the "don't have kids if u can't afford them" mentality...

[MermaidCheeks]

Who exactly do this lot think are going to be looking after them in hospitals and care homes when they're elderly and infirm?

If only those who could really afford to have kids had them - a decreasing well-off demographic -we'd be even more fucked than we already are.

Immigration is not a long-term solution when 80% of elderly are going to be spread across low and middle-affluent countries by 2050, either. Every country is going to need their own citizens.

Instead of resenting people who need their wages topped-up by the government in order to afford having a couple of kids - maybe embrace those who are making sacrifices to have kids at all, especially in the face of the overwhelming decrease in value that society and successive governments have placed on the role of raising children.

I hope you’re not having kids so they will look after you in your old age, how absolutely ridiculous.
Do not have kids if you can’t afford them, it’s selfish and not fair on the poor kids to be given such a shit life.

My thoughts exactly. Funny how that’s the first thing the poster thought of. Why have a child you can’t protect and nourish just to build a workforce 🙄

If you live and benefits and keep popping them out, you're taking the piss.

Although typically the wealthy tend to limit the number of children they have.

Gosh you aren't the brightest are you it's not your own children that will be caring for you in your nursing home, treating you in the hospital or propping up the economy.

Since you seem to get relief from being a self proclaimed judge of people's brightness, check yours first and read my post again. It still means the same, whether it is your own kids or other people's kids.

And nice job assuming that as long as people keep having kids, the latter will automatically and consistently take up caretaker professions and end up caring for you 🙄

I do agree that the world need a younger generation to keep it going, but we are talking about a specific thing here, in this thread - whether people should have and/or keep having kids when they cannot afford them, financially. Hyperbolic projections like 'what if every one stops having kids, then the world will stop functioning' are not very logical. We all know for sure that this will never happen - people will keep having kids, because they can and want to.

From personal experience, this is my observation - Adults who cannot afford kids but still continue to have them, often have only negligent or uninformed parenting styles to offer. Kids raised in such an environment by parents who were constantly worried about finance, expecting money from the gov to survive and taking daily decisions based on being skint, are really not well-adjusted or happy people, they have a lot of struggle ahead of them. Ultimately, that is not a healthy world to look forward to. And I am not even talking about the state of the world now, the politics, the climate crisis.

I stand by what I said - do not have kids if you cannot afford them, if you don't have at least a stable job or some savings. "But we fed you, took you to parks and did our best" is never enough, when money often dictates the very fabric of domestic life (this is especially true in countries outside UK).

They tend to space them out too , popping one out just as the last one is reaching school age .

You’re suggesting people who don’t want to have kids nobly gave them for the good of society- absolute rubbish.

Of all families with dependent children, families with one child made up 44% (3.6 million) in 2022. Families with two children made up 41% (3.4 million), and families with three or more children made up 15% (1.2 million).

The majority of people have one or two kids max.

It's really bothersome to see women here so divided over this. A little imagination might promote a little bit more community, but where there is a scarcity (childcare/status), it seems like people are willing to fight with total strangers over it. I have met people who espouse the "If you can't afford children, don't have them" viewpoint, which is valid in some ways and sounds horrendous in others, but I've also met people who ask me what I was doing whilst they were having children on a low income and "doing the most important job in the World." It's difficult to support either opinion so I've studiously avoided having biological children. If I have any, I'll adopt. My mother was adopted, and I've dealt with so many children in care who couldn't get access to anything that was human and something like good parental care. But there's a problem, isn't there? Women are paid less, and childcare is so expensive. So women are left to fight amongst themselves. I've also been shocked at how little imagination women with or without children have about reasons some women might not have kids yet. One of my colleagues lost her child at a toddler age and doesn't talk about it much for fear of what insensitivities it might invite. With me, I was raped early in adulthood and a few times after that. Believe it or not, it's difficult to imagine a stable financial future, let alone have one, when you're trying to carry traumatic experiences. And try throwing abusive alcoholic family members into the mix, and a few abusive relationships - as that's what bad boundaries means, in adult terms. There is a blindness some women develop where they're so defensive about their own situations they can't find friendship or sisterhood in colleagues or people outside their immediate group and they wonder why they're lonely. People regularly quote "it takes a village to raise a child." The problem is there is only a judging village, not one based on community. If you are in constant competition with each other and the government doesn't or can't provide alternatives, fewer and fewer young women will choose to have children. Cancelling the Surestart centres a while ago was a massive mistake. I like the idea of people qualifying in childcare and wanting to have a family but being subsidised by government to give homes to young kids in care if they don't have the income. Yes, fostering exists, but that's not Home. Children are still being thrown around like they're no-one's responsibility, even in families. In Denmark, even care homes are of a standard where children feel cared About, not just For. And I've noticed Mumsnet is full of the kind of people where you don't feel parenting has made them a more caring person - if anything, because of the deficit in provision for mothers, I suspect a lot of the anger comes from a place of being neglected by a society which promotes motherhood only to leave mums to fend for themselves.

Zombieeeee

This argument is so fucking stupid. No one has kids for the good of society. They have them because they want to. It’s an entirely selfish choice, which is fine. Whatever. But don’t pretend that your kids are going to grow up and start caring for the elderly so you should get some sort of medal. It’s ludicrous.

The actual societal issue is not whether people can afford kids - it’s who is having them.
What we actually need is more intelligent, good parents to have more kids, not more stupid, crap parents to have more kids, which is what is currently happening.
This is what is contributing to the current shitty society that we have now. Too many stupid people who are crap parents keep having and dragging up stupid, feral kids. The cycle will continue until society is overrun by the stupids.

It's not just quantity, it's quality. No point having a bigger population if they're not willing nor able to actually do the work that needs doing. That's just making the situation worse. We need the "right" kind of people. The ones willing and able to work, and work in the "right" kind of jobs. People popping out more and more kids who will become drains on society because of inability/unwillingness to do the work needed just make the problems worse not better.

What are the “right” kind of jobs?

The jobs where there are shortages!

No one is having kids for the benefit of the country.

Exactly, it's just the usual excuse trotted out by people trying to justify why they're having children they can't afford.

Things get better as well
You might not have much when you are young but as they grow up you might earn more or society might get more redistributive.