AIBU The global fertility crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced?

[plantsdieinmyhouse]

We’re in a ‘global fertility crisis’.

I’m astounded that global (even UK/European) fertility decline to below the replacement rate of 2.1 (thought to have happened now) isn’t in the forefront of most people’s radar. There are barely even any politicians acknowledging it let alone devising policies to tackle it.

Thee are even people who still think we’re in the 70s/80s/90s and ‘overpopulation’ is still an issue.

Once everyone who’s alone now is dead the human race will be in terminal decline.

Nothing else matters if there’s none of us left!

Even on a personal level a large proportion of women don’t have the number of DCs they expect to.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/43a9bd63-25c9-4941-bc99-fc9f7e42c12a?shareToken=29bf27cb9dafe9af7a006bc25355e411

I know well the pain of fertility struggles and baby loss, but to be honest I don't think it's just a fertility crisis we are seeing. I think it's also women saying no. We've had women arrested for miscarriages, maternity care/NICU care declines and scandals, men leaving their kids and paying little more than pocket money while the woman has to trundle on. Frankly I'm not a bit surprised we're choosing not to have babies or not to have many if we do!
We also have men who drivel on about birth rates instead of becoming the men and husbands who would make us want to have more children. I heard a good saying the other day- a man comes home from work to a cooked meal while a woman comes home to cook the meal; our problem isn't women becoming independent but rather men being dependent.

This is what I think too.

Who cares. There are far too many people on this planet anyway and all we’ve done is ruin it. Animals made extinct, oceans polluted, great swathes of land concreted over for a bunch of self serving idiots.

Most of my friends have either one child or a child free by choice. DS has said he doesn’t want children and I don’t blame him.

If the government seriously wanted to improve the birth rate they’d end the shit maternity care and birth experience many of us have had, make childcare affordable and make feckless fathers step up and support their children. None of which they’ve done.

I think we seem to have enough people tbh. Definitely wouldn't hurt to bring global population down.

https://www.timesnownews.com/health/worlds-first-artificial-womb-facility-to-grow-30000-babies-a-year-in-birth-pods-parents-can-design-child-article-96231371

There you go.

Exactly @Iheartmysmart . We've literally invented plastic grass ffs

Are you one of those birther people

Maybe because more and more people are disillusioned with the human race.

The current human population of the planet is some 8 billion. Has this information totally bypassed you? 🤔
So no, it doesn’t sound like humans being are experiencing fertility problems. The number of absolutely clueless/misinformed people on Mumsnet boggles my mind.

Climate change is a bigger concern. The human race going extinct, not so much - you reap what you sow. We are the engineers of our own demise.

This.

i would say we are overpopulated looking at what’s going on globally.

I don’t think being in decline is a problem and we aren’t at risk of extinction just yet!

Did anyone read the article quoted in the OP?

It seems to be based on the 'findings' of a lecturer who says the birth rate is linked to smartphone use. According to her we're all just too busy scrolling, looking at porn and watching Bridgerton (it really said that) to pair up and reproduce.

She backs up her theory by saying that the birthrate is higher in sub-Saharan Africa where they have fewer smart phones. Nothing to do with the lack of easily and widely available contraception then?

Honestly, what bullshit.

In 1900 there were a billion human beings. By 1960 that had trebled to three billion. It's now eight billion and we're heading for ten. The 20th-century will be remembered as the century in which the world's population spiraled out of control. In Africa the birth rate is so high the African population is going to double – right in the middle of a climate crisis.

Overpopulation is the elephant in the room, not underpopulation. It has been a major contributor to climate change, deforestation, pollution, declining fish stocks and mass extinction. With all my heart I wish there weren't so many people. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two new housing estates, and we've been told the fields in the middle of the village are going to be built on as well. The traffic is now so awful I have to time my trips to the shop very carefully, and I'm often woken at night by the screeching of souped up car engines. As for foreign travel, I no longer bother. I went to Venice last summer and it was so busy I could have screamed.

On top of that, we're about to radically extend the human lifespan. Within the next ten to twenty years, the first drugs will appear to slow and then reverse ageing. This is no longer sci- fi fantasy. Serious people are working on this, and they're pumping serious money into it. Google 'senolytic drugs', for example. We'll almost certainly be pushing average lifespans up to 120 by the end of the 2030s. In other words, people won't be dying and making room for the next generation.

I did @Bridport. Decided I'd rather scroll mindlessly on mn than have another baby 😂

Under his eye indeed

I think global fertlity rate is estimated at 2.2 currently.

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-kids-woman-population-survival-reveals.html#google_vignette

There are researchers arguing 2.1 usually taken as replacement level is actually too low - they suggest 2.7.

We've been under replacement level for 50 years in UK- under 21 and population still going up but it's this year deaths of "natural" population will outnumber births in UK for first time. So it's a slow effect and politicians aren't usually good with those.

But it's the rapid decline once we peak world wide that's worrying - especially for countries with social security but we'll likely adapt.

What an absolutely insane conclusion she has drawn from decade upon decade of documented sociological findings that if you educate women, make financial stability and employment possible for them, you get a lower birth rate.

Global crisis? - Africa's population is projected to double by 2070. Expect to hear a lot more about the African diaspora.

Why do you care? Honest question.

There are 8 billion people and plenty of countries that are so over populated they struggle to feed themselves. It’s good this is slowing down? Surely?

I agree. I mean I don’t want the population to keep going up but wishing collapse on next generations seems awful. Idk how far in advance the pp means, but out dc or their’s. And even then we tend to care about the next generation if we have dc.

Look at the amount of human suffering, over consumption of resources, world wars, environmental damage. A bit of population decline overall would be a good thing. The problem is that we end up with a bulge of older people and a lack of younger people to look after them.

Exactly. This is what the whole thing boils down to.
Other options for women and reliable contraception are absolutely central to this.

That's why I get very twitchy when you hear politicians and the press banging on about birthrate. It's to do with economic growth and control of the (female) population for them - it really isn't about their concern about who is going to wipe our bums when we're in nursing homes.

I’m not worried about royal population. There is no shortage of people. I am worried that only religious nutcases have children and that this will drag us away from liberal democracy and light-touch religion towards a world torn apart by religious fanatics. This is at the extreme end of all religions, but if we take the Abrahamic faiths, you can see that the extreme versions all limit women’s choices snd opportunities. Then you have the Shia Muslim extremists who run Iran and believe that it is necessary to eradicate all Jewish people to bring about the coming of the Mahdi. By contrast there are extreme Jews who believe that the messiah will not come until the Islamic mosques are removed from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which would obviously bring about conflict and loss of life. Obviously there is no guarantee that the children of religious extremists grow up to believe the same extreme things, but there’s a strong correlation.

Same
🤣

Perhaps the powers that be are more concerned that fewer humans = fewer consumers = less profits?