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.

These women think they would be able to raise better men than we currently have so the boys would be allowed to stay and eventually procreate with their little darling daughters (who would hopefully then be happy to be mothers?)

Social engineering doesnt work.

Unless women were absolutely bloody stupid, none. No way in hell would I risk a pregnancy by relying on a man remembering to do something that has far less impact on him than it would me.

I always wanted lots of children but because I couldn't find a bloke good enough to have them with, I had a career whilst I was waiting. Eventually, at 43, I went it alone, so I have one biological child (and now some lovely stepchildren who are a blessing), all now adults.
In my experience, it was the lack of willing men. I always had men wanting to date me but they were not good father material. In one or two cases, I just couldn't have been married to them but they did go on to be fathers. I still know most of them and they haven't changed.
I think you can have loads of kids if you are irresponsible enough to bring them into the world not knowing how you are going to fund raising them and naive enough to believe their fathers will stick around when they are not built for the long haul either.
If you are responsible and want a solid man to help you along the way, you might not be so lucky.
It's really not all on the women.

But yet there are many young teenage girls who have multiple babies with multiple young fathers knowing full well that neither of them are taking any precautions.

Male birth control wouldn’t stop those women from reproducing with those men as they are already unreliable.

The only men who would take it are the men who are responsible and those are exactly the men who should be having children. How ironic.

I’m 28 and have 2dc. My eldest is 4. I have my ex classmates on social media and I’m the only one who has kids. When I drop ds1 at school, most of the mothers are in their mid thirties.

Only a few are younger than me. I think it’s the norm now to have children older.

This is basically the plot of Brave New World by Huxley

What a great rhetoric to force women back into the kitchen while actually giving eff all real statistics and with no focus at all on the well-being of women. Well done mysogynisto bot

I only had one child because:

a) it's too expensive to raise more than one child on our income. We're not entitled to any benefits because of our earnings, yet we're living hand to mouth, living in an overdraft and using credit to pay for everyday things. I use secondhand buying & selling for much of mine and DCs clothing.

b) I had a neurodiverse child and the lack of real SEN support is appalling. I couldn't manage mentally if I had another SEN child. It's been a constant and still-ongoing battle for years, and it's truly draining.

c) I have to work to help financially support the family. DH only earns slightly more than me. We couldn't survive on his salary alone. BUT no matter how many chats/rows we have, the lions share of raising our DC and running the home still falls on me. And I actually put in more hours at work. Im absolutely knackered all the live long day, every day! I don’t have the time or energy for any more kids.

d) We have very little family support in the way of childcare. 'It takes a village' no longer applies. All our relatives are either: • also working endless hours
• are too sick/disabled
• have just had enough of raising kids themselves and want to enjoy retirement years
• live too far away

e) Due to the above, the childcare costs (nursery or childminders) were crippling when DC was younger. We actually sold several high value items off to pay for just 8hrs of childcare a week. Because before DC was 2yo we weren't entitled to any childcare funding. At 2yo, we finally qualified for 15hrs. That was an absolute godsend, but still not enough to stop us struggling. We simply could not afford this again.

f) working so many hours in a physically demanding job has brought on early osteoarthritis. Im in pain all the time. The NHS is a mess and I've been gaslit by doctors into thinking my joint pain is in my head, to one male doctor even passing me off to gynae...because, you know, if a woman has any pain, it must be because of her woman's bits!

g) the world has become such a mess. It's not a nice place. Why bring more humans into a mess created by humans? So they can either suffer in this mess or make the mess worse?

So many social amd economic factors. I do often think if I knew them what life would be like now, I wouldn't have even had one child.

Shot your bolt too soon with this one, my dude. A circumstance I suspect is frequent in your real life, too…

I see what youre saying OP. It's essentially that by delaying pairing off beyond the original biological or societal norm, people are missing the window in which they should be having children.

I do think it is men that need to step up, but maybe society or social policy could have a hand in that. The societal expectation for men to stick around for their kids has radically changed.

I know of so many men who abandon their wives to look after the kids. They make some grudging and tiny contribution financially and then a weekly or fortnightly visit. 🤔 Its crap.

Those who do stay often revert to zero in terms of mental load and housework.

Yes, there are exceptions, but this is reported from a modern, advanced and developed country (the UK) where women are legally equal. We still pick up the lion's share of all the caring of every generation, and men largely float through life having it all done for them.

God only knows how women get on in the more backward countries. We're voting with our feet against being completely shafted once we have kids.

It's very sad, and in the case of the white British people in London - has almost led to their extinction. 90% of the primary school population is born to mothers borm abroad. If it weren't for this ability to attractpeople from overseas, the capital would be a ghost town.

.

I have no idea on the whys as it is everywhere - although worse the more patriarchal and already crowded the society eg Japan, South Korea and counter intuitively as population gets smaller the more crowded the cities get as young people have to move there for jobs. When your rural town drops from 10,000 to 5,000 no of careers drops too.

But the two actual problems are economic - capitalism relies on everyone expanding consumerism - and support, financial and care for aging populations.

I think maybe we need to look harder at those problems than hand wringing at the decline.

This is disgusting. So women now have another “job”. Maybe encourage men to be less shit and pathetic.

The idea that a government will support women is laughable. The only person a woman can rely on is herself.

Am not too fussed. Many species have died out before us. We aren't that special that we shouldn't die out as a species. Besides, we are the most harmful of species and by our own standards we should be rooted out. The other species that we are destroying can may be thrive.
This is the cost of the world (politicians, businesses, an overwhelming majority of whom are men) using women and not valuing us. Now they want to convince us to replenish their tax and profit bases. No they can fo

It's not really about how much money people have, the issue will be when the majority of the population do not work. There won't be enough doctors to treat everyone as there won't be enough working people to meet demand. And that is true for builders, water supply, food supply, everything. A gentle drop in birth rates we could manage, but this is drop off a cliff stuff and he is warning that it coming. If young people want to settle down and have a family it is a lot less likely to happen than it used to. If a young person doesn't want kids, lucky them, this is the best time to be alive.

The maker of the documentary quoted in the OP is working with right-wing former Hungarian president Katalin Novak (who also served as minister for Family Affairs under Orban) to set up some sort of charity/think tank aimed at ‘stabilising the population’. There is some indication that Elon Musk is/would like to be involved.

Just putting that out there.

MIL is that you?

It isn’t actually normal for a lot of people to have babies until their 30s. If someone has one by 28, lovely but what a random number to pick based on some strange stat.

I know so many women who have 1 child and are single. Women who were i a relationship which then failed. In most cases, the women realised what a dick the man was and kicked him out or he abandoned her and she has not been interested/able in a new relationship ans definitely not in more children.

Ultimately I believe falling birth rates are because women are far more aware, either before children or after their first, that men are too often useless and awful and our standards have gone up. 50 years ago, these women didnt have those options - they would not have been able to leave or they would have settled, and had more children.

Similarly I know women who have stayed in relationships for the children etc but who I suspect, if they had had their choice, would have had MORE children. They just couldn't based on the practicalities of having an extra child already in the form if the man they married.

Good. The best chance of the human race surviving is if there are fewer of them.

Older people already pay more in tax than the young and as more people have workplace pensions state pensions will become even less important. Old people will be funding themselves from their savings even more than they do already. Also when women dont have children more will be working full time.

Actually it’s good to know they think like this

another reason to give most of them a wide berth

the confidence in the open display of manosphere attitudes probably contributes to the rapid decline in birthrate - until the Andrew Tate’s of this world started mouthing off and you could see the number of men cheering him on men could pretend “I’m one of the good guys” until it was too late

perhaps now women are on high alert - looking for the red flags of being trapped with an utter dick and going “no thank you” much earlier before becoming ensnared

knowledge is power even if what you find out is less than inspiring!

Musk trolling on MN again - creepy AF OP

I was somewhat with you until you claimed that White British people are virtually extinct in London. The racists always out themselves, they can’t help it.

Ooooo where’s the trad wife one?
let’s rip that apart as well!

Seems like a good time to stop relying on population increase every decade and use AI / tech to help deal with the decrease.