AIBU to think a big reason to birth rate is falling is because mothers are made to feel they must do more for their children than in previous times?

[TheJoyOfWriting]

Now there's a lot more focus on mothers needing to do a lot, the whole 'concerted cultivation' thing where kids have a lot of activities that need help and travel time etc, pressure to get into top schools & unis arguably more than there was in the past, and for support & extra activities from an early age to enable this.

Wheras say, children in the 60s and 70s or before had a lot more independent play time and time outside without adult supervision
The gentle parenting thing ties in to this too, whereas before parents generally did not use such high-intensity strategies.

Working mums are made tp feel guilty often of they can't make the school run. But in previous times children often walked alone or with friends at pre-seckndary school age..my gran was walking to school at 6, tho admittedly this wad as an evacuee in the country
I think it's good we're more safety conscious now but also think that it's gone a bit too far in some ways and put too much pressure mainly on mothers.

otoh there's obvs areas where children are unsafe, and this must be addressed.
Maybe also an effect of the climate crisis will be to have less driving, so this would also make streets safer.

There's a lot of talk that mothers spend less time w kids now and this is why there is too much screen time. But I think that's wrong.
Studies show mothers, including both working and SAHM, spend more time with children than most SAHMs in the 1960s did

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-as-50-years-ago&ved=2ahUKEwjuxsiS-dWPAxW3YEEAHXHsO044ChAWegQINhAB&usg=AOvVaw0RS-idWHNILw0SaKskdwRI

I don't think online stuff is bc mothers aren't spending time. I think it's bc there's a perception of less safety so kids are kept inside more than previously and are allowed screen access, so that takes place instead.

I'm saying this as a Gen Z who's really happy that my single mother (we lived w my gran tho who helped a lot) helped w my music & other hobbies. I don't think this is necessarily bad at all, I just think there needs to be more balance.

So what do people think? Is the expectation for children to be much more supervised now making women feel that children require much more effort than they actually do, and therefore affecting the birth rate?

I went home and baked the cake for school which were asked to provide and did a lot of other life admin stuff to run a family.
I left at 2.30 pm if that's important - I don't really understand why you think I had a lot of time to rest. At my child's school 9 out of 10 parents work fulltime - it's really not a choice if you want to support your familiy.

@MumChp just ignore

As a child of the 60’s I totally agree op. In those days children fitted in with what their parents wanted.

It makes me smile when posters fret about not having enough money to take their children out in the summer holidays. The only place my mum ever took me was to my grandparents, partly because most child centred activities did not exist and even if they did we didn’t have any money.
We spent the whole holiday ‘playing out’ and it was fabulous.

I do not think that is true at all - take a look at Gransnet. I have done my fair share of looking after my 7 GC to allow my AC to work and also just to have fun with them. And all my wide circle of friends of a similar age are busy looking after their GC, collecting from school, making their tes etc. etc.

On the broader issue, there is no doubt that I can see my AC feel they have to do more for their own children and there seems to be pressure to be closely involved in their lives, e.g. making sure they do homework, pushing exam revision, taking them to lots of activities, waiting on them rather a lot etc.

My own children were far more independent - e.g. from the age of 5 they made their own lunchboxes, bathed themselves, got ready for bed (we read a story and did the cuddling bit!), played in the garden unattended etc. I never asked if they had homework - they just got on with it; and we only helped with exam revision if they were stuck with something. We did take them to activities, but nowhere near as many and from an older age.

Going back to my generation, it really was eat breakfast then out the door to find friends to play with for the day.... we would walk to the rec, or bike round the streets, or play in each others' houses. From the age of 10 I regularly babysat my baby sister (she was 9 years younger); and I took myself to school from age 5-6 - this involved a bus ride, crossing roads and a long walk either end. And it was not because my mum was out at work - she wasn't. And there were no fat children, nor adults very much - those that were really stood out. And I used to bike to the seaside (about 4 miles away) and swim in the sea unsupervised from about 12.

I think there are lots of reasons why things have changed: both parents working (either by choice or because of finances) and needing to make up for the time they have to spend away from their children; worries about safety outdoors, particularly as regards traffic; a greater emphasis on health and safety; the dwindling of open spaces or areas where a child could safely play unsupervised. It is also interesting that weirdos were around but no-one seemed to worry so much about them - there was a strange bloke who hung around sometimes (rural area) and we all ignored him - and my DS used to say that "Old Tom was out again with his willy hanging out as we went by on the bus" .... I know, I know - all seems horrifying now! But that is how it was!

I think that I, and also my children, expected less - e.g. holidays were all camping when I was small, and my DC did not see the inside of a hotel till they were about 15. We really did have no luxuries, and neither did my children - this is beginning to sound like a Monty Python sketch!! But it is all true.......

Do children have better lives now? - not necessarily better, just different. Do all these factors influence decisions about how many children to have? - I am sure they do as parents want "better" for their chidlren, as we did for ours - it is the way life progresses. They were not necessarily the Good Old Days - I think each has its advantages and disadvantages.

After housing costs and childcare costs (which are also high because people need to be housed) there's not enough money.

It's a contributing factor but cost is by far and away the biggest reason more people don't have more kids in my personal experience. Cost of housing, cost of childcare, cost of food etc etc. Also age, if you want to buy a home, get married and have decent financial stability before having kids good luck doing that before your early thirties given how high deposits are, how expensive rent is and throw in paying for a student loan too. This is more or less what happened to us, we had our kids at 32 and 36 and as much as I'd love another I'm 39 and feel like I've left it a bit late.

There is definitely more pressure to do more with the children now. When i was young i was expected to look after my siblings from the age of about 8. My eldest is 19 and has never babysat for his siblings.

There is multiple factors at play here I think but comparing experiences and costs are big ones.

I think though that largely women these days have realised that actually you just can’t have it all despite what we were once told!!

I don’t know a single woman who has all of the following:

• well paid work she enjoys
• children (she feels she gets enough quality time with)
• a partner/husband who treats her well and who shares both the mental and physical load of childcare/domestic chores equally as well as the financial burdens.
• Time for herself, hobbies, relationships

Most I know are struggling with balancing work, children and a partner who may or may not be good - but even the good ones don’t share in the load of everything equally. In all cases the woman shoulders the majority.

I think finding a decent partner to do life with and the costs of living and raising children aside it’s simply becoming more and more common for women choose themselves over the stresses and pressures of family life.

I don’t feel like people are expected to do more with their children. If anything I think it’s the opposite, there are so many threads on here about the ‘horror’ of children watching an iPad at dinner or reading a book and not interacting with their parents. There are so many more activities and things like breakfast and after school clubs etc.

My female friends who are child free are so by choice. Money wasn’t a factor, they just don’t want them. There isn’t that expectation of it so much anymore. The majority of us also took a while to get married, there isn’t that pressure to marry someone from school and marry so you can move out. The only ones who did get married to their uni/school are now divorced. All of us work full time, and those with male partners share the load so it’s not like they’re feeling out upon and don’t want children to add the load. Quite a few of those that have children stopped at one, saying they feel content, stress free, and enjoy the current work/life balance.

I do t know - we’d have to look at counties that don’t have falling birth rates and see if we can make a comparison I suppose. If I had to guess though based on my own experiences and that of people I know I’d guess the biggest reason is the economy. You now generally need two people working full time to afford a fairly average standard of living and kids impact that hugely.
Also I don’t feel like all men have caught on to the fact that now women are doing a hell of a lot more outside the home, that means they have to be doing a hell of a lot more inside it.

I think house prices are definitely an issue but when I was growing up, and when I had kids, we didn’t have nice furniture it was second hand, lots of already used clothes, no holidays abroad, no meals out, took a decade to get a decent kitchen. A lot of young people would see my experience as slumming it and they choose to keep a nicer lifestyle and not have kids

And yes having kids is knackerkng and reduces your quality of life in many ways. Babies in the 50s were often left to cry but nowadays it’s a huge no-no. All life revolves around kids now . It’s lovely to enjoy the kids more but also very hard work

A few generations ago, a mother would have thought they'd failed if their child wasn't sleeping through somewhere in the first four months or so. But there are parents in this generation, who are up all night with children over 12 months and marooned on the sofa by the same child who for some reason has been trained to sleep draped over the mother. Now, I know there is natural variation and so on, but babies haven't changed that much. My first took six weeks to sleep through - I mean not a solid night but say from midnight to 6 am - and the second took eight weeks - and they were hellish weeks. I just can't imagine keeping that up for a year or longer. Children were expected to fit in with the family rather than the whole family revolving round the child.

There was far less pressure to entertain children. Sure, we 'd have a few trips to the beach with an ice cream or go ice skating or maybe the local pool but they were fairly simple low cost things. There was less stuff on line and I grew up in a country with one television channel when I was a child and the prime time viewing was a program on agricultural news which often seemed to involve increasing the yield on your dairy herd or getting more wool off the sheep. We tended to follow our parents round so we learnt useful things like peeling vegetables, folding sheets, pegging out the washing and how to change a fuse, and adding stuff to the compost bin (which I refused to do after an encounter with a very large rat). Eating out was a treat and takeaways weren't that common.

It was a rare working mother when I was at primary school. Mothers might have been going mad with boredom but they weren't having to drag themselves out of the house at dawn to face a long commute. Children did walk to school - often a bunch of children from the same street might walk together. Parents weren't expected to be helping with school projects and drawing borders around homework pages.

I think we should meet, then you’ll know one woman who feels she has all those things!

I enjoy my job and am paid well. I have quality time with my family and I wouldn’t change a thing. My husband is caring, respectful, and loving. We share childcare/housework/mental load fairly and have no resentment or stress. I have time for me, I see my friends, and just generally enjoy my life!

@Complet do you work full time & have young dc?

My DH is very hands on & great I have a job I like that pays well. I spend enough time with my dc but I struggle to juggle time with friends, wider family, with DH, myself & other hobbies. I just can't fit it all in.

Are you sure? Our parents and in-laws help regularly, and most of my friends have similar help. We see so many grandparents doing the school run now and I don't recall seeing this much at all when I was a child.

My parents could afford a house on just my dad's salary so they had 4 kids and my mum looked after them. We need two incomes to buy and run our house and 4 lots of nursery fees, afterschool clubs etc would be a lot. So we had 2.

Partly economic reasons but yes also not wanting to give up their nice lives for children. The ability to blame the economic costs also mean it's more socially acceptable not to have children. Mothers now are expected not to have an alcoholic drink during pregnancy and breastfeeding - could be 2 years of your life, our grandmothers didnt do that.

We have no grandparents to help and it's quite standard around here. Grandparents are deceased, they work, they are poorly, they don't live close, they have their own stuff.

The way the government so cruelly treated children during lockdown cemented my decision not to have children. They showed that they do not value children or education at all.

And yes, even as a teenager, I thought the world was a very cruel place to bring children into.

I really agree with you OP and am surprised at the responses. Even pregnancy is super stressful these days, with movement monitoring and diets and exercise etc

Back in the day you had more time for housework and less to do as there were far fewer things in the houses.
You walked to school from 6 / 7, played, and if you didn't comply it was short lived as punishments were really deterrents. Life today is incredibly hard.

I like my life with 1 dd. I don't have more because I don't want more.

My gran actually had children in the 60s, the Pill was out but she didn't use it. She worked though, she was a school Head of Languages, but she only started work after child number 2 (my mum) was 4 and old enough for school. (BTW condoms were available before, surely they were used to limit kids?)

I do agree women working has raised prices. I am a strong feminist, I want people to be able to support a few kids on a single income without driving women out of the workforce.

Better state schools would also help w saving money..

I do think also that too many people, men and women, are made to feel they must do uni when it might be better just to start work. Better adult education courses would be good for people who want to learn later.

The problem with failing fertility is 2 fold. Lots of women are actively deciding to remain childfree, plus the women who have children are having a lot fewer.

I dont think its what you suggest though, I think cost is keeping families smaller, plus needing 2 salaries makes mat leave a challenge financially. I think as other people have said there are a lot more choices in life and not having kids is socially acceptable, I know quite a few couples who could absolutely afford to give kids a great life, but the women just don't want to as they have lovely lives already and don't want the drudgery, wreck their bodies etc