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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
ResultsMayVary · 21/09/2025 01:26

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.)

Wow okay

You do realise many young women don't want to sign up to marriage and children because it's a rubbish deal for women?

This is especially true in the UK where women who live and have children without being marriages are placed at a huge financial risk.

The idea that most women want to trap a man into marriage and children just isn't true although many men wish it was!

And yeah why is a declining population such a big deal? If women were given more support more could work or work longer hours and we could solve the 'lack of workers issue' but instead we want them to have even more children??!?

Firefly1987 · 21/09/2025 01:27

Horsie · 21/09/2025 00:55

Sadly, he speaks the truth. Sex is important to men in a way that women will never understand.

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

OneCalmFish · 21/09/2025 01:31

I was thinking isn’t the world vastly overpopulated now anyway, at least this option provides choice. Will save any more “manmade” diseases accidentally (cough, cough) being somehow released, might even force the government’s to care about the genocides that occur

Trendyname · 21/09/2025 01:32

RetiredMan · 21/09/2025 00:09

There was a suggestion in one interview that government needs to step in and tell young women it will have their back if men let them down, in order to persuade them to have children at a younger age.

Though it was also asked, what would you rather be at 50: a divorced childless women, or a divorced woman with children? Maybe the risk of a bad man is worth taking, if you want children enough. Not for me to say.

There was a suggestion in one interview that government needs to step in and tell young women it will have their back if men let them down, in order to persuade them to have children at a younger age.

So women are seen as the breeder / baby makers, and government should come up with plans to get them to have kids. Sounds a bit like handmaid’s tale. Let women decide rather than manipulating them in thinking if they want to be divorced and childless or divorced with kids, you don’t care about women, you care about manpower for economic growth.

WearyAuldWumman · 21/09/2025 01:32

ruethewhirl · 21/09/2025 01:13

OP I don't understand why you've started this thread. Why are you so invested in telling women what they should be doing with their uteruses?

Maybe we need a thread about men delaying fatherhood until their sperm has diminished and lacks motility.

beserene · 21/09/2025 01:33

Why is this an issue? ”Destined to be childless” 😆
Hardly! There are women on this very platform having babies well into their 40s. Besides, not everyone chooses to have children - male or female. Not everyone chooses the contraceptive pill as a form of contraception. Not all families are the same. Not everyone wants kids! It’s not one-size-fits-all.

This documentary seems an echo chamber of itself that neglects to consider the range: some women have chosen to have no children, others 6 children. I know plenty on both ends and many more in the middle. Why should we be worried that birth rates are going down? It’s good for the environment & the world is already overpopulated.

Remember that documentary makers are not necessarily scientists - or qualified to make predictions.

APTPT · 21/09/2025 01:37

I'm 40. I have one child with severe disabilities. I would have LOVED more children but the impact on my career has been devastating from having one. There is barely money for us to get by as it is.

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 01:38

The reality is if we want to increase the birth rate, men need to step up. Be better.

But they won't.🙄 If anything they're making themselves more and more unattractive. No woman wants to be with an entitled, helpless, hopeless, possibly abusive, man baby.

So the birth rate will continue to fall.🤷‍♀️

LeftieRightsHoarder · 21/09/2025 01:38

Finteq · 21/09/2025 00:00

I think YABU

and the stat about Japan women being childless doesn't make sense.

How can it increase from 1 in 30 to 1 in 5 in just 3 years?

That doesn't make sense.

The world is already overpopulated and increasing all the time. I don't think anyone has to worry about the population level being too low.

Quite. In a world in which the vast human population is forcing other species into extinction, and appropriating every bit of land, a gentle natural decline in our overcrowded numbers would do nothing but good. A brief period of readjustment would be a small price to pay.

Wetoldyousaurus · 21/09/2025 01:39

An economic system that relies on infinite growth by consuming, depleting and degrading finite resources will eventually collapse when no more efficiencies can be found through technological or cultural innovations. Petro chemical fuelled consumer capitalism has been a glorious ride for humanity and our pets but even if the oil keeps coming, the other life systems on earth can not keep supplying the other raw materials we are extracting nor store the permanent toxic waste downstream. Falling birth rates, ever more desperate migration of significant populations, and climate change are the system saying, no more. We have to find a steady state economic model. But those who benefit most from the system - about 10% of the human population, will never be able to allow this change to happen. So it will happen to us, rather than because we realised the game was up.

LegoPicnic · 21/09/2025 01:39

This isn’t a women problem.

We need more good quality men who aren’t going to bugger off.

If men improved, more women may wish to have children with them.

LeftMyScarfThere · 21/09/2025 01:40

If people are wondering where posts like this are coming from, it's the pronatalist movement emerging from the American right. It goes along with tradwives and is inherently misogynistic - I mean, the OP has adequately illustrated that for us. I wanted to barf when he included something about 'the mating window' at the end of his first post.

The degree to which they're bombarding forums and social media is pretty sinister. They are coming after women's rights, so we'd all better look out.

k1233 · 21/09/2025 01:42

I think men need to accept their share of the responsibility for falling birth rates.

Facts:

  • not many men earn a sufficient wage for women to be SAHMs
  • women are expected to bear the load of children, parenting, household and working. Men go to work. Refer the inequitable question that is always asked of women, not men - how to you balance a career with a family?
  • men these days are children - wasting time on gaming and hobbies while their wives are their skivvies but still expected to work and bring in money (EDIT forgot to say women also need to be pornstars in the bedroom, at the end of a long day of doing everything for everyone)
  • then divorce / separation. Give me strength. The kids typically stay with mum. The dad is "too busy" to have the kids 50% but that busy-ness does not convert to the actual cost of supporting and raising children. Child support is based on what the absent parent "can afford" to pay, not what it actually costs to raise the child. The resident parent has to somehow make up that cash shortfall while also solely raising the children.

What can be done

  • support for women to have children - career programs to help them return after children and work support to help with childcare etc
  • men actually man up and stop behaving like children. Pull their weight in the house. Just to make OP happy, that may lead to the adult relations he thinks men need to commit - mothering a grown man kills any sexual desire, as does doing 100% of everything.
  • have a compulsory amount absent parents must pay and that comes out of their wage or benefits BEFORE the money goes to them. That would free up court time, enforcement time and ensure the chidren are properly provided for.
Firefly1987 · 21/09/2025 01:42

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'm sure that's great for men for a few years but what happens when the woman is too knackered from looking after all these kids you want her to have that she no longer wants sex? Not sure you've thought it all the way through. Or maybe you think it's fine to just trade her in for a younger model at that point, yuck.

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 01:44

k1233 · 21/09/2025 01:42

I think men need to accept their share of the responsibility for falling birth rates.

Facts:

  • not many men earn a sufficient wage for women to be SAHMs
  • women are expected to bear the load of children, parenting, household and working. Men go to work. Refer the inequitable question that is always asked of women, not men - how to you balance a career with a family?
  • men these days are children - wasting time on gaming and hobbies while their wives are their skivvies but still expected to work and bring in money (EDIT forgot to say women also need to be pornstars in the bedroom, at the end of a long day of doing everything for everyone)
  • then divorce / separation. Give me strength. The kids typically stay with mum. The dad is "too busy" to have the kids 50% but that busy-ness does not convert to the actual cost of supporting and raising children. Child support is based on what the absent parent "can afford" to pay, not what it actually costs to raise the child. The resident parent has to somehow make up that cash shortfall while also solely raising the children.

What can be done

  • support for women to have children - career programs to help them return after children and work support to help with childcare etc
  • men actually man up and stop behaving like children. Pull their weight in the house. Just to make OP happy, that may lead to the adult relations he thinks men need to commit - mothering a grown man kills any sexual desire, as does doing 100% of everything.
  • have a compulsory amount absent parents must pay and that comes out of their wage or benefits BEFORE the money goes to them. That would free up court time, enforcement time and ensure the chidren are properly provided for.
Edited

Well said.👏👏👏

VoltaireMittyDream · 21/09/2025 01:49

Why are any of us engaging with this massive tit?

VoltaireMittyDream · 21/09/2025 01:51

Trendyname · 21/09/2025 01:32

There was a suggestion in one interview that government needs to step in and tell young women it will have their back if men let them down, in order to persuade them to have children at a younger age.

So women are seen as the breeder / baby makers, and government should come up with plans to get them to have kids. Sounds a bit like handmaid’s tale. Let women decide rather than manipulating them in thinking if they want to be divorced and childless or divorced with kids, you don’t care about women, you care about manpower for economic growth.

He doesn’t care about any of that, he cares about winding us up.

TooBigForMyBoots · 21/09/2025 01:53

VoltaireMittyDream · 21/09/2025 01:49

Why are any of us engaging with this massive tit?

Ah come on. He's not a massive tit. Tits are nurturing, comforting and useful.

The OP isn't.

LemondrizzleShark · 21/09/2025 01:53

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.)

Have you met men? 🤣

Sex does not make men want children. It just makes them want more sex.

Unless you are suggesting women trap men by secretly coming off the pill. Which would obviously be immoral (and would also not prevent the man from walking away).

ChihuahuaKeeper · 21/09/2025 01:58

Friendlygingercat · 21/09/2025 00:25

I can remember when women who decided to be child free were called insulting names like "old maid" or "spinster". You never hear these terms now and they have become as unacceptable as the "N" word. Now that the choice to be childfree carries minimal stigma many women are looking at the shitshow which is childbirth and parenting and rejecting it. I decided age 11 that I wanted no children and have never wavered from that sensible decision. I did not see how children were going to serve my interests in any meaningful way.

Are you being ironic being on MUMSnet?

kittensinthekitchen · 21/09/2025 02:05

Didn't even need to look at the username to know this was written by a man.

Stop thinking you should make any decisions in what women do with their own bodies.

spoonbillstretford · 21/09/2025 02:11

Personally we stopped at two because I was the main earner but there was no way I could do my job and have more than two children, and it would also cost way more. New house, and new car would have been required. Quite apart from anything else, the sums just didn't add up. So unless you get free bigger houses and cars and childcare I can't see it happening.

Crushed23 · 21/09/2025 02:11

Having children disproportionately impacts women and fewer and fewer of them are falling for it. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that. The COL argument is a red herring, IMO.

FairKoala · 21/09/2025 02:15

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.

I wonder what caused that fall? I really really wonder what that cause could be?

The pill came into effect in 1961 so 20 years before that would be 1941.
What were the Japanese and the world up to in 1941 that would cause a lower birth rate?

Personally if the persons making this documentary can’t work that out then maybe this film maker should steer clear of make documentary films

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why there was a falling birth rate 20 years earlier

Of course the introduction of the pill would produce a falling birth rate. So do World Wars

LemondrizzleShark · 21/09/2025 02:21

FairKoala · 21/09/2025 02:15

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.

I wonder what caused that fall? I really really wonder what that cause could be?

The pill came into effect in 1961 so 20 years before that would be 1941.
What were the Japanese and the world up to in 1941 that would cause a lower birth rate?

Personally if the persons making this documentary can’t work that out then maybe this film maker should steer clear of make documentary films

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why there was a falling birth rate 20 years earlier

Of course the introduction of the pill would produce a falling birth rate. So do World Wars

Japan, for whatever reason, did not approve the oral contraceptive pill until 1999. So 20 years beforehand was 1979.

IUDs and condoms were available, but the pill wasn’t.