To disagree with Phillipson's Have More Children advice

[JustASmallBear]

In various newspapers.

Bridget Phillipson is urging young people to have more children in order to try and reverse the inevitable population shrinkage from a falling birth rate.

AIBU to think at best this is short termism at its finest?

Apart from anything else, young people struggle to buy a home, let alone can afford the expense of having more kids.

I think Phillipson is deluded in believing anyone wants more children when it'll make their lives more financially difficult.

What are the incentives that will make this irresistible?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/30/falling-birthrate-bridget-phillipson-education-secretary-labour?CMP=share_btn_url

I can't lay my hand on it now, but I remember reading an interesting article arguing from survey results that actually a substantial mumber of women are having fewer children than they would ideally like, or aren't having children at all even though they would like to. Looking at ways to enable these women (making housing more affordable etc) feels like a good first step.

Yanbu, and what happened to advice like ‘make sure you really want a child before having one’? Children aren’t drones designed to prop up the economy,, they’re human beings.

Well a couple of decades back they were moaning about people having children that they couldnt afford. So they were obvs thinking short termism then too. And now start whining when the reckoning has to be paid

Couples can’t afford to house and feed children. Too much social
care tax, too little social housing.

Next question.

Unfortunately in this country the birth rate is skewing towards those who need state support

Now that we are meant to fund them through university, two is enough for me. And we’re on a decent (not high) household income. We genuinely couldn’t afford another child.

All developed countries seem to be facing this issue - no matter the economic incentives or support given.

I therefore am not sure what the solution is really.

The UK has the fastest falling birth rate in the G7 - that does seem to be driven by economic factors. Housing and childcare are just so expensive - people are opting out and having smaller families.

But I do also think that working and raising children is incredibly hard work, and women (and couples in general) don’t really have the appetite to create more stress and work in their lives than necessary.

I think today’s young adults prioritise having a high standard of living (and enjoying themselves!) vs having eg fours kids and life being a great struggle to make ends meet in a cramped home.

Im in social housing and im child free by choice. Admittedly there arent many of us around because when you make this choice while being in a lower income bracket its actually detrimental re. things like housing policy

I remember someone on here talking about that survey.

I doubt there will be any real incentives, and if there were, there'd be an outcry if young people were encouraged to procreate when the government are busy paring back on so much else.

Another thing is that the younger couples can’t rely on family childcare because my generation will be working until we are nearly 70. My mother stopped work when she got married (at 21) and my dad retired on a great pension around the age of 50. Mind you, they didn’t offer any childcare either!

There's lots of research showing this. Sadly children are such enormous financial liabilities you have to be half mad to have any. Fix the housing crisis would be a great start.

Good point. I think it's daft in a society where we're expected to continue to make do with less, to then try and magic up enthusiasm for people to increase their own financial pressures with bigger families.

Quite! It seems like a panic announcement now the realisation has started to sink in.

She’s even more deluded than I thought if she thinks a few more nurseries are going to solve the low birth rate problem. People need big enough houses (or even a house full stop), children need food, clothes, books and toys, enough spare cash to pay for a weekly football/music/ballet lesson. Parents need to not be working multiple jobs so they have time to spend with their DC. Kids need access to a GP and a dentist, and a choice of good quality schools. Ideally access to affordable university if they want to go and decent jobs as adults. I have DC of 13 & 16 bit if I was younger, I don’t think I would choose to have children now - it’s all far too bleak & miserable.

its like they cant think things through to their logical conclusion

I would be interested to know just how many more children would need to be born per annum and for how many years before this was turned around.

Would it be a lot or surprisingly few?

The whole population decline thing has been known about for a long time.

And to start trying to get people to have more kids in this economic climate comes across as bonkers. Who on earth is going to decide to have one more on the back of her pleas???

I knew i didnt want kids by the time i was 20 So just a few years older than your son is now. Im now 52

Women were sold that they can have it all. Two parents working full time with your child in nursery so you barely see them is not having it all. In fact it's the worst of everything. Women are getting smarter and saying no.

Women were told they could have it all When really what they meant was they wanted us to DO it all. I saw through that shit back in the 1990s

Governments never can because their prime focus is only five years ahead.

They never think about anything longterm, so this must now be quite pressing, I imagine.

I think women have come a very long way in equality with men in work.

We do not seem to have had the same progress in equality in the home / domestic chores / being default parent / sharing the mental load etc.

So women are doing two shifts, often with little support, which is very hard and not rewarding. Adding more children to that dynamic makes it harder.

I recently watched a film called 'Idiocracy', in which the idea of the 'right' kind of people having more babies was mooted, and what the world might look like if the stereotypically 'wrong' kind of people have more children. It was a bit of a weird one, but I could see its points...

Bigger families require bigger houses, which are more expensive, and I imagine that money is a lot tighter when you have a larger number of children. Also, how many families can afford to effectively live on one wage if (usually) the mother is at home having many babies and juggling childcare, cleaning, life admin and so on? Throw in long working hours that don't really fit with childcare or seeing your own offspring in the mornings and evenings, plus maternity pay doesn't last for long, the expense of childcare, etc... and you can see why a lot of families just have 1-2 children.

Maybe the cabinet could lead by example? They have enough cash and decent houses. Most of them seem to get their DC into the best state schools. What’s stopping them having a few more DC and leaving the rest of us to manage the ones we have the best we can.

We don’t owe the GDP anything. It’s not a metric we should be measuring our lives against.