To this this is NOT the worst time ever to bring a child into the world

[Celebrityskint]

Quite often I see posts going on about today’s world being a terrible world to bring children into... but honestly... in the UK... we’re probably having a very good life compared to most people in most of history.... it’s not a terrible time to bring children into the world

My dad told me this yesterday. I understand how he felt sort of. My two are 6 and 8. I mean people were getting pregnant during the war which had to be worse I guess or the plague as people above said ( but no birth control then)
Climate change worries me. Yes it's been there 6 years ago but recently it seems to have got worse....or maybe it's in the news more so I'm more aware of it. Would I have children again? Not sure. I'd have to stop watching the news for a few months I think because It's so depressing at the mo

Within 20 minutes of where I live I can't even buy a parking space for 40K. I haven't moved to this area, I am from here and remain here by renting from family. When my family came to the area 50 years ago it wasn't the desirable place it is today. Now a lot of people move from London and this has affected the house prices.

Would you recommend that I move to wherever you live in order to buy a house? Can you see that if your area becomes popular with investors or people from the nearest cities the houses won't be £40K and buying a house may become more of a "big deal"?

Are people really saying if they'd known about climate change 10/20 years ago they wouldn't have had their children?
Climate change? I’m not worried about that. I have faith in scientific innovation and I believe we’ll resolve it with new technologies. Ditto the energy crisis - it’s going to be a few harsh years but we’ll get through it.

But the war with Russia is something else entirely. Even our best and brightest can’t stop a madman from pushing a button halfway round the world and blowing us all to smithereens. Radiation sickness, nuclear winter, starvation - it’s looking more and more like this will be the end of civilisation and if it continues to escalate then no, I don’t want my kids to suffer.

I know I will be slammed for saying this, but where there is life there is hope.

@PrincessButtercupToo back in 1943 how did your uncle's parents know that they were bringing their child into such a lucky life? They didn't know about NHS or grammar schools or the boom in property development that was just around the corner. They knew about war and rationing.

I am not suggesting that our future isn't bleak. I am just saying if we all stop having children surely it will be bleaker.

I mean, only in the sense that having children is selfish full stop however you look at it, how can it be anything else? It’s certainly not selfless. People have kids cos they want them, so by default it’s selfish isn’t it? You’re not doing it for anyone else and there’s no problem with that but call a spade a spade.

I think we have more choice of contraception and abortion than at many points in history, so perhaps people have always felt a bit like that but didnt ponder it too long.

We don't have to go back that far. WWII was awful with all of Europe engulfed in war and all the cruelty that went with it.

Yet people continued to have kids.

Bad times don't last forever. Most of human history has been full of poverty and tragedy yet we're still here. Our strength in the face of adversity and struggle should be admired.

I feel like children born today will face more pressures and hardships than I had growing up. Of course it will hopefully be better than children born a hundred years ago, but it will be less good for them than it was for me. I am extremely grateful I grew up in an era with no social media, no imminent threat of climate change disaster, no real threat of nuclear war in Europe and a relatively stable economy. I think when todays children are adults they will be facing a much more challenging and difficult life than when I become an adult.

Yep! Telling everyone how selfish they are and then on another thread 'DC4 is blah blah'.

No disease 20 years ago?? Kids have been dying from cancer, pneumonia and all sorts for years. What a stupid post. Thousands freezing to death this winter, in this country? Come off it.
In living memory there has never been disease to the extent that we’ve had to stay at home and social distance. Ok, there was the Spanish Flu and the Black Death centuries ago, but technology is supposed to have moved us past that. Now suddenly we’re back in the days of plague and pestilence. And yes, the news is reporting that thousands will die because of poverty and lack of money to heat and eat.

I think it’s natural for parents to want life to continue improving and for their kids to do better than them. For the first time that anyone can remember we’re actually seeing our kids doing worse than us, and we don’t like it.

Because there’s a mismatch between what they actually value and what they think they value, and they can’t really explain it or even accept it, so they’re left trying to claim that the only time in human history it’s been objectively good to have babies was if you lived in Guildford between 2006 and 2011.

😆😆

So why did you have kids at all then? Why didn't you predict that life could get worse? Going by the entire human history things have always been bad and good. Nothing stays good forever and it never has. Are you saying that nuclear war threat is the only one that matters? That could always have been a threat as there are many countries with nuclear weapons. So in theory its always been a risk. Its just higher right now. In 10 years it might be low again. But maybe you're right and we'll all be dead. But that's the risk anyone takes when having kids. No one knows. And if everyone took any small risk into account no one would ever have kids. Maybe in 100s of years there is risk of the dinosaurs created by scientists will eat us all. You can't say its impossible. As hundreds of years ago people would have laughed at the idea of nuclear wars.
People just need to accept that for a while (no one knows how long) life will be different with higher risks. But don't keep telling children they have no hope. Everyone needs hope. A hopeless population will make things so much worse.

Never been a time for social distancing and staying home etc?
Maybe not but there often should have been!! The reason why hundreds of years ago they couldn't is because there wasn't a government funding everyone to stay home and tesco delivering food! In the days of plagues/smallpox outbreaks etc it probably would have been a good idea! And there wasn't an NHS at the end of a telephone.

Also, I don't know anyone who genuinely wanted to have children but decided not to because of the the state of the world.

I know plenty of people who don't want to have children. There reasons are "selfish" because they like their lives without children.

I know plenty of people who do want to have children and they are "selfish" because the population isn't low so they are choosing to reproduce for their own reasons.

I know plenty of people who've had idealistic views about boxes to tick before having children, but it's all gone out of the window when they've reached a certain age and needed to get on with it. How "selfish".

I even know a couple who were staunchly against having children because of the bleak future, but now have two planned children because it turns out that they put there own "selfish" needs before those of humanity.

In fact, when it comes to the haves and have nots of children the only person that I know who isn't completely "selfish" tried to conceive for 10 years and has just successfully adopted a child who had no hope without her.

Humans make big decisions based on their own "selfish" needs. Whether they choose to dress these decisions up as ultruistic is a whole other thing. The bizarre thing is that when it comes to reproducing so many people feel that they have to justify their decision and reassure themselves that they made the right choice. The fact is it's nobody else's business.

Is everyone's life really so miserable?? We are on a very normal income, can't go crazy with the central heating but we won't freeze to death. We have a log burner and a slow cooker, we will stay warm enough and fed enough this winter. My 6 year old son is just the happiest person - Pokémon cards, friends, walks, rugby at the weekend, school, sweets... These all delight him. We are lucky to have health, love and employment but we don't have anything out of the ordinary, either. DS lives a very normal, happy life that probably exceeds the quality of life for most children throughout most of human history. Are we exceptional in this? I wouldn't have thought so!

My grandparents survived the worst atrocities that humans can unleash on one another. They still had children that they loved and cherished, and I'm glad they did!

It’s hard to say when the best time is to have children, but my guess would be 70’s or 80’s, but since I was a child back then myself I couldn’t have my kids then, instead it had to be early-mid 00’s. Now is obviously not ideal to have children, but if this is when your window is what are you supposed to do. We still need children in the world to be born (just less of them), so some will have to take the risk and hope for the best. If humanity is about to be extinct, it’s neither here nor there. None of us will know what hit us.

I agree it’s unfair on the parents of small children and babies now to constantly criticise the completely normal decision to have a family. It’s all very well for those selflessly sacrificing their family plans for the ‘greater good’ but in my experience those not having children is due to personal circumstances (eg lack of financial stability) or just making the very reasonable decision not to have children but using climate change and Ukraine war (?!) to justify it.
The world is tough right now but children bring joy. We need children as the next generation and if we raise them well respecting the environment, challenging poor behaviour and actively tackling climate change we hope for a better future. If nothing else we need people here in the Uk as future nurses, teachers, workers. The aim is not to eradicate the human race it’s to wake up to the fact that we need to respect the planet we live in and live in a way that isn’t damaging. I feel hopeful for my children that things will get better and I’m glad they will be here for the journey.

Really? 1980s? With the threat of nuclear war and chernobyl etc? Because with hindsight we know it all turned out OK no one thinks this was a scary and bad time.
I was born in 1980s and knew nothing about the threats. Rightfully so. My parents kept it from me as they should!

Well, yes. Having kids is selfish, we do it to further our own genes. That's the basis of life!

I think this is the worst post I have ever read on Mumsnet. Fuck everyone else, right? Cos we're ok, with our holidays and money and access to medicines. Utter lack of awareness of what's going on in the UK, let alone the wider world

Well if youre going to be made redundant anyway may as well stay at home with a baby /s

'Anyone born healthy in the UK in recent years has absolutely won the lottery of life. To have been born here at any point in the last fifty years, healthy, and to have failed to do well is utterly shameful.*'

What the fuck? You vote Tory, right?*

It feels like a terrible time to have children because living standards are falling, and will continue to fall. Nobody wants their children to have a worse quality of life than they have. It’s usual to aspire to more for your children.

FFS your child could have been born with a painful life limiting condition, had terrible experiences in life, become ill at any point, we could have been nuked at any point since nuclear was created, a comet could have hit us any time, wars could have broken out. Unless all those of you that had your children 'in better times' looked into your crystal ball for the next 80 years of your child's life to make sure nothing bad would happen so they would have a full good life then you need to stfu

Nobody wants their children to have a worse quality of life than they have.

Theres a fair gulf between “I would like my children to be happy” and “any life with anything less than what I’ve got right now is not worth existing in.”

I’d like things to be great for my kids and their generation, too, but if it’s a choice between it’s a bit worse and they’re living happy fulfilled live, vs it’s the same but they’re so miserable and nihilistic that they think humanity should opt to wipe itself out because mortgages are less affordable than they were in 1995 - then I’d prefer the first one for them.

People had children during the siege of Sarajevo. On purpose, as an act of defiance against the forces trying to annihilate their culture. There is more to the meaning of life than the length of dentist waiting lists.