‘It’s not a nice world to bring children into’ - Births fall to the lowest level in 50 years - BBC article

[OneBusyFinch]

Just reading this article and don’t think I’ve seen a thread on it.

More people are having fewer children - and it’s not just the UK, the data shows it’s a worldwide trend. Interesting reading the different perspectives.

When given a choice, a lot of women are deciding not to set fire to their finances, suffer birth injuries, carry the entire mental load, and end up raising kids on their own with no support from fathers who can walk away scot free.

It's a shit deal for women. No wonder so many are saying No Thanks.

I couldn't in all honesty recommend motherhood to anyone.

I think it's not just motherhood but fatherhood that needs recommending.

Basically a lot of women are screwed by motherhood so if they've done it once won't do it again. Myself and many friends had 1 child. The dad was too busy living his own life to help. Money was tight. Everything now has to be perfect! Basically in my experience many women have seen those go before them be exhausted and think not for me.

I think it’s viewed as more acceptable for women now to be childfree. We are educated, skilled, earn our own money, don’t pick the first man we hooked up with at 14, etc.

There are so many more options for women these days. It’s always the easy option to blame women (men are having fewer children too!). If the government really cared they would address our current infrastructure and economic systems to futureproof for a declining birth rate (apparently we are too overcrowded anyway!), not just try and make women have more babies.

I'm in my 50s now, but even in my 20s having children made no sense to me, socially or environmentally, so I didn't have any. Also, it looks absolutely no fun and a great deal of stress! I appreciate we need children to support older people, but fewer children born now will lead to fewer pensioners in the future so at some stage it will even out (with a few decades of misery!)

We really need to embrace immigration as there are plenty of people in the world already, with more people likely to become environmental migrants in the future, so we just need to shuffle people around.

If you don’t want one, don’t have one. I think too many people felt pressured into having one before as thats what you did, get married and have kids. I can think of a few people who had children that probably shouldn’t have done!!

The human experience has never been a good one but it's better now than ever before. Imagine giving birth before antibiotics (or even hot water for a shower afterwards). The difference now is choice.

Or maybe better maternity pay and incentives to support children and new mothers. They want people wanting children who are going to contribute to society. They dont want ‘failed
abortions’ and more NEETs.

Agreed. Those expecting others to pay for their children just keep on breeding, knowing the state will pay for them. Sometimes and I know this from personal experience of these sort of people, they don’t want or look after the child, they just like not working and the benefits the children entitle them to. They’re not bothered about the quality of life for those poor children.

The young couples I know with kids have no money and no time. Everyrhing is a race - get up, make lunches, drop kids off, get to work, get home, do pick-up, do tea, do homework with them, put a wash on, do bed, put the wash out, pack bags for the next day, fall into bed. Do the whole thing again the next day. Weekends spent doing admin and housework and backlog of homework. Holidays are spent covering the school holidays, one parent off at a time. No money for dinners out or going away - cost of mortgage, childcare and student loans eats everyrhing

there Isn’t time or money to enjoy the children or themselves

it’s a no-brainer. Have no kids, you have at least a thousand a month disposable income more to enjoy yourselves with. And the time to do it

It is now near impossible to start a family in your twenties and give your DC any decent quality of life whilst retaining sanity for yourself. With all this talk of Plan B in the NHS how is an average person going to afford to keep themselves comfortable, let alone provide quality of life for someone else.

I'm not im the least surprised. As well as the state of the world there seems to be a huge rise in ND children which makes life harder too.

My child (now adult) is disabled and I'm glad I didnt have anymore.

This is true. Plus the SEN school crisis is well documented now. You can no longer go into pregnancy knowing your DC will have a school place at four.

Expectations of women have changed massively - 2 generations ago you were considered a lonely old spinster if you didn’t get married and have children - now it’s completely normal. I’m 50 and out of my 3 oldest friends (& myself), only 2 of us have children (2 each) Women have much more choice now - the expectation to get married & have kids is far less. Which is a good thing imo as a lot of people who weren’t at all suited to being parents just did it because they thought it was the ‘done thing’.

Also I think expectations were far lower regarding how we live - nowadays if you want a third child, you’d think ‘I need a 5 bed house, I need a people carrier car’ whereas in the 70s you’d have just made your kids share a room and stuck all 3 of them in back of your Escort & hoped for the best. There was much more of a ‘make do’ attitude I think, and people didn’t overthink the situation like we do now. Sometimes I think we have gone too far the other way - we all managed to survive sharing bedrooms and having hand me downs in the 70s & 80s but fewer people are willing to do that now.

It’s very interesting.

I dare say it’s at least partly down to everything being so bloody expensive - perhaps especially housing - just as much as to warmongering Trumps and Putins, and dire facts/predictions of global warming.

Mmm it's swings and roundabouts I think. In the 70s and 80s we didn't have the technology or the conviences that we have today that made parenting more difficult.
Today we seem to have much more at our disposal as well as choices but don't have the time to enjoy it
I agree with the PP up thread about people being unable to ignore social media and carrying the correct way of parenting bible everywhere with them.
As a parent myself, I wish I ignored all the advice given to me when my children were young and just went with the basics of being kind and listening to them. Let them eat what they want, no time outs etc. They are teens now and I think I'm a much better parent now that I stick to those principles.

The state of the world has always been Dodgy. Social media now holds a magnifying glass to it which in turn puts our attention on high alert.

I do get why women are choosing to have fewer children. I would perhaps do the same if I was born a couple of decades later who knows.

Absolutely this. Police didn't come out to 'domestics' in my own childhood, and my mum wasn't named on her first married mortgage.

The world has got immeasurably better, and women are choosing fewer babies, born later, or being child free. When women are educated, birth rates go down. This is a good thing for the planet and for women.

The higher the level of education, and the more employment and civil rights women have, the fewer children they have. The most educated countries, and the ones with the best social safety nets, have the fewest children.

When women have choices, they very often choose to either not have children, or have fewer than they might have had otherwise.

Lots of countries have tried to reverse this trend through tax incentives, childcare incentives etc - none of it works. Not one country has managed to reverse declining fertility rates.

The cat's out of the bag - give women choices, and they will very often choose not to have children.

I think the whole failure to launch is what makes me glad I've only got 2. I launched as an adult by the skin of my teeth so feel very daunted by the responsibility of launching my own children. There's no guarantee that they will be able to grow up and make their own way without parental help because that's rare now.

Pretty much since they were born me and DH have been talking about savings for them, house deposits driving lessons, whether we'd have room to house adult DC for extended period of time if necessary. This wouldn't be doable for a large family.

Remove a woman's village of support for childcare and the birth rate goes down.

Just one of many reasons why the birth rate is declining.

I didn't have children until I was 40 because that support just wasn't there any earlier.

Not when they are mainly old though…

• Maternity Leave & pay issues. Paternity leave is next to nothing so the onus is on the woman to stall her earnings, pension and career

DHs work now offers at least 3 months paid paternity leave which is a good thing

We live in a tech supported age where assisted dying will certainly be accepted in civilised countries before too long. Old populations are peaceful ones.

It is all very interesting. My grandparents actively chose to have two children in the middle of world war two whilst living in central Warsaw. It doesn't get much shitter than that.
They had no support (my great grandparents we're part of the polish war office in london on one side and dead on the other).
They did it as a fuck you to the Nazis.

Maybe if Farage gets in this will happen 😂

And ailing. The trend towards continuing life no matter what the quality of life is a modern invention too, that adds to the pressure of that middle generation too.