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.

I've never wanted children. I don't want the pregnancy/birth injuries like incontinence, nor do i want to be responsible emotionally, physically and financially for another being that i can't change my mind and walk away from. I want to be able to put myself and my wants and needs first sometimes, and you can'tt do that with a child. I would never get a dog for the same reason.

So, the population goes down, no big deal.

Or the grandparents who say they are not helping out because they’ve done their childrearing it’s their time now, forgetting they got family help when their kids were small.

Or the male offsprings who no longer have some downtrodden wife (or sister) to do the unpaid relentless caring work so he can rightfully inherit his house, but he won’t do the caring work so assets are used up, He was born with a penis, A PENIS he deserves all the sex and money without any of the work don’t you know ladies!

No my dumb airhead female brain cannot understand why the birthrate is falling it’s such an attractive offer isn’t it?

This poster was right when they said:
"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?"

Clearly what this thread is all about and you have just confirmed it with this post! 😄

Let me break it down for you. Some women don’t want children just because they don’t and that’s fine. There is a LOT of happily childfree women. It’s not a problem. No one should be having kids to be the next generation of taxpayers especially in a society that’s increasingly replacing jobs originally done by humans with AI and making it difficult for anyone who isn’t part of the ultra rich to live.

And yes sometimes it’s because they know men have forever been walking away from their duties whether they are in their home or not in the home and it’s the women’s life that will be massively impacted. These women are making wise calculated decisions, women were told to choose better by men and they have!

How can the government have their back in being a replacement father? Parenting isn’t just about financial stuff, that woman who is left carrying the baby will still feel unsupported in every other aspect if she doesn’t have a decent partner.

Exactly! This is what some men are purposely pretending not to understand. I’m sure if they were the ones who had to carry the baby and typically were left taking care of the children when relationships broke down they'd soon understand.

Yes women can now make the same choices men always could and guess what it’s the men who don’t like that.

The women are absolutely fine with this.

Ha ha ha
actually it sounds like they are getting worse
don’t some of them have limp dick when presented with an actual real normal female nowadays because they have wanked too much over extreme porn that normal sex doesn’t arouse them

erm guys the survive of the human race needs little johnny to be functional you know, as a mere basic

I know this is probably women’s fault as well they were forced to wank to hardcore porn because the females they met wouldn’t give them anal after an uninspiring exchange of text messages - or some other bullshit reason

That’s why the ‘best’ time to have kids is in your early twenties before your brain has developed enough to think about all of this. Only in the interests of population growth though.

The same reason I only go for a run early in the morning, before my brain is awake enough to really know what I’m doing and by then it’s either done or it’s too late to turn back.

Reducing the total human population is a good and necessary goal. It won't happen without suffering, but the suffering is worth it.

It also doesn’t make men want to commit. Plain and simple. Look at all the threads on here especially the relationship board - women complaining about men in their 20s,30s, 40s and beyond who have regular sex with them for months, sometimes years but still don’t want to give them the title of girlfriend let alone fiance/wife. Look at women who thought they enjoyed happy sex lives with their husband only for them to leave them for a younger model when they reach a certain age.

Aside from the fact of how demeaning it is, it’s also patently untrue and even ludicrous to pretend that “giving men lots of sex” will make them commit in any meaningful sense .

And even if they do in “best case” scenario commit to a marriage that doesn’t necessarily mean they will behave well in said marriage. Again look at the threads on MN of husbands behaving badly.

Not every woman is desperate enough to use sex to “persuade” a man to commit. Also we are missing the fact that Marriage and kids is a good deal for men , if anything they should be trying to persuade us!

Perhaps the high housing costs are saving many young women from a life of enforced obligation

always good to look on the bright side if you can!

we’ve advised our teens (they are boys but would say the same to girls) don’t have kids before you are 30 and make sure as much as you can do it’s with the right person

Overall it is a good thing. But the economics of it don’t really work when we have an aging population and not enough young people to sustain what needs to be done in terms of generating revenue.

I am not aware that there are many women unhappy they have not had children. I know of quite a few who are very happy they are childfree as they made that choice. I also have a good friend who could not have children owing to early menopause and although she was very upset for a time she has now come to terms with it.

Thats our advice too….

I would never tell my daughter to have children as early as possible just because there is some sort of statistical deadline she is heading to.

We have an aging population who want to keep hold of all their wealth - hence this new narrative have more babies

let’s face it the older generation keep voting for measures which are making each generation less well off and now the scales are finally tilting in “ I might be able to support me but a child forget it”

and now the older ones might have to spend some of their money on private healthcare and care costs - well this just isn’t good enough

If anybody or any government wants to save this world from de-population they should think of ways to increase the number of ‘quality’ (for lack of a better word) humans the world produces. We need more good, productive, kind, educated, thinking, capable humans… not just more humans.

Yup! There are so many men 35+ who haven’t had kids yet themselves who will whine about why women in their 20s and early 30s are ‘wasting’ their best “fertile” years traveling and pursuing careers when all the while their own sperm quality is declining.

Why did THEY not have kids in their 20s then if it’s such a great idea?

It will still be a battle for some to not get lumbered with the care for parents because they don’t have either children or a penis they should be gleeful of the unpaid caring work for older family members!

the male dominated society dislikes content women

Probably jealous the women are having a much more fun and productive time in their 20s because they are smart enough to not assume anything just falls in their lap, like conceited men do, so instead of accepting their own wasted 20s they try to pull women down instead,

always was
aways will be

which is why fewer and fewer women no longer care what the men think - we’re always wrong so might as well just get on and enjoy being wrong - and not get lumbered with one of them in the process

The problem, @RetiredMan , is not the lack of babies. It is the massive excess of retired men (and women). The only reason we need so many young workers is that older people are retiring too early. Keep us working for longer and we won't need to be supported by the young.

My mother and step father are both still working in their 80s, and happy with it. We need to enable people to have fulfilling careers that they don't want to quit while they are still able to do their jobs. That way, the only people that need supporting are the disabled, and a system with a shrinking population (which is good for the planet) becomes viable.

A parenting test basically

if you past the test you get a card

then men and women could request to see the card before agreeing to come off birth control!

This.

It’s frightening how this element seems to be absent from discussions about the so called problem of falling birth rates.

Governments and publications will speak about it so clinically but not touch on the fact that so many children are being raised poorly and not everyone is suitable to have children.

It’s like they are just pushing for children by any means necessary. Even if their lives are going to be shit or they’re going to spend it terrorising others.

I know a woman who has 6 poorly adjusted disruptive and traumatised children. She was abused herself as a child and has never really engaged with the counselling they offered her although she took the financial compensation which she squandered. She had a different father for each kid. They have been in and out of care and severely neglected. Of course this is an extreme case but as a former educator, I know a lot of parents aren’t great. And this harms the children. Many adults spend a lifetime recovering from bad childhoods.

Then there’s the ones who raised their kids to be selfish, entitled and hateful of people who are “different” from them. The list goes on.

We need every human to be a net contributor to society throughout their productive lives. And that doesn’t just mean financial contribution although unfortunately money does make the world go round and life more bearable. Too many kids starting adulthood late and too many oldies in ill health or retiring early. The burden then falls on those squashed in the middle.

People have started to realise that work + children does not equal ‘having it all’. It means a huge workload, exhaustion and high levels of stress.

Society expects women to have children but it doesn’t respect mothers. It isn’t a high status role. You are sneered at if you are no longer financially independent, you are just tolerated at work, you feel guilty taking promotion because you are already spread too thin and you are not considered as attractive as carefree young women without children.

Once you have the children you risk splitting up and then having to co-parent with a man who has been unfaithful or abusive to you and who you would rather never see again. You also risk losing your children for 50% of the time.

I have children and love having them but I can totally understand why many women choose not to.

There are many obvious reasons, all mentioned here - financial stability, careers, expectations of women ‘having it all’ meaning they don’t have time to find right partner, decline in marriage, decline in societal expectations of dating and men’s commitments to their families, women (and men) forced to move away from family ties for work making raising a family much harder. Fundamentally children aren’t seen as valuable in a capitalist society where money is king.

Whet scares me the most is not the lack of people, but what will happen to women when the kings of capitalism realise they need us to have babies so they have a future workforce.. I wonder if that political shift is quietly starting to happen with the general acknowledgment of ‘not enough people’, the rise of the far right and the way some of these prominent figures see / talk about women.. Charlie Kirk, Andrew Tate, Trump. I can see a shift into normalizing their way of thinking re women which is dangerous imo.