To think it’s obvious why the birth rate is falling

[workidoos]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnvj3j27nmro.amp

Life is prohibitively expensive in this country. We earn the UK average income each and can’t foresee being able to comfortably have a second child without the financial impact being too great. I understand sacrifices can be made but in addition to extortionate childcare and the essentials we want to be able to afford extracurriculars, birthday parties, Christmases, trips away for us and DD and some basic savings for her future. I’m not talking private school or extravagant holidays either. With another this would be harder, I’d have to definitely work full time and for longer to afford it and thus losing out on work life balance for what’s likely to be increased mental load and stress in some way or another.

On a local group someone was saying it’s over £100 for two adults and a child to enter a festive park nearby and see Santa. Mind boggling. As a family of 3 it then feels like the natural choice to stay that way, despite the fact we always saw ourselves with a bigger family.

Does this sound like anyone else’s situation? AIBU to think this news shouldn’t be a surprise?

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I would agree with posters suggesting the risk of being left as an unsupported single parent is too much of a risk. Family courts/child maintenance agency do not support women.

I think it would be completely frowned upon now for anyone to have say 8 children. The majority of people would think it was unacceptable and damaging to the environment never mind completely selfish.
Attitudes change. There is no reason to have 8 children. Contraception is free and widely available. 100 years ago for example and the reason a woman had that many children was because she didn’t have a choice.
Times, values and expectations change quickly.
50 years ago and unmarried mothers were referred to as whores. 50 years ago and a woman who wasn’t married or engaged to be married before the age of 30 was considered strange and wrong.
Who’s to say that in another 50 years people with children won’t be regarded as selfish and abnormal.

I live in a country where assisted dying is legal. We certainly aren't using it to decrease the elderly population!

And no one has mentioned porn yet.

how that damages not only existing relationships but also new ones. It must be so hard to find a stable ‘normal’ partner if you’re in your 20s now. They’ve all grown up with porn and it must be difficult to navigate sex with that so available nowadays.

All the research shows that across the western world we’re having less and less sex.

Even smart phones and gaming are mentioned as preferred distractions to ‘doing it’. People can’t be bothered. It’s too much effort.

Weve really backed ourselves into a corner as a species.

Not all ‘progress’ is good.

Such a good point

Haven't rtft so apologies if this has been mentioned... I'm in Ireland and get a universal children's allowance per child, not means tested. Its 140 euro per child per month until 18 or 16 if they leave education. It makes a massive difference to anyone considering another child. A twin is counted as 1.5 child so for twins you get paid for 3 children, 420 pm. This makes up for the many things that can't be passed along and duplicate purchases etc. It's the kind of government social policy that could really influence behaviour. A generous similar allowance in the UK could really affect birth rates. It's far too common to hear of people who really want another feeling they can't afford it

Japan is cited as having problems due to low birth rate - 2 workers for every old person but they have never had much immigration which most western countries have.
Some African countries have a very large birth rate so could immigrate here.

I think the birth rate is going down in western society because of the ever growing cost of living. It’s becoming more and more unaffordable for the average person to live. Resources and assets are being accumulated by the rich, including property which is pushing up house prices and rents. Covid made this worse. Governments paid out vast sums of money in response to the pandemic. Where did it all end up? With the ultra wealthy. What do they do with it? Buy up assets.

In just 8 years my house had gone from being worth £270k to £450k. I can’t see how my children will ever be able to afford a house of their own. Look at the cost of a university education these days, and the cost of basics like food and heating. Life is becoming more and more unaffordable. Is it any wonder people in their 20s and 30s are deciding not to have children?

Everyone hoped this Labour government would make things easier but they are just the same as the Tories. The energy price cap has already gone up again and is due to rise again in January and we have been warned over and over that ‘tough decisions have had to be made’ and hints of impending tax rises.

I don’t think there is any future in the UK for young people and will be encouraging my children to move to a country that offers them a more prosperous future when they are older.

I agree with this. Birth rates have plummeted as women's rights have advanced. This has been true in good economic times, as well as times of hardship.

In fact, lower earning households still have more children, on average, than higher earning ones. While I'm sure economic hardship is a small factor in declining birth rates, it's not the dominant one.

Erm, no. The pension problem will get worse over time, unless birth rates rise (and as they've been declining consistently for well over half a century, I don't see that happening any time soon).

With falling birthrates, and with people living longer, the proportion of older people will continue to rise.

I think more young people communicate via tech.
We used to go to pub. Which meant more sex…

Plenty of abysmally poor countries have whole families incl. grandparents living in one or two rooms (or worse, slums). Both parents work long hours on back-breaking jobs, and still struggle to pay for the basics. Girl children are often pulled out of school by 7-8 to look after the babies and do domestic labour. Most of these women are desperate to have fewer children, educate them properly and have a better std of living. Local NGOs do what they can with education and contraception. But it’s an uphill battle.

@ForGreyKoala As I said I think it will happen by default, if you can’t pay you for treatment, care etc you will be left to rot. How does the country you live in manage an ageing population and free healthcare?

I think, as many PP have pointed out, it’s a combination of different factors and influences.

I met DH at 24 and am now 38. I was very, very broody for a bit at 26, but wouldn’t have dreamed of having children, we were conditioned to think that was too young (despite my mum having been married at 18 and had had her first child at 20). We got busy working, bought nice things, had nice holidays. I looked forward to the day we’d have kids though. In my head, I had images of me floating around on maternity with a little baby, in a high chair, feeding it nutritious home cooked meals whilst it gurgled happily at me.

I decided to become a teacher at 26, I love working with children, I think they’re great. Through teaching, I have learned a lot about child development and met countless families. DH and I both have older siblings, so we started having nieces and nephews around the same time. I’ve seen all of the possible outcomes of having children - from the good, to the bad.

DH and I decided not to have children when I was about 30. We liked the lifestyle that we had built. Children just looked like weekends full of birthday parties and sports clubs after a long week of work. It looked like sleepless nights and endless worries. It sounded like more work than reward. As a teacher, it looked very much like taking my work home with me. DH is big on the environment so that was a factor for him.

Now, I’ve had enough friends who have had traumatic births and PND to realise how big of a risk giving birth actually is. I don’t want to take a year or more off of all the sports that I do, at my age, it would be difficult to get back into them after time out and giving birth. I’ve realised that despite loving my classes of upper primary, I’m not really into being around under 5s.

I do think, if the expectation had been that I would have had children in my early twenties, I’d have just done it and probably enjoyed it for the most part. But there are so many different options and so much information out there, that people are making the best choice for them. We’re now both hoping to be able to retire early as a result.

Santa example?

@Drfosters thats quite a naive take on the world. Old people are living longer and we have all the generations to come. It’s a crisis. Unless you propose just murdering all the old people?

30+ years ago, most people I know were married at mid 20s or younger, and had their first baby by 30 - even the 'career' people with good jobs and a University degree. Most have coped fine and raised good kids.
Millennials seem to be more immature at say, 30, than the generation before them....

I'm.sorty but I would have to disagree - with many of my parents generation, raising my generation; I saw a huge amount of dysfunction, at the worse end, what would now be considered abuse
A lot of it due to immaturity and lack of perspective.
I don't think they were more mature. They had more responsibility, but I wouldn't be convinced they were more mature.

(And expectations, especially for men/fathers, were much much lower too).

@HazelPlayer I agree with you. It’s nonsense to claim people who had dc in the last few decades were great at parenting & more mature!

It is naive to think we can keep just growing and growing the world’s population without consequence!

a Smaller population means less older people. You don’t need to remove any, there are just less. Not sure why people are struggling with absolute vs percentages so much.

As a result - More resource per capita. We aren’t expanding our resources quick enough for an expanding the population nor is there space to. London is crammed. Literally skyscrapers going up everywhere. Not a single new GP nor a new hospital. They aren’t going to be built. There is literally no where to put them. Any space that come up, no one is building a care home - it’s more and more flats. Places of fun and leisure are disappearing- libraries, leisure centres etc are disappearing now as the land is more lucrative to build on.

the UK functioned just fine when the population was 40-50 million. I bet it was wonderful. If my great great grandchildren had more room to flourish then I don’t see a problem with it.

of course there are challenges with a lessening population over time. I just think they are better challenges to face than an ever increasing population.

@Drfosters you still aren’t getting it. No one is saying the population should keep growing, you do understand that if everyone stopped having children tmw the population would still grow?

a Smaller population means less older people. You don’t need to remove any, there are just less. Not sure why people are struggling with absolute vs percentages so much.

Because the ratio of old to young won’t be less just because it’s a smaller population!!

the UK functioned just fine when the population was 40-50 million

Because it was a younger population!!

Surely with all the "progress" of modern society any person can become pregnant now. The last slightly valued aspects of being a born female person has been stripped from us, the true wonder of creating another human life. Therefore time for "others" to become pregnant people and chestfeeders.

If you exclude immigration the UK population is already shrinking.

I think quite a few already have. We need to look at whether they are actually an economic asset

Successive governments have allowed/encouraged housing to become monetized by the banks. BTL, everyone trying to get a rental, my house is my pension, etc.
If houses were significantly cheaper, there would be loads of extra money sloshing around the system being taxed on every exchange of hands. The country would be in a much better position, and having a child would not be so onerous.