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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:
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OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 14:29

LlttledrummergirI · 21/09/2025 14:02

I haven't read the full thread, so apologies if this has been posted previously.

When a female of any species is born, there is a 50% chance that they may have children.

I haven't researched this, but given that they either will or won't choose to have children, anecdotally I believe I'm correct.

If there is a third option, please educate me.

Be prepared for a maths lesson. That’s just not how statistics work.

FeistyFrankie · 21/09/2025 14:38

I was in a long term relationship and wanted to start a family, but chose not to because of the insane cost of childcare. We just couldn't afford it. Then we broke up.

I've looked into going it alone and again, cant afford the childcare fees.

I'm too old to fall pregnant naturally, now. Nobody i have dated in recent years has made me think, oh I can see them being a great dad. Not one.

WetHair · 21/09/2025 14:39

LlttledrummergirI · 21/09/2025 14:02

I haven't read the full thread, so apologies if this has been posted previously.

When a female of any species is born, there is a 50% chance that they may have children.

I haven't researched this, but given that they either will or won't choose to have children, anecdotally I believe I'm correct.

If there is a third option, please educate me.

You’re wrong. There being two mutually exclusive choices (have baby/dont have baby) does NOT mean that both are equally likely.

To use examples already given up thread: tomorrow I could be Prime Minister, or I could not be. That doesn’t mean both examples are equally likely. Tomorrow I might murder someone, or I might not. The chances of both of those are not 50:50

Currently around 80% of women have children at some point, so the chance of a baby girl born today eventually having children is around 80%. Except that it isn’t, because we don’t know yet what percentage of her generation will have children and won’t.

Dervel · 21/09/2025 14:43

Good men are very thin on the ground, but then again so are good women…

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 15:08

Is it really possible that bots infiltrate forums like this? With the hope of what? Spreading an ideology?
Are we that influenced sub consciously by what we read? I don’t think anyone online could make me act in one way or another but perhaps I’m misguided.

OneAmberFinch · 21/09/2025 15:11

Mewling · 21/09/2025 14:21

Just bumping this for the daytime crowd. We need to be really vigilant against this bollocks.

OP seems like a bit of a wanker (sorry, I'm sure he's not wanking, he's off having brain-melting sex I see) but the desire to have children isn't a weird artificial idea cooked up by American extremists.

Studies very frequently show that women are having fewer children than they want, and often it's because they don't meet someone they find acceptable even if they'd have liked children with a "good" man ("childless by circumstance") - we should engage with that rather than just go "ah isn't it lovely that modern women are being so independent"

bombastix · 21/09/2025 15:23

Kinder, Küche, Kirche

ParmaVioletTea · 21/09/2025 15:39

I think there's a true social issue also of men especially waiting until they're much older before being ready for kids, inevitably they will then want to find a younger woman who has childbearing years ahead of her. Meaning some older women approaching their late thirties/forties who'd love to have had kids aren't chosen, so to speak. Out of the women I know who don't have kids in their forties, the majority of them wanted them, but just didn't find a man happy to have them with her in time. It's Peter Pan syndrome in a way.

This.

Men need to take responsibility, not women.

Foundationns · 21/09/2025 15:41

The population is far greater than our planet can sustain, at least at a level expected by westerners. It needs to reduce. What will be hard is the stage where a big proportion of people are very old .

InThisSpookyTown · 21/09/2025 15:44

Another creepy bloke on mumsnet. 🤢

ThreePears · 21/09/2025 15:47

padso · 21/09/2025 09:47

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

I did not say that, nor did I imply it, so don't go putting words into my mouth.

I was talking about the continuing increase in human beings on Earth being unsustainable in the long term.

Pharazon · 21/09/2025 15:53

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.

You’re bang on about education. However even in countries with high levels of equality, and fantastic, highly subsidised childcare and support for families, birth rates are plummeting.

The truth is that when women have options in life, fewer choose motherhood.

CatHairEveryWhereNow · 21/09/2025 16:11

I think most demographers are waiting to see if there just a continued rise in parenthood ages and childbearing will continue just closer age gaps with older parents - putting bigger gaps between generations -or if the % which has been roughly around 20% with slight rise of women who have no kids in last few decades.

There's a definite decline in family size over decades - as parentals demands increase time and money and as kids are dependent much longer. My parents and IL were working at 15-16 full time contibuting to household income they handed wages over and got back spending money.

Yet when survey most parents would have more if they felt they could - with financial and time demands often cites as barriers. The eassiest way to boost birth rates is to focus on those with kids already who want more but don't have them it's pushing at an open door. However focus is always on those with no kids - even those who may have made an active choice to be so.

LlttledrummergirI · 21/09/2025 16:11

WetHair · 21/09/2025 14:39

You’re wrong. There being two mutually exclusive choices (have baby/dont have baby) does NOT mean that both are equally likely.

To use examples already given up thread: tomorrow I could be Prime Minister, or I could not be. That doesn’t mean both examples are equally likely. Tomorrow I might murder someone, or I might not. The chances of both of those are not 50:50

Currently around 80% of women have children at some point, so the chance of a baby girl born today eventually having children is around 80%. Except that it isn’t, because we don’t know yet what percentage of her generation will have children and won’t.

I don't think you got my point.

When you toss a coin, you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting heads.

You could toss 10 coins, but there is still a binary choice.

You can choose different methods to measure likelihood, and opportunities to change statistics (why they can be manipulated), but fundamentally each coin, individually is still heads or tails.

WetHair · 21/09/2025 16:26

LlttledrummergirI · 21/09/2025 16:11

I don't think you got my point.

When you toss a coin, you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting heads.

You could toss 10 coins, but there is still a binary choice.

You can choose different methods to measure likelihood, and opportunities to change statistics (why they can be manipulated), but fundamentally each coin, individually is still heads or tails.

I’m no statistician, but I think that misses the point. It’s true that any coin has a probability of 50:50 of landing heads or tails. But it’s not true that the probability of me transforming spontaneously into a leopard in the next five minutes is also 50:50. That’s even though there are two mutually exclusive outcomes: me becoming a leopard, and me not becoming a leopard. Just because there are two choices doesn’t mean they’re both equally likely. You need to know how likely each event is (a coin lands heads almost exactly half the time; me transforming into a leopard doesn’t happen half the time).

WetHair · 21/09/2025 16:29

To add: currently a baby girl born today has around an 80% chance of having a baby in a lifetime according to our best guess at present. When she dies (or gets past menopause and expresses no desire for fertility treatment) her individual chance will be either 0 or 100% depending on whether she had a child or not. But until then it’s all probability.

user1471538275 · 21/09/2025 17:00

Great. I will encourage every young woman I know to make sure their contraceptive is 100% until they have found someone who they have spent sufficient time with (and lived with) to really know if they can tolerate them. I would then encourage marriage before deciding to have children if they want them.

As to pensioners wanting the young to have babies to look after them and pay for their retirement - no bloody chance. Young people owe the old absolutely nothing, certainly not their fertility 'duty'.

The old can look after themselves - they've got the money, the housing and the numbers.

The young have none of this - they are not their servants to have their lives dictated by the gerentocracy.

Goatinthegarden · 21/09/2025 17:04

FairKoala · 21/09/2025 14:02

The issue I have with this is if you say on here that it was hard work at times and you had a wonderful time and having children changed your life for the better you get shot down for saying such things.

Apparently it is complete drudgery having children. No exceptions

Well, I think you can take everything on Mumsnet with a pinch of salt.

What I really meant was, reading here allowed me to consider a wider picture beyond the biological urge of wanting to hold a baby.

People in real life, hardly ever saying anything other than how amazing it is - and of course people do find parenting incredibly rewarding.

But reading here, I was able to see that it can also be incredibly hard work (and plenty of people say on here that it’s the best thing ever too) that there were lots of factors to weigh up. I decided that, even though I think I probably would have enjoyed lots of parts of motherhood, ultimately, it wasn’t really what I wanted.

LlttledrummergirI · 21/09/2025 17:05

WetHair · 21/09/2025 16:26

I’m no statistician, but I think that misses the point. It’s true that any coin has a probability of 50:50 of landing heads or tails. But it’s not true that the probability of me transforming spontaneously into a leopard in the next five minutes is also 50:50. That’s even though there are two mutually exclusive outcomes: me becoming a leopard, and me not becoming a leopard. Just because there are two choices doesn’t mean they’re both equally likely. You need to know how likely each event is (a coin lands heads almost exactly half the time; me transforming into a leopard doesn’t happen half the time).

Of course you won't turn into a leopard, that's an impossibility. I can state with pretty much 100% certainty, despite no research, that human beings cannot become leopards.

user1471538275 · 21/09/2025 17:07

What if I wear a leopard costume and am convinced I look like a leopard.

How about if I'm really fast and encompass the 'spirit of a leopard'

TheWorminLabyrinth · 21/09/2025 17:11

OldOrMaybeNotThatOld · 21/09/2025 10:11

There is a lot of man bashing and hating going on here.

Thankfully, you are here to defend the poor little lambs. Go you.

spoonbillstretford · 21/09/2025 17:33

FairKoala · 21/09/2025 07:07

It’s not that long ago that it was the norm that 18/19 year olds would get married and have children. I was married at 17. I know many who married younger.
Even in my dc’s friend groups there are a handful who by the time they turned 20 had 1,2 or 3 children with their partners

Unfortunately the normal now is to funnel children into A levels and a degree
and join in with this infantilization for a few more years.

The fact that you can’t see that getting a husband/partner, getting a place to live and starting a family at 18/19 years old is beyond possible confirms my point

My mum was born in 1939 and didn't consider it normal to get married at 18. It has never been the norm in my very ordinary working class background in my lifetime and I'm 50. One of my aunties got married at 18, one of my cousins had a baby at 18 but they stood out to me as being so young. I thought it was horrifically young as a kid and still do now.

snowlaser · 21/09/2025 18:14

finfitrulesok · 21/09/2025 00:28

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

No - just because there are two possibilities doesn’t mean both are equally likely.

Everyone in Britain has either climbed Mount Everest or hasn’t - but that doesn’t mean the chances that the next person you meet has climbed Mount Everest is 50%

FlirtsWithRhinos · 21/09/2025 18:39

Pharazon · 21/09/2025 15:53

You’re bang on about education. However even in countries with high levels of equality, and fantastic, highly subsidised childcare and support for families, birth rates are plummeting.

The truth is that when women have options in life, fewer choose motherhood.

I take your point, but that's just saying to me that even those countries that on paper at least have high levels of equality, and fantastic, highly subsidised childcare and support for families still aren't doing enough yet to make motherhood attractive.

Make it attractive enough and people will want to do it.

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