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.

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.

I’m a divorced woman of 52 who’s very grateful that I don’t have children. That would have been a terrible idea. Cats all the way.

(As for this being MUMSnet - I’m one of many non-parents on here, we even have our own board, & I originally came for the feminism).

It’s interesting to compare this thread with https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5414180-to-think-the-ultimate-feminist-act-is-ensuring-that-a-man-will-provide-for-you-and-your-children though.

The introduction of the pill was in 1961 20 years before that when Japan and the rest of the world had a dip in birth rates had nothing to do with the pill but because there was a world war going on

So trying to say the falling birth rates have nothing to do with contraception because birth-rates fell during a world war doesn’t disprove anything

All of this.

That isn’t what the OP said though. He said “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.”

Not 20 years before the pill was invented. 20 years before the pill was licensed in Japan, ie 20 years before 1999.

If we want to up the birth rate we need it to be a normal choice. / route for women to have children at 18/19 and there is help to make it possible. When dc then go to school these women can go into education or the job market at 25.

Those that I have known who did it this way are the most successful people I know.

I think it is because they have had time to grow up and figure their lives out and what would make them happy

Who are women of 18/19 expected to have babies with? Or do they just spontaneously reproduce?

You can't actually be serious...

What in the incel hell is this?

So it’s all the nasty women’s fault is it?

I don't think the number of women wanting children has changed. Their ability to choose has.

My DM admitted she shouldn't have had children. It was something she was just expected to do. I was on the fence & the constant negative pressure & horrible comments about being old & alone or missing out on the greatest love I'll ever know, and DH wanting kids, made me think I was being selfish. Only a few years later women became more open about how hard it is, expensive & how your husband won't step up & how I'd have to sacrifice my career & freedom. If I'd heard those voices too, I would have said no.

The world needs less humans. The governments should be embracing it & trying to find ways to manage it economically. Instead where I am, which is not UK, immigration is massive to counteract falling birth rates & increase population. The result is housing is unaffordable, our famous backyards are disappearing to build flats, & roads, even in our rural city, are congested & shopping centres & parks are so packed on weekends we just don't go anymore. I worry for the next drought, which will happen, as no one cares whilst we're in a plenty of rain cycle.

Maybe I am being thick but doesn’t AI mean the shrinking birth rate isn’t such a bad thing? We keep being told of the dire warnings of robots taking all the jobs so the fact there are fewer people around won’t matter so much?

At 18 I'm hoping my DC, both male & female, are spreading their wings and enjoying their first steps out into the world, not being tied to babies!

It might work in situations where there's a perfect father who steps up, lots of financial support & family to help raise the child, but for most women I know, it's led to poverty & lack of opportunities. Also, men who are well into developing a career certainly won't step back & step up so their partner can have her chance at success.

This is a radical feminist position. That liberal feminism has basically ended up with a life pattern that apes men (years at uni/establishing a career) when actually men and women should prioritise women’s biology and have babies at say19/20 and then have uni with full childcare provided etc in late 20s onwards.

you don’t need to be a trad wife to have more babies

lol that’s not how probability works. Either I will or I won’t be the next prime minister- doesn’t mean it’s a 50:50 chance

So you need to have kids to post on AIBU? To discuss politics? To talk about what TV shows you like? To ask about a place you want to go on holiday?

It’s not about the population in general though, it’s the decreased population of younger people - who can work, are likely fit and healthy and can bring new ideas and creativity to the world. A huge population of elderly people who are retired and are more likely to be in poor health don’t contribute to society in the same way. (This isn’t saying old people don’t matter, it’s simply acknowledging the fact that there are different phases of life).

I don’t get why this is seen as a birth rate issue, when the world has too many people already. It’s an issue of how to afford everyone, especially old people who are expecting to retire and live on a pension until they die. This could be 30 years of not working being paid for by someone else! How on earth can we afford that when most people would only work for 40 years max before that?
This needs a societal shift to people looking after family members, saving money for when they’re old and infirm and not expecting to be bailed out by the taxpayer after a long retirement. Society is also increasingly unequal with too many uber rich people draining the pot and avoiding paying tax.
Women are more cautious about having children because they know the risks - of not having a stable enough partner/father for their children, of not having their own career to afford kids/childcare, and of needing their own career to stop being dependent on unreliable men.
Men have just lost their heads in the past few decades. Incels, Andrew Tate, terrorists, paedophiles, militant religious nuts - all mass male hysteria that does not create attractive potential fathers. Why isn’t that being discussed as a major global concern rather than how women respond to it?

Honestly, it was Mumsnet that made me consider if I actually wanted children. I first came here when I was broody in my mid twenties. I was newly married and keen to start trying for a baby. At that point in my life, my experience of babies had been holding sweet little sleeping parcels and pushing a pram. It seemed ideal. Then I read, in depth, all about the realities of life with children, disappearing men, costs involved, etc, etc….and it put me off.

There is more information out there than ever before and women have the ability to stop and consider their options before committing. I’m nearly forty now, still married to the same DH, and we’re very happy with the decision we made.

It's funny suddenly the messaging around birthrates has changed. I can remember people being told the population needed to shrink across the world and in particular the UK due to the environment/ sustainability/ blah blah.

Women should do as they wish, and anecdotally I had my first child over the age of 28 and have 5 children. Not one of my friendship group has had a child younger than 28, this is all a new narrative to suit a new agenda.

It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the calibre of the younger males available could it?

How about making a law, regardless of marriage status, if two adults make a baby during maternity leave, and extended child rearing, the life of that child up to end of their education (moving target because university is expensive now) that finances are split equally between the parents 50/50 at net, with equal pension contributions and none of the hiding cash/tax/dividend tricks? You know make men real providers again on an equal footing. Do you think the men would agree to that?

if women are happy to educate themselves, take birth control and forego motherhood, perhaps replace all they seem to get from some males with a decent sex toy and a supply of strong batteries, maybe men could try looking at themselves a bit deeper and ask why?

Perhaps banning sex toys for women would have them flooding back to the nearest dick at the dance desperate to be knobbed like a blow up doll? Who knows?

The declining birthrate is much more complicated than trying to persuade women they will be sad dried up spinsters to solve. Men have tried that line for eternity, just that nowadays women can go “ok fine by me” and press “buy now” from the latest rabbit collection, and men can’t strap them to ducking stools anymore. So that’s some progress you have to agree.

Oh isn’t it just!

This x infinity. It's not tue declining birthday rates that are the problem, those are actually a good thing. It's the economic model.

The delaying of adulthood in youngsters until their sometimes late twenties means men and women couple up much later in life with a lot more wisdom about what they want and will accept.

Agree with every word

And my generation who are now looking after parents and kids at the same time. I don’t believe my kids will ever financially look after me and possibly won’t have kids of their own to look after given the stats.

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