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?

I think a lot of the attitude regarding not being able to afford something is more about choosing not to be able to afford somethings.

I have seen so many threads about not being able to afford to buy a property when what people mean is they can’t afford to buy in the area they want to buy in.
Or they can afford a 1 bed flat but don’t want that as they want a forever home

Children and how you spend your money are affordable. It is just that couples now don’t want to give up their “lifestyle” to accommodate a child when in reality the lifestyle goes out of the window when baby arrives.
For most people, they don’t give a shit because they have a baby and are too knackered to care and this child has become the centre of their world. For the parents I know who returned to work it worked out better if they had a second and a third all close together as then they would get a live in nanny or 2 and that was cheaper and more convenient than nursery.

A couple of the families I knew did a cost analysis that it was better getting a bigger house and a nanny/au pair and have 2/3/4 children than it was to pay for nursery fees

I think there is a lot of not thinking about alternative ways to do things.

Equally i know families who have moved into 1 bed flats with 2 children who bought the only thing they could afford then saved so much more as the mortgage on a 1 bed flat was so much cheaper than the rent they were paying. It was a case of making a few sacrifices for 3 or 4 years whilst they moved up the property ladder

We could very easily afford 4 children IF we didn't want them to go to private school, go on holidays, drive the cars we drive, have a bedroom for each of our children. Many of our friends are the same. Why would I have 2 more children, just to ruin our wonderful standard of living.

Until they support working, educated women in to having more children, Britain is in trouble.

£100k 30 free hours needs revising - My DH and I cut our hours to stay under this so both worked 3.5 days until the DC started school.
£50-60k benefit cap needs changing

Full time working parents should be able to offset the 3 years of nursery fees from their taxable income.

The continue to screw over people who are actually paying tax.

If you can't afford it though you can't afford it. No matter where I lived, I couldn't afford to pay for a car for DS and that's that.

We both have postgraduate degrees. We aren’t having a second child because the first one stretched us to the financial limit. It’s not just about money. It’s about the fact that I WANT to work full time and have a career, and with one child we can barely afford the childcare to make that possible. With two kids it would be game over for me.

I forgot to say in my previous post that we lived in a 2 bed council house so me and my 2 siblings had to share a room until I left home at 22. It was quite common for children to share a room then.

Today so many parents are insistent that each child must have their own room so therefore need a large enough house which, obviously, costs a lot more.

If people today didn't want/expect so much - large houses, brand new furniture, holidays abroad, 2 cars, massive tv's, takeaways all the time, eating out etc etc they most likely could afford children.

It's gotta be housing and childcare costs.

My grandparents were able to buy a three bed in Bath on his mid level management job in the civil service. This was 1979. My grandma didn't work after she had her eldest.
Very few would be able to do that now, how much would you have to earn to buy a three bed in Bath on one salary??

Another example. My mum was a single parent. She paid £1 an hour for me to go to a childminder in the 90's. She was an admin assistant on £5 an hour. So it was a fifth of her wage.
I am also an admin assistant on £12 an hour, childminder is £7 an hour. So that's over half my hourly wage!
Partly because childminders have to really want to do it now and have to provide evidence and learn about safeguarding etc, it's not just Nora from the estate who is home all day anyway and wants some extra cash.
But if you add in another child, or a partner earning another £18K so you don't get UC, it becomes impossible.

@lavenderlou ridiculous to say your grandparents were working class with a child in private school.

It's only an unaffordable luxury as society has become too materialistic and values being busy over quality time. I'm assuming people only had 5 children in my grandparents day because that was normal (and my understanding is the children contributed to housework and the eldest also with income as well). People also have choices now so children aren't the default for most and this trend will continue

What is happening is that intelligent people are putting off having children / not having them or having fewer as they weigh up all the costs and decide that they can’t afford them or they are to busy with their careers to have them. The unintelligent are multiplying in droves though as they are not supporting their children themselves and are relying on others to do so.

I know I’m going to get a lot of hate for this comment by the way

@FarleyHatcherEsq I was working in childcare when Ofsted came in. The standards were so low back then. Nurseries largely had far higher ratios than legally allowed today. And you are right, childminders were largely someone at home with their own children who would look after someone elses. That was it.

The government proposed watering down childcare requirements to make it cheaper, and there was an outcry. We can not compare childcare then to childcare now. Very little of what happened back then would now be legally allowed.

The real issue is house prices as houses have become investments.

@BlueGrey1 I think you mean poor people, and you are wrong.
You are also not very bright if you equate wealth with intelligence.

@alltootired making childcare cheaper for families should absolutely not be at the detriment of the children. The government need to prioritise helping families with childcare costs, it can be done, look at Germany or Scandinavia.

Well no I agree - there are many studies supporting the lower IQ and attainment levels and how that will change and shape the future. Genetically and culturally.

I think the fact people don’t live near parents anymore adds to it. People are more transient, either because of housing costs or work. It means there’s not that community to help raise your child. There’s not granny round the corner who can do ad hoc child care.

thats only going to get worse as people can’t afford to retire.

People just expect more now, so money goes much quicker.

@alltootired

If a survey was done I think it would prove that the majority of families these days with 4+ children have at least 1 parent on benefits

life is generally more expensive now - back then bills would have been utilities, possibly some sort of council tax, and maybe 1 car and a tv licence and a paper subscription. Now its much more expensive plus internet and phones, various insurances for everything, 2 cars per household, subscriptions for various streaming services. Housing has become much more expensive and its societal pressure that kids have thier own rooms now.
Kids back then had hand me downs, didnt really do much extra curricular activities, uni was free, and there was much more tit for tat childcare going on (so many rules now about how being licenced to look after someone elses kids)
It is much more expected now that you can provide your kids with lots of opportunities, clothes, activities, birthday parties are no longer just cake and pass the parcel at home etc.
Then when you factor in nursery or child care and the fact that lots of people cant drop a whole income in order to be a SAHM its not hard to see why people are having less kids.

@BlueGrey1 I don't think you're right.
The trajectory of our lives has changed.
In the old days, if you went to university many would already be engaged or married.
Now it's more like:
18- leave school
18-19- gap year
19-23 university
23- 30- shared house with mates/ parents
30-40- either living alone or with partner
40- marriage
45- trying to conceive.

So your years of fertility are massively reduced.

That is because the majority of work places are not paying enough and need top ups.

Also you are aware of the two child benefit cap aren't you?

I don’t think it’s materialistic to want to be able to afford to send your child to university (if they wish) or support their interests. These things all cost money and if your planning a child and wanting to give them the best opportunities and chance at life

@FarleyHatcherEsq

Yes, so people who don’t go to Uni are starting to have children in their 20’s and have 15-20 years to reproduce

It's housing. If your rent requires two incomes for a family to survive, one parent can't take the time off to raise a child. SMP does not cover more than 3 months and the free nursery hours don't kick in until the child turns three. Most grandparents are still working, so family childcare is not a prevalent as it used to be.

I stopped conventional work after my second child and started my own business because it was not worth paying more in nursery fees than my monthly salary. However, even that was a luxury as I had a working computer and Internet connection to do so.

@BrieAndChilli That is ture - a lot more informal childcare. My parents both worked full time (farmers) so often friends from the village would pick us up form school and we would have tea back at their house.

More unacceptably today, after the age of about 7 or 8 we would just be expected to walk home from school (about 2 miles) let ourselves in to the house and wait for my parents to come in from work (this was the late 80s).

This is a copy of the budgeting guide from the “modern housewife” a book that covers all expects of life, from babies to gardening.
this copy was issued just before The nhs came in
if you look at the percentages. My rent alone is now 70% of our household income.

I think that we are already there . Wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living (especially housing) and I think that younger generations will end up choosing home ownership or children until their parents are old enough to pass on an inheritance.

I think that there’s some rose tinted glasses when looking at the past. I think that children are best in regulated childcare after school rather than roaming wild and mums are better off returning to work considering how often relationships break down.

I don’t think it’s bad to plan your family around your standard of living. It’s a popular clickbait argument to say that young people are picking iPhones and holidays over kids but why not enjoy your wages? If you asked people from the past what their quality of life was like, I’m sure that it wasn’t all roses. If you’re the oldest of many then you probably did a lot of childcare (especially if you were a girl) and each child would have minimal time with their parents because expectations with regards to dad and mum doing household chores manually eg laundry.