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.

I thought that, actually no I thought wonder if “D”H exH still took full responsibility including financial for the child he happily pumped out!

I haven't read further than this post, so apologies if I am repeating another poster.

For context - I am a married mother with 3DC and also with a professional career. I had DC1 at 31.

Completely agree with this post. 👏 Hungary's policy is mothers with 3+ children are exempt from income tax for life. If the UK introduced a policy like this it would certainly go a long way to helping with the extra costs of raising a family.

Sure. She is on her 3rd marriage and it’s on the way out. 5 children with 4 different fathers. She doesn’t have a man problem she has a business plan.
Definitely not a me problem.

You have to be kidding.

We pay and support and love the children 100% while she explores her career and is in a new country every month leaving the kids with the newest husband who is on his way out because he too has had enough of a women happy to have kids but not really prepared to be a mother.

If the birth rate is falling over the world, then well... good.

This planet cannot sustain a continued increase in the human population, and there will be a humanitarian crisis in future if steps are not taken.

But why do you care?!

Daily Mail style scaremongering - get pregnant ladies, get back in the home, let the men go to work.

Honestly, if any government was really serious about this, they would be offering equal pension and pay to women who choose to have kids. The financial penalties women face for simply procreating are staggering, shameful and blatantly sexist.

Whats the old saying- there’s lies, damned lies & statistics!
Whilst i’m not disputing birth rates are continuing to fall (quick google tells me it’s now fallen to 1.41 births per woman in the UK and has been falling since the mid 60’s). However the average age to be a first time mum is now over 30 so there must be plenty women hitting 30 and going onto have successful pregnancies. ONS stats say 50% of women are childless at 30 but it’ll not be known for some time how many of these remain childless- but looking at women born in 1975 48% were childless by 30 and only 18% have ended up childless by the end of childbearing.
We are an aging population and unfortunately the figures for government just don’t add up- hence rising pension age etc etc.

So he didn’t stop to think before he added another child into this set up either? But everyone blames her, she’s just acting like most men but she will get more bile because she’s female

“oh those poor men trapped by her vixen allure”

not saying it’s good it’s clearly not but it’s what men have done for centuries and get blue plaques on buildings because of their “nothing related to fatherhood” achievements for

They don't have their back though, not at all. It's nowhere near policy in the UK, nobody will say it out loud, but the policy is to discourage having children. In the UK, unless you have a very good job or a wealthy family, being a single mum = poverty.

In Scandinavia and countries like Latvia, Slovakia etc, it's less so, as the government pays your full salary or close for up to 3 years. So if you earn 50K, you'll still get your 50K being at home with a young child. Also, you have free or very cheap flexible childcare, none of the stupid 3pm middle-of-working-day pickups. I'm still unsure what jobs people have to be able to do them.

Does that fix everything? Not really. It does give women a choice though. Some women want to be mums and have 3+ kids and the gov supports them in doing that. Other women simply want to be mums as well but primarily identify with their job/ other roles. And for some women being a mum is not something they identify with.

My family's a bit of an outlier in the sense that from my great grandmother down, the women have been independently wealthy, and haven't needed a 2nd income to have kids. So they've chosen men who was perhaps genetically a good fit but got rid at signs of any bad behaviour.

Did they go on to have more children? No, I just don't think they liked the idea of having more than one, and thought their professional and community role was more interesting and fulfilling than having lots of children.

To summarise, women in many countries have a choice to have children, which previously wasn't socially acceptable - it was just what women had to do. These days, women have a choice, and many have realised that motherhood is not something that would make them happy, and they prefer to contribute to society in other ways.

My Dh was her first husband. He didn’t add to anything.

I am 40 with 2 children but knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time, I would have chosen not to have children.
I adore my kids but I haven't had a life of my own because of it and have stayed with a man that I wouldn't have otherwise purely for financial reasons otherwise myself and the kids would have been in poverty.
I also didn't realise the huge worry that comes with having kids and the dramas and medical issues etc that i just didn't think about. I would not willingly choose to do that again. The world is a horrible place now and I dont feel our kids of this generation have no where near as much fun as we did .
Plus the sheer amount of money that it costs us . My daughter has already said she doesnt want kids and I will encourage her to stay that way!

I care because it doesn’t take giving birth to be a mother and two of her children are my SC.

I meant husband no 3

And yet you have more than 2 kids and everyone says you're being selfish and taking up valuable resources. We are getting such mixed messages. I can totally see why people aren't having kids at all. The cost of living/rent compared to wages is insane. My niece has just got pregnant at 24. They are going to live with her parents in a tiny house as on one salary of £30k, you can't even rent a flat round here. If we do really need people to have more kids, we need to incentivise them financially and bring the cost of rent/nursery under control.

I can’t speak for him but I do know from my SC that he does the bulk of childcare for all the kids with our older kids being mini-parents, works full time with a side hustle on the weekend while she travels the world pursuing her dream.

When they met she worked part time and lived off child support from her two previous DHs.

We know his family and I don’t believe he is one of the bad guys. He is considerably younger than her. I can only assume that she married him for the financial benefit and having a kid with him was the price to pay with the added illusion that she was a dedicated mother and wife to sweeten the deal.

@ThreePears why do you think ageing populations won't lead to an humanitarian crisis?

@Padso Look up the government tax statistics, I've posted them in the past but I'm not finding them for you. Young people also get a lot more financial support now than pensioners did at the same age - more years in education, more child support for working parents. They are net contributors but at a lower level than their parents were.

Maybe some people would retire early but its more likely they'll shift to doing something different. Average age at death may drop too - from the impact of repeated covid infections or the next epidemic.

Dont expect to be working in care either - robots will replace carers for most people.

I would have had more children, but the cost of childcare and inadequate maternity pay made it impossible. It’s a reality faced by countless women. The government must do more to support women, financially, and socially, so that starting or growing a family isn’t a privilege, but a choice every woman can make freely.

@frozendaisy I genuinely think if nobody had dc loads would not work full time, why would you?! And you can be as reckless as you like if not thinking about future inheritance!

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

Proper assisted dying is expensive though, I think it will be more left to rot and stave in a bed.

Years ago, the majority of people left school at 16 and got a job. They would then get married in their early-mid 20's, by which time they would have saved up a house deposit (or been on the waiting list long enough to get a council house) and the woman would have had around 10 years to establish a career. Once they had their own home, they would then start a family. Largely possible because in those days, a man's salary was enough to support a family.

These days, most people leave school at 18, then go to university for 3 or 4 years, so don't start work until they are at least 21 or 22 as a minimum. Add the 10 years on to establish a career and save up enough money to find somewhere to live and hey presto - they are in their 30's before they can consider the expense of having children. The vast majority don't get married young either, if at all.

This was my problem. It was drummed into me that having children did all of that.
Which was why I put off having children till much later in life.

Except the reality was I loved having children, loved everything about it. Going to work, coming home and doing the same things over and over was drudgery. It was only after I had dc and I did all the same things as before but now with dc it seemed so much worthwhile.

My only regret was leaving it so late that I didn’t have more children and had listened to those around me.

TBH my mother was totally against my marriage. Told me we would only last 6 weeks. Instead of the 42 years. Covid was what put an end to my marriage
Some people know exactly who they are at 16. Why forbid a 17 year old from doing something that once they turn 18 they are going to do anyway. It just takes away your power and influence and creates a barrier.

I dont know if I'm just being thick here or not but surely this is a positive thing given our NHS is on its knees,, we have a housing shortage crisis and we owe billions in debit??

World population 1900 was around 2 billion.
world population is still growing and estimated to hit 9 billion within a few decades.
its not sustainable. So I hope the birth rate continues to drop

Hungary's policy is mothers with 3+ children are exempt from income tax for life. If the UK introduced a policy like this it would certainly go a long way to helping with the extra costs of raising a family

Wow, I'd have another now then! 😆