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

Im not sure if I'm misunderstanding something that every Western government in the world seems to be in a panic about, but surely this is largely a short term problem that needs to be dealt with? The Boomer generation is huge, and they need to be cared for, but creating a second baby boom is not going to solve that problem because babies born now will not be productive adults until that generation is largely gone. The generations after them are much smaller. A smaller global population is in the long run, better. With the advent of AI it is likely that many more people will not be economically productive, so the fewer people the better. I'm not a nihilist who wants the human race to die out but birth incentives don't work so we need to deal with reality of a shrinking population that will eventually recalibrate to hopefully a smaller and more manageable global population. Governments need to be working on that reality not telling women to have more babies they don't wantvand can't afford.

On their podcast, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart were discussing the idea/incentive of no income tax for life for anyone with over 4 children. Just as a theory. And would it change the birthrate.

I've got 4 kids, so for someone like me, it may have pushed me to have a fifth. But if I had none or 1, the idea of having that many would still seem insurmountable I think.

I feel the need to caveat this with 'I love my kids dearly', but If I was a young woman today, I don't think I would have any.

Said this before but I think big families were all well and good when kids were more free range. You'd have a baby, you'd need to potty train them and teach them some street sense but then they could be sent out to play.

Now the expectation is that they're supervised at all times and kept entertained but not by the dreaded screens. More things need adult facilitation now, schools don't even let parents make the decision as to when they can walk by themselves.

Whilst not as enforceable we feel pressure from "parenting experts" to go in for more time consuming psychological forms of discipline. You feel guilty for shouting and are encouraged to switch to time consuming conversations about emotions every time there is conflict.

We've gained time with labour saving devices but the mental load has hugely increased. I don't blame anyone for not feeling up to managing all these expectations with more than one or two children.

afaik, the only sure way to create a baby boom is to take away birth control. Romania pre 1990 showed that.

People will invest more resources in a small number of children on average, if they possibly can. This is logical strategy if you think your kids will get to adulthood with good health. This is great, it means better quality lives for existing people.

Even in China or India the fertility rates have plummeted by choice, even in Africa FR have fallen (even if still much higher than in rich countries).

All this fretting about future economy yet somehow Japan & S.Korea remain prosperous in spite of many decades of low FRs AND low immigration.

Creating a society where both parents will be equally (providing no safe guarding concerns) responsible for the children they create would help more.

Look at the other report yesterday 3 out of 4 young women have experienced or witnessed abusive male behaviour in the past year.

Primary schools in London closing because people can’t afford to live there anymore, well not with children at least.

There are people who want children, or want more children, they can bring joy, reasons to strive, a connection to the future, make you more patient, less selfish. They are fucking expensive, increasingly so, mind.

A falling birthrate is not going to be increased by opening 200 nurseries across the country. It’s much more complicated than that.

Plus immigration won’t end, why encourage more people on a planet that is burning when a redistribution of the people already on it could be a better answer.

Having to take DCs to scholl and stand about til door opens then hang around at the gate til they come out in the afternoon is a big timewaster in your day -twice- run buses or walking groups or something. Grumpy DGM here.

Even leaving the financials aside, parenthood seems a lot more intense nowadays...just look at the recent thread about how many parents don't watch what they want to watch (inappropriate content excluded) on TV whilst their DC are around, and comparing it to their own parents.

I think parent's lives are now expected to revolve completely around their DC whereas certainly in my childhood it was more expected for the DC to just fit in to their parents lifestyle to a certain degree. Plus the pressures of social media etc make parenting seem a much bigger job than it ever used to be.

I'm not entirely convinced that it's a good thing for either the parents or the children but it certainly doesn't make parenthood look appealing and it's not surprising that those born in the early to mid noughties, a fair proportion of whom would have been raised in this wholly child-centered way, are choosing not to have kids.

I am generalising hugely, of course, but I do think it's a factor in many cases.

Fwiw I was child free by choice even though I could afford a child - I wasn't willing to dedicate my life to raising one! Maybe we're all just becoming a bit more selfish.

Boris and Elon are derided though and they can afford their DC

Neither of them are on speaking terms with all their children though, and I highly doubt they had/have that much to do with their upbringing.

Would someone mind reminding me how many children Phillipson has?

Don't think that matters, it's the bodies she wants.

Kids used to be able t pay out because other adults would look out for them and if you were being a nuisance your parents would be told and they would believe the adults not the child.

There were virtually no cars in the daytime, the only family car was with the dad at work.

Men used to take pride in supporting a family, and on the other hand abusers had their wives trapped, there were more local police on the street, church leaders knew the flock, there were more spaces not just streets of houses, if you had a work ethic there were more jobs for life locally and affordable housing so inter generational childcare was more usual.

Adults don’t like other children anywhere near their houses nowadays, there are cars parked everywhere all the time, much much much more traffic, very few open spaces to go.

It’s not just parental techniques, parents have to fill in the gaps that society used to fill. If kids are out now adults post ring doorbell footage of them on local Facebook pages. Adults have become much less tolerant of other kids.

Go to some European countries, their attitude to children is very different.

When you educate and empower women, they have less kids. Until men fully pull their weight at home, including with the unpaid mental load stuff, and the CMS properly chases men down and removes their passports and driving licences for unpaid child support. this won't change.

This. Children - and their parents! - are people, not just taxpayers and wage slaves. You’re birthing an eventual adult with emotions.

The more developed a country becomes the less children they have. If anything less developed nations need to be encouraged to have fewer children as well.. the result timeline wise when older people vastly outnumber young people will be very difficult which is happening now but it will readjust in a few decades.

It’s not always the cost of everything it’s because women have a valid choice to not have children and better contraception. I do have 2 children but have a couple of women friends who have chosen not to have children and are now 45 plus both in long term relationships and perfectly happy.

Is this the same government who's also been running scared of Reform and banging on about how immigration is a Big Problem? How does that square with 'We need more children and working age adults contributing to the economy?'

Guiding them into the world of work is one of those memories that make life fulfilling? What a capitalist thing to say! My eldest is only nine but considering he has ASD and struggles at school I’m slightly dreading how he will cope with the world of work in a time of AI

Well now the government have told me to I'm definitely going to get my coil removed and get breeding. I mean dh and I are presumably expected to do all the actual hard work and my career is just taking off again after it stalled, but my country needs me!
No thanks!

Not only that, they're most unlikely to want to be carers and at the rate of house prices and basic living costs will barely able to sustain themselves. Unless they are inheriting, each generation is significantly worse off from the previous now.

@JustASmallBear There will be a huge prolonged when vast numbers of oldies want help from the younger population and the population isn’t there. Italy is heading that way.

Low reproduction rates have a huge effect on our economic wellbeing. We need their taxes for our ludicrously expensive nhs. Plus defence. We need more dc and when people cannot afford them the country will suffer in the long run. More immigration is inevitable.

The reasons this is happening is obvious. The minister is right to highlight it but what is she doing to help? It’s often a money decision. The only people with larger families are the very rich or the poor. Many in the middle now have 1 or 2. We need more with 3 but women value their careers and don’t want time off. They cannot afford to be SAHM so limiting their family makes sense to them but economically for the country, it doesn’t. We have far too many bright couples with no dc at all but having more and more needy families is a huge drain too if the tax take shrinks.

It’s in the Birthgap documentary but not quite the same. The ‘problem’ that research found is mainly in the increasing number of women who want children but don’t manage to have any - often because they don’t find a partner and settle down in time. Those who do have children often have the number they want (though not always) but there are many women who don’t manage to beat the clock.

So we have to have our extra children only for them to be in full time nursery as soon as they hit one then wraparound clubs from school age while we are increasing the GDP.
Please tell me what is going to happen to these children when they grow up - graduate employment rates are pretty shit at the moment with the only jobs available are wiping arses for under 5's or in care homes for the girls (surely we can't have males doing these jobs) at nmw.

The only way this would work is if every household could afford to have one parent at home. That parent would need to be educated, involved and good at raising children that could be decent and kind adults.

But right now people can't afford more dc. They struggle to deal with the stress of balancing childcare and work and the conflicts that brings. Most people don't want to have dc just to hand them over to strangers for most of the day, even though they need to.

Add that onto the streets of the UK feeling more unsafe every week, public infrastructure crumbling around our ears, healthcare, policing and education all failing.

Not many will want to bring the struggle of multiple dc into all of that. It's cloud cuckoo land.

Yes it's been become societally normal that mums should go straight back to work. It's become a stigma to be a sahm.

The only thing this politician is offering is 30 hours free childcare all the way until school.

Why not offer the families the equivalent of cash every month and let them decide.

She's wanting to use government money to keep private nurseries in business which tend to only pay their staff minimum wage (well round here they do), for the government to get tax from the business/owners.

Meanwhile rinsing tax from both parents while they're scraping by a living paying crazy rent or expensive mortgage.

This country survived and had good standards of living on one income families, one person paying tax... Could you imagine if all the woman became sahm... the goverment would lose so much tax. They've duped all the woman into thinking they should have it all, it's no longer a choice because they want double the tax.

Woman are under so much pressure and now she wants woman to have more kids so they can go on to be tax payers.

This country has very high rates of anti depressants being given out from the NHS every month and a huge spike in adhd and autism,which in my opinion I wonder if some of these are just attachment issues in kids from not getting to raise their own children apart from breakfast and evening bath - and some mums might not even have time for that. There's more to parenting than that and not all children thrive in a busy group environment.

Maybe if mums could chose to slow down and look after their own children everyone could decompress a bit? For it be socially normal and for the government to provide the equivalent cash of these 30 hours paid childcare direct to families.

Perhaps controversial, but I wonder if some of these women feel like this because they haven't had the choice. I know plenty of women who assumed they wanted to have children and then decided they're actually quite happy with their lives as they are.