Birth rate hits record low - 1.49 children per woman

[MidnightPatrol]

The ONS has released its latest data on the UK birthrate.

The number of children per women has dropped from 1.55 in 2022 to 1.49 in 2022 - the lowest on record.

This is the lowest number of births in the UK since 2002 - when the population was 10 million people smaller.

Do we think this problem will inevitably worsen? Are there particular reasons people are having less children (unique to the UK vs the rest of the world?).

Should we be taking steps to increase it / stop it reducing further?

Same here. I have one child by choice and my siblings are all childfree. Growing up as we did was miserable.

Women are also giving birth older than they ever have - average age of 31 in 2021 according to The Guardian, which is the oldest since records began in 1938! So there’s less time to have bigger families as well.

But does anyone with only 1 child feel a bit guilty about it, because I do. Not for not supporting an aging population, but because being an only child must be so different to having a sibling. I have a sister and we are best friends, so I hoped my child would have a sibling to be besties with, play with etc., but it doesn’t look likely to happen. Not saying that all only children would necessarily be happier with a sibling (a close friend told me she loved being an only child), but it seems a shame that many only children will never get the chance to know the joy of having a sibling. Also, what impact will smaller families have on our cultural outlook and collective values? Will our society gradually become more introspective and introverted as the combination of more time spent online and more 1-child families reduces the need to interact in the “real” world? Covid was a scary insight into what the future might just look like…

Surely it’s a good thing. Housing waiting lists have thousands on them. NHS at breaking point. Schools bursting at the seams. Traffic congestion everywhere. There are enough people to cover job vacancies, it’s just that the amount of people not working is increasing. It’s that which needs addressing.

Our next door neighbours are Muslim and they have a 3 bedroom house with 4 children and the mum doesn’t work, and never has.

I think their priorities are very different. We find our house (exactly the same size/layout) small and couldn’t imagine having 4 children in a house this size!

We have one at the moment and as an only child, I regularly feel guilty if we decide to be one and done.

We’d love another, but nursery fees are just insane and we can’t afford £3k a month to have 2 in nursery. If that wasn’t an issue, we’d definitely go for a second earlier, but have to wait for the 30 free hours.

Why break yourself financially, physically and emotionally, just to raise a child who will be slamming doors in your face at 14, screaming about how much they hate you and how you have ruined their life?

Is that really how you behaved at 14, @Hereyoume ? I remember being abit embarrassed by my parents at 14, but I appreciated them again by 16. I wouldn’t have dared scream at them, the consequences would’ve been dire. 😂

My two (18 & 15) have never screamed at us, they seem to be quite fond of us! We’ve always insisted on showing respect towards family members, even when you disagree with them, and it seems to have worked out so far.

It will get worse. Childcare unafforable. Women are not putting up with being skivvys to manbabies who expect to be waited on hand and foot.
General fertility rates are plummetting and people can't afford ivf.
Quality of life without children is more desirable.
Women are often at a disadvantage when getting pregnant. Maternity care is abysmal, medical misogyny is rife, birth trauma is common, workplace discrinination is rife.
Mothers are forced to work when they might prefer to be full time mothers, so that is also offputting.
Fear of poverty...

I could go on

Too fecking expensive. Simple as that.

I hope you don't drive/ride in cars, go on holidays abroad or buy imported goods. If you do then you're ruining the environment and being a hypocrite.

As I said upthread, I do think that house prices will gradually decrease as the Boomer generation downsizes/passes away. I’m not being ageist, it’s just supply and demand.

That doesn’t address the childcare and COL issues though.

The cultural and religious pressures on women to focus on childbearing and parenting leave women and their children very vulnerable to abuse.

if There is indeed a birth rate issue, the solution does not lie with encouraging women to go back to a state of financial dependence. Women working keeps women and children safe. The social support for childbearing needs to mold around that system.

It’s too expensive. I had a termination this week because (primarily) our youngest is due to start school this year and we couldn’t afford another 4 years of nursery fees while also giving our existing children a good quality of life.

I am a high earner but childcare fees are so extortionate this still applies. We live in London and are paying >£2k/month. Over 4 years (due date was September) that’s £105k assuming rates don’t go up, and when I thought about what that could do for DCs1 and 2 I just couldn’t justify it.

So sorry that you had to go through that, @G535600 💐

Tell me about it, just found out the nursery fees for my little one are going up - no idea where that extra money is going to come from!

I’m curious, if you did have another child would you or your partner ever consider taking a career break to be a full-time parent so they didn’t have to go to nursery and you’d not have the extra fees to pay?

@Somanystupidpeople eh?

Taking a career break kippers you in terms of pension and all that other stuff, so no, probably wouldn’t do it.

Also, with the cost of everything rising every few months; we need two salaries coming in. Our council tax is going up 15% this year, our internet and phone bills 10%, nursery went up £200 a month, our weekly food bill seems to be creeping up each week. Everything is just insane.

I read about this but personally nearly every one I know has two or three unless they are older parents (and often ivf baby) I of know several women with 4+ babies not by same dad though. I'm guessing there's lots without children at all affecting the average, neither of my siblings have children. My children both plan to have children and fairly young (mid to late twenties) they are actively planning now

It’s more than just the cost of childcare (in this country anyway )
it’s the lack of housing , nice areas to live that are affordable , cost of living to be able to live a half decent life , access to decent schools / healthcare etc etc
TBH , if I was considering have kids now (I have 2 ) I’d think very seriously !!!!!!!!
I don’t regret having mine , but the decision would be based on the economic state of the country / my circumstances !

We had IVF for our DS after 5 years of trying with fertility issues. I was 27 when DS was born.

We were desperate for another baby but the NHS will not find another cycle for anyone who already has a child, even if that is your partner having one that isn’t yours.

I have checked the criteria today after reading this post and it’s still the exact same as it was when I got pregnant in 2018, so we would never receive funding for another round and we are absolutely not in a position to pay £7000+ for further treatment.

This meant that both DH and I will now only ever have one child and DS has no siblings. I’d have thought if birth rates dropping so drastically they’d have opened up this to allow couples with infertility to have another round, but it hasn’t.

Also now that DS is 5 we are finally out of the nursery fees trap and I actually wonder how we managed it for all those years. Our nursery fees were more than our mortgage. I gave up my career to work in a school as a TA which was a £10,000 pay drop and of course that means my pension contributions are also extremely low.

I can understand why so many have one or none by choice based on that too. Working in a school was not something I had ever done before having DS, but there’s no other career that works with school hours and holidays!

I find this really interesting. We are primed to have the biological urge to reproduce, so for some people that has disappeared (which begs the question why?) and for others they still want kids but are hampered by living in a society which seems to make it as difficult as possible. Humans are basically just overgrown chimps with anxiety but it’s hard to imagine any other animal worrying about whether to have a baby. It’s pretty sad that as a society we’ve been (rightly) focused on development and progress to improve our quality of life over the last centuries but that it’s ended up in a place where profit is prioritised over actual human life. I haven’t phrased this very well but hopefully you get what I’m trying to say.

Eh? Why would we not want it to decrease?

The world is overpopulated, more humans = more climate change. Surely a decrease in births is good news.

I dont think its a drop in a low i think its because women are having babies much older now.

Don't feel guilty, there's no guarantee that siblings will get along at all. My siblings and I have nothing in common except DNA, we are not at all close. Growing up we didn't get along, very different interests and the age gaps meant we were never going to be super close.
My partner isn't close with his either, no bad blood they're just not close, they exchange birthday cards and occasionally see each other at their parents' house if they both happen to be visiting at the same time.

What a load of bollocks to say most adults have very little contact or respect for their parents. Everyone I know has contact with their parents and only one has an issue with one of their parents!!

Our population is growing despite the birth rate, but surely a reduction is a good thing? They are predicting it will level off and begin to rise again. Where I live they closed schools and now, thanks to not using the stats that were available, we have children in portacabins on the remaining schools and insufficient secondary places (although mostly due to immigration and extensive house building)
Net effect is that we take the pain of a higher older population by proportion, which means that in the shorter term the previous model of governments not storing NI to pay for pensions, but using current contributions is no longer viable, which is why we are moving towards mandatory pension contributions.
But, thanks to government policies, we also have a drop in benefit claimants.