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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

521 replies

workidoos · 28/10/2024 17:25

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?

Three women sitting together and chatting with their babies and prams

Fertility rate in England and Wales drops to new low - BBC News

Just over 591,000 babies were born in the UK last year - the lowest number in four decades

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

OP posts:
Thread gallery
9
JenniferBooth · 29/10/2024 20:21

FiddlyDiddlyDee · 29/10/2024 14:01

No, I was making provisions for this obvious situation. It's strange that when food goes up 5% people are up in arms, but when the biggest expenditure goes up 10% year on year for many years people are celebrating. What's ironic is a house in a Country which you can't get access to decent services is not worth a lot. The Country fully deserves what it's experiencing now. People are greedy and self serving.

And the hatred towards social housing tenants gets worse and worse.

Marshmallowandchocolate · 29/10/2024 20:23

I had a child 10 years ago (just the one due to trauma during the birth). I remember my take home pay after nursery being a few hundred pounds. I wasn’t entitled to any child care vouchers as my employer didn’t offer them. I had rubbish old clothes, tv, phone. We had one ancient car. While I had far less money than I do now, I realised the childcare fees were just a short time. Even though I didn’t have much money, I wasn’t destitute and I really didn’t worry or care I didn’t have so much. I worked part time and we just muddled along. Life was expensive then too. (Around 2015 house prices jumped a lot).

Rambling a bit …. we would have had another child (if life had been different during child birth). However, I was very happy during that time and money was very much secondary. I appreciate some costs have gone up but I think social media and even the way we buy things has changed so quickly. I think people expect and want more even in the space of 10 years.

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 20:24

JenniferBooth · 29/10/2024 19:47

Tell me about it. I did some chat shows about deciding not to have kids in the late 90s and i got told that i wasnt human.

Fucking hell that’s awful. I’m so pleased it’s better now. I definitely remember (not even that long ago) it being an expectation on all women.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for not, worlds burning, futures bleak, beyond expensive. More than that though, it’s a choice, your own choice.

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 20:25

Marshmallowandchocolate · 29/10/2024 20:23

I had a child 10 years ago (just the one due to trauma during the birth). I remember my take home pay after nursery being a few hundred pounds. I wasn’t entitled to any child care vouchers as my employer didn’t offer them. I had rubbish old clothes, tv, phone. We had one ancient car. While I had far less money than I do now, I realised the childcare fees were just a short time. Even though I didn’t have much money, I wasn’t destitute and I really didn’t worry or care I didn’t have so much. I worked part time and we just muddled along. Life was expensive then too. (Around 2015 house prices jumped a lot).

Rambling a bit …. we would have had another child (if life had been different during child birth). However, I was very happy during that time and money was very much secondary. I appreciate some costs have gone up but I think social media and even the way we buy things has changed so quickly. I think people expect and want more even in the space of 10 years.

not being goady or arsey

have you looked at uni costs yet?

Marshmallowandchocolate · 29/10/2024 20:27

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 20:25

not being goady or arsey

have you looked at uni costs yet?

Is it best I live in blissful ignorance?

JenniferBooth · 29/10/2024 20:28

Noodles1234 · 29/10/2024 18:51

Yes, it is so expensive. Buying a house (likely flat), is beyond the reach for most working couples I find this not only sad but incredulous.
EY childcare looks to be getting fixed, but when they’re at school there are still school holidays which is often expensive. It feels the rich or people that wfh / have their own business / have nearby support do better in this area.

also something to note I do feel many (not all) students coming out of college etc having different aspirations. Many want to travel and when faced with uni debt or a feeling of no hope of an owned home I can understand a slight infantile attitude to do something different 1-2 generations ago was not on the table.

Extra stress in life to conform and this puts relentless pressure on couples which then have a higher break up / divorce rate. If and when you’re lucky enough to find someone everyone is a bit older, fertility is now an issue and this can rip apart marriages.

I don’t know the answer, but waving an expensive carrot over a tiny box flat that will cost huge sums over a 35 year term doesn’t feel the answer. People often want to aspire to live in a house or a nice place and constant sky rise flats with people smoking dope out of half the windows doesn’t do it for me.

we have lost something somewhere.

And yet the elderly are castigated on here for not downsizing to flats. If families dont want them then why should the elderly

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 20:32

Marshmallowandchocolate · 29/10/2024 20:27

Is it best I live in blissful ignorance?

probably Grin
its just starting to become a hot topic with mine.

VivaVivaa · 29/10/2024 20:33

Lots of my female friends/acquaintances/colleagues are not having kids because they just don’t want them. There are a few who are child free not by choice, but the majority have actively chosen not to have DC. I think more women are realising that you don’t have to have kids to have a happy and fulfilled life. I’d say my childfree friends are, on average, more satisfied with life than those of us with DC.

Most people I know with DC have 1 or 2. Having lots of kids is close to impossible without either lots of money or lots of family support, both of which are a lot harder to come by these days.

I am not surprised by these results at all really.

Lolaandbehold · 29/10/2024 20:34

Don't worry, OP, Labour are in power now and they're going to make everything better.

Winterjoy · 29/10/2024 20:37

Nowadays there is pressure on women to develop their careers before even thinking about having children, by which time for some women it's almost too late to have them.

I would say its more a case of women having the freedom to choose other paths like developing a career. I know 3 older women in my immediate family who openly say that they would not have married/had children if they hadn't been under great societal pressure to do so. I think the worry at the moment and the studies coming out reflect an increase in the number of men and women who are actively choosing not to have children, rather than being unable to do so?

That said, financial expectations and aspirations were much lower 50-60 years ago, and it was rare to see households dependent on two incomes. Only the very affluent could afford a new car, most people made do with a second hand vehicle and there were virtually no two car households as is common now.
As children, we had hand me down clothes and our neighbours used to swap children's clothes or pass on unneeded baby clothes to others that required them. Many requirements for children such as cots or prams were second hand as they weren't being used for long.

The foundations this way of living sat on are gone.

I remember me and my friends having 10+ year old cars and our dads were often under the bonnet doing repairs. All my (much) older siblings friends could tinker on cars also. That's largely impossible with modern day cars because of the way they are built. A family now with an older second had car faces being stuck with a potential money pit needing to regularly pay for repairs that previous generations would have done themselves.

There were fewer two car households because often mum wasn't working so had time to walk everywhere, and local shops and amenities (long gone from this area) didn't require a car to access. Living without a car is near on impossible if you've got to drop off to nursery, then drop off to school, then get to work, all by 9am, then stop off at the (out of town) supermarket on the way home because you've been at work all day.

Hand me down clothes of the past would have started at 10x the quality and durability that we see now with cheap fast production clothes and shoes (the difference in fabric/construction quality compared to even 20 years ago is stark). No-one I know buys a clothing of quality that will last to be to handed down (less readily available and prohibitively expensive), and if any do have items of clothing, toys, prams etc of high quality they are selling them onto the highest bidder to try and prop up their finances, they can't afford to pass them onto friends/family!

dontbedaft2000 · 29/10/2024 21:22

dontbedaft2000 · 29/10/2024 09:32

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."

Oh, and finally, it is NOT as some have hinted at because women are now working and in the olden days they were cherubic angels fluttering around their cosy households, with strong and supportive men enabling their nurturing instincts.

Women have ALWAYS worked for pay. To pay the rent if their husbands whored, drank or gambled the money, or deserted them. Because they wanted to and needed to have their own money.

Life is not a 1950s American sitcom. Only a tiny percentage of a very privileged group of women ever stayed home with children.

If a woman is in the very unusual position of being able to choose to stay home for a few years with her children, that’s great. But it’s not the standard and it never was.

https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/08/women-have-always-worked/#:~:text=It%20is%20commonly%20assumed%20that,to%20engage%20in%20paid%20labour.

https://www.striking-women.org/

Striking Women |

https://www.striking-women.org

dontbedaft2000 · 29/10/2024 21:27

VivaVivaa · 29/10/2024 20:33

Lots of my female friends/acquaintances/colleagues are not having kids because they just don’t want them. There are a few who are child free not by choice, but the majority have actively chosen not to have DC. I think more women are realising that you don’t have to have kids to have a happy and fulfilled life. I’d say my childfree friends are, on average, more satisfied with life than those of us with DC.

Most people I know with DC have 1 or 2. Having lots of kids is close to impossible without either lots of money or lots of family support, both of which are a lot harder to come by these days.

I am not surprised by these results at all really.

To be fair, I think there were always millions of women who would have chosen not to have kids, but the choice was not allowed them. And yes, a lot of women are now simply allowed to exercise an individual choice.

And some studies have indeed shown that women without children are generally happier.

Goldenbear · 29/10/2024 21:45

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 20:25

not being goady or arsey

have you looked at uni costs yet?

Not all are capable of going to uni though I'm fact I'm visiting unis with DS and the unis we are visiting are all asking for A A A, in my day these same unis were BBB for most courses e.g Exeter. My DS is on track but I can see how it excludes many candidates.

Goldenbear · 29/10/2024 21:47

Goldenbear · 29/10/2024 21:45

Not all are capable of going to uni though I'm fact I'm visiting unis with DS and the unis we are visiting are all asking for A A A, in my day these same unis were BBB for most courses e.g Exeter. My DS is on track but I can see how it excludes many candidates.

That was supposed to read AAA and therefore many don't have to worry about funding Uni for DC

Goldenbear · 29/10/2024 21:47

Sorry A star

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 21:54

Goldenbear · 29/10/2024 21:47

That was supposed to read AAA and therefore many don't have to worry about funding Uni for DC

I do understand that, it’s not a given that they want / need or are capable. Most parents what to offer the opportunity if they can, most parents want their kids to fulfill their potential, not feel it’s off the table before they’ve begun. Some of the threads about accommodation costs are eye opening.

Meltdown247 · 29/10/2024 22:28

PlopSofa · 29/10/2024 19:51

USA is very much in the same boat.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240525.htm#:~:text=For%20Immediate%20Release:%20April%2025%2C%202024&text=The%20general%20fertility%20rate%20in,3%2C591%2C328%20births%20recorded%20in%202023.&text=were%20unchanged%20for%20females%20aged%2010–14%20and%2040–49.

The problem affecting everyone is rampant inflation since covid. Money was thrown around like confetti to ‘stabilise’ the markets. But it was all debt that needs to be repaid. By someone.

Then war in Russia/Ukraine just added to high oil and commodity prices like wheat. Demand surged when things returned to normal but supply lines couldn’t keep up, and prices went up and have never returned to what they were.

Trump added $7.8 TRILLION to USA’s national debt during his presidential tenure. That money has to find a home somewhere. He massively devalued the dollar and now everyone else has to play catch up. All the money we own has less value and buys less than it used to.

Let’s hope he doesn’t get in again or we’re in for a very rough ride with his project 1925.

Companies have also got greedier using inflation as an excuse to keep raising prices. We don’t live in an ethical world anymore. It’s every man (and woman) themselves.

Look at state by state stats. But you have not looked at ROW stats - it’s not a simple answer.
check out Peter Zeihan who has been talking about this for years.

AlecTrevelyan006 · 29/10/2024 22:40

there's no single reason for the falling birth rates - it's a multitude of things and most of them have been mentioned on this thread. However, I'm a little surprised that so many people seem quite blasé about it. As the article below outlines, when birth rates fall to a certain level the population won't simply fall slowly but will fall off a cliff. Population decline will have major impacts globally.

e.g.
“ To see what this means for our future, we can look at an extreme case. In South Korea, the average woman is expected to give birth to 0.8 children over their lifetime. Even assuming birth rates don’t drop further, the number of children born will more than halve with each passing generation. If you start with 100 people, the next generation will have 41, the generation after that 16. It’s barely exaggerating to say that if this continues, Korea will simply cease to exist as we know it.”

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2024.10.10-102534/www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/10/world-heading-doomsday-humanity-brush-extinction" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2024.10.10-102534/www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/10/world-heading-doomsday-humanity-brush-extinction/

AllTheChaos · 29/10/2024 23:30

Thameslock · 28/10/2024 17:52

Agree with points above. Add to that the decline in fertility rates, the pill works twice! once as expected and again when all that oestrogen ends up in the environment. Sad but true

It’s more down to artificial oestrogens leaching from plastics - it’s fascinating!

fetchacloth · 29/10/2024 23:30

hibernatinghorris · 29/10/2024 20:24

Fucking hell that’s awful. I’m so pleased it’s better now. I definitely remember (not even that long ago) it being an expectation on all women.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for not, worlds burning, futures bleak, beyond expensive. More than that though, it’s a choice, your own choice.

For some women it's not even a choice. In the early 1990s I found out that I wouldn't be able to have children. There was a certain element of shame attached to that then too, especially amongst the older generations. Luckily these days people are more sympathetic to this.

PyongyangKipperbang · 30/10/2024 00:27

As a parent of 6 kids, my eldest is single and is in fact single as his ex ended things because he didnt want kids (he is disabled which affects his decision as he doesnt think he would cope). Second doesnt want them, neither does her partner although both (almost 30) accept that they may change their mind but dont think that they will. Biggest part of this is their careers. DD has far more opportunities to move on without the restrictions that comes with having children due to the nature of her profession. Third doesnt want them, again due to her career. She is in Art Direction and although she could combine that with a family, she would be limited on the jobs she could take if she had kids. Harder to upsticks for 6 months to (say) Japan with a couple of toddlers in tow. Fourth has never had any interest in children and I doubt ever will, her career hasnt started yet as she is still at uni but it is not a family friendly choice. DS is 19....who knows. He says now that he isnt interested but well aware that at that age it could well change. Youngest is 13, so again who knows.

Point is that with the girls, their choices are definitely influenced by their careers. They know that they will have far more success and opportunities if they stay child free. I am also aware that perhaps my choice to have a large family played a part as they lived the reality of the sacrifices that that choice came with.

So I am not convinced that COL is the only thing at play here, although I am sure it does make a difference. But our daughters havent been brought up with the "when you have kids" thing like we (I am 51) were. Now they are brought up with "IF you have kids" which is how it should be. I chose to have a large family and wouldnt change that for the world, but they also have choices and they are choosing what is right for them.

OonaStubbs · 30/10/2024 00:36

Isn't this the natural result of what feminists fought for, for women to be regarded as not just baby-makers and caregivers?

PyongyangKipperbang · 30/10/2024 00:38

OonaStubbs · 30/10/2024 00:36

Isn't this the natural result of what feminists fought for, for women to be regarded as not just baby-makers and caregivers?

Whilst I agree with you, unfortunately that means that yet again the woes of the world are all the fault of those bloody wimmin. Twas ever thus......

cocoloco23 · 30/10/2024 00:59

Davros · 28/10/2024 18:17

@Foxblue I agree with you. Women can't help but see how useless men can be, especially when children come along.

This. I don’t have kids and nor do most of my close female friends. For the majority of us, it’s because we didn’t meet anyone we wanted to have kids with / trusted enough to have kids with while we were young enough to do so.

Now, at the age of 50, I’m so glad I didn’t have any. The world is in a horrific state - climate change, rising cost of living, rising incel movements… I’m glad I don’t have to worry about my kids inheriting that.

Pumpkincozynights · 30/10/2024 07:48

There are still plenty of women prepared to have children with useless men. I see it around me all the time. My work colleague calls her dds partner ‘a lazy bastard.’ As indeed he is. Always asking my colleague to have the dcs for days on end whilst he pisses about with his latest project. His partner is the bread winner. She has said even though her dd would have liked 3 children, she can’t see it happening.