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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

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OP posts:
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8
padso · 21/09/2025 09:54

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

But won't the population still grow because people are living longer?

Notmyreality · 21/09/2025 09:55

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.

She isn’t gloating. And you obviously envy her and wish you’d made the same choice. And anyone can post of MN. The clue is not in the name. It’s just a name.

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 09:55

Icecreambythesea · 21/09/2025 09:49

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.

They need to get absent father’s to provide adequately for the children that already exist first.

Make it crystal clear that having children isn’t something that you can walk away from, even if you decide to do so physically.

Society is struggling to invest in all the children alive right now, if we can’t support a 1.41 birthrate how is it a good idea to increase this?

Horsie · 21/09/2025 09:56

CliantheLang · 21/09/2025 05:23

Pity that they're not better at it, then.

🤭🤣 Exactly!

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 09:57

There is some crazy statistic about the number of children who grow up in fatherless households (it’s worse where I am from originally) and this and all the anti social ills it brings us and these poor children is something society needs to address before we start advocating for women to just have more children!

padso · 21/09/2025 09:59

@anyolddinosaur google doesn't tell me that though. There are more higher rate tax payers now vs the past particularly because of fiscal drag for one.

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.

Child benefit was universal for my parents, they didn't pay anything like the stamp duty I did. Childcare subsidies are to encourage more women to work thus more tax. Lower state pension age etc.

Everything I have read says current pensioner have taken more out of the system than they put in

An ageing population decrease the amount of net contributors because of pensioners.

PosiePerkinPootleFlump · 21/09/2025 09:59

”if a UK woman has not had her first child by 28, there is a 50% probability she will never have children”

What a stupid statistic. What if I said “if a UK woman hasn’t had her first child by the age of 15, there is an 18% probability that she will never have children.

That statistic is also ‘true’ based on the same measure - ie that 18% of women never have children, and the average age for a first child is 29 and that the proportion of women who have their first child by 15 is tiny*

*I’ve googled some vague stats here, haven’t looked in detail just wanted to point out the statistical manipulation. If the author of this ‘study’ seriously believes this is a meaningful statistic then they are in the wrong job.

RobustPastry · 21/09/2025 10:00

Late stage capitalism doesn’t lend itself to people having kids whether they would otherwise want kids, or they don’t want kids.

We all want secure retirement but most voters won’t want to reorganise the welfare state to be more generous towards families and especially single parent families. We don’t have a political system that works in lifespan time cycles- they tend to make decision based on the next 0-5 years away. That’s why things like climate change and global migration are not being tackled either.

The risks of motherhood are disproportionately huge to women because society makes it that way. Even just pregnancy and birth care is very poor and carries greater inherent risks to women (which is a reason why surrogacy has become so contested) but the aftercare we get is insufficient too and the risks and penalties of single parenthood are high.

And young men are increasingly wanting something else for themselves as well so increasingly they are not wanting to ‘commit’ until well past the age that their same-aged female peers can easily conceive naturally. So they will look for younger women as partners for parenthood and a revived patriarchal model starts establishing itself of men being the choosers. A lot of women will rather opt out of that understandably.

bumblingbovine49 · 21/09/2025 10:00

FlirtsWithRhinos · 21/09/2025 00:21

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.

This

Until childbearing and child rearing are as respected and rewarded both in terms of status and financially as CEOs of massive corporations are, educating women will lead to deferring having children for economic reasons,if nothing else, and the resulting declining birth rates

Capitalism may be the only economic system that works ( and I am willing to agree it may be ) it only does so by ruthless ( albeit impersonal) exploitation of the most powerless and vulnerable in a society.

Unfortunately pregnant women and mothers fall into this category. Just look at all the threads of women struggling to balance childcare and work and the numerous replies on the side of the employer and ' well you need to sort out your childcare' with no allowance for how difficult that can be

Whilst individual women may be able to escape this role and many do, the work and sacrifice involved in being economically successful and a mother is often too much for a lot of women. The other option to rely on a romantic or life partner for the financial support is also fraught with difficulties

Thiis is especially true when there is so little respect in society for being a mother. If we tell people having children is choice and why should we help support that financially if they have children, how can you blame women ( and men) from making a personal choice not to have children when life without them is much easier? ( I didn't say better or more fulfilling but easier)

padso · 21/09/2025 10:01

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??

An ageing population means more strain on the NHs and social care though, that's part of the problem.

Arrrrrrragghhh · 21/09/2025 10:04

I don’t think the economic reasons for population growth are particularly valid. Technology and AI are relatively new but already doing the work of people.
I think we could support the current population whilst still having a decline in the growth rate. Given it’s humans that fuck up the planet that’s no bad thing.

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 10:04

bookworm14 · 21/09/2025 09:24

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?

Marriage detrimental to men
Parenthood detrimental to women

Stalemate!

Icecreambythesea · 21/09/2025 10:05

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 09:55

They need to get absent father’s to provide adequately for the children that already exist first.

Make it crystal clear that having children isn’t something that you can walk away from, even if you decide to do so physically.

Society is struggling to invest in all the children alive right now, if we can’t support a 1.41 birthrate how is it a good idea to increase this?

I agree that men should be held accountable and not allowed to walk away from their children. I also recognise that we’re facing resource challenges, and I don’t dispute that population reduction could be beneficial in some contexts. But I was simply sharing my personal reasons for having only one child—when I would have liked to have another. The decision wasn’t ideological; it was shaped by financial constraints, lack of support, and systemic barriers that many women face.

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 10:05

frozendaisy · 21/09/2025 10:04

Marriage detrimental to men
Parenthood detrimental to women

Stalemate!

And single parenthood detrimental to children.

Triple checkmate.

Horsie · 21/09/2025 10:05

pinkyredrose · 21/09/2025 01:20

How so?

In terms of how it seems to come above everything else. Men will leave a marriage for sex, no matter if they've built an entire life together for decades and have a bunch of children together. They'll stuff it all up for sex. Women, not so much.

padso · 21/09/2025 10:06

We all want secure retirement but most voters won’t want to reorganise the welfare state to be more generous towards families and especially single parent families. We don’t have a political system that works in lifespan time cycles- they tend to make decision based on the next 0-5 years away. That’s why things like climate change and global migration are not being tackled either.

This

Horsie · 21/09/2025 10:06

TomatoSandwiches · 21/09/2025 01:16

They can go fuck each other or themselves then.

Yup!

ObtuseMoose · 21/09/2025 10:07

RetiredMan · 21/09/2025 00:31

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...

(Obviously women would only do that if they thought what they were getting in return was worth it. It's their call.)

I think you really need to fuck all the way off and then keep going 😤

padso · 21/09/2025 10:07

Men will leave a marriage for sex, no matter if they've built an entire life together for decades and have a bunch of children together.

Is this still true? what with current economic issues? Life is so expensive now I'm sure it must influence some men to stay coupled up.

MeTooOverHere · 21/09/2025 10:07

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.

Excellent. The human pop'n of the planet is already way past ecologically sustainable levels, and this will enable us to lower our population to a sustainable level without drastic measures.

ReleaseTheDucksOfWar · 21/09/2025 10:09

FlirtsWithRhinos · 21/09/2025 00:21

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.

Very good reason why some in the US attacking educational policies and pushing the Christian Right agenda, and the surrendered wife bullshit.

Keep women uneducated and in the kitchen, that's what I say - not. But they do.

MidnightScroller · 21/09/2025 10:09

Just to add - I think society also needs to reposition the dialogue to help men appreciate that having children - and spending your own time raising them - is a privilege more than it’s a duty. Think how many many are disengaged from their kids, if they even live with them at all, and see any time spent with them as a burden such that even a walk to the park becomes an achievement to be celebrated.
Women have to fight their corner to be “allowed” to go back to work sometimes because of the potential impact on men time-wise having to do anything at home where men expect to do none of the child rearing- yet men complain about being nothing but a paycheck, work stress and male suicide rates are skyrocketing and we have particular issues raising well adjusted boys.
But this is all easily within our control! Why aren’t men fighting to have their share of “time off” work, so they can be the ones depending on their partners income for a bit and enjoying time doing the crucially important job of raising good people.
If the govt was really invested in helping families they’d enforce part time permission for all adults - which would also support older workers staying in work longer - and they’d reposition home keeping/school runs/ homework time as a privilege that women “get to do” where men should have their fair share.
Men should be sharing with each other when their kid does well in a test or some achievement that theyve coached their kids on - how much does that happen now other than in acceptable male areas such as sport?
If both parents could do parenting and earning equally then understanding and empathy would improve between couples, divorce rates would reduce, kids would grow up happier and more well balanced and so many issues would be better. Women would be less tired and pissed off having to do everything and would admire and respect their helpful, hands on, intelligent supportive partner creating more desire for mind-blowing sex.
Why won’t this happen? Because too many men value earning money above everything else and they’re more likely to praise each others car than the humans they’ve brought into this world.

DoinFineIThink · 21/09/2025 10:10

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.

Edited

Completely agree, especially with the damaging bit.
I don't think enough's done about it or even acknowledged.
I know "free speech" and all that but normalising bigotry and stuff like this too just desensitises people whilst normalising restrictions on women for example.

Horsie · 21/09/2025 10:10

Firefly1987 · 21/09/2025 01:27

I think we understand that fine, it's not like it's a secret men have been keeping all these years.

I'm probably projecting. I was quite naive when I got married to my exH, and did not appreciate how, for many men, sex overrides everything - your character, your compatibility, the time you've spent together. I thought that things like companionship and a shared history and the ability to laugh together would definitely mean more than sex, but apparently not!