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?

My kids are in their teens and we're not badly off but honestly I am already wondering what we'll be able to do to enable them to have their own kids if they want to. Whether that means me going p/t to look after a grandchild, having a child, partner and grandchild move in with us for a few years or whatever. I think we're going to see an increase in relatively affluent multigeneration households as the only way for people to afford families.

There is also a relatively modern social pressure to "travel, live, have fun" before settling down - but often three-four years at university aren't mentally included as part of that period, and then recent graduates don't have much money to travel (etc) either - so gradually the period before children extends until people eventually feel they have had that experience and want to move onto the next stage.
It anecdotally appears that women reach the point where their mindset changes (having worked back a timeline of how many children they want, how long this might take, when their fertility might start to decline etc) significantly earlier than the men who are their peers and feel that there is still more fun to be had, so there is also a delay while the men catch up and get with the "family" programme.

@wonderstuff I think it will happen by default tbh. I know a few people who in the last few yrs have had to pay thousands for operations because the waiting lists were 2-3 yrs. I was in hospital recently and A&E was rammed with older people, many who couldn’t advocate for themselves, it really scared me. My mum was in hospital last year & when visiting her I often fed some of the other women as they had food plopped in front of them but couldn’t actually reach/aim and the staff were run off their feet.

@LikeWhoUsesTypewritersAnyway

How do we get 'less old people?' Pray tell.

They mean fewer old people in relation to young. We need to be having more babies.

@workidoos

It does always get me on these threads when people point out seeing Santa isn’t an essential. No it’s not, but the point of actively choosing to have kids is surely because you want to give them the best time you possibly can all through their life?

I completely agree. Shoot me but raising children on the breadline doesn’t appeal to me and hardly seems to align with the best chance of a good outcome for the children. I can’t see how having children in poverty would bring joy either to me or the children.

Of course people do it and no one should assume a poor parent is a bad one. But making the best of your circumstances is very different to aspiring to have children with no money.

It seems bizarre to me that people think having children is a worthwhile thing for people living in very challenged circumstances to do. At the risk of sounding like a smug twat, because I am educated and knew I had a chance of doing more than having children, I can see the downside.

Generally the wealthier women are and the better educated they are, the less likely they are to want children because educated women can see the opportunity cost of having them in terms of the impact on their economic autonomy, their freedom and their rights.

It’s less about what you think your children will cost, it’s more about how they will handicap your ability to do other things. If you start with very low expectations you probably won’t see the economic downside of having children because you wouldn’t have done much else if you didn’t have them so you might as well.

In retrospect I was very lucky in that I never had to consider if I could afford my babies. I just had them. It wasn't a thing to fret about. Now I would be very wary mainly because of the cost of childcare. I never paid anything, I worked for myself and had GP who did lots of care. I don't think my children will have as many babies as me. Life is very different now.

I have had amazing NHS maternity care - but understand this might not be everyone's experience.

Finances are part of it but I think our misogynistic society has caused it too. For the vast majority of couples who have children it’s the woman who does most of the childcare even if she works full time. There are thousands of threads on here about it. Lots of women realise that and decide it’s safer to not have kids than be in a situation where they shoulder the mental load and most of the child care 🤷🏽‍♀️

in your example though the difference between the generations is getting smaller and smaller though. So 20 difference and then 16 difference and so on. As the population reduces the proportion might stay the same but the absolute number reduces thus reducing the burden on the lower generation.

. The fact is - bigger the population, the more hospitals and care homes we need for example . They need to built and paid for as the population increases and that isn’t happening so at the moment more and more people are cramming into the same amount of resource. There are only so many hospital beds and that number is not going to keep increasing.

as the population reduces there is more resource per capita. This reduces the burden on the working population. people should be able to stay healthier for longer (possible also because of a better environment due to less people).

To the poster that said overpopulation is a Malthusian Myth, David Attenborough doesn’t think so: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/david-attenborough-warns-planet-cant-cope-with-overpopulation/

How do we get 'less old people?' Pray tell.

policies like assisted dying. I think there will be conversations around what the NHS will fund. Even things like access to care in the home, more people will have to pay for a decent provision.

Global warming will turn out to be a European conspiracy. it’s a big money making business.
off setting, carbon neutral.. all garbage

Dont get het up on it.

Also more younger people will emigrate to other countries which will exacerbate things and we may see our own brain drain.

Many women in developing countries have very little sexual education or agency, poor or no access to contraception and no options once they are pregnant, if they even know they are pregnant at an early age.

The child mortality rate is high, so it makes sense to have lots in the hope that some survive to adulthood.

Child labour is common and even once the children reach adulthood, multi-generational families are the norm, where the more children (or specifically, sons) bringing home income, the better.

It's a completely different culture to the UK where women know exactly how not to get pregnant and have the means to avoid it, the child mortality rate is close to 0 and children are only ever an economic cost, never contributors to household income.

In poor countries, children are your future welfare system and it’s an economically rational decision to have lots of them. They act as your old age pension, aged care providers, unemployment insurance, home healthcare etc especially if they leave school at a relatively early age and are able to work. Some children may also die due to lack of healthcare, so having plenty of them to ensure you do not end up childless would be a high priority.

When you live in a country however that has the infrastructure for pensions, healthcare, education, ability to maximise earnings and coupled with the ability to control family size then decision making about family size will change accordingly.

The childless women I know don't want children and don't feel any pressure to have them. They enjoy their freedom, hobbies and holidays. Society has moved on and women aren't under the same pressure to breed.

I feel so incredibly relieved I've not had kids.

I'm mid 40's.

My ex-husband was abusive in more ways than one - my life, and the life of any subsequent child brought into that would have been a hellscape. Maybe I would never have left if children had been part of the picture with him, who knows? I shudder to think of how bad it would have been.

I was mid 30's when I left him and dated, open-minded back then about the prospect of meeting someone with whom to possibly have a child with.

So many men I met had fundamental issues - alcoholism, drugs, debt, cheating... none were suitable and after having left a hellscape, I was not about to get into another hell with a different loser. So children never happened.

Having a child on my own is not something I could afford. I rent and work a low-paid job that I enjoy, and time for us all goes in one direction - we simply get too old to either have children naturally or with the help of medicine.

This planet cannot sustain the exponential human growth populating it.

A different system or set of systems - economy-wise, etc, needs to be found.

Having women popping out children like in years gone past is no longer the answer.

We want careers, and not to be slaves to the home and men. We are intelligent beings that have had a taste of opportunity in this modern world, why on earth would we want to have to turn the clocks back to the 1950s style of living? And I see from my friends who have full-time careers, and children and are DOING IT ALL at home - just how tired they are. The men are often useless.

It is no wonder we are keeping our legs shut, or taking those contraceptive tablets like our happiness, bank balance, and peace depend on it - because they do.

When I go food shopping which is just for me I almost need to sit down to cope with the shock of how much it all costs (and so much of it is poor quality, but that is another story) and I wonder how on earth people are feeding their families. Then there is the cost of keeping warm, paying the council tax, the effing water rates which are apparently going to go up by almost 50%. Not to mention all the other stuff you need when raising kids and I am not surprised that people cannot afford to have even one child. What an utter mess this country is in. I used to donate to my local food bank and would put baby stuff in but I am now struggling to afford things for myself.

But surely we want these educated, successful and wealthy women having babies so we have more educated, successful and wealthy people coming into the world?

If, as you’ve suggested, educated women choose to not have children, we’ll be a population of uneducated people living in poverty!

not directing this at you, poster, just observing what this would mean in the long run.

I found the articles use of the term 'fertility rate' interesting. To me, this is indicating that women are less fertile.
I assume not.

It's a study based on 1 year 2022-23. Many of the young women that would have had children in this year, would have likely met a partner in 2020-21 , but COVID kyboshed that.

Women have choices now, it's acceptable not to want or to have children. It's acceptable to wait until your 30s. I've been both mother at 21, and again at 33.

But,
With the information given, on the one year survey would heavily suggest a pandemic in the previous 2 years put people off. OR... Stay at home led to a higher birthrate 2020/21 therefore less births in the following 2 years.

It's a rubbish article really.

My passive income is because I spent my early twenties working my bollocks off studying and working. How fucking dare you say my passive income isn’t due to hard work.

It’s not just financial. Many women have finally realised they don’t need to have children or want to have them! There’s much more to a woman’s life than being a wife and mother. The sheer number of women on here that complain about their awful husbands and partners is a glimpse into how crappy some woman have it. Imagine realising that you don’t have to have that life! That you can be independent, pay your own bills, have freedom! Hooray!

I am one of them.

I raise my eyebrows at all the articles claiming it's because of lack of money. I have a big group of childfree friends and while between us we have a bunch of common and different reasons why we don't want kids, money isn't that reason for any of us.

Equally, I have friends who struggle in low paid jobs and they've gone on to have kids.

Money may be a reason some people don't choose to have MORE kids, but it's not a reason they don't have any.

Have you not seen the film Idiocracy?

Don't start me off! The cost of housing is out of control, wages are low, childcare is unaffordable, marriages are unstable, the divorce rate is high, we're in a cost if living crisis, and now there are university fees as well. (They didn't exist when I was going through.)

If you wanted to put a population off reproducing, you could hardly do any more! Of COURSE people don't want to have kids in that socio-economic environment. Or maybe they only have one, where otherwise they'd have 2 or 3.

I believe the birthrate has fallen because of the lack of government support for families. You get what you pay for....You don't want to pay for families, so guess what? You get no families.

There should be rent control here like they have in parts of America. And Quebec trialled subsidised affordable childcare - it was about 150 pounds a week eq, and it was a success. Many SAHPs went back to work at least part-time.

Other countries find ways to help their citizens when too many aspects of living become impossible.