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

Critical thinking is clearly not your strongest side

The number of entry-level graduate jobs has fallen drastically since the advent of AI. All these children the government wants us to have just to care for an aging population and do the menial jobs AI can’t do (yet) -well screw that. Haven’t they worked out that people want better lives for their children, not worse?

I’ve got two kids and it’s a real worry.

Perhaps read the article and what she actually said?

Very reasonable, all she is hoping for that those who want to have children but feel unable too, can in the future have them.

But any reason to twist & bash anything this Govt does or says .....

well she isn't going to say "women of England you MUST have more kids" is she?

I wanted more children when I had my second a few years ago but I knew I was at capacity and couldn't take on any more. I love them to pieces but now I wish I hadn't had any, because I get more and more worried each day with how much worse everything will be when they grow up and what life they will have. Until the govts of the world fix stuff and make it work properly, I can't see that changing tbh. For me, it's not even about nurseries or income or things like that anymore, it's about bringing sentient beings into a world where it's going to be increasingly difficult for them to live a fulfilling and happy life.

I don’t understand this push to have children because of population decline and who is going to fund the elderly care. It just doesn’t stack up because it seems logical to me that we need to break this cycle and start to reduce population. Surely the only was it would work if the children people have are healthy, able to work and support themselves. We currently have a population where disability is increasing requiring ever more support, people not working (in many cases as there is no incentive to) and people seemingly unwilling or unable to take any responsibility for themselves.

Just everyone having more children surely will be in the same pattern as the current population trends whuch us not what is needed at all. Smaller population is much more manageable.

Maybe they should increase child benefit then and get rid of the 2 child UC child element limit?

Ultimately, they need to:

Scrap the tax cliff edge of £100k.
Child benefit to everyone regardless of salary.
30 hours for all parents regardless of salary.
Much cheaper school holiday care.
Government subsidised maternity leave for 12 months.

We need working, middle/high earners to be having children, as they are going to produce working and middle/high earners.

No country has managed to reverse population decline even with incentives.

It's too late for us anyway.

Why have the opposite anyway. It’ll be mass unemployment in a couple of generations.

Plus struggles over resources.

The majority of Muslim women don’t work which probably explains it.

Yup, should be making it easier for employed people to have kids tbh. If you grow up in a workless household you are more likely to be workless so theres no real financial incentive to prop up the birthrates of unemployed people.

No government cares about us raising kind, caring children who can go on to live happy and fulfilling lives - they care about numbers and money. If they did, they’d be investing in education and healthcare and any number of other things that address the sort of societal issues that we are all raising on this thread, rather than running it all into the ground and then forking out millions sorting out the resulting issues. What they do now is someone else’s problem later, not theirs. We see it long term, they see it in 5 year chunks. We see life, they see career progression and legacy. And that’s the problem.

Well yes, because thats how we pay for things like health, education, defence, roads. We need an economically useful population, what we currently have is an ageing population and lots of dependency. It’s not sustainable. The money doesn’t come out of thin air.

Society would need to shift a lot to make having more children desirable. Affordable housing and less dickheads OLD would help a lot. But those are very difficult issues to tackle.

This. I wanted children but my body refused to cooperate. Now in my 60s and retired with no money worries and no caring responsibilities, I like my life just fine as it is.

Don’t know about anything else, but how a woman who has never had a real job, that was employable only by her own mother, and in a family charity at that, is now in charge of education for a generation that is the future of the country is terrifying.

You can literally see the cogs moving when she speaks.

I do actually think theres just more other stuff to do now. I could probably afford a more few kids but I would have to look after them, I would have very little time for my own interests. Doesn’t seem attractive as an option tbh and I love mine to death.

Personal fulfilment for some women is going to be about their families but for a lot of women it’s just not enough tbh. I can’t be content spending every waking hour caring for a brood of kids for a couple of decades. I’d be miserable, even if I loved them more than anything else in the world. I need time to read and exercise to be happy. I don’t want to be constantly making trade offs around “can I afford this or that”. It’s not even the money, it’s the time.

Even in Sweden which has some of the best child friendly policies in the world the population is in decline. Both their birth rate and net in migration are falling.

Like others have said this pretence of economic immigration being a problem is a problem in itself because we need immigration to sustain our economic model.

Personally I think it's time to change the model but our government in particular will never do that. It's too big a job and requires longterm thinking and planning, not bringing any old thing out within a five year term, only to have the other side change it all up.

For those saying what Phillipson has said is just a comment about young women having more children if they choose to, it's fairly obvious just by looking at our demographic trends that the government wants an increase in the birth rate.

They won't get it, but it won't be their problem in 5 or 10 years, so they don't have to spend too much time dwelling on it.

They're naive to think that more nursery places will incentivise women to have more, as the places (if they ever come to exist since nurseries have problems as it is) will only go somewhere way to mitigate the existing shortfall.

Why have the opposite anyway. It’ll be mass unemployment in a couple of generations.

Plus struggles over resources

You think an ageing population will help with that? 😆

Like others have said this pretence of economic immigration being a problem is a problem in itself because we need immigration to sustain our economic model.

immigration isn't going anywhere, why do people think the Tories didn't do anything about it. Do people think we will abandon capitalism?

Why do people do these emojis. What are you wanting an ever increasing population?

What are you wanting an ever increasing population?

What has happened to basic comprehension? What on earth makes you think I want an ever increasing population? 🤔

And my original question; why will there be less struggle over resources with an ageing population?

If you can't answer just say...

So between the overuse of emojis at posters what is it you’re after?

Fewer people = lower need for resources, not hard.

What exactly are you arguing for, what do you want to happen

The Uk natural population is likely to be declining in the next 4/5 yrs. Any growth will be driven by migration.