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

[Unreconstituted]

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

Why is it 'blame' though to analyse why demographics change? It's just stats and research not 'look at the bad women refusing to have kids'.

I have one child, born when I was 39. So I'm a classic 'career woman leaving it later' which is demonstrably what I did. There's no moral implication either way. My mum had three kids by the age of 26 but times have changed.

1 - they can't measure how many kids per man because the man doesn't have to be present at the birth. If you see a woman who looks like she has just given birth and a baby who looks like it has just been born together there is a high chance the baby has come from that man.

2 - I note they used "woman" and not "women and people with uteruses" just noting that.

Because it never says "Men are having fewer/later children". It's always women, as though we spontaneously procreate, or defy these pesky men who are longing to have children.

That's because they don't really care about the man during the pregnancy process

No, imo it's because they blame women.

I'm happy for birth to be one last thing that only women can do.

Well, I’m a woman and I’ve always been solely in control of whether I have a baby or not.

Not sure it’s about blame.

It's to do with how data is collected and it is obviously easier to look at hospital records than to hunt down every man who fathered a child.

No, you haven't. If you want a baby, and there's no man around, you can't have a baby.

From the statisticians point of view it’s like when you’re rhesus negative they don’t even test the father’s blood, they just give you anti-D to avoid blue babies. Because it’s not worth the risk to assume the rhesus negative declared father is actually the father of the baby.
The reporting afterwards may be blaming women in a way that’s not fair. But actually calculating the fertility rate based on women is just sensible.

There’s no point of my adult life that this was the case.

OK, sperm.

I don't understand why women can't be central to a conversation about women

It’s because they can measure exactly how many “live births” a woman has, but they can’t do the same for men. They cannot know how many children a man fathers each year, so they measure birth rates by women.

You can.

Single women with children Bron from sperm donors are on the rise and really not that rae. I know several.

Sorry but it's you that's ignorant and uneducated here.

Who are "they"?

Because it's easier to track how many children women have as opposed to men who don't actually give birth?

Well, being rhesus neg myself, that's not actually the case. It's whether the blood barrier has ever been breached. Nothing to do with the father's blood type.

You don't seem to know what you're talking about?

Society. "Oh noes! Those nasty career women are blocking all those men who are desperate to have babies!"

Ok, angry person who this statistic has clearly touched a nerve with and is projecting.

When women are educated the number of children born per woman falls. The more resources women control and the more choice over their lives - leads to a lower birth rate.
And the simple fact is, even if there was mass infertility among men, women don't need many to still be fertile to have children.

Fertility rate falling doesn't in any way imply more women are infertile just that more women are choosing not to have babies (or reduce the numbers). And it's measured per woman - as it requires testing to determine 100% who the father is, whereas it's clear who gave birth.

I don’t think men really care about DC but it used to be the trade off for sexual access to women.

With birth control and abortions men can have sex without the responsibility of children so not many would actively choose to have children if they can avoid it.

Same with marriage, why would men get married when they can get everything they want without it?

Measuring births per woman - the ones who are actually having the babies - makes far, far more sense than measuring by couple or by father.

You appear to be taking what is a completely logical way of reporting data VERY personally, but it isn't an attack on women.

It actually has everything to do with the father’s blood type. If you are rhesus negative and you have a rhesus positive baby and the blood barrier is breached (probably during the birth) then your body starts making antibodies against the rhesus factor. So if you have another rhesus positive baby, your immune system will attack it.
But if all your children are fathered by a man who is also rhesus negative, it’s impossible for your children to be rhesus positive. But drs don’t bother testing fathers because people don’t always tell the truth.