UK fertility rate drops by 18.8% in 12 years

[MidnightPatrol]

The UK has the fastest falling fertility rate in the G7.

2022 saw the lowest number of births for 20 years.

The current TFR is 1.49 births per woman.

What do you think the reason for this is, and what could be done to reverse the trend?

news.sky.com/story/amp/britains-fertility-rate-falling-faster-than-any-other-g7-country-with-austerity-thought-to-be-a-principal-factor-13232314

We stuck at 1 due to the cost of childcare

Mostly down to costs
Only the poor and rich can afford to have children now. Middle class couples are unable to afford children or any further children. It's a shame.

Expense mainly. In a lot of places people even on decent salaries are struggling with the cost of living and in debt.

The solution, in an ideal world, would be £500 a month to everyone with a 0-3 year old I reckon. That would make the difference between affording a child and not for so many people. Obviously would never happen but the sorts of suggestions people seem to make to incentivise starting a family always seem utterly insulting and governments will have a hard time avoiding problems of dropping fertility unless they offer serious levels of investment and support.

Loads of reasons but cost of living is definitely a factor. Even people on very good incomes have to sit down and do the maths before deciding to have another. We were planning on two but wouldn’t have gone beyond that purely for financial reasons.

The other factor is age - people settling down later and having smaller families as a result. We have one, second pregnancy was ectopic, and after that we concluded we were simply too old.

It can only be a good thing. Fewer people means a better standard of living.

This is something that is happening in a lot of countries as they get richer and women have more control over their bodies. It seems to be worst in countries like South Korea and China where women are expected to care for their husbands parents as well as their own children and have paid employment.

So, if the National Care Service ever happens that might help. And men being better at childrearing would make a third child seem less daunting.

The other thing that I've heard people mention when talking about third children is fitting car seats into cars. I'm one of four, and when we were kids we were all crammed into the back seat. I'm sure car seats make it safer now, but it makes the practicalities of life with more than two children more difficult. Don't know what to do about that to be honest.

It's a global issue, not just a UK one.

I'm not sure it's a bad thing, I don't think humans are particularly good for the planet.

And I'm definately not convinced that finances are the major factor. Russian women get the equivalent of 2 years salary as a bonus when they have a second or subsequent child and they've got one of the lowest birth rates in the entire world.

It just seems that, when women have choice, they choose not to. They want to do other things instead.

14 years of Tory government made this country a depressing, hopeless place to live and Tory decisions massively increased the cost of living, while wages didn't rise to match. More recent global events make the world feel unstable and dangerous. Bringing a child that you can't afford into a scary, unstable, depressing world isn't appealing.

This !

Cost. We couldn’t afford 2 close together and by the time DD started school we were far too old (and I mean literally-I’m 46 and going through menopause and DH is 51).

The research seems to suggest that a large number of women want to have more children than they end up having, so something, or many things, are making people miss out.

The thing is, if it's just cost/ financial, why does Sweden have an even lower birth rate than the UK? Honestly, I think it's more broadly socio-economic. Women don't want to be run ragged caring for 3+ children so are settling for 1 or 2. It's pretty relentless to have a career and a lot of children.

Everyone assuming that the UK is uniquely terrible should have a close look at these graphs. The UK's fertility rate may be falling a bit faster than other countries but it's coming from a somewhat higher base and is still slightly higher than most of our European neighbours.

Haven't RTFT so not sure if it's been mentioned, but another factor has to be the absolute state of modern dating in your 30s.

The good men are snapped up early and what's left is mostly dog shit, so more and more women stay single. 🤷‍♀️

At one time I thought it was because the women who only had one child did it because they had an unhelpful partner. So they had one child, saw how difficult it was doing it all alone, and then decided not to add to the burden.

but the evidence is quite clear that what is rising, is the number of women having NO children.

The number of women having 3 or more children remains roughly the same.

Agreed this is a good challenge to the economic argument - although, I know Sweden has challenges with its housing market too.

I wonder if the reality is as you say that it’s just not relative to have many children and also a career - so the pool of people having multiple children has shrunk.

When I was a child I knew so many families with 3 or 4 children. I don’t know any now!

Every mother I know works 4 or 5 days a week though - I don’t know any stay at home mums.

Birth rate is how many babies are born each year per thousand people. It's driven largely by the age distribution of the population - if you have lots of twenty-forty year olds and very few people aged 70 plus then you'll have a high birth rate.

Fertility rate is a calculation of how many children the average woman will have throughout her lifetime, and drives the long term population trends.

It’s because all the men now think they are bloody women!

Tbf, we’ve had the choice for several decades, @TTPDTS. I’m 50 and don’t know anyone who was married at 20 and only know one person in my age group who had their first child at 29-everyone else was 30+.

But housing was more affordable 20 years ago. I do think that finances are a big factor, plus, being childfree has become increasingly socially acceptable. It wasn’t unheard of for my generation, but less common. Now it’s not unusual at all.

Maybe it's people looking for perfection / a lot of fun in their lives, careers and partners instead of settling down with someone nice quickly.

It's a deliberate consequence of government policies designed specifically to stop women from having children/continuing unexpected pregnancies, the cost of housing, the cost of childcare and the attitude towards women being a waste of oxygen unless they're earning over average wages - add in the overwhelming awfulness of male behaviour towards women from about 10 years old onwards and it's no wonder that women are deciding that they aren't going to put themselves into that place of vulnerability and outright contempt.

The cost and the fact that our society doesn’t particularly value children or have much respect for mothers. Probably doesn’t make it desperately appealing.

I am also in my mid 20s and vast majority of my friends are not in committed relationships and still flat sharing even years after leaving uni / further education. I am in the minority as I have been with my DP for over two years and he owns a flat. We earn six figures combined and live in a cheap area, so realistically we could afford at least one child (likely two if we scrimped) but I want a promotion and have some more child free years before we have a family, so again it comes back to career.

This is fantastic news, why on earth would we need to worry about reversing the trend?! 8 billion people on the planet not enough?! This is the best news for the planet.

As well as the obvious financial stuff…

An ever growing cultural focus on the individual and doing what makes you happy, far more alternatives for what to do with your life (and visibility of alternatives through social media etc) and what might be called “selfishness” though I don’t mean that in necessarily a bad way. I know a couple of women of my parents generation who had kids because that was what you did, but who say if they were thirty-something now, with the opportunities they now see and with far better contraception, they’d never have had them. Certainly not 3/4/5.

Also the level of parenting expected now - I don’t have the emotional or physical energy for parenting a big family to today’s expectations. Parenting and children have become all encompassing. But I could have parented four the way my parents did in the 1980s - far less emotional input, far less child centric holidays or weekends, very few afterschool activities, kids piled into cars without seatbelts each in big carpool arrangements, we were allowed out unsupervised for hours, left in cars alone - my parents weren’t bad parents and we had a happy childhood but some of the things they did would get a safeguarding referral these days!