To think this notion of 'economic infertility' is bullshit?

[JenniferYellowHat1980]

Here

Living and working in London is a lifestyle choice isn't it? There being actual homes and jobs outside the capital. Having experienced actual biological infertility it boils my piss a little, that's all.

I think what irks me most is that the writer seems to present herself as a victim of the economy rather than someone with the capacity to make autonomous choices.

I don't really like the article but I think it's important to recognise that although people do indeed have the ability to make decisions about their lives, they are often making them in the context of very real constraints which are placed on them by wider issues over which they have no control - the ridiculous cost of living in London being one such issue.

Choosing not to have children because you can't afford a bigger flat / garden / house is just that, a choice. And a perfectly valid one, but one you can't reeeeeaaaaly complain about.

It's offensive. Just call it 'being poor', 'being stuck in a certain place', 'being stuck in a certain job', 'being screwed over by the current economic climate' or whatever you want to call it - but it's not infertility.

Can't we aspire to an economy that works well enough that people don't have to choose not to have children because they can't afford a decent home to raise their family in?

The price of homes compared to earnings in London is beyond a joke but as you say, there is life outside London.

When you think of the hundreds of thousands of economic migrants we have in the country who have left their families and support in a whole other country to have the lives and futures they want for their children it really shows the lengths people will go to if that is what they want.

It's an imperfect term but I understand what it's getting at and it's absolutely true that when the economy looks bleak the birthrate goes down - this is a fact. It's widely known that women put of having children during the last recession and the birthrate dipped to prove it (at least in the USA where I'm based).

I also understand it on a personal level, I put off having children for years because I felt financially unstable. Now I'm in my late thirties and I'm having biological fertility issues - a bitter irony.

I loved out of London 25 years ago due to cost of accommodation. Fine as a young person in house shares, but I could not afford anything else.