U.K. birthrate hits 20 year low

[SunshineHello]

“Since 2011, the number of babies born has been on an almost constant downward trend, falling each year from 2011 to 2020 before a small rise in 2021 as pandemic restrictions were eased. The latest figures show another “considerable” decline last year, from 624,828 births to 605,479.”

This take the TFR to the lowest rate on record for the U.K. - 1.5

I wonder how much the birth rate will drop before it levels out.

The cost of housing and childcare are a major factor among my peers.

I currently have one in nursery and if I had two it would be ~ £4,000 pcm. That’s a £75,000 salary. To make a decision to do that is… complex.

I had my kids in 2004 and 2007. It felt like a positive time. They’re great kids/young people, but things have changed so much since then, I'm not sure I'd be so keen to have kids now.

Not surprised. I wouldn't have children now. Although they may change their minds, my two DS aged 23 and 21 do not want children. I hope this is true, as I'm not fussed about grandchildren.

Finances are a big thing impacting this. The 2 child rule on UC for instance.
salaries aren’t keeping up with costs.
The UK has gone to pot and a lot of people don’t want to bring a child into it.

@BerriesandLeaves @Parky04

Why wouldn’t you have a child today?

I had my 2 in 2007 and 2011. If I didn't have children I would not be having any now. I worry for their future, how they are going to afford anything big (a home etc). I don't think the world (uk where I live) is a very nice place right now, especially for younger people. I can see why people aren't having children

Its just too expensive these days.

The old age-dependency ratio that we are heading towards requires some serious thinking and adaptations over the coming decades. Of course we'll just stick our head in the sand and see how it goes though

Overpopulation, soil degradation, climate catastrophe, upcoming hellish decades with food and water shortages, climate refugees, being alive not being affordable, working till you're 70+, etc. I'd hope most people are thinking whether it's a good idea to have a kid.

I’m sticking at 2 as i can’t afford more (can’t afford bigger house or car or more childcare). Plus I want to stop at 35.

Interestingly, there is another active thread on here about the UK’s poor maternity care where many women have experienced such bad PTSD due to their care that it’s put them off having more children. I was almost at this stage.

On the chart attached, that spike starting around 2017 onwards was when the 2 child benefits cap was introduced

Removing the cap might not immediately increase the birth rate because there are other factors such as high costs of childcare, environmental issues etc but even so if the government actually cared about this there is an easy quick win here

It really grinds my gears when people come on and say “I’ve got my kids but I wouldn’t be having them nowadays” yeah right 😂 of course you wouldn’t!

We’ve worked hard and saved hard and we will hopefully be having at least 2.

My eldest is good at maths and science, but brexit has led to a lot of finance/science jobs moving to the EU. Mine don't have an EU passport. Climate change. A government who seem quite corrupt and only interested in lining their mates' pockets, rather than doing what's best for the people of the country.
House prices are out of reach for young people unless they get a big handout from their parents. Public services are much worse. Ambulance waiting times. Education isn't prioritised etc.

I've just got the one who is about to start school. Of her little group of ten friends at nursery, only two of them have a sibling. Maybe it's a bit of an anomaly but I know I could only have one due to numerous reasons.

1. I was old ish when we had DD and my DH even older so we were knackered.
2. Cost of nursery
3. No parent help at all or even friends
4. My experience of giving birth / maternity services
5. Cost of everything else makes it easier to give our 1 a better quality of life than 2

There’s a post on here about abysmal maternity care. I hate to say it but it chimed totally true with my experience, it was so awful it was truly surreal, I tripped from my lovely professional life where I naively believed ability had created some kind of gender equality into a world where I was treated like an inconvenient animal. I had to have reparative surgery and treatment for a superbug which they actually tried to hide from me that I had… I remember at one of the trauma clinics (no one mentions the trauma clinics) the nurse scoldingly and shamingly said ‘where’d you get this MRSA from, then?!’ I was so bewildered I just said truthfully, ‘…here? When I was having my baby?’

My work told me that my pregnancy was ‘not exactly ideal’, maternity leave was ‘selfish and destructive’ and that I was too young to be worrying about kids (35).

I moved home to NI, had AMAZING shared care with a private obs/gyn in an NHS hospital (£4.5k) but then faced the reality that NI, despite having some of the lowest income has NO 30 hours, NO 15 hours. Children get 2.5 hours a day in nursery for only the preschool year - mine’s slot was 12-2.30 mon-fri - making it impossible for women to work around.

I freelanced, I worked part time, my old board-room level career was destroyed, on top of this my DH had to work away to make ends meet, so all the shitty wifework and domestic labour was on me. Plus we had to flip our way through a series of fixer uppers in order to get somewhere decent to live (U.K. expensive aging housing stock, overpriced and not fit for purpose, tradespeople unaffordable).

After lots of INCREDIBLE advice on here I got a job with the civil service, earning a third of what I did a decade ago. I fell on my knees with gratitude when I got it - a secure job with good pension that means I will be able to meet at least some of the crazy whims, random days off, 14 weeks of holidays plus week of teacher training days that the primary school (staffed entirely by women who are mums themselves) mandate.

I am super able, educated, enthusiastic, I have done everything from washing up in a caf to the boardroom of a big media company, where the expectations of being contactable 24/7 were not conducive to good parenting. I am broken. I am crawling back but holy shit is it hard.

Not to mention we have to hover over every aspect of our kids’ lives or be judged negligent- read the thread on other European parenting on hols, it is eye opening.

No fucking wonder women aren’t having more kids!

Yeah, we had twins when we had one already and the numbers are just crazy. Our childcare bill for August will be just under £4,000 and that's WITH taking some days out which we had to book months ago and when they could have given the kid's places away.

We are at a point in our lives when we are supposed to be starting to think seriously about long-term saving for retirement and are barely paying the bills.

We have been very lucky that for us it has been worth it, as a six month incredibly hard time has allowed me to re-establish in secure term-time flexible work that will now flip the figures back to something affordable. The other side of this is that I work with schools and they are emptying. London schools are already in demographic crisis and some will shut. It's just one very visible sign of something that is going to have a big societal impact over time IMHO.

And no, 15 hours in term-time for two year olds when there are no nursery places isn't going to change that.

We only have one child partly because of cost but also we like the balance. I think there's less societal pressures and expectations on women to have children and to have multiple children then there once was combined with of course the challenging logistics. The world is always changing, people have had children in much worse situations than we have now, of course it's personal choice but the planet has never been the perfect utopia of opportunity some seem to remember the past as.

Exactly. There are far too many people on the planet already and it's now having real consequences. Adding more seems like madness.

So much sympathy and hard identify with this post @Sourcherriesarebest flowers

That’ll be me then but not for want of trying - 14 lost pregnancies in 3 years. These stats never talk about the rise in infertility…

Brexit schmexit, here we go again.

And Climate change? Meh. It's another grey, miserable day here in the kingdom of Essex so I'll worry about that another time.

I AM troubled by the OP saying childcare for 2 kids costs £4k pm. That's utterly insane. How do people who have twins cope with that financial bombshell?

Yes, it's absolute virtue-signalling shite, isn't it?!

You're quoting the Times. There's another interesting paragraph in there about the % of babies born to mothers from outside the UK.

James Tucker, head of health analysis at the Office for National Statistics, said: “The annual number of births in England and Wales continues its recent decline, with 2022 recording the lowest number of live births seen for two decades. Almost a third of all those births were to non-UK-born women.
https://www.google.com/search?q=baby+boom+ends+mothers+born+outside+the+uk

Do you know, I really didn’t mean to type all that it just came WHOOSH out and I realised how often we are just meant to suck it all up and be grateful - of course I’m grateful for the good things, but also having my best friend in another European country with brilliant, empathetic, supportive maternity care, protected career breaks by law, lavish child benefit, high quality subsidised childcare that they take so much for granted… we should all rise up!

Thank you so much for your post, it really helped. Unmumsnetty xx

I’d love to have had another one. But I’d have to leave work. I managed with the first two because I was a 1%-er for salary (City law job) but that’s not a sustainable life if you ever want to see your own offspring.

No doubt!