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?

you might think so but isnt that what china did, they seem to knock out a fair bit of pollution?

30+ years ago, families could easily live on one parents wages, now that more

Depends which bit of the UK you lived in whether that was true or not. I was born and brought up in the SE, in one of the nicer'outlying areas of London, and my mum worked part-time when we were young in the 1960s and then full-time from when I was about 10 and could safely walk my younger sister to and from school. She then worked full-time until retirement. My father worked full-time too and we weren't very well-off. No car until I was in my early teens and then an absolutely ancient one that dad practically rebuilt. A week in a caravan on the Suffolk coast every summer. Secondhand bikes and everything else.

I don't think my family were unusual, there seemed to be a lot of us with mums who worked at least part-time. Perhaps in areas of the UK where house prices and living costs were lower things were different, but I'd suggest that the idea of a single ordinary working man's salary being able to support a halfway decent home and lifestyle was old-fashioned by the mid-60s.

No, best to just cut to the chase and obliterate them all now 🙄

I'm sorry you have such a bad relationship with your parents, and if you've had them, kids.

I don't know anyone who was ambivalent about their parents dying. On my experience it's been a devastating loss.

I won't get an inheritance from my Mom, I get no childcare or inkind benefits from her either. By your logic I should be NC because she's of no financial use to me

Depends on what the man is earning. My mum stopped working when she had children because dad’s salary covered everything, and being a full-time mum was what she wanted. They lived all over both in the UK and abroad, so it’s just different strokes for different folks.

The government can't seriously want people to have more babies. If they did they would build affordable housing and wouldn't be wanting the mums to send the DC to nursery at such high cost. People cannot be having kids they can't afford to look after its utter madness.

Women have always worked, unless they were the upper crust. It was only in the 20th century post wars eras that women didn't work, because there was a drive to get jobs for men coming back from war. Anyway, as we've seen from patriarchal societies like Japan and Korea, if the choice is between women being forced out of the workplace if they have children and not having children, women choose not to have children. We need to have more flexible working practices, better and more affordable childcare and more equality in childrearing between both parents. The hit women take when they leave the workplace is felt when they initially lose the salary, then years after their children have grown up, when they have a huge hole in their pension pot.

& @Abeona women have always worked but even 20 years ago it was very possible for women to give up work until their babies were in school at least.
I grew up in the 90s-2000s and throughout primary school none of my school mates mum's worked. None of us were rich, some in the school were more comfortable than others, but nobody I would describe as particularly well off.
The local nursery (there was only one in the village) didn't take anyone under 3 as they weren't set up for babies as there wasn't a demand for it.The school didn't need to provide wraparound care as there was no demand for it. They brought in wraparound care years later when there was a demand for it, just as my youngest sibling was reaching the end of primary school.
Speaking to my friends at the moment who are all going through the "should we have children? Can we afford them? How will childcare work?" and none of their mums worked full time throughout their primary school and none of them were put in nursery as babies. Mostly their parents worked part time or term time once they were in primary school. None of them are from particularly wealthy families.

You have anecdata specific to your particular (middle class?) area that doesn't take into account the possibly high earnings of your father and others in your local community. I offered anecdata of a situation in which back in the late 60s and 70s my parents were having to live very carefully (everything secondhand, no car, no television) in order for my mum to stay at home and do childcare. My dad was an accounts clerk. Possibly your dad and all your friends had fathers with more lucrative jobs. My uncle Pete, for example, was a middle manager at Esso in the 80s. He had new cars and his wife never worked outside the home her entire life.

All I'm saying is that it's not true to say that in the 80s every family could live on a single salary. There was a massive recession in 1980-81 caused by the oil crisis. Then and later in 1987 interest rates reached as high as 15%. The image of the 1950s nuclear family with mum staying at home was a middle class fantasy. Working class women (and a lot of middle class women too) have always worked to support their families.

Oh certainly, without doubt the whole system needs revising, and quickly! As for women always working, well yes and no. Jane Austen’s novels are full of women who don’t work and they’re not all from the upper classes. Some women work because they have to, some because they can. Others don’t work because they choose not to or there are stigmas attached to working from society. It’s a real mixed bag and we must be cautious making bold, sweeping generalisations. The important thing is to have a society that empowers women to make their own choices, whatever those might be.

@Abeona

Did the pandemic skew those 20-22 figures?

Absolutely, my dm worked in the 80s and df had a well paid job

She was at home when we were small but started to work when we went to primary school

She was saying that Africa is the fastest growing population globally and as a result is going to be one of the most interesting economies. So whilst UK indigenous populations are down, globally there are still countries with high population growth and naturally those people will migrate for economic reasons

if they have a young dynamic population then those African countries should experience economic growth and not be available to migrate. This is what we dhd want.

but it depends on whether you think a population is replaceable. Would Singapore have been nearly as successful as it is without Chinese people? The existence of Malaysia next door does seem a somber counterpoint.

Yes, there is a bit of a contradiction in that post - “one of the most interesting economies”, yet people will migrate for economic reasons? What does “interesting” mean in this case?
I’d really like to see that interview though, will try to find it.

Agree with this. We were very much a working class family in the North in the 90's, my dad didn't have a highly paid job and my mum started working when the youngest was in nursery but she was able to take a few years off we were we born.

The point I was making earlier was more about wages being too low in general rather than everyone wanting to be a stay at home mum. Having said that, if my DP earned enough i would love to take a few years off work and only go back part time after having kids!

Exactly this, we were working class and I think the majority of my class mates were too. I won't get into my own family dynamics but from what I remember my friends' dads' were bus drivers, lorry drivers, labourers, farm hands (not farmers so much), one was a policeman, one worked for the post office driving a van of sorts (I cannot remember whether he was a postman in a van or if he just drove a van in some other capacity for them), a couple worked in factories (and they did night shifts and were definitely the financially better off families).
The mums weren't stay at home mums forever, but they were able to take at least a few years off work to raise the kids.
A year off work to have a baby isn't even financially viable for me, let alone a few years off to raise a toddler.

Robots. Robots are the answer to the aging population and could solve many issues with social care. Everyone gets one that is assessed as needing one, they’ll be able to get people up, washed, dressed, meds, fed, toilet etc. those that enjoy their caring jobs now can provide visits of human contact. Otherwise i have no clue what the answer is apart from stopping keeping so many alive just because we can

I think they tried that in Japan with robot companions. The old people hated it. I mean, maybe we just won't have a choice. I'd rather a robot than my children spend their time wiping my bum. I think though, thst if robots did care work, it would be on them to advocate for us.

@IwishIcouldfinishabook i can understand it not being liked by people it is really impersonal but I don’t think there is going to be any choice. Where I am in Scotland we are already feeling the effects of too many old people and not enough young people in my area, clogged up hospitals, no home care with long wait lists of 2 years for a care package and no beds in residential homes something is going to have to give.

Where I live, there is a much higher proportion of younger people.compared to older people (despite the boomer generation). I also live in an area where the population has increased 15% in the last 10 years. We also have problems with waiting lists, hospital beds, care homes etc.
My mum was in hospital recently and she was on a female only ward for a chest infection. Many of the people on the ward had dementia-it scared both me and my mother.

Is there any evidence to suggest that only children spend more time on devices than other children? Certainly isn't my experience.

No.

There is this study into the number of minutes spent watching TV per day and amount of physical activity done by only children and those with siblings. They found male only children spent significantly more time watching TV every day than those with siblings, as did female only children from single-parent families. Female only children also did less physical activity than those with siblings. I’d say TV use and that of devices is comparable.

Also on a lighter note, the makers of ‘Sean the Sheep: A Flight Before Christmas’ obviously have similar concerns if you’re able to check that movie out!

Family structure & TV

Thanks for the info @Breathedeeper

So the issue is the finances of single parent families not just the fact that the children were only children.