Why doesn’t the country support having children?

[NameChangeAsICouldBeOverReacting]

Just seen an article on The Guardian about the 15 free hours for childcare for under 2’s and how the whole system is a mess.

I’m just starting to lose hope that this country doesn’t support working families anymore?

AIBU and need to think more positively, or have we screwed up massively by not supporting families?

The Guardian article which I read.

Thank you! MNetters always sound surprised when I say we applied for child benefit and we're eligible for £0 a month. It's not universally given out anymore. We aren't "well off" we are just over the threshold I believe.

Some countries have manged very slight increases in fertility rates with very generous polices- but most are either under replacement level of 2.1 or heading there very soon.

Most of the increase in population is people not dying and past fertility ie people born 20-30 -40 years ago hitting peak fertile ages.

Problem is at one stage it was thought once we hit 2.1 replacement fertility it would establish what seems to be happen is it gets lower and lower - as we get fewer in fertile years there's less and less penitential for babies. At some point I'd personally expect it to rise again and population go up but lack of evidence is making some people get excited it won't stablish or rise again.

Unfortunately there are other factors like young people leaving land for cities and better life and aging farming population left - sparking concerns in future about food production in world as that young population leaves and doesn't return.

Then aging population put ever increasing pressures on working age population and health care systems.

I think some people hear less people and think oh good less carbon impact - because they don't think though the ramifications .

Personally I think it's already perfectly normal not to have children but people who do have them and face sudden cost increases or circumstances change and end up with their children growing up in poverty which has long term social there I do think we should help the children to mitigate negative affects.

The stats for the elderly burden are 50 years in the future.,
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The baby boomers are not the problem for the children being born now - your generations - Xs and Millenials - will be the costly generation. Be careful of blaming everyone else but yourselves.

I listened to a great piece from Oxford Institute of Population Ageing on R4 recently. I’m sure there’s loads of research happening but one thing that struck me was the Director said how siloed people are in research

So one group is worried about AI, the other worried about demographics and the two don’t really talk

She thought the answers might be in those two things talking more

It's an inverted pyramid past baby boomers still - isn't it.

There still less workers per working age - even after they die off as we had less children every generation and we live longer. So we still have high worker to economic dependency rate past that generation - though they will be the big shift.

The stats for the elderly burden are 50 years in the future., The baby boomers are not the problem for the children being born now - your generations - Xs and Millenials - will be the costly generation. Be careful of blaming everyone else but yourselves.

There is already more over 65 yr olds than under 15 yr olds though

Agree entirely, I also think money should be focussed at what will actually make people happier then much of the rest flows from there. How many mothers of young children actually want to work full time, or return to work at 6-9 months, probably a minority so throwing billions into funding full time childcare from 9 months isn’t that great an idea and the execs who would most benefit are usually quite career focussed and would of returned to work anyway or wish they could work part time ideally (perhaps if possible if CB was reinstated) However thousands of people would love to study for further skills and qualifications but are excluded from any childcare assistance. Loads of people would love to work in the jobs they’ve qualified in but can’t due to a combination of inflexible working hours/conditions and lack of childcare outside of office hours. Some people can’t access childcare due to the funding issues. Lots of things need to be given focus before we start assuming full time free childcare is what all women want or need

And younger generations have seen their pension ages pushed out despite healthy life expectancy not increasing. I doubt prescriptions will be free for the over 60s in a decade

@TripleDaisySummer is right.
You can increase fertility rates somewhat with improved childcare policies and a more equal split of childrearing responsibilities between the sexes, like the Nordics, or by big cash bribes like France.

And you can decrease them by whatever the hell's happening in South Korea.

But globally it looks a lot like once you've given women the free choice not to have children by a combination of contraception and education, and shown them a couple of generations' example of what that looks like, then no power on earth will make them want to have two or more children on average.

However I'd argue that child-friendly policies aren't pointless because the long term difference between a 1.5 fertility rate and a 1.75 fertility rate (for example) is well worth having.

Not entirely. Trees grow crops of fruit and nuts. And spices, and maple syrup, come to think of it. Don't get me started on bartering and the origins of currency, or we'll be here all night.😂

Barter is no way to run a complex modern economy: that's why monetary exchange units were invented.

Wait until Gen Alpha fully appear.

In all fairness; most of these Gen A babies are born in places where elderly services/pensions are not an issue.

I guess its more convenient not too, and enough people are selfish enough and stupid enough to buy the idea that no one should receive any financial support, yet those same people are more than happy to accept final support themselves in the NHS, free university, state pension, family allowance etc.

Where we now live things are more children and family centred, for us a month of fulltime childcare here would cost less than what we were paying for one day of nursery in the UK. Here all children from 12 months are entitled to a fulltime pre-school place. Just like a child over 5 in the UK is entitled to a primary school place. For us this costs about £89 a month, if our daughter was our first child it would be about £140 a month. I think the funding for childcare here is about 1.9% GDP.

Wrap around is available at primary school age, however its also common that once children hit compulsory school age they walk to and from school, our eight year old does. So working isn’t as awkward. However employers are far more flexible, its completely normal for employees to have flexible working, no matter their home situation. Holidays are also treated differently, its common for work places to shut down for the entire summer, or to rely on teens and young adults to be seasonal workers so others can have the whole summer as holiday.

The birth rate however is still low, if you don’t want children no amount of cheap childcare will persuade you to have children. Having children will always be a sacrifice as you sacrifice time, sleep, money, space etc.

Our nursery fees are the highest in the world!

Higher taxes fund subsidised childcare. The fact that UK voters consistently vote in governments that in ‘principal’ are against higher taxes says all you need to know. Ditto over social care, education, health etc. Don’t underestimate people’s ability to vote against their own self interests in favour of their social aspirations.

V. true but they aren't even voting for their own social aspirations, they really are voting against them.

We have a Dr's strike, could settled for relative peanuts yet we get 20bn in tax cuts with more to come, not just Dr's, we have no dental service, crappy roads, sub standard NHS, council borrowing at £100bn... poor adult social care, limited MH services,,, super hi and non available childcare.

Almost no social housing, so the least well off spend all their money on rent and/or get some housing benefit.

Political parties response to all this?

CUT TAXES.

The point is you have to earn a decent wage x 2 to be able to splash 1k+ on nursery a month minimum.

By that logic, you are saying only people with plenty of money can have children.

So poor people can't have children? Seems heavily unfair given you can't choose which parents you are born to.

I bet all these people saying "only have what you can afford!!!!" conveniently weren't born to working class families or grew up on benefits.

Unsurprisingly people here on their high horse about "well don't have more children than you can afford"....

I'm on my second maternity leave from a well paying job. My husband has just been diagnosed with a life changing illness, will be left with permanent disability and odds are 50:50 whether he can ever return to his well paying job as a doctor.

So suddenly, because of the unplanned shit life can throw at you, we may have gone from a double income family to a single income family. And if I need to support all 4 of us on my wage alone (plus whatever benefit pennies husband might get as PIP and early retirement from NHS), I'll need to slash my pension contributions (how the hell will I ever retire then) and will also lose child benefit. That £50k threshold not being revised is another awful fiscal drag btw.

We used to afford 2 kids without as much as batting an eyelid. Now we'll probably just about survive. And we won't if I ever lose my job.

So may I please just say a really massive F U to anyone talking about "only having children you can afford".

Hasnt anyone realised yet that we are now a third world country now

In general there is a huge opportunity to expand the economy with better childcare provision to cover to the end of primary school. This would improve financial equality for women throughout there lifetime and eventually be self funding. However getting to that point is complicated. There would be alot of those who work in early years and primary education who would object to change in hours etc.

One route might be a more contribution based benefit system. There has been a move away from this with scrapping SERPS for example. The trend has been more the other direction towards means testing.

There is no winning answer for the government. The world is overpopulated so ideally people should have less children, but then there won’t be enough people to pay pensions in the future. And if they give too much in terms of benefits there’s will be a proportion who have kids and don’t work, and their children are more likely to follow in their footsteps so also won’t provide to the pension pot.

@apples24 "So may I please just say a really massive F U to anyone talking about "only having children you can afford"."

You can say it but that doesn't make it right. Why on earth do you think it's OK to have children you cannot afford, when you know you cannot afford them?

It's a lifestyle choice. I'd like a horse, are you willing to pay for its keep and stabling?

Are you willing to have a stroke before the age of 40?

@apples24 "Are you willing to have a stroke before the age of 40?"

I'm in my 70s and a wheelchair user. However, I wasn't when planning our family.

Can you not see there is the world of difference between life changing events after having well-planned children and planning to bring them into a world of poverty?

They could afford it though if you read her post.