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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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8
ToeSucker · 21/09/2025 00:57

finfitrulesok · 21/09/2025 00:29

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

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

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…

ToeSucker · 21/09/2025 00:55

Greggsit · 21/09/2025 00:30

Women who do become mothers are not having fewer children than before

This simply isn't true. The average number of children per mother in 1800 was 5.9. it's now 2.5.

Deleted message as responded to wrong one

Horsie · 21/09/2025 00:55

SquirrelosaurusSoShiny · 21/09/2025 00:32

Dude, you are giving me seriously creepy vibes.

Shudders

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

Livelovebehappy · 21/09/2025 00:54

There isn’t a stigma these days about being childless that there used to be even just a couple of decades ago. I remember not really wanting children at all, but was kind of pressured into it by societal expectations. I love my (now young adult) children to bits, but wonder if it was me now, whether I would have children at all. And I suspect that’s the driving force behind not as many people having children now. Not just because they can’t afford them, but also that they don’t feel they have to have children just because it’s expected of them.

IsTheRecyclingOut · 21/09/2025 00:54

Me and my 2 sisters each had our first child at 30.

OriginalUsername2 · 21/09/2025 00:50

It’s only a bad thing in terms of economic growth, which can’t go on for much longer anyway. In every other way it’s bloody brilliant.

I don’t like this message. We don’t want to veer into some sort of Handmaid’s Tale situation here. Women’s bodies aren’t tools for the economy. It’s not our jobs to prop up the GDP for the big boys, thanks very much.

samarrange · 21/09/2025 00:47

padso · 21/09/2025 00:41

@samarrange economically I think we are already feeling the impact of our changing demographics

I tend to agree, but a lot of it is currently disguised as (or attributed to) other stuff.

WearyAuldWumman · 21/09/2025 00:47

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

NotPerfectlyAdverage · 21/09/2025 00:47

It's very interesting but we aren't a endangered species. Also shot me for this - why are we so specail that we must breed exponentially? She says with more than 1 child.

stovokor · 21/09/2025 00:47

I think reducing the population can only be a good thing? 🤷‍♀️ I get that the state pension will have to end if there just aren't enough young people to support the old, but thinking of climate change and resource scarcity etc, fewer people = good, surely?

llizzie · 21/09/2025 00:43

RetiredMan · 20/09/2025 23:56

It's not just Japan, it's nearly the whole world.

Apparently every country has their own explanation. Japanese women say it's because men won't pitch in with with housework. The British say it is house prices. But it's happening in many countries, including ones where house prices aren't an issue, and Scandinavian ones where men do pitch in with housework.

Do the water companies manage to take the contraception meds out of the water supply, or does everyone get their own - or not as the case may be -and someone else's contraception?

BuffetTheDietSlayer · 21/09/2025 00:42

DoinFineIThink · 21/09/2025 00:41

What is it with all these type of posts lately?
So tonight I've seen a trad wife style one, and now one about "falling birth rates"
Quick, get the women to have more babies 🙄

A mix of pervs and AI.

WearyAuldWumman · 21/09/2025 00:42

NuffSaidSam · 21/09/2025 00:14

No-one is saying that women who don't want children should do so.

I think some people are actually.

I kind of agree that men are part of the problem

Kind of? You know how babies are made right?

If women are determined to have children, they need to get men to commit at a younger age.

But surely the problem is that women aren't determined to have children? Did this documentary conclude that all these childless women are unhappy about it/childless through misfortune? Surely, most of them have made an informed choice not to lumber themselves with a child (and a man who kind of, might be, part of the problem..)

Hmm.

Part of the problem is that many men don't want to 'tie themselves down' when they're in in their 20s. No, I don't have any stats for that - just anecdotal evidence from the world around me.

padso · 21/09/2025 00:41

but yes it will get much worse b

DoinFineIThink · 21/09/2025 00:41

What is it with all these type of posts lately?
So tonight I've seen a trad wife style one, and now one about "falling birth rates"
Quick, get the women to have more babies 🙄

padso · 21/09/2025 00:41

@samarrange economically I think we are already feeling the impact of our changing demographics

ILikeMaths · 21/09/2025 00:40

finfitrulesok · 21/09/2025 00:29

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

😀

Tomorrow I’ll either be dead or alive. It doesn’t mean there’s a 50% probability that I’ll be dead.

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 00:39

hehehesorry · 21/09/2025 00:33

@RetiredMan Women do this more than ever trying to copy slop online with anal and deepthroating or whatever and it's not working. Homemade cooking and a shoulder to cry on might go further.

You do know that women are actually people in their own right? And not emotional support humans for men?

PinkArt · 21/09/2025 00:36

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.)

Eew. On your backs ladies, do it for the pensioners! Just be a better shag and men will stop being feckless twats.

padso · 21/09/2025 00:35

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.

Lower is good, more old than young? that's the difficult bit.

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 00:35

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.)

Fucking hell.🤢🤢🤮

padso · 21/09/2025 00:34

Immigration will not be able to solve the economic problems caused by falling population.

I've said this on many a thread. Western countries will all be fighting over young skilled workers and will incentivise them eg Portugal are looking at different taxes for the young already.

samarrange · 21/09/2025 00:34

Increasing worldwide wealth means far fewer people in grinding poverty everywhere compared to 50 years ago, and the emergence of a global middle class. Somewhere in Malaysia right now there is very probably a Mumsnet equivalent, where people are being advised to "tinggalkan bangsat itu". There wouldn't have been a market for that 50 years ago.

Simultaneously, women everywhere (except Afghanistan 🤬) have increasing access to education, which we know reduces birthrates.

And also at the same time, life expectancy has increased. In much of Africa now life expectance is in the mid-60s, and it will continue to rise.

All three of those, on their own, are Very Good Things™, and yet their combination means that we are looking at a worldwide demographic disaster. The world's population is forecast to stabilise around 2050. At that point, population aging will become the norm, on average, in every country. Countries such as the Philippines that currently export care workers to places like the UK will need those care workers at home for their own elderly.

In other words, we —as a species — are going to become the victims of our own success, because we won't have the people around to sustain our current lifestyles into our collective old age. I'm mostly talking about one or two generations from now, but I think the last third of the 21st century will not be pretty. And that's assuming we magically get fusion power to work and fix global warming and other resource shortages; it's a more fundamental problem even than that. In 1953 South Korea was the poorest country in the world. Now it doesn't have enough people to staff its military.

This is also a problem at the level of individual countries, of course. Sadly the only people talking about it are the far right, for whom "more babies" means "more tradwifes for white men". But it's a real problem for everyone.

hehehesorry · 21/09/2025 00:33

@RetiredMan Women do this more than ever trying to copy slop online with anal and deepthroating or whatever and it's not working. Homemade cooking and a shoulder to cry on might go further.

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