What if women stopped having babies?

[Whatifitneverhappened]

There was an article in the news yesterday about declining birth rates: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/world-needs-babies-better-rethink-what-we-need-from-mothers

What do you think would happen if women chose to stop having babies altogether? Would the human race die out? Or AIBU to think men wouldn't allow this to happen and women's reproductive choices would be simply taken away Gilead-style? Could we grow babies in test tubes to make the role of women as incubators redundant?

Didn’t we all see this movie?

It would never happen if it did men would imprison women for babies recreate "the handmaid's tale".

We may see this play out in China very soon. They brought in the one child policy in 1979 and only recently relaxed it. They’re now saying that lots of people in urban areas can have two kids and in rural areas families already had more than one child relatively often. Their birth rate hasn’t really increased as for much of China it’s now the culture to have one child, so they have disproportionately more older than young people.

The annual population stats have been delayed but there are press reports that the population has gone down. China are waking up to their demographic challenge but have been slow to move because (I’ve read) the people involved in policing the one child policy are very powerful.

It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Interesting probably isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean.

I think its about time people made a greater effort to limit the number of children they have.

What people are you referring to? The global fertility rate is falling

Actually, the average African woman has 4.7 children — considerably more than you estimate. This article gives more information, and yes, improvements in infant and child mortality are a part of it.

There is huge variation in the birth rate depending upon the part of Africa & where it is higher there tends to be higher infant mortality. Plus it's declining yr on yr & will continue to decline.
As I said Africa's birth rate is were you expect it to be looking at patterns from other countries & people in the west do moralise about it, it's always mentioned on threads but the fact remains their continent is not doing anything different to ours, they are just at a younger stage.

ifstudies.org/blog/african-fertility-is-right-where-it-should-be

I don't think a reduction in the world population would be a bad thing. I don't just mean highly populated countries like India or places where people have lots of children.

Humans have such a huge effect of the planet there needs to be less of us. I saw a pp argue that the global birth rate is falling. Which is obviously true. But this doesn't mean on an individual basis we shouldn't think about the impact of having children. Especially as the children we have in the UK have a much higher carbon footprint.

Also we need to think about how many people a child may add to the world with their offspring. Maintaining or increasing the population rather than reducing it.

It’s never going to happen. The biological urge to reproduce is too strong for this to occur wholesale.

However there are policies countries can adopt to encourage or discourage reproduction. Long, generous maternity leaves, subsidised childcare, much tougher laws on maintenance payments would all help persuade the undecided.

I don't think a reduction in the world population would be a bad thing.
It wouldn't but if we are to go down the path surely its better to cull the elderly people over the young to reduce population.
Not my opinion personally I love DC they are the strongest with longer years of service if the world continues spinning.

But this doesn't mean on an individual basis we shouldn't think about the impact of having children. Especially as the children we have in the UK have a much higher carbon footprint.

Tbf I think women are doing this although not just from an economic perspective. In the UK the birth rate is now about 1.6.

It wouldn't but if we are to go down the path surely its better to cull the elderly people over the young to reduce population.

It's a very uncomfortable question but logically more young people is better than more old people.

[quote wotchhha] Actually, the average African woman has 4.7 children — considerably more than you estimate. This article gives more information, and yes, improvements in infant and child mortality are a part of it.

There is huge variation in the birth rate depending upon the part of Africa & where it is higher there tends to be higher infant mortality. Plus it's declining yr on yr & will continue to decline.
As I said Africa's birth rate is were you expect it to be looking at patterns from other countries & people in the west do moralise about it, it's always mentioned on threads but the fact remains their continent is not doing anything different to ours, they are just at a younger stage.

ifstudies.org/blog/african-fertility-is-right-where-it-should-be[/quote]
The fact is that the population of Africa taken as a continent is expected to double in the next 30 years. That's because most African states (54 of them, all with their own cultures, health systems, education systems and policies) have more than 40-50% of their population under the age of 15 and those young people are just about to have children of their own. Gathering and discussing statistics isn't moralising. It's not unreasonable to discuss the situation.

Perhaps you should stop "taking it as a continent" and discuss country by country. Are we discussing European, American and Asian statistics as continents too? Or we can't be bothered with individual countries when we get to "Africa"?

And they're not African "states", they're COUNTRIES...NATIONS and within each country are different states and regions; within the states are different cultures and languages.

I agree with wotchhha.

@wotchhha I agree.
Another uncomfortable solution is euthanasia the dying with dignity campaign, I'm 40's and hope to see end of life choices within a 20 year time frame.
People can make their own choice.

[quote EmeraldShamrock]@wotchhha I agree.
Another uncomfortable solution is euthanasia the dying with dignity campaign, I'm 40's and hope to see end of life choices within a 20 year time frame.
People can make their own choice.[/quote]
I think there will be real change in this by the time I'm old. I'm 40 btw.
It would be interesting to know what public opinion is? I know my own parents who are mid 60s think its a good idea and they're fairly Conservative in most things.

The crazy part by reducing the birth rate of humans we are replacing them with domesticated pets.
The canine birth rates has exploded producing meat eating animals reducing the resources and making a pet carbon footprint.
Nearly every home has a pet and for the ones that don't it evens out as some have 2 or 3 domesticated animals.
It doesn't make sense.

The world is overpopulated anyway.
But people will always have children.

On top of this another worry I think is that well-educated women are having less children and women who don’t work/rely on the state are having many many children. So more and more children born into families that don’t prioritise education and work and contributing to society and less and less children born into families who do prioritise education and work. I wonder how this will play out down the line.

I don't think men would care tbh. Demand for babies primarily stems from women's biological drives.
It's like men posing the question "what if we just refused to have sex with women?".

@BonasThatBonas

On top of this another worry I think is that well-educated women are having less children and women who don’t work/rely on the state are having many many children. So more and more children born into families that don’t prioritise education and work and contributing to society and less and less children born into families who do prioritise education and work. I wonder how this will play out down the line.

How many countries do you think have families that don’t work?

@DeadlyMedally

I don't think men would care tbh. Demand for babies primarily stems from women's biological drives. It's like men posing the question "what if we just refused to have sex with women?".

Ok so men would be fine with the population dying out? No young people to care for the old? Governments (mainly men) would definitely intervene.

It's about a population level change not about the individual need for babies.

@womanity I mean within countries such as within the U.K. / within Ireland. If you compare birth rates of those families on social welfare compared to those families where mothers are educated / working the birth rate would be higher in those families who don’t prioritise working or education. How that will work out for the next generation is important but often not talked about.

@Neonprint
Sure, governments would intervene (likely ineffectually, as in Japan), but the average man is indifferent towards being a father and does not care about "the population dying out".
Very few women are having children because of their fear of "the population dying out", it's a solipsistic (but very normal) decision.
In the history of the world, there has never been a need to round women up and forceably inseminate them, regardless of circumstance, because women, generally, desire to be mothers.

I often think it's quite funny that mumsnet, with all of its MLM ire, isn't good at seeing that having more babies to take care of an ever-expanding elderly population is the biggest pyramid scheme there is.

Personally, I'm childless and have very little family. I'm hoping that voluntary euthanasia is brought in within the next 20 years (I'm mid thirties). My life is small and sad a lot of the time - if I knew that at a certain point I had dignified control over it, I'd be perfectly content to do so.

Another factor, surely, is femicide. I believe China now has a shortage of females due to the one child policy and many people not wanting their only child to be a girl. India allows sex selection for abortions. Girls worldwide have a pretty awful time growing up. FGM, forced early marriage etc.