To tell you that if a UK woman has not had her first child by 28, there is a 50% probability she will never have children.

[RetiredMan]

I just watched the documentary linked below, about falling birth-rates, released on Youtube yesterday, by the guy who did the research.

(The fact in the subject is from an interview, the documentary itself only give the statistic for Japan, where the equivalent age is 26.)

Some factoids for those who won't watch the video (some are from the documentary, some are from two interviews with the maker that I've also watched.)

Birth-rates are below the level needed to keep population stable everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. (It looks like only a matter of time until it's true there as well.)

That the invention of the pill is causing this is disproved by the fact that rates fell suddenly in Japan 20 years before the pill became legal there. They fell at the same time as birth-rates in multiple other countries, so it's not that Japan has a different cause.

Women who do become mothers are not having fewer children than before, the issue is that suddenly a large chunk of women are having no children at all. In other words, the problem is not smaller families, the problem is fewer families. (If I remember rightly, Japan went from 1 in 30 women childless to 1 in 5, in the space of three years. It's now 1 in 3.)

I think I caught a statistic somewhere that 40% of US women are now destined to be childless. (Presumably that is among those becoming adult now. But I might be wrong about this statistic, may have misheard/misunderstood.)

One reason childlessness is a problem is that 4 out of 5 women who never have children are biologically fertile and would have liked to have had children, but just never made it happen. Obviously there will also be economic issues, if each 20-year-old entering the job market has to generate enough economic output to support multiple 70-year-olds.

Even though birth-rates are falling. generations already born before births peaked will caused older age brackets to have increasing numbers of people, so for a few decades, overall population will still increase despite births decreasing.

The birth-rate of a population can be 90% predicted by the average age at which a women has her first child. The exact figure has not yet been researched, but it appears to be the case that population will inevitably decline if women who want children do not have their first child by their mid-twenties.

Immigration will not be able to solve the economic problems caused by falling population. There will be nowhere with a people surplus for them to come from. (There was a jokey interview claim that India already has ghost villages, they need immigrants!)

The cause of the decline seems to be a failure of couples to get together in time to have children. The data shows a big drop in birth-rates every time there is a major economic crisis. In response to the crisis, people postpone having children, but once society has shifted to aiming to have children at an older age, it never shifts back to having them at the original age.

A metaphor that explains why couple-formation is down. Imagine you live in a village with a dance-hall that is open for three hours on a Saturday evening. Every young person is there for the whole three hours, and gets to see every other person they could potentially marry had have children with. Now imagine the opening hours are changed to six hours, but most people still only have the energy to go for three hours. Some people leave before the person they should have met and married arrives. Some people are half-way through getting to know one person when another person enters and catches there eye, one courtship is interrupted by a new possibility. Perhaps this disruption kills one potential relationship. If the time-period during which most men and women think they need to mate has changed from maybe as little as five years to as long as 20 years, the likelihood that any potential pair will be on the same page at the same time goes down.

It's not surprising that Japan is having a population crisis.

Women don't want to have children because

• High living costs & tiny flats
• Culture of stupidly long work hours
• Still a very patriarchal society where women are seen as second class citizens.

Falling birth rates are an issue but I'm personally of the camp of making it financially better and easier for those who want children/have children to have multiple rather than encouraging all women to have children.

I also think discussions miss our the role of men, men have to step up and carry their weight reason research found that Gen-Z women want a career as a top priority whereas for men having children was the top priority. Men have to step up imo it can't all be about encouraging women, men have to do more in carrying the load.

It's not just Japan, it's nearly the whole world.

Apparently every country has their own explanation. Japanese women say it's because men won't pitch in with with housework. The British say it is house prices. But it's happening in many countries, including ones where house prices aren't an issue, and Scandinavian ones where men do pitch in with housework.

I think YABU

and the stat about Japan women being childless doesn't make sense.

How can it increase from 1 in 30 to 1 in 5 in just 3 years?

That doesn't make sense.

The world is already overpopulated and increasing all the time. I don't think anyone has to worry about the population level being too low.

I also think discussions miss our the role of men, men have to step up and carry their weight reason research found that Gen-Z women want a career as a top priority whereas for men having children was the top priority. Men have to step up imo it can't all be about encouraging women, men have to do more in carrying the load.

This all day. It’s absolutely insane to me how all the conversations about falling birth rate seem to focus on women. It takes one person of each sex to produce a child.

Personally I think it's cos women have woken up to how they are being taken advantage of.

Their career, and freedom. How easily men can just walk away or cheat on them. Just spend 5 minutes on the relationships board and you'll see the bad behaviour women have to put up with.

It's not surprising more women are deciding not to be put into that vulnerable position.

To solve the problem by having bigger familes rather than fewer childless women, I think the median mother might have to have four children instead of two. That's a rather big ask. It also doesn't address the suffering of childless women who did not want to end up that way.

No-one is saying that women who don't want children should do so.

I kind of agree that men are part of the problem, in that there aren't enough of them who want to marry and have children with 30-something women. If women are determined to have children, they need to get men to commit at a younger age. (Which should be easier, as women below the age of 30 have the upper hand in the dating market. 30 is the cross-over-age, after which men start to have the upper hand.)

I don't see declining population size as bad thing. The humankind was never this numerous and there is only one planet.
And through the history, there have always been childless women, those unmarried aunties from literature were real.

The main issue is that economist and politics created an impossible expectation of infinite growth.

There was a suggestion in one interview that government needs to step in and tell young women it will have their back if men let them down, in order to persuade them to have children at a younger age.

Though it was also asked, what would you rather be at 50: a divorced childless women, or a divorced woman with children? Maybe the risk of a bad man is worth taking, if you want children enough. Not for me to say.

The think a big issue here is financial, some couples just simply can't afford to have kids. The cost of living is out of hand just to keep yourself never mind children.

Next factor I would say is the toxic way dating has gone. Lots of people are out looking for Mr or Miss perfect and either won't comprise, or behave so toxic themselves no-one wants to date them long term. Incel culture has men out looking for virgins only and women are rightly put off.

Add in to those that fact that the world just seems like a shit show, no wonder people are deciding not to have them

That's really interesting.

Women who do become mothers are not having fewer children than before

Is this true? It doesn't seem like it. I think families used to be much bigger. When my Mum was growing up (one of six) everyone she knew was one of 4/5/6/7 etc. Their neighbours had 13 children! That's really very rare now.

I don't think it's surprising the women are choosing not have children (or having fewer). It's hard work and expensive. Why wouldn't you avoid that if you could?

I think what's dying is the urge to reproduce, we're more interested in having a good quality of life now.

I think many women look at the current crop of male specimens and think, Nah thanks. Some would probably choose to become single mothers by choice with better government support.

Other than nobody to pay pensions whats the issue with falling birth rates?

We don't have enough work for people. AI is coming more jobs will go.
Fewer people less demand for houses, will bring house prices down or at least keep them stable.
Fewer people less demand on the NHS which is over stretched anyway.

I also quite like the ideal of falling population.

Environment was spoken about in one interview, and apparently the difference between falling population and stable population will make virtually no difference to climate change.

No-one is saying that women who don't want children should do so.

I think some people are actually.

I kind of agree that men are part of the problem

Kind of? You know how babies are made right?

If women are determined to have children, they need to get men to commit at a younger age.

But surely the problem is that women aren't determined to have children? Did this documentary conclude that all these childless women are unhappy about it/childless through misfortune? Surely, most of them have made an informed choice not to lumber themselves with a child (and a man who kind of, might be, part of the problem..)

We need to 'get men to commit at a younger age'?

How do you suggest we go about that? By force? Bribery? Blackmail?

Young people of either sex don't have enough money or faith in the stability of the planet going forward to have a desire for children.

It's definitely the case that mothers today are not have fewer children than mothers 20-30 years ago, before the birth-rate fell below the level needed to sustain the population. This was a finding that shocked the guy doing the research, he did not expect it.

If you compare with families more than say 50 years ago, then yes family size is down, but that's not what is causing the current problem. Family size had already fallen to current levels 20-30 years ago, but because most women were still having families, that fall was not a problem.

Apparently, in the USA, family size has actually gone up, from 2.4 to 2.6, over the last few decades.

I always dreamt of having two or three children but my first has special needs so there’s a higher chance another one would have the same. 😔
Plus, the state of the world at the moment makes me wonder why anyone would risk bringing children into it.

Having children is too expensive. I think it's as simple as that.

God some men are tedious. "But whhhhhhyyyyyy???? But wwwwwhhhhhyyyyyyyyy???? How we can make sure more women decide to be all fertile and broody in their lovely fresh twenties when they are all properly fuckable?"

Mate, it's simple and it's been known about for years. The more educated the female population is, the fewer babies they have. And globally, women are more educated now.

Childbearing and childrearing is a huge commitment and money, and far too few societies adequately support women and compensate them for the overall risk to their long term financial security. So once we have a choice about it, a lot of us think Sod that for a game of solders and don't.

If you want that to change, get voting for things that protect mothers and incentivise motherhood. Either socialise childcare and the costs of childraising, or make men legally bound to support their children with both time and money before they get any time or money to spend on themselves.

Is it in the women's best interest to be "persuaded"?

I'm all for making having children more affordable, so people would be able to act on their wishes, but persuasion sounds way too much to me.

I can remember when women who decided to be child free were called insulting names like "old maid" or "spinster". You never hear these terms now and they have become as unacceptable as the "N" word. Now that the choice to be childfree carries minimal stigma many women are looking at the shitshow which is childbirth and parenting and rejecting it. I decided age 11 that I wanted no children and have never wavered from that sensible decision. I did not see how children were going to serve my interests in any meaningful way.

Isn't there always a 50% probability that a woman won't have children? Either she will or she won't. 50-50.

I think we need to take the potential children into consideration here too. In the dance hall scenario, everyone rushes to find a dance partner within the first few hours out of fear that they will miss out if they stay long? or others leave too early? But in ‘real life’ if there is too much pressure for women/men to couple up within the arbitrary timescale in order to beat the magical number (There are biological timescales but 26 or whatever it was is towards the earlier side) then there will be even more children growing up in unhappy homes with parents who don’t get on.

I watched a documentary about this the night I conceived DS1.🙈 I was 34.

I was 45 when I had DS2.
Never stop being careful folks.