/2025 01:27

Horsie · 21/09/2025 00:55

Sadly, he speaks the truth. Sex is important to men in a way that women will never understand.

I think we understand that fine, it's not like it's a secret men have been keeping all these years.

ResultsMayVary · 21/09/2025 01:26

RetiredMan · 21/09/2025 00:31

How do women get men to commit? Well, this may be controversial, but I think offering them copious amounts of brain-melting sex might do the the trick...

(Obviously women would only do that if they thought what they were getting in return was worth it. It's their call.)

Wow okay

You do realise many young women don't want to sign up to marriage and children because it's a rubbish deal for women?

This is especially true in the UK where women who live and have children without being marriages are placed at a huge financial risk.

The idea that most women want to trap a man into marriage and children just isn't true although many men wish it was!

And yeah why is a declining population such a big deal? If women were given more support more could work or work longer hours and we could solve the 'lack of workers issue' but instead we want them to have even more children??!?

Firefly1987 · 21/09/2025 01:26

WearyAuldWumman · 21/09/2025 00:47

Lord help me, I didn't at first spot that a bloke had started this thread. Silly me.

Yeah me either-really must pay more attention to usernames from now on!

Daisymae55 · 21/09/2025 01:25

All of my friends/family of my generation have had their kids between 30 -35. I was 33. The youngest of my friends was 29.

Lots of us have also chosen to only have 1 child. Myself included. Personally for me, the state of the NHS and the appalling care I had when I gave birth to DD is the main reason I will never have another child. The financial issues also contribute to this but we could make it work, but I refuse to go through that trauma again.

I’d also much rather wait until my 30s and have a stable family with someone I see longevity with and have had a secure relationship with for a substantial time than be encouraged to have kids sooner, just for that relationship to fall apart and not provide my child a secure family unit. We absolutely should not be encouraging women to rush into having children. It should be when both partners are ready.

OonaStubbs · 21/09/2025 01:24

When given the choice, women are having fewer or sometimes no babies at all. That can only be a good thing. For everyone. What is the alternative? Forced pregnancy?

Sodthesystem · 21/09/2025 01:24

I can't speak for how I'll feel in old age because no one knows 100 percent how they will feel but, I had a cancer scare lately. Months of tests and an operation too. And it ran home for me how -fucking relieved I am I never had kids. If I had, I wouldn't have been able to travel as I have the last few years (which that's brought me such joy). And I'd have been worried sick I'd die and leave them all alone.

If you feel you don't want kids then don't let anyone else scare you (or scare yourself) into having them. I'll not be having them. Not unless I marry someone I love who happens to have older kids already and adopt them. But...I don't think I'd want that responsibility either tbh.

If women don't want kids it's not your job to convince them they actually do. They know themselves and what's best for them better than you ever will. And no one owes society children. Let alone children that were not wanted in the first place and grow up knowing that and feeling it's sting.

If you don't want kids, you don't want them. If you think you don't want them, you don't want them. If you maybe possibly want them, you don't want them.

pinkyredrose · 21/09/2025 01:20

Horsie · 21/09/2025 00:55

Sadly, he speaks the truth. Sex is important to men in a way that women will never understand.

How so?

Needspaceforlego · 21/09/2025 01:17

It took me a bit to notice it was started by an old man.
Who's never put his body through pregnancy, or risked being left holding the baby, while trying to work, juggle a house, drop kids off and collect them.

The risk is 100% in individual shoulders it really gets me that the UKs support for widowed parents now only lasts 18mths.
10 years ago a widowed parent got support (not a lot but some support) for each child while they still received childbenefit, ie 18.

TomatoSandwiches · 21/09/2025 01:16

Horsie · 21/09/2025 00:55

Sadly, he speaks the truth. Sex is important to men in a way that women will never understand.

They can go fuck each other or themselves then.

MyPinkTraybake · 21/09/2025 01:16

finfitrulesok · 21/09/2025 00:28

Isn't there always a 50% probability that a woman won't have children? Either she will or she won't. 50-50.

Many women don't want to have children by 28. If you are upwardly mobile you have to finish university by 21, buy a house, establish a career, build a personal nest egg, pay for a wedding - assuming you'd found a partner.

Obviously there will also be economic issues, if each 20-year-old entering the job market has to generate enough economic output to support multiple 70-year-olds.

I don't think there's much need to worry about supporting 70 year old who've never had children, because we have more disposable income to invest when we are in our 30s/40s, have smaller mortgages, no uni fees for children to think about, no time out of careers for child raising, so likely to have higher personal pension pots.

The UK has just bought it's pensions back to the UK- we were quite unique in that most of our pensions were invested overseas. The Mansion House accord agreed that 17 biggest pension companies would invest in UK stocks (private equity).

There will be more economic growth in next 20 years with new technologies.

FourIsNewSix · 21/09/2025 01:14

RetiredMan · 21/09/2025 00:13

I also quite like the ideal of falling population.

Environment was spoken about in one interview, and apparently the difference between falling population and stable population will make virtually no difference to climate change.

Maybe it doesn't make a difference to the change of climate itself.

However, when all people on the planet try to move to the remaining inhabitable area, it will be easier to face it for a smaller population.

ruethewhirl · 21/09/2025 01:13

OP I don't understand why you've started this thread. Why are you so invested in telling women what they should be doing with their uteruses?

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 01:10

TheGreatWesternShrew · 21/09/2025 00:56

Why would you share that? How does that help me?

Im 30 and going back to university. So I have to wait. How does this information aid me? By scaring me? Thanks so much…

Don't be scared. Don't let your guard down. Enjoy uni and use contraception if you don't want a baby yet. And don't get sucked into this shite.

<<I realise I sound like an old gimmer>>Grin

Blarn · 21/09/2025 01:09

ToeSucker · 21/09/2025 00:57

Can't tell if this is a joke or not.

But isn't a 50% probability it won't happen also a 50% probability it will? As there are two outcomes: children or no children, so equally likely. I'm not amazing at maths but I thought this is what it was. So if a woman hasn't had a child by 28, there is an equal chance she will or will not after that age.

But also, like I keep telling my mum, just because it's on YouTube doesn't mean it's true.

FourIsNewSix · 21/09/2025 01:07

WearyAuldWumman · 21/09/2025 00:47

Lord help me, I didn't at first spot that a bloke had started this thread. Silly me.

Oh, thanks, I haven't noticed.

I should have suspected though.

LBFseBrom · 21/09/2025 01:07

SpikeGilesSandwich · 21/09/2025 00:20

I always dreamt of having two or three children but my first has special needs so there’s a higher chance another one would have the same. 😔
Plus, the state of the world at the moment makes me wonder why anyone would risk bringing children into it.

People have always said that about the state of the world. I can remember my parents' generation saying the same and many times since, it's nothing new. The 'world' is always in crisis.

I too dreamed of having two or three children but after having one, other things intervened. I've no regrets about it really.

Arregaithel · 21/09/2025 01:05

@RetiredMan

This study has been critiqued, the conclusions of Birthgap may be rather simplistic.

Please take a look at the review of the findings by birthgap facts before deciding.

aintnothinbutagstring · 21/09/2025 01:00

Why do men have such a problem with childless women? I'm pretty sure it's not because they care about supporting pensioners. Is because a good proportion of women no longer care about what men want or think? And actually a lot of women are enjoying life without men, and without children. If I happened to get divorced, I dont think I'd remarry - I just don't think there's many benefits to being paired with a man these days.

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