To think this country's future looks bleak due to the attitude towards having children

[KookyExpert]

I have observed a very hostile attitude towards people with children especially on MN. Whenever anyone posts anything about struggling financially due to childcare etc, there are lots of people commenting on how having a family and children are lifestyle choice.
As the saying goes it takes a village to raise a child, there are no villages these days and most families have both parents working which makes the role of parenting even harder in the current times.
Not just that, there are many family friendly organisations but in reality if someone has a young child and when parents have to take time off work to look after sick children, there are so many people moaning about it.
UK reported its lowest birth rate in the last 2 decades and it's relying on migrants to fill the jobs. With the hostile attitude and crippling childcare costs, I think this country's future looks bleak and the shortage for many occupations will only get bigger with increased reliance on migrants to fill those jobs if people keep choosing to have no children.
I expect people to have bit more sympathy for parents with children and less hostility to create a better future for everyone.

Frankly, not every child will be a tax payer in future and even more frankly, since you mention "who will pay for x", most or at least half will not be net contributors.
This "they will pay for your old age" will apply to less than half of people and even from that only small percentage will contribute the majority of funds, if it goes as it is now.

Ghis is also for OP arguing the same

You honestly sound like a child yourself. Who is “hating” on people having children? Half the posters here have children themselves.

Not being happy to prioritise parents over absolutely everyone else at all times is not the same as hating them. HTH.

I had hoped that the dreadful teen phrase ‘hating on’ had died a quiet death. Clearly not!

Nobody "hates" you for having children, OP. But you need to understand that society is made up of all different types of people and that being a parent doesn't entitle you to more money/support/status than anybody else. There is room for everyone to be treated with respect.

I think the future looks bleak because our inactivity rate is so high. We need high taxes to support our increasingly dependent population, this falls squarely on the people in the middle who don’t qualify for much if any help at all who in turn probably have smaller families than they would have liked.

I think it’s better that people who don’t want kids don’t have them. I know several women who would have dearly liked to have had families and weren’t able to (mainly due to not being able to find a suitable man tbh). But I also don’t think it’s responsible to bring children into a dire financial situation.

The vast majority of children will benefit society

Whether that’s from paying into it, or working to benefit.

It’s very short sighted to think other people having kids doesn’t benefit you, as a whole, it does

@KookyExpert
Hi Kooky- you are absolutely right!

The EU and UK’s population pyramid is constricting - due to fall in birth rates and increase in life expectancy. That means the proportion of elderly is increasing, and the burden on working age people is increasing.

The government also has its head in the sand about this- when it talks about wanting to limit immigration as a vote winner.

When having children becomes a life style choice due to expense rather than desire, there is a problem. As others have said- childcare needs to both affordable and high quality which takes money.

We are already seeing state pension age rise, and state pension is a giant Ponzi scheme- we need children to be born to sustain it- and that means investing now in good childcare and helping parents with child friendly work policies.

https://www.ft.com/content/cb7d3b26-ba7d-4968-ad47-c3c553827887

The phrases used were "pay for". Hencewhy I replied abou financial contribution rather than societal.

What a fascinating thread.

From a purely practical point of view, people who have children are doing quite an important public service. It's vital to have a good balance of older and younger people in a population or else things start to fall apart. The birth rate is currently about 1.56, below replacement, which means we're going to have a very top-heavy population in decades to come. If it weren't for the people having children now, we'd be totally screwed. It's worth pointing out here too that the end point of not having children is extinction - I know some people are in favour of that.

I think women in particular need to consider what's going to happen if the birth rate doesn't pick up. One sort-of solution is immigration, though as others have pointed out, it drains other countries. A serious shift in anti-immigration attitudes would also be necessary, which is possible but will likely take time. In the absence of that shift another, not unlikely, scenario is that moves are taken to force women into having more children. Men like doing things like that.

To me, calling having children a 'lifestyle choice' is deeply odd, as though it's akin to buying a car. The end point of that attitude as far as I can see, is that children become an expensive commodity, something only rich people can afford. I suppose that's a natural end point of capitalism - we price ourselves out of existence - but boy does it seem a stupid way to go.

Children being a lifestyle choice is often used as an argument against IVF being available on the NHS. Funny that when you can have them naturally they are not a lifestyle choice.

I remember a thread a while back in which the OP had a group of childfree by choice friends, then one of them got pregnant on a ONS, going to keep the baby and already expecting the group to set up a babysitting rota for her. The village doesn’t work like that.

I think the “lifestyle choice” reference is valid in the sense that every parent sets the parameters for the lifestyle they choose. You can select two couples, each with the same household income and living in the same size property: one of those couples will feel they can only have one child in their circumstances, because they believe they need to maintain a particular lifestyle as a family and want to provide particular things for their child; and yet the other couple will feel they can have four children in the same circumstances, because they aspire to a different type of lifestyle and don’t think that the things the first couple think are important, are important at all.

MN threads about affording more children always end up repeatedly referencing things like needing four bedroom houses, two cars, things like theme parks and holidays being designed around families of four not five or six, paying for university, saving to help with house deposits, and a host of other things which are ultimately not about affording more children, but affording a certain lifestyle.

but I have faced this hostility myself and I see many parents in similar situation.

What hostility though? I can honestly say I and my children have never been met with hostility. I fund my own household, don’t take the loss at work and manage my kids behaviour when we’re out and about. What has actually happened to you that constitutes hostile behaviour?

That makes sense, though I've seen it used to imply that certain people shouldn't have children at all, which isn't exactly heartening.

The day people with kids stop being so condescending to those of us child free or childless ("you don't know love until you have a child", "you're selfish", "you'll change your mind") perhaps we will be less hostile to those who selfishly have kids and think the world should by default like the little darlings.

Our taxes already pay for child tax credits and some nursery fees. What more do you want?

@KookyExpert I think you have a rosy and unrealistic view of how things used to be. You would have loved my parents. They had 5 children, which I assume you would have approved of.

They couldn't afford us, and weren't actually that interested in us. I imagine we were just a by-product of a regular sex life. Our childhood was cold, poor, overcrowded, sometimes hungry, often excluded. There was no 'village' in evidence back then either. We were just ignored. No fun at all.

We each left as soon as we could. None of us has a large family of our own. None of us wanted to put our children through the same miserable process.

Personally I think people are right to want a better start for our children. I have one ds. He has a nice childhood. - warm, happy, well fed, loved, educated.

I've never experienced any hostility as a mother.

Aren’t a record number of young people out of work because ‘mental health’? If that trend continues the argument of we need to have kids to do all the jobs kind of becomes irrelevant.

The hostility from society is palpable when you have young children. Young children/toddlers will be difficult sometimes, it's hard but part of teaching children to behave comes from being in public. DS is 20 months and starting to have tantrums and the amount of unpleasant stares, sometimes downright disrespectful looks I've got when I'm quite clearly in the middle of trying to calm him down/remove him from the situation is unbelievable.

I respect what people said about children on the continent being better behaved but I think it's a chicken/egg situation. You don't just magically get well behaved 5 year old kids that haven't had to be taught how to behave in public from a young age.

There was a thread on here a few weeks ago complaining a kid had been talking to its parent too loudly in a coffee shop, then on the same thread people moaning about quiet kids in front of iPads in public. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Just in passing,

https://time.com/6835865/south-korea-fertility-rate-2023-record-low/

I have a relative who has lived there for many years. She has a huge family ( two children )

Mumsnet is extraordinarily anti-children and anti-mothers, so I think you're being reasonable but will find a lot of people on here disagree.

Obviously having children must be experienced as a "lifestyle choice" for some individuals, but actually it's the very essence of life itself — reproduction is in fact part of the definition of life — and for many people it's so very far from a "choice" as to be the very foundation of existence; the inability to have children or thought of not having any can be a devastating existential blow.

To pretend it's akin to a luxury lifestyle decision is a covert method of endorsing societal trends that invalidate and make difficult all sorts of essential human activities, including family life, community, care, cooperation and connection with the rest of the natural world. It's dishonest and manipulative.

Mental health is very adversely affected by a hostile and unaccepting environment.

Maybe the UK is just a hostile place in general.

@fitzwilliamdarcy I totally agree with this. I have been in many restaurants on the continent where small children are present late in the evening. They are part of the gathering and sit at the table joining in with family. I have never seen a child running around a restaurant because they won't/can't sit at the table - nor are they playing on ipads. That is why they are welcome.

I was on holiday once in a Spanish resort particularly popular with Mumsnetters. E were a group of 2 families with 5 children aged 2 - 8. When been there an hour or so when a British couple, who had eaten and were just leaving, complimented us on how well behaved our children were. All they were doing was sitting at the table chatting and eating. It made me wonder what other behaviour they'd seen from British kids to feel moved to compliment ours!

People are far too selfish and unable to even look after their selves to have kids these days. Some of the comments on mumsnet show this. Bitter and jealous judgemental lot.

It is a choice though. And arguably a lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with saying so.
It's not mandatory. That makes it a choice. You generally have to live a certain way which makes it a lifestyle. Put together and we have ... A lifestyle choice. 🤷

And so what if people move from other countries to fill vacancies? They need jobs, we have jobs, global population not increased just for the sake of it.

Sounds like a win all round.

Global redistribution of population as part of a worldwide goal of reducing the number of people on the planet to a sustainable level would be wonderful.

It won't ever happen.

But it would be wonderful.

It’s the entitlement that gets me, too many people think that having children means that they have the right to a huge amount of financial help from tax payers. Nursery fees are short term not a life long cost. Yes, they are expensive. Unless you earn over £100,000 you get 20% in tax free childcare. This is help. There are some people who won’t be happy until they get free world class child care and the right to years of MAT leave. And they’ll still complain that this isn’t enough. Having kids is hard and expensive and always has been. Get on with it or don’t do it.