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?

Global warming is why I decided not to have children.

Fair play. It was almost 14 years ago.

Yes they do. Birth rates are falling globally even in the poorest countries.

Overpopulation and high birth rates are a 20th century issue.

Global birth rates are plummeting. The global population will max out within 40 years then start falling to zero unless we increase the birth rate.

yes I said that before- inverted triangle. Top heavy. I have never said that isn’t an issue. I think it is one that can or will have to be managed and the first generation will take the Biggest hit but when the absolute numbers start to decline it will lesson the burden on the future generations. I have said for years that the state pension will have to to disappear in my lifetime. We will a have to provide for ourselves with it just being a means tested benefit like any other. .Not a good situation at all but I think better than an ever increasing population. It is time so stop thinking of the economy as being a giant Ponzi scheme .

many people choose not to have children as they just see overcrowded roads, expensive housing, the housing being created to fill the gaps is not what they want. People naturally crave space and not to live on top of each other. Look at the coffin apartments in Hong Kong. Literally people living in 6 ft of space. I can absolutely see why people decide that they don’t want to bring children up in small flats rather than the larger houses they grew up in. Even if the government were to build build build they aren’t building the nice family houses that we were built 100 years ago. New family homes are all crammed into tiny sites with postage stamp gardens. I did not grow up rich but my sibling and I always had our own bedroom. Many more children now don’t get that luxury nor the luxury to kick a ball about in the back garden. They can’t even play on the roads as they are too busy.

Lots of very valid points.
I'm quite anti men tbh due to being treated badly by significant men in my life and I get the appeal of not having children. Women don't want to put up with pathetic men who don't step up whilst they play housewife, mother and work full time. Why would any of us opt for that?
But there's also the lack of support. There's nothing for new mothers, so many women don't even have their own mother to support them and it's so lonely, i spent many a day crying on the floor with a newborn and a toddler whilst husband worked away living his best life and no one eveb checked in on me!
The cost - it's astronomical! Our in laws don't understand the price these days, our school bus is 100 a kid every month!
I'm not at all surprised about the birth rate and in our family there's 8 of us between mine and husbands family and only 3 children - 2 of which are mine, and none of them want children.

At no point in the last 200 years has the UK fertility rate been above 5.

Yep definitely a change since covid..entry into things costs so much now... Life is just sooo expensive. Milk alone costs our family about £80 more a year. That's just milk..!!!

These vague headlines are pretty useless tbh. The birth rate is falling but who is having the babies? What is the breakdown by ethnicity, social group etc of the birth rate.

Once we have the detail we can see how bad it is. According to figures there has been a surge in those 18-24 not working and claiming sickness benefits, this is expected to increase. Previous OP mentioned ethnic minorities having more children - is this because women are expected not to work traditionally? Will this attitude continue and what therefore is their benefit take?

There is no point in encouraging people to have children if they aren't going to be the workers of the future. There must be a tipping point where % of those not working, those in low paid jobs massively outweighs those higher earners. I actually think we are near this point now and you can see how there's no more tax to squeeze out of people working full time and not getting any benefits.

At the other end of the tree we keep old people alive who don't know where they are, who they or who anyone else is. Often in great pain. That's inhumane. Somehow we assume that all these people being born will want to do low paid care jobs. Again you can see that they don't.

The devil is in the detail.

Absolutely agree.

Is that a bad thing?

Absolutely, young couples can’t afford to buy houses. They both need to be working full time, and still can’t afford a house. Babies aren’t the top priority under such circumstances.

Well, I hear a lot that society doesn't like children any more, but honestly I grew up in the 70s/80s and to me, the UK today is way more child-centric than it was when I was growing up.

You are seeing the complaints about children in restaurants, etc, partly because children are now seen far more in them than they were. When I was a child, parents didn't expect to take their children everywhere. It was far more acceptable to leave children at home with an older sibling/teen from down the road. Added to this going out for family meals simply wasn't affordable on a regular basis. And when we did go, our parents were very strict about our behaviour once there.

Pubs weren't all doing food back then, kids weren't allowed in the bar under the age of 14 and it was acceptable to leave us in the car with a bottle of coke and a bag of crisps.

It was also acceptable for parents to tell their kids not to scream in the back garden (we were told we'd be going in if we did that) out of respect for neighbours. It was acceptable for neighbours to tell other people's kids off if they were being a nuisance in the street.

I don't think kids are less tolerated now. I think we are expected to be more tolerant than we ever used to be towards 'kids being kids'. If a restaurant/cafe/pub announces a 'no kids' rule, it becomes a massive social media drama, whereas once upon a time it was perfectly normal and accepted that some places weren't for kids.

I think some of the backlash now is about the erosion of those formerly child free spaces as well as the fact that it's considered if you aren't happy about children screaming like they've been murdered, you must be in favour of locking them in a cupboard under the stairs and children should be seen and not heard.

Whenever anyone tells me they want to remain child free I say "smart choice". I love my daughter but parenting isn't fun.

I think with a lot of these people it's a case of misery loves company.

Nowt at all to do with climate change or money. It's choice. Men today are horrifying, porn soaked pigs and women don't feel safe having kids with them. Yeah, yeah not your Nigel, of course.

Guess what, not my husband either. But yeah, millions and millions of men are ruined by it, and young men in particular. They have made themselves unmarriageable, young women don't want a bar of them, and no wonder.

Most young men go through a porn addled period and it makes them absolutely not relationship material. Some grow out of it, but they're never quite normal after they've gone down all those grubby rabbit holes. Many turn into incels and scream at women online about how they will die alone as cat ladies, not realising that's actually what a lot of girls now want. Many hide it and are just abusive to their partners.

Girls don't want to be beaten, anally raped, strangled, spat on, forced into threesomes. Many men today think this is normal. Wish this was exaggeration. It's not.

If I was a young woman expected to allow a man to shove his penis up my arse, shave myself bald and do whatever porn kink fetish filth he demanded, I'd far rather be on my own too.

Anyone who claims I am a prude or "vanilla" based on that statement (which is a word loons use to try to degrade normal, healthy people) needs serious psychiatric help.

Internet porn has destroyed men, as a sex. Women are opting out of children because they don't want to be stuck with a greasy, cheating sleazebag who will treat her like crap, force her to do things she doesn't want to, then leave her with a kid.

And if you don't believe me, just read what the girls themselves are saying.

https://goodmenproject.com/newsroom/do-porn-addled-boys-really-rule-the-world/
https://medium.com/@brittneyleigh/why-women-arent-dating-anymore-6988828adc16\
https://www.healthyscreenhabits.org/s2-episode-3-how-to-talk-about-pornography-dr-gail-dines-of-culture-reframed
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/experimentations/201707/pornography-and-broken-relationships
https://www.btr.org/porn-addict-husband-wont-stop/

Dr Gail Dines "Porn is now the major form of sex ed. And again, this is backed up by studies. The sexual script of pornography is that girls and women are disposable sex objects to be used and abused for men's pleasure. That is the key script of pornography. And the key script for boys is that they have no, um, moral compass. They are. In fact, the image of boys and men in pornography is they are life support systems for erect penises. They are devoid of any capacity for intimacy, for connection, for empathy."

Women were given the message that they can have it all. They now realise means having it all means doing it all!

It's the same where I live. One mum I know who is on benefits has just had her 8th but I think working people tend to have far fewer children. I know someone who couldn't afford a second so instead they are fostering and the money means she can go part time now.

We could only afford a second if we both worked full time so what would be the point? My mum helps me with my 6 year old DD but she's in her 60s now and it would be pointless and unfair having a second just to have someone else care for it.

@dontbedaft2000 well done. Perfectly put.

So true.

It clearly isn't only cost of living - I think there is something of a worldwide movement afoot, where women collectively reject the low status drudgery of having to parent and care for elderly relatives while also taking on paid employment. Certainly in places like South Korea, with the 4B Movement, there is something interesting going on around women rejecting the status quo.

However, as far as the financial side goes, I think there are the obvious short-term affordability factors (astronomical housing costs, childcare etc) but also longer term the fact that people are simply starting to recognise how hyper-competitive the future landscape is going to be. It's not enough any more to simply have a couple of kids and coast along, as my parents did, trusting that there will be adequate educational provision, solid healthcare and jobs for their DC at the end of it all.

All these expensive 'optional' extra-curriculars that DC are now doing are often actually plugging gaps that would have been covered by schools back in the day - for example, the music and sport provision in my London state schools in the '80s and '90s was way better than it is for DD now. Our kids will also be competing for jobs and resources later on not only with their U.K. peers, but also with a global elite - potentially for a shrinking pool of jobs, due the impact of AI.

We decided to stick at one DC for various reasons, and while I do still have the odd pang of guilt about the lack of siblings, with each passing year I am more and more glad that we did.

Great points. Children can't just plod along in the middle any more if they are to have any chance in the working world of the future.

I don't think it is just that though as many people default to being paternal about dogs now so they are everywhere. The area I live in now has one of the lowest birth rates in the country and dogs are given access to special cinema viewings, they are in shops and cafes, they are everywhere and in the past they were not anthropomorphised like this. The change of demographics is very apparent and it has entirely changed the tone of an area, that once was a great place to bring up children, e.g the cinema viewings at the Art house cinema used to be for new Mums and babes in arms! The schools are closing due to lack of numbers so on road now 2 houses are house shares of 20 year olds and we are one of 2 houses out of about 20 that have dC and both of these are teenagers, no young children at all on our road, mid to late 00s when we had a first it was an entirely different story, kids outnumbered dogs at the park. The new equipment at the park is all for adults and a puppy park was built 2 years ago so it isn't just kids that are expected to be seen and seen, IMO.

Interesting point, but I would say the change in demographic has influenced the change in area rather than the other way about.

Dogs are the new big money-spinner. As the children have dwindled, the child-friendly market drops. Dog ownership rose, so dog owners have become the new market.

Family friendly was a big thing in the noughties, particularly for pubs, many of which faced closure without radically changing their business model. I guess as birth rate drops that market has changed again.

This is true, but it's not the whole picture.

40 years ago someone in the UK with a high school education was one of the most educated people on the planet.

Poorer countries have since invested heavily in education, and someone with a GCSE level education now, whilst still luckier than many, no longer has an advantage in what has become an increasingly global job market.

I believe the push to increase education first to 18, then beyond into tertiary education is a response to these global pressures.

Other posters have mentioned it but people overlook the fact so many jobs not want degrees even if it’s just for a sifting CV process. My graduate job required a degree, my managers didn’t have one and future employees were required to have a specific degree.