Is our society heading towards the point where having children is an unaffordable luxury for the average couple?

[MamaLlama123]

Is our society heading to the point where having/ raising children is becoming a luxury?

Thinking about my family as an example - My grandmother had 5 children - she was working class and a SAHM. Despite not having much, my grandparents were able to house, feed and raise their children well. They were not in poverty. They had small treats like fish & chips every Friday and a few days at the seaside every year etc. I don't think family size for this generation was any kind of luxury but children was just an inevitable outcome of life

Comparing this with today, I read so many threads on mumsnet about women who are in a much stronger position than my Grandma. They are not SAHM but actually have extensive qualifications/ careers and resulting in 2 incomes within the household. Despite being so much better off, women seem unable to confidently go forward in planning even a small family 1-2 children (comments from a recent thread about delaying 2nd child due to nursery fees comes to mind)

Are children becoming disproportionately more expensive compared to previous generations? and do you think that having children will be an unaffordable luxury/ unrealistic goal for todays children?

To answer the Ops question, it might be, if parents had to support their children entirely by their own efforts. As it is though, the benefit system and all its associated things such as school meals, breakfast clubs, etc etc subsidises parents who do not work or do not earn enough to provide what their children need. Thus people will of course continue to have children.

People made stuff- knitted, crocheted, sewed.

Doing that is more expensive then buying stuff from places like Primark or getting children's clothes handed down/second hand

And thanks to the cost of housing if you have a garden to grow things in you are lucky. Then you have to have the time to tend to it. Oh and all the allotment waiting lists are closed where I am.

Most people want their children to be as well off as they are. Parents with resources and certain lifestyles know what it took to obtain those lifestyles. Yes, they could choose to have more children at a sacrifice to their own lifestyle, but more importantly, they would likely be diluting resources for their offspring. If the goal is to keep your children at or above your own economic station, parents aren’t going to have more children then they can afford to bring up using the methods that maximize the odds of reaching that goal.

my grandmother grew up in poverty. She didn’t speak about it in a nostalgic way. Instead she talked about how she and her husband worked damned hard to make sure their children never experienced anything like it.

i can only imagine how angry she would be with me if I had more children then i could afford to send to university when she had to leave school after year 8.

it's a battle of SAHM living in a not so nice house/area or paying nursery fees and getting a 2-person income

Disagree. In many parts of the UK even 2-income households will struggle to afford housing and childcare costs, even if they don't live in the best area.

Comparing with our grandparents or even parents generation is pointless in my opinion - housing was so much cheaper compared to average earnings. Yes people had different lifestyles but it's ridiculous to expect people to go completely backwards in living standards.

My grandparents were both born into large working class families. Yet they were able to buy a decent family home in the 1950s, run a car, have 3 children (including one in private school) and go for UK holidays every year, as was the norm at that time. All based on my grandfather's sales job, which he got despite leaving school at 14. My grandmother didn't work a day after she had children. Completely different times.

I think the rate of family breakdown is adding to it as well. How many times on here do you learn of women being cheated on whilst they're pregnant or the father going off with someone else six months after their partner's given birth then dodging paying child support as well? Women know they'd struggle to go it alone so can they risk getting pregnant? Life is so much more insecure now, especially in rented accomodation.

I hope so. The fewer the better, on this poor planet.

We are not well off as a family but not entitled to benefits and it did not stop us having children. If people really want children, they have them.

Life is so much more expensive.
To purchase a house in certain parts of the UK requires 2 good incomes.
In order to get 2 good incomes that may mean 2 lots of student debt.
To continue to pay the mortgage more families need both people working 30 hours each, which means expensive childcare.
In order to get to around most families have a least one car, with expensive insurance and running costs.
Homes are filled with expensive gadgets. Then there are uni costs and having to have savings/private pensions.
On top of all that there is no security in relationships, you could be married and your partner decides that they want out of the relationship and could leave without the appropriate finances to manage alone.
These are only some of the reasons why women are choosing to have less children.
I remember conversations with friends when we were young adults and most of us wanted 2- 3 children, so many have stopped at one due to differing circumstances and plowing all that money into one child.
They have a decent standard of living as does their child but stretching to larger families is just not on the cards.

Agree with posters saying some families do not want to compromise on lifestyle choice - we certainty didn’t.

My parents had me late teens and I grew up on benefits (and believe me, my parents were the stereotypical not wanting to work parents). I hated my childhood. Soon as I finished Uni I left.

DH and I didn’t start a family til mid 30s so we were UPS teachers and had our own home. We decided to stay at two as (as well as childcare because it doesn’t stop at school age, we need wraparound) we wanted them to participate in a range of extra curricular, a holiday abroad a year, camping trips throughout the year etc. I wanted our children to live, not survive like I did.

I fully agree OP and no amount of putting hems up and darning socks is going to overcome the childcare issue and crazy property prices.

This is because house prices are ridiculous. People are struggling to afford a basic home.

House prices and salaries are not in sync. I used to laugh at the stickers I'd see about work being modern slavery now I feel it is heading that way.

Why would anyone want to?

Its a lot of sacrifice, cost, hard work and dedication for a situation where the parents(s) may barely be able to see their own child because they have to work so hard to cover basic costs. What is the point?

Where is the upside? It’s too hard and too much to expect anyone to willingly have a baby, and need to work every hour to keep a roof over their heads and there is no such thing as quality family life or enjoyment or time to relax.

Raising en masse babies in nurseries from a young age like battery chickens is not appealing to most prospective parents, so no wonder people are opting out.

This will need to be addressed rapidly in the coming years, it is a global problem. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, we are overpopulated, I do hope AI can step in and help with the issue of an ageing population. We can’t expect the young people we do have to carry this burden as well.,

Expectations are so different now to what they were even 20 years ago. I live near a hip coffee shop street and during the week they are full of mums on maternity leave meeting up. At the weekend they are absolutely crammed with families with young children meeting up with other families with young children. Baby sensory, baby swimming, baby massage were not really things when mine were young. The only coffee you bought was in a jar.
There wasn't a class for everything. I remember my mum had a Rosemary Connolly exercise book and she did that every night. Takeaways were definitely not something you had because you fancied, they were a treat. I buy all furniture second hand, and gumtree/marketplace is full of people selling very new stuff because they "went off it" or "there's a new range out". Again, unheard of when mine were young. Social media has a lot of influence now on how to "live your best life" and that usually involves decorating your house to keep up with "trends" and going on holiday every 6 months. Consumerism is at an all time high.
I've no idea how the next generation are going to buy without parental help, or if they can even afford to rent. We need to come up with ideas that might seem a bit radical, such as multi generational living, or housing made out of straw bales (and I'm not even joking!). The rental market is so exorbitant and increasingly competitive. It's not even enough to have 2 high earners, because 50 other couples have also applied.

I have also thought that the role of access to contraception/ abortion in regard to this

A couple of generations ago, before access to these were readily available to families - large families would inevitably be common. As a result women would often have little choice but to SAHM

As women chose to access contraception - I guess many families could "compete" against other families for resources by delaying pregnancy/ postponing pregnancy until later age/ reducing family size etc. (This overtime would even push house prices higher)

For today's generation, smaller families is now the norm. Children have become a "lifestyle choice" as opposed to the inevitable outcome of a union within marriage (or equivalent partnership).

Whilst i think contraception has been amazing for women, it also leads to me to think it has not been completely cost free. When children are an inevitability within society - society has to accommodate these. whilst today the use of contraception doesn't really feel like a free choice - it is expected that women should access it if this makes sense.

It seems to me like women's bodies are been coercively controlled!

i'd be interested to hear if anyone else has thoughts on this

They are not SAHM but actually have extensive qualifications/ careers and resulting in 2 incomes within the household.

Not RTFT, so others have probably pointed this out too, but this is the difficulty. For a family with a SAHP to have an extra child is really very cheap (some extra food, maybe some stuff like swimming lessons, some new clothes and toys but many can be passed down). For a family with two working parents it's expensive.

Some of the posts that think parents can't afford to have more kids because they 'want it all' and spend too much on holidays, phones etc are judgemental and out of touch.

The cost of accommodation is by far the biggest most damaging change. People spending half their wage on rent or mortgages is financially crippling but unavoidable for many. Its not their decision to buy a latte in the morning or an ipad for their kid to do homwork that is causing money problems!

When children are an inevitability within society - society has to accommodate these How has this worked in the past that doesn't happen now?

It seems to me like women's bodies are been coercively controlled!

How exactly?

Even 20 years ago it’s the reason I only had one. We couldn’t afford a second. Dread to think how much harder it is now.

Had 2 DC
Worked part time until youngest went to school
Most of pay went on childcare at that point,but worth it to keep my career
DH and I share all housework etc equally
Was aways very important to me that we had total equality

well again using my Grandma as an example

she had 5 children and she never worked once the children came along. there was no social expectation/ pressure for her to be economically productive. Her husband was in a working class job (lorry driving) and his wages - housed, clothed and fed the family.

this isn't an option for many working class women today

And is that not a good thing

I agree and I would question what progress looks like if you are working two jobs at minimum wage to keep your children fed. This is not so much about a glittering career but about staying alive. It’s not equality if the woman simply ends up doing absolutely everything.

Also tuition fees have done a number on this generation - if you earn well (50k ish, not unreasonable for a good graduate in their late 20s) you’ll be pretty much ineligible for child benefit and yet be paying back hundreds a month in student loans.

The grandma example in first post is helpful. A family now who had fish & chips every Friday and "few days at the seaside" for a holiday would be judged as pretty poor. Making poor health choices and lacking in culture/experiences. Society's expectations have moved on in a good way in many cases. Yet there are examples where it's gone too far (influencers, brands etc) but overall health & wealth has improved over generations.

The inequality is the big issue in my opinion. People born in Yorkshire have a life expectancy several years lower than those born in SE.

As for the original question, I think we may see a shift towards people expecting to need to save before having kids, and to more & more grandparents providing care (which maybe will bring average age of mother down again?)