To think a declining birth rate is a good (and inevitable) thing

[OptimismvsRealism]

Article in the times today about the "push for Britain to have more babies" on the basis that a declining population will cause economic shocks.

One of the proposals is "fertility checks in your 20s and education about declining fertility in biology classes".

I mean. Isn't it great that people only have babies if they really, truly want them? And isn't it good to have a smaller human burden on the planet (and fewer humans vying for declining jobs as tech replaces us at most of the things we used to do)?

I don't believe for a second that fertility checks would help anyone. Nobody is out there going "trala I'm 45 and really want five babies but just haven't felt like starting yet"!

This will be an unpopular opinion, but our cultural expectations just aren't set up for it.

My grandparents left school at 16, got married a few years later (18 & 20), had kids young, worked hard, stayed married. That was the norm.

Now, many people go to university, do gap years, graduate schemes/apprenticeships and aren't even in full time work until 24 ish (with a load of debt).

Then there's pressure to enjoy your 20s, find yourself, go clubbing, have lots of partners, travel etc.

So many don't find a partner until 30. Fertility is already declining at this point.

There's also more emphasis on every child having their own room, holidays, activities etc where previous generations felt they needed less to have a child.

Not saying one way is right or wrong! But you're looking at 2 completely different cultures. I don't see what the government can really do to encourage birth rate. I think it's just down to making having children as affordable as possible & encouraging stable marriages & responsibility in young people I guess

Just in reference to your original post - I work in IVF and actually yes, there are thousands & thousands of people putting off having children until their early to mid 40’s & they are often genuinely shocked when we discuss their realistic chances of conceiving.

This seems to be what people arent doing. Instead of telling women to have more babies, how about governments sorting out elderly care, working out how we are going to look after older people with fewer working age people, stop taking money from junk food businesses making people sicker, fatter and less able to work etc etc. A slow reduction in population is inevitable, as the people just aren't being born who will have children, and I doubt we'll he going back to the Victorian times of people having 10 children.

I can't even begin to imagine how that happens? I'm 44 and the whole world seemed to be flooded with cautionary tales about leaving motherhood beyond 35 when I was in my mid twenties.

And that wasn't just in dry column inches. Only a few years before, Alley McBeal was one on the biggest shows around, it inspired a wave of women who wanted to train in law, but it was mostly a story about a woman locked in a big career but desperate settle down and to have a baby before she ran out of time.

Agree - I'm really not convinced. I know a couple of women giving it a last go but they all appreciate the issues.

I'm sure most people, especially women, know that natural fertility is chancy after 40, but I think that a lot of them, even women, believe that IVF is a silver bullet that can reverse the clock. Maybe that's what the PP's patients were having to learn the truth about.

And think the same thing about freezing your eggs. I see it suggested so often on here, but the live birth rates from frozen eggs are really low.

I used to see articles about 40-something Hollywood actresses having babies following expensive fertility treatment. I actually started to believe that if you had enough money, you could beat your biological clock.

Eventually, I looked into these stories a bit more and realised that many of these actresses were using donor eggs.

Yeah I think women know the risks but they were just unable to have kids before due to various reasons. A prime reason being not finding a suitable father /partner. I don’t know anyone who has left it until after 40 deliberately because they wanted to travel in their 30s for example.

That said I know many women 40+ who have kids without IVF and sometimes it’s their first kid. You don’t need to use donor eggs or be rich or whatever.

I agree with this. I actually don’t know anyone who it’s worked for successfully yet but tbf most of them have only frozen the eggs so far - they haven’t actually tried to get pregnant yet.

It will be interesting to see the success rates over the next decade or so but so far it doesn’t have a high rate of success.

I have a friend who is early-mid 40s, she’s still trying to conceive but she started in her early - mid 30s. I suppose people who don’t know her as well as I do might think she just started really late but that’s not the case. So you don’t always know the full story with people.

IVF is allowed on the NHS, just not as readily as you would like.

If IVF is allowed on the NHS that readily can my best friend have a hair transplant, can I get a nose job?

Both things out of our control that impact our mental health

Having children is a privilege not a medical right.

The NHS is too cash strapped to deal in privileges

My personal view is that a falling birth rate is a good thing, and that ivf should not be available on the NHS, at all.

I think infertility and homosexuality are nature's population control and shouldn't be overridden (I'm not asking you to agree with me)

That's not to say neither should be parents, but I adopted.

I have a friend who is early-mid 40s, she’s still trying to conceive but she started in her early - mid 30s. I suppose people who don’t know her as well as I do might think she just started really late but that’s not the case. So you don’t always know the full story with people

This is the thing fertility starts to decline from 30. To be absolutely safe and give yourself the best chance and highest quality eggs you need to be thinking about it from 25 onwards. Mostly of course it's absolutely fine to start ttc @ 32,34 a bit less so and by 36 you are playing fertility russian roulette. The problem is of course this timescale is virtually incompatible with morden life in the West except for those at either end of the socio-economic spetrum.

I do think overpopulation needs to be talked about, for better or worse. No politician will touch it, although some try to sneak in mentions of it. Didn’t the serial breeder Boris Johnson (or was it his father?) write “I cannot understand why nobody is doing anything about population control”? And Prince Philip said in 1988 “if I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to do something about overpopulation”. The irony.

There's no real point in talking about overpopulation at this point, except in a few countries in SubSaharan Africa.

The population keeps growing in most countries, not because women are having lots of babies each, but because the children of previous population growth have reached their twenties and thirties and are having one or two children each. Because they are the product of bigger families themselves, even if they have less than two children each, that's still a larger number of babies being born than the number of great grandparents who are dying.

This will inevitably grow the population until the ripples of the previous boom are passed and it suddenly turns around. There's nothing that can be done to turn the oil tanker around short of really draconian measures which would store up huge social problems down the line.

In the few countries where the fertility rate does remain high, you don't need to "talk about over population" to get the population to shrink in the longer term. You just need to educate women, to give them access to the workplace and financial independence, to vaccinate their babies and get them clean water, and to give them access to contraception. All of which you should be doing anyway.

Most people haven't met a partner they want to have children with in their mid 20s though.

I am well aware of this, it doesn't change the biological facts.

I started ttc at 29 and never managed it, seemed the boat had already sailed.

I’m sorry. That must be hard.

One of my friends had a child at 27 and assumed she’d have a second a few years later. It never happened, because her fertility declined drastically and she went through the menopause in her early 30s.

Thank you. It was. At peace with it now.

Given that governments don't do anything to reduce the cost of childcare and housing and also don't take serious action against climate change, it seems unreasonable to be surprised that the birthrate is falling.