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.

If you think women can’t be forced to have babies — oh, please. History says otherwise, and I can dream up a few modern twists in no time.

That usually happens in dicatorships/authoritarian governments not democarcies - democarcies usally go for pronatalist polices ie usually money.

There lots of reasons to worry about state of democracy round the world. The USA - the way they've gone restricting access to contraceptives and abortions while still being a democarcy is worrying though their fertlity rate is on the decline and is below replacment levels 1.6 last year and likley going to fall - but their poltics are worrying.

Plus China a very authoritarian state who did have great impact on resticting fertlity is having huge problems increasing their birth rate - is just not as simple as some people think.

No it's a reasonable question. And the TFR is not constant and adapts under normal circumstances (e.g. the baby boom TFR was nearly 3 and that only lasted for one generation). It also depends if you mean on a global level or the UK.

The issue is that there is something called the "low fertility trap" for a country, perhaps somewhere around 1.3, where we literally have no examples at all in history of a country turning it around. At the very best, we have examples like a few Nordic countries managing to claw their way up from say 1.5 to 1.8, with the absolute best in childcare subsidies etc etc, still not managing to get up to replacement, and it's falling again. We don't have any examples of a country getting to the 1.2, 1.3 kind of level and managing to improve (this is the Japan scenario).

So what I mean is the difference between 1.2/1.3 and 1.5/1.6 might seem small but it's actually the difference between "maybe recoverable" and "permanent disaster".

Global population will inevitably stabilise - the western Roman Empire collapsed but new states filled the gap - but no such promise exists for an individual country.

Is ideal replacement 2? Ie every man and every woman replaces themselves?

@OldOrMaybeNotThatOld I wanted to add this as a separate post to keep the ideas separate.

It's very hard to answer the UK version without getting into a debate on immigration because that has been the main lever pulled over the past few decades, so the consequences of that are mixed up in the consequences of the low birth rate.

i.e. a more likely scenario than rapid population crash is rapid population replacement - i.e. instead of 50% drop in population, the population stays the same but is now 50% foreign.

Either scenario is deeply destabilising culturally though. We already see riots, protests, inter-ethnic tensions, voting blocs etc now in the "immigration" scenario (now imagine that if 50% of the population is foreign origin).

But also imagine having to yank pensions out suddenly from existing pensioners, many more homeless on the street as we realise belatedly we cannot afford benefits, IMF style bailouts with harsh conditions etc; imagine not being able to stand up an army in the new world where "geopolitics is back, baby"...

Electorally the maths is very difficult though. Politicians know that immigration is not popular but they also know how extreme they'd have to be in policy-making for the no-immigration scenario.

That usually happens in dicatorships/authoritarian governments not democarcies - democarcies usally go for pronatalist polices ie usually money.

Or in patriarchal usually religious cultures where women have no status outside of traditional family structures and very little inside of them either.

I've seen some people worry we are breeding for religion as religious people tend to have more kids - but ignores fact that children may not follow the parents religion or be religious at all.

TBH most likely scenario is population decreases across many countries and socites adapt as best they can and at some point some sort of equilibrium is found - but we've never had this on such a wide spread scale so no-one really knows.

Short term more planning would be helpful - making sure there are enough people attracted to key skills and adapting societies so older people can manage for longer with less support.

Yes, roughly.

(For the UK it's actually 2.08 per the ONS - as some children unfortunately don't survive to adulthood to be able to start the next generation. In countries with high infant mortality replacement rate is higher.)

The replacement TFR in developed countries is 2.1 (the 0.1 accounts for the fact that male births are slightly more prevalent than female births, and for childhood mortality). So at a TFR of 2.1, a population remains stable, neither increasing nor decreasing. The historic TFR, and the current TFR in some low income countries is higher, due to higher infant mortality.

I know they would. Which I don't think is fair. I do think it's interesting that they are reproducing like this without centering men in their lives. It's a very matriarchal model.

Now I know that female headed families like this do tend to use the benefit system. But what is the problem really? Either men support the next generation directly through marriage, or indirectly through taxes. Most of the women in the family are finished with childbirth by 30 and also proceed to work and support their children and grandchildren for many years.

Religious people generally have more kids - secular socities have had most fertlity declines - even where religious women do have access to education and more autonomy.

Could be patriarchal structures, could be more community support, could be more hopefully outlook on life - could be a lot of things but your right religious communities even in secular counrties they do have higher birth rates though even those can still be below replacement levels just higher than surrounding society.

TBH most likely scenario is population decreases across many countries and socites adapt as best they can and at some point some sort of equilibrium is found - but we've never had this on such a wide spread scale so no-one really knows.

This sounds like the most reasonable outcome. We endure whatever the fallout is eventually learn and adapt to less people on the planet again. I don’t know what that looks like practically and I won’t be here to witness it I’m guessing.

Yup exactly. We already tried pulling some levers and we can't just "pull them harder" (e.g. add even more immigrants) without more pressure.

Electorally I don't see how some of these benefits (I mean pensions, social care etc) can be reversed though. I think they somehow need to be for the reasons you outline, I just think every possible government is going to run into trouble unless they can explicitly spell out the disaster scenario. Even a potential Reform government.

Pension age creep - possible rationing of health care creeping in more and and how ever the euthanasia bill with safe guards pans out - could affect you dependent on age.

My SD is currently of this mindset. I’m not sure where it has come from as it’s not from my DH and I and her own mother has had 5 children with 3 different fathers. It’s possibly an effect of her parents divorce and seeking out the alternative.

Im quite happy for her to have her traditional values and family setup with her husband heading up the household and her being this dream SAHM. She is studying so we haven’t let her completely get taken away with it. My DH and I were discussing it recently and I think the thing that is going to stop this from happened is financial. She is too naive to understand the cost of raising children and I think her BF overestimates his ability to be this traditional head of the household, provide for everyone and still be this hands on dad. It’s a very rosy picture painted by the church but really doesn’t take into account much reality.

🤣

I had kids with a woman, when I was much older than 28 but given the choice of men many of my straight friends seem left with I’m not surprised women are having less kids. Finances aside.

And what do all religions have in common I wonder? Oh right, misogynistic and patriarchal, used go subjugate and control women. No woman wants to be a dairy cow.

Would the sons born into this structure be allowed to go off and do the same or are there new expectations of the new generation of men born?

And it goes in cycles… the kids I know born into religious families tend to break free from them.

I think this depends a lot on the surrounding culture. If the whole culture is religious and there is no secular influence then you just go along with it. As it's less about cycles of extremes, more about following the default.

There have in history been female cenrtic relgions - we're just not as used to them.

I supect though many well educated relgious women living in secular socities would bristle at the idea they are brain washed idiots like this post is suggesting.

I'm not advocating women should have kids - frankly I think that a very indivdual choice and frankly a gamble.

I'm an atheist but I wanted kids and have enjoyed having them. Two at uni and one doing A-levels all the dire well just you wait posts I feel don't apply now. I made an active choice - picked out a partner who also actively wanted kids and spent ten years getting in a stable place together to have them. I am not a fool or a brain washed idiot - they've been really hard work but fun.

I really reject men telling women to have kids for the "greater good" but also women telling other women they shouldn't or there is something wrong with them if they do.

Our socitey made having kids more expensive and demading than ever before - I'm not surpised the birth rate has dropped - latest UN report found that most young people wanted more kids than they had or expected to have due to barriers - so it's not all free choices.

I'm not sure. The latest baby has been born to a male family member and his grandparents are offering support to the new parents just the same as they do with the women. Realistically though, he may well split with his girlfriend and have more children with someone else and in those situations the mother of the child tends to turn to her own family. Quite a few of the women have partners who support step children as well as their biological children though, but this may only continue as long as the relationship lasts.

What I will say is that contrary to media portrayals of these types of families, the children are all well looked after, have everything material they need and are polite, don't get into trouble. They are a credit to their parents.

I think @MotherOfRatios had her quote wrong, although the sense is clear from context: when interviewed, young women gave ‘having children’ as one of their top priorities in life and their idea of what a successful life looked like, young men didn’t even mention having children. So no, no-one is suggesting (god forbid) that men should be forcing women to have a child. People are pointing out that based on this evidence, young women already have parenthood on their agenda for what they want over the course of their life, young men don’t. So why does all the discussion about falling birth rates point exclusively to women as the cause?

When we say men need to step up, we don't mean be 6' with a 6 figure salary. We mean pick up their own socks and clean the toilet after themselves.

The whole point is women aren't forced to be with a man to survive now, we're allowed an education/job/to own property, so we get to choose which men we tether ourselves to, and those men, quite often, are a bit rubbish (I myself have 2 kids with an ex who actually is 6' and 6 figures (mind you, i'm 5' and 6 figures myself), but who never ran the hoover round once, and sees his kids a couple of times a month. Where was my motivation to have more children with him?

Honestly, and I say this as a Feminist, I agree. When I've spoken about getting the incentives right it's not necessarily thinking in terms of individual childcare support or even individual men stepping up, but more along the lines of seeing childcare and childrearing as something done within social groups not private couples and finding ways to support that so individual women aren't carrying the burden and the risk by themselves.