Could anything have incentivised you to have more children?

[Echobelly]

Following excerpts from this demented article about how the birth rate might be upped in the UK ('get a telegram from the Queen when you have a third child!'): twitter.com/rhiannonlucyc/status/1543475834769522688

along with the SCOTUS ruling the other week, it got me thinking about how all ideas about how to get birth rates higher seem to involve 'Demanding women give their whole lives to childbearing and giving them a pat on the back for being good breeders' and how it never seems to involve anything that would actually make it easier for women to have children and thrive as full human beings.

I have to say, if there were free or heavily subidised childcare available I would probably have had a third, but I couldn't face that long under the burden on childcare costs (although there is the 'needing a larger car and house' issue as well). Could any subsidy or offer from government have encouraged you to have more children than you are planning/have?

Nothing, not even £1mil, would have persuaded me to have another. 1 was enough for me.

Free childcare from second birthday, decent hours of wrap around and holiday care to allow most normal working hours. Playground supervision from 8:30 to ease school traffic/parking issues. Any staggered starts/half days in Reception, other than the first day, should be optional. Normalise independence in the upper primary years, allow children to walk home alone or with siblings. More after school activities available for 11 to 14 that children can access independently.

Nothing on earth would incentivise me to go through pregnancy again, it was the worst experience of my life. I find the idea of abortion being restricted terrifying.

Even when I had a biological desire for a 3rd, no incentive would have made me do it. Raising children is expensive and requires a lot of emotional (and physical in the early days) commitment. Two is enough.

Odd number. Never understood it myself, that's why I had four 🤣

Eggs that work! But seriously, some more bloody research is needed into poor egg quality and how to fix it! My Drs keep saying, science just isn’t there yet…

I'd have another child if I was given, at zero cost to me, a 4 bedroom house with a garden in walking distance from my existing children's schools.

No other extras, I'd do everything else. But adequately and permanently housed would do it for me.

In the real world, that will never happen so zero extra babies for me.

This is an excellent article about this:

www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/02/the-mystery-isnt-why-the-birth-rate-is-falling-its-why-anyone-has-kids-at-all#:~:text=The%20fertility%20rate%20%E2%80%94%20that%20is,it%20at%201.65%20and%20falling.

No, but if housing was affordable, child care tax deductible / subsidised, parental leave was split, and work places more flexible then I am sure quite a few people would.. don’t think a telegram from the Q would do it.

I think one effect of the aging population/lack of kids may be an (overdue IMO) reconsideration of quality of life over quantity, but that's a whole other thread!

I will say that fertility clinics are having boom times - rammed with young, slim healthy looking people (even in their 20s). There is a huge ticking infertility time bomb and there are lots of people who want kids but cant - or struggle and have fewer than they wanted. There are real reasons for this - lifestyle and pollution, endocrine disruptors in eg plastic or beauty products to name a few.

There is pathetic education, diagnosis and treatment of gynae issues from painful
periods to fibroids, endo, pcos etc. I hadn’t ever hear of endometritis or adenomyosis or MTHFR etc until I was having infertility testing. Reproductive health is only considered after the event, not as part of a general wellness. Men too - and a lot of sperm is really poor quality now.

if they want more babies, someone is going to have to work on that.

I have one child and I'm a single parent. I possibly would have had more if my ex wasn't an abusive knob but aside from that I think society in general has put me off having more for so many reasons. I hate that female single parents are looked down upon as scroungers and the scourge of society and yet men who raise their children alone are seen as brave warriors!

Then there's the rising crime levels, the schools who aren't being proactive when it comes to bullying (education on the whole needs an overhaul), lack of support for those with children with SEN, lack of mental health care, privatisation of the NHS (which I think will get much, much worse), will there be a state pension when my child is older?, lack of affordable housing, rising cost of living means my DS may be living at home until he's in his 30s the way things are going - these are all things that worry me with my DS and put me off ever having any more, so unless the government sorts all that shit out then no more babies for me.

Great article @YingMei - we were definitely only enabled to start a family when I was 30 because I had inherited money that meant I owned a property outright (that I lived in, then rented out) and had another I lived in that I bought with my DH. The rental income kept me going through mat leave and kids being in nursery - my entire work salary in that time went straight into our bills account.

I would totally have a third if I feel confident my local hospital won’t kill me…. They nearly did last time…

Nothing.

I had one as an older mother and made it clear to everyone I was not having another.

Oh and I've worked in some of these European uthopias. Oddly my friends and former colleagues from them have one or two children. Guess you can't make educated women have lots of children....

Have more children

Contribute more to climate change

Meaning they have a higher chance of living in a world of drought war flood famine and destruction

No

everything is about propping up a failed system at all costs including our future never mind childrens future

I have two children and would love a third but

•in 37 and exhausted

•I'm about to start my degree

•I have no family to help me ( in the country )

•i can’t afford the childcare to have a third so I would be sacrificing my degree\career .

even if the government made childcare affordable, I still don’t know if I would . I don’t know if my desire to have a third is strong enough .

Nothing. And I wasn't financially secure when I had my existing children either. I had my first at 19 and lived on benefits, then my second at 27 when we were on a low wage. We're financially comfortable now and nothing could convince me to have another.

I had eclamptic seizures with my first and almost died. Very risky second pregnancy and luckily gave birth before I got to that stage, but a whole host of other health problems. It's odd considering I'm completely healthy outside of pregnancy. I think having another child might kill me. The idea of abortion being banned terrifies me. I know that some laws state an exception for risking the life of the mother, but you can't definitively say that your life is at risk before it's already being risked. I wouldn't want to get to that stage. I went from being completely healthy and having a normal bloody pressure to having a seizure within 1.5 hours.

Cheap housing. If the government would stop prop pomp up high house prices,a lot of things in society would rebalance.

An increase in the birth rate will just mean even more old people in the future to be be supported. The planet has finite resources and cannot sustain exponential population growth. I don't have an an answer to this but killing off old people definitely isn't it. I'd rather not be born than live in a real life Logan's run.

No because it would have been dangerous for me. I’ve been medically warned not to have any more. In a country with as poor a health service as the U.K. that is a warning I took very seriously.

Other matters that would impact my decision towards ‘no’ is the impossibility of making a living in this country if you’re not from wealth, and the levels of male aggression and crime here (which not coming from wealth I’ve seen a lot more of).

Certainly the idea of a telegram from the Queen, someone who will never have to worry where her next meal was coming from or if she can pay the rent next month, would have no bearing on any decision I made whatsoever. That’s quite an insulting joke in fact.

No. I have two and love being with them , I'd like to have had about 6, but even if I'd won Euromillons in my late 20s and had got started then, I don't think I would. There were 5 houses on our little country road when I was growing up; now there are 15. I don't blame the owners, if I was from the town and could afford to move to the country I would. The town itself sprawls far further than it did when I was growing up (literally, "I remember when all of this was fields"). A bit of the edge of our farm, including a lovely quiet bit of deciduous woodland, is going to be vested next year to put the slip road for a new 53 mile long dual carriageway on it, tarmacing over a lot of peaceful countryside in the west of Northern Ireland. I could hardly have more children than replacement number (2), then start whingeing about the destruction of habitat and the consumption of resources.

I would have loved 4, but 2 is my limit - I have twins and it wasn’t financially viable for me to work (as a family pot, we’d have been ££££ out of pocket) so I became a sahm.

To persuade me to have more kids:

Heavily subsidised or free childcare for 1+ year olds going up until my child is old enough to be left at home independently.

The removal of the child cap on UC. I don’t want to have a relationship break down and a brood of children that I can’t support on one wage. I don’t claim UC, but life can change in an instant.

A proper child support system that forces the NRP to actually pay for their child(ren) rather than the shit show we have now.

Subsidised quality housing for larger families, kids and houses are expensive and if they’re trying to encourage us to have more kids, they’ve got to be housed. Otherwise the take up would only be the higher earners, and there’s more lower or normal earners I think.

Better NHS care, MH provision, and children services provision. My DS has speech issues, we’ve waited over a year to see an ENT, SLT have disappeared, and he has additional behavioural needs which he’s also waiting on. He’s a very mild case, but parents don’t need to have to fight tooth and nail for every scrap they can get (especially if they’ve had a large family) because that’s a full time job in itself and they still need to work to provide for said kids.

Basically, I think if the Govt want us to produce more children, it needs to be massively subsidised and financially viable regardless of personal income. No idea of how the country would pay for it, but these are the sort of things that would make me consider more children - a piece of paper from the Queen would not cut it I’m afraid!

God no. I have 2 (ages 6 and 4). It's not the costs now that worry me but being able to support them when they're late teens/young adults. Driving lessons, mobiles, university fees, helping them get on the housing market, helping them with childcare if I'm a grandparent. Unless something fundamental happens with the long term affordability of cost of living and housing then there's nothing that could incentivise me to have another.

Free or heavily subsidised childcare would have been the only thing, but now we’ve finally managed to move to a 4 bed so all children have their own rooms, it would have to also be a gigantic grant given to extend the house. And a new car. And reversal of my husbands vasectomy!