To ask why dropping fertility rates are always blamed/measured on women?!

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It takes two, you know! Where is all the handwringing over men not having children?!

Umm...

It's measured by babies per woman because women have babies? Not rocket science. Babies per couple wouldn't work because half siblings would make it difficult to count and babies we nation doesn't account for the fact some women have 4 babies and some have none, so it has to be measured by babies per woman. Also not all babies have fathers, those born by sperm donor wouldn't get counted if you were counting babies per man or couple either.

Also ultimately it's women who decide whether thay want to have a baby or not, obviously we discuss with our husband but the final decision to try for a baby lies with the woman, she's the one who says yes or no to getting pregnant. Also if an accidental pregnancy occurs the final decision to carry or terminate lies with the woman. Women are the ones impacted by having a child the most so the social pressures that affect women have greater impact on whether they want to have children or not affects birth rate far greater than social pressures on men.

The old phrase "A wife decides how many children and when, a husband just has to decide if he's alright with it or not"

Yes, men never have children. We must never give them responsibility over the birth rate.

Lolling at spending my twenties and thirties being begged by men to have babies! Naughty, mean women who lower the fertility/birth rate.

Also not all babies have fathers

I think you'll find they do

Couples often make joint decisions on whether to have children based on shared factors (eg economic and dwelling) that they are both experiencing.

Not legal fathers on birth certificates that can be counted by a statistics office.

Because most women want to raise their children in a stable relationship, and if men don't want babies then those stable relationship will never happen.

So women are avoiding taking the decision to conceive.

You can’t accurately count how many babies are born by asking men how many children they have fathered. The numbers would turn out wrong because some men don’t know they are fathers and some men think they are fathers to children who are not theirs. Also some men may have a very large number of children in a very short time which women cannot do. You get much more accurate data by looking at how many children women have had.

Right. Yes. Clearly we can only measure women who have given birth as a certainty.

But why are men never asked about this? It's always women having children later/less, not men!!!!

You can’t involve men in this conversation without also involving numbers of abortions.

It’s about women because women have the control over contraception and abortion, so it is women that affect the birth rate. Men have more effect on the conception rate, so it might be worth asking why so many women who fall pregnant don’t feel they can continue to birth.

Oh come off it. Nobody asks men why they aren't having more children!

As a society, it's always "Why are women are having children later" .

I'm childless - not by choice.

My uni boyfriend was prone to making pronouncements about what he'd expect of a wife, based - he said - on what he saw of his parents' relationship.

According to him, his mother never worked - just brought him up and had a part-time business! He gave me to understand that any wife of his would be expected have to one child and to go straight back to work.

After 3 yrs, I dumped him. (There were many reasons, but the final straw was when - after we had both graduated and were working - he told me that his dream was for us both to have our own flats in the same city.)

I got married in my 30s. When children didn't come along, I was given a laparoscopy which showed that everything was in working order. Not until after that was done was my DH checked out. He wasn't infertile, but we'd have had more chance with assisted conception. By then I was too old for NHS intervention. If I'd paid privately, all the money I'd saved for my non-existent child's future would have gone. Bit of a Catch-22 situation.

I did conceive naturally, but lost all three pregnancies, one to an act of male violence at work.

Yes, you’re right. The assumption is that it is women who are deciding to have fewer children. Practically every couple I know had a different experience- the men wanted one and the women pushed for two, or they wanted two and the women pushed for three.

Tine to ask men in their late 20s/30s/40s why they don’t want any or more DC.

Because they literally come out of us. And it's easy to work out a rough cap on your fertile window because of menopause.
You can't know how many babies a man will father until his deathbed! He could be 90 and shag the nurse and die from the excitement and have a baby 9 months later! Who matters is the woman that is impregnated

These headlines are like clickbait, they don't tell the whole story. It used to be that once married a woman had DC whether she wanted them or not and men just went to work and provided for them. Now people marry much later, if at all, and loads of men don't even think about becoming Fathers until they're much older- I know lots of men in their 30s who still think they're too young to be a Dad.

That would be a very cutting reply, if I didn't have a twenty year old offspring.

If that's the case, it's a valid reason for being upset, given that the media seems intent on blaming the low fertility rate on women not wanting children.

It is very much the case that men are often unwilling to have children with women when both are still young and fertile.

Very sorry to hear that. That sucks.

you've mentioned it a couple of times....

"Oh sure, there are so many men just begging women to have children, and we refuse!"

"Where are all those men begging women to have babies with them earlier?!"

Yeah, it's not the case. But even if it were, the point is:

Men are never blamed for birth rates!!!!!!!

The report talks about fertility rates, but the statistics are based on birth rates. The 2 are not the same.
If 6 women try to conceive, and they produce 3 children between them, there’s no way from that info that you can tell who has had the children. It could be that 1 woman has had all 3, and the remaining 5 have fertility problems. Or 3 have had 1 each and the remaining 3 have fertility problems.

Yup. Not only are they blaming women, it's sloppy reporting. From the BBC.