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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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.

609 replies

RetiredMan · 20/09/2025 23:47

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.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music that you love, upload original content and share it all with friends, family and the world on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/m2GeVG0XYTc?si=rzbxoEDDxcy3hn6d

OP posts:
Thread gallery
8
Onegingerhead · 21/09/2025 09:09

menopausalmare · 21/09/2025 08:56

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

Yes, exactly. That’s why I only had one — it’s the maximum I knew I could afford on my own if shit ever hit the fan.

And I’m not entirely convinced that even if fathers contributed more, it would suddenly lead to loads more babies. Children take up huge amounts of a family’s resources, and unless women are stripped of their rights and forced to have as many as biology allows, I just can’t see how birth rates will ever climb significantly.

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 09:09

slashlover · 21/09/2025 04:59

So you need to have kids to post on AIBU? To discuss politics? To talk about what TV shows you like? To ask about a place you want to go on holiday?

It's called mumsnet. The clue is in the title. It isn't a good place to gloat about how clever you are that you are not a mum.

padso · 21/09/2025 09:09

I think we need to campaign for policy that means that ai taking over jobs doesn't just mean more money for the super rich and everyone else in poverty.

Good luck with that!

Mewling · 21/09/2025 09:10

There’s another thread talking about The Handmaid’s Tale TV show and honestly, I don't think America is far off from this kind of fuckery and I hope to God that Britain doesn’t follow.

I really don’t think we can underestimate how damaging posts like these are. It attempts to normalise this batshittery and frame it as reasoned debate.

VeryViolet · 21/09/2025 09:12

How do women get men to commit? Well, this may be controversial, but I think offering them copious amounts of brain-melting sex might do the the trick...

Thanks for that useful piece of advice, Retired Man. What advice do you have about getting men to remain committed? If it's ongoing brain-melting sex, then wouldn't having babies be a bad idea? Because 2am feed exhaustion, sore breasts, episiotomy scars etc etc tend to reduce the amount of brain-melting sex on offer.

padso · 21/09/2025 09:12

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.

You can argue that there has been some white flight but there are a number of reason for that. Extinction?! That statistic isn't true

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 09:12

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 09:09

It's called mumsnet. The clue is in the title. It isn't a good place to gloat about how clever you are that you are not a mum.

oh piss off. If there is one thing I can’t stand more than anything it’s women who think that they are better than others simply because they gave birth.

My DHs ex wife is one of these golden vaginas who thinks that by popping a human out she can claim all sorts of special accolades.

padso · 21/09/2025 09:13

@Mewling I really think birth rates has influence the abortion laws in the US.

slashlover · 21/09/2025 09:14

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 09:09

It's called mumsnet. The clue is in the title. It isn't a good place to gloat about how clever you are that you are not a mum.

Who's gloating?

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 09:14

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 09:09

It's called mumsnet. The clue is in the title. It isn't a good place to gloat about how clever you are that you are not a mum.

It’s a good place to stop a woman being lumbered with a useless excuse of a baby father though

(and I say this as a mum)

WetHair · 21/09/2025 09:15

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 09:09

It's called mumsnet. The clue is in the title. It isn't a good place to gloat about how clever you are that you are not a mum.

It’s been clarified many times that you don’t need to be a parent to use mumsnet. The childfree even have our own specific discussion board on here.

padso · 21/09/2025 09:15

Older people already pay more in tax than the young and as more people have workplace pensions state pensions will become even less important

Do they?
State pensions will be even more important because workplace pensions are less generous now & more people will be renting into retirement.

Uricon2 · 21/09/2025 09:16

I will just say that advanced search is instructive on the OP's opinion of marriage.

Sunshineandoranges · 21/09/2025 09:18

Not so long ago we were being told the world was overpopulated.

padso · 21/09/2025 09:18

Also when women dont have children more will be working full time.

I'm also not sure that's true. I like my job & work p/t but a lot of my salary is spent on the dc or saved for them. If I didn't have dc I could work less & definitely retire earlier!

padso · 21/09/2025 09:18

DH would also retire earlier.

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 09:19

Uricon2 · 21/09/2025 09:16

I will just say that advanced search is instructive on the OP's opinion of marriage.

Which are? Spill the beans - just the highlights will do

about to make a coffee so will be up for a scrap with him if he thinks women’s fought for freedoms “have gone a bit too far now ladies” type thing

neveradmit17 · 21/09/2025 09:20

ILikeMaths · 21/09/2025 00:40

😀

Tomorrow I’ll either be dead or alive. It doesn’t mean there’s a 50% probability that I’ll be dead.

Shrodinger's poster 😁

Star458 · 21/09/2025 09:21

It's good news for an already horrifically over populated world as far as I'm concerned. Infinite growth is not sustainable.

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 09:22

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 09:12

oh piss off. If there is one thing I can’t stand more than anything it’s women who think that they are better than others simply because they gave birth.

My DHs ex wife is one of these golden vaginas who thinks that by popping a human out she can claim all sorts of special accolades.

No need to be nasty.
It sounds like a you problem.

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 09:23

padso · 21/09/2025 09:18

DH would also retire earlier.

Looking at the nice cheap places our teens want to go uni, Kensington are you kidding me child, 😁, H reckons he will never retire!

“you can sleep when you’re dead babe”
”I’m not even sure I’ll be able to then”

(he is one of the seemingly few good ones who also says he can’t think of anything he would rather spend the money on than their education)

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 09:23

The world should be concerned about the quality of the humans that inhabit it not the quantity. Just like being a mother is so much more than giving birth and being a father is so much more than biology.

There is an abundance of evidence about single parent households and the likelihood of divorce, success and criminality in adulthood. It’s all cause and effect. Women need to make better choices when it comes to choosing who to procreate with and men need to start being better humans.

Onegingerhead · 21/09/2025 09:24

And as for old age — just my opinion — I’m not set up for a good pension. Being in my mid-40s and not on a great income, I’m unlikely to build much of a pot now.

The state pension may well be gone in 20 years, but I really don’t want young women to be bullied into having loads of kids just to fund old me.

By the time I retire, assisted dying will probably be a thing — even for people who are relatively healthy but simply not wealthy enough. When I shared that view with my colleagues, they were absolutely aghast, lol

bookworm14 · 21/09/2025 09:24

Uricon2 · 21/09/2025 09:16

I will just say that advanced search is instructive on the OP's opinion of marriage.

Isn’t it just. Also on a number of other manosphere talking points topics.

OP, given that you don’t believe anyone should get married, and that marriage is more detrimental to men’s interests, are you suggesting all these young women should have babies out of wedlock? And then have no financial protection when the men bugger off? Do you think this is more or less likely to make young women want to have kids?

Youdontseehow · 21/09/2025 09:24

I voted YABU because people don’t really understand statistics.

Statistics like this apply to populations not individuals. Your statistic means that in a population of say 1000 women over 28 who have not had their first child, 500 will go on to not have a child.

But each individual woman has two “chances” of having a child after 28 - zero% or 100% - ie she will either have a child or she won’t.

Same with cancer statistics that say for example, a woman has a 70% chance of getting cancer X if she smokes for 20 years. That means in a population on 100 women who smoke for 20years, 70 will get cancer X. But each individual woman’s chance of getting cancer X is 0 or 100% - she gets it or she doesn’t.