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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Reform wants women barefoot and pregnant

829 replies

Sweetiedarling7 · 14/02/2026 07:57

Reform candidate Matt Goodwin wants women to have children early in life and introduce extra taxes as punishment for anyone who chooses not to have children.

Misogyny in plain sight.

How long till they ban abortion too?

Women voting Reform may want to consider if they are turkeys voting for christmas.

OP posts:
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Gwenhwyfar · 14/02/2026 10:28

I hate Reform, but I must say that many continental countries tax childless people more. I pay more tax than my colleagues with dependent children.

Owlbookend · 14/02/2026 10:28

Also it is not just women who need to be lectured about their choices about fertility & reproduction, but also 'young girls'. Nice.

rainingsnoring · 14/02/2026 10:28

Yewoo · 14/02/2026 10:07

A large part of the solution is massive redistribution of wealth and services away from retired people and the elderly to the young. But nobody likes to hear that, they’d rather berate women in their 20s-40s for choosing to not have children they know they can’t afford.

Exactly.
This is one major problem. We've seen wealth taken from younger workers and given to the elderly, partly through the tax system and partly through the deliberate inflation of assets (stocks, property) which has enriched the asset owners (the elderly who were able to buy assets decades ago and the wealthy). This has continued until the >60s are the wealthiest group in society, when they were previously the poorest. Despite this, they still receive triple locked pensions, WFA, free prescriptions, free bus passes, etc.
It's all very well saying that women need to understand about their fertility declining after 35. I'm pretty sure most women do understand this but many women (and men, let's not forget them!) are not in a financial position to have children at the same age their grandparents did, in their early-mid 20s.

CandleRigg89 · 14/02/2026 10:28

Sartre · 14/02/2026 08:53

To play devil’s advocate… We are facing a bit of a crisis in the west in particular, though swathes of East Asia are experiencing it too. Nobody is dying but very few are being born, the average age is increasing and this impacts public services. I think the average number of children a woman has in Japan is down to like 0.3 or something.

I don’t know what the solution is but I do know lots of couples are waiting until their mid-late thirties or even later in some cases to have children and finding it’s much too late then regretting it. I have noticed I’m always one of the youngest parents still at school, even though I was 27 when my youngest DC was born. Most seem to be at least a decade older, in some instances 15ish years above me. They’re more likely to stop at one child too.

I’m not a fan of Reform but I do think women have been fed a lie of being able to have it all. You can be successful and have children but I think women need to realise their fertility isn’t finite, it does decrease after 35.

Edited

The solution is literally already clear and happening - migration. You can’t force women to give birth, what you can do is create social policies that encourage families to be created without financial hardship, and plug the gap with working age people from other countries.

It used to be great when we were in the EU because the workers we got were generally trained to a high European standard, but since the idiots voted for Brexit we lost that guaranteed pool of skilled workers - and lost many of them to their home countries.

the same idiots that voted for Brexit also don’t understand the complexities of socioeconomic policy and demographics so now they just think ‘too many migrants, not enough British people being born, force women to give birth’.

Demographics change. Human movement is literally the story of humanity. Migrants provide us with the working age population we don’t have.

Snowyowl99 · 14/02/2026 10:28

weewillywink · 14/02/2026 08:45

I had my children at 35 and 40 and I’m glad I have the children I have now, but it would have been nicer to have had them younger really and have more time with them. My mum had me at 21 and hopefully I’ll get lots of years with her. She’s very fit and able and I feel so fortunate compared to my friends who have older parents

Lovely to have that time with your mum. My mum had me older and I was envious of my friends with younger mums. They all have their mothers still and these mums are active grandmother's. Mine has sadly passed and I miss her . Life has no guarantees but this has spurred me to have my children earlier. Enjoy your time with your lovely mum xx

itsgettingweird · 14/02/2026 10:30

i had DS at 24. However he’s disabled and I became a single mum so they’d probably still hate me 🤣

Not that I’d ever consider voting for. Reform candidate. My local MP was bad enough as a Tory and has now defected 🙄

rainingsnoring · 14/02/2026 10:32

The only thing YABU about is expecting Matt Godwin, the Professor (how?!) to have anything but abhorrent views on most subjects. To me, he comes across as rather stupid, aggressive bigot. Happy to listen to anyone who has heard him say anything sensible if anyone has!

MayaPinion · 14/02/2026 10:34

These are all Trump’s authoritarian, paternalistic, and misogynist ideas. Women don’t have to do anything we don’t fucking want to do, and that includes taking seriously the pontifications of some headbanger from the Temu Republican party.

Whatwerewetalkingabout · 14/02/2026 10:36

Reform are misogynistic arseholes, they want to peer pressure women (and girls) into having children early rather than giving women who want children the opportunity to have them earlier. Quite frankly one of the reasons I didn't have kids till my mid 30s was because it took till our 30s to buy a house, have a liveable wage in our careers and longer to build up our savings so I could have a year of maternity leave including 3 months unpaid and 3 months stat maternity pay.

Reform have no plans to make housing cheaper, minimum wage to cover cost of living, parental leave to be more generous and early years childcare to be more affordable. These are all things that would probably help those who want children to be able to manage earlier. However their plans are to just subjugate women and make life for women culturally conservative. (Something they claim to dislike in the Muslim community)

FuckRealityBringMeABook · 14/02/2026 10:38

WhereYouLeftIt · 14/02/2026 08:58

What does our current low birth rate achieve?

An aging population being supported by ever-fewer people of working age - who not only have to physically support this aging population but also see their taxes disappear into pensions, reducing the services they and their children receive.

Our current low birth rate is not sustainable.

And yes of course it will take twenty years for those born now to become working age! It always did. This population crisis has been brewing since the introduction of effective contraception sixty years ago.

Edited

What about the looming climate crisis? We need to be working towards degrowth.

StandFirm · 14/02/2026 10:38

Sweetiedarling7 · 14/02/2026 07:57

Reform candidate Matt Goodwin wants women to have children early in life and introduce extra taxes as punishment for anyone who chooses not to have children.

Misogyny in plain sight.

How long till they ban abortion too?

Women voting Reform may want to consider if they are turkeys voting for christmas.

As I keep saying, if you want to know where that comes from, look up the Heritage Foundations. It's the ideology behind MAGA and it has imperialistic ambitions. It's all about Christian (white supremacist) nationalism. There is a perverse logic to all this: they're anti-immigration (non-white) and think the only way to address the looming demographic crisis is to turn women into breeders whether they like it or not. Can't have them educated (because there's a direct correlation between education levels and number of kids), can't have them vote, certainly can't have them single... Those people disgust me beyond words. I have a 19 yr old DD. I will fight them to my dying breath.

ThingsAreNotWhatTheyWere · 14/02/2026 10:39

Gwenhwyfar · 14/02/2026 10:28

I hate Reform, but I must say that many continental countries tax childless people more. I pay more tax than my colleagues with dependent children.

Yes, that was certainly true of Germany when I lived and worked there in the late 90's/early 2000s.

ETA it was framed more that you paid the same tax but got less of a rebate if you were single, childless and didn't use public transport or a car to get to work!

StandFirm · 14/02/2026 10:40

FuckRealityBringMeABook · 14/02/2026 10:38

What about the looming climate crisis? We need to be working towards degrowth.

GDP is a perfidious metric. The billionaire broligarchy is the only demographic that benefits from it while the rest of the biosphere slowly chokes to death.

Yewoo · 14/02/2026 10:40

Pineneedlesincarpet · 14/02/2026 10:10

I agree with this.

I feel like it needs to be laid out to the public. Almost referendum style. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle - we now have the ability to keep lots of people alive to their 90s, in varying degrees of health. 1 in 2 babies born in 2020 can expect to live to at least 90. Funding people retiring in their late 60s or early 70s for 20 plus years is a huge financial commitment, even forgetting the cost of additional health and social care requirements on top of that. Assuming we don’t want to go backwards and let the elderly die of treatable conditions or unmet care needs, we need to work out how we fund it. The options seem to be 1) increasing taxation of working age people 2) creating more working people who all pay less tax, either by increasing the birth rate or mass immigration, 3) increase retirement age and/or 4) reduce the state pension. None of those options are perfect and will face lots of backlash, but we are rapidly speeding towards needing to pick at least one.

rainingsnoring · 14/02/2026 10:40

FuckRealityBringMeABook · 14/02/2026 10:38

What about the looming climate crisis? We need to be working towards degrowth.

To clarify, do you mean population degrowth or economic degrowth or both?

RingoJuice · 14/02/2026 10:41

ThingsAreNotWhatTheyWere · 14/02/2026 09:03

What about those who are unable to have children and are therefore locked out of "participating in creating the next generation", even though they might have liked to? Do they get a pass?

Asking for a friend...

Then paying additional taxes is a good way to contribute, is it not?

Like I feel bad if you wanted a family and it’s not on the cards for any number of reasons. But it’s not a reason to hold back on these sorts of policies, imo.

FourCheese · 14/02/2026 10:41

FuckRealityBringMeABook · 14/02/2026 10:38

What about the looming climate crisis? We need to be working towards degrowth.

I don’t understand how we’re supposed to accommodate all the the new babies and migrants we’ve brought into solve this population crisis. Do we just keep up the pyramid scheme?

Gwenhwyfar · 14/02/2026 10:42

ThingsAreNotWhatTheyWere · 14/02/2026 10:39

Yes, that was certainly true of Germany when I lived and worked there in the late 90's/early 2000s.

ETA it was framed more that you paid the same tax but got less of a rebate if you were single, childless and didn't use public transport or a car to get to work!

Edited

France, Belgium, probably lots of other countries.
It's the same principle Blair had with the working families' tax credits.

Allisnotlost1 · 14/02/2026 10:42

Surely this will mean men who vote Reform are even less attractive to women?

Rainbunny · 14/02/2026 10:42

It's clear to me that this decade is going to be the decade of "backlash" against women and our rights. Messages like Reform's are happening across the developed world. In the USA Vice President JD Vance said a few years ago that childless couples should not have the right to vote. In South Korea male politicians are extremely hateful towards women for not having children and are publicly making it their political platform to get women out of the workplace.

I fear for the equality of women in the near future. In the USA there are christian groups arguing for school lessons encouraging female students to marry quickly after high school and have babies because they can go to college later (meaning never...), they also argue against women going to college at all now.

It wasn't a coincidence that Trump's Education Department suddenly downgraded the professional status of nursing degrees last year, leading to a reduced cap on student aid and government loans to study nursing. The vast majority of nurses in the USA are women and it's long been recognised as a pathway to female financial independence as nurses can make decent money (some of my friends are earning 6 figures.)

Then there was the SAVE Act that just passed, now women who took their husband's names at marriage have to provide a government federal ID document that matches their married name so birth certificates are no longer valid, if they don't have a passport (less than 50% of Americans do), they have to scramble together a bunch of documents to prove their identity. The Act doesn't make it clear that a wedding certificate suffices to prove change of name, a curious oversight or not perhaps...

The EEOC (Equal Employment and Oppourtunits Commission) has been gutted by Trump so women have an even harder time reporting workplace discrimination. Then we have abortion.... we know what's happening there and now attacks against contraception. To cap it all off, a growing movement to end no-fault divorce.

In the mindset of right-wing religious types, women's equality is a disaster and is the cause of "white genocide." And now they're in power in the USA (and in the Supreme Court). It's going to get rougher for women.

rainingsnoring · 14/02/2026 10:42

StandFirm · 14/02/2026 10:40

GDP is a perfidious metric. The billionaire broligarchy is the only demographic that benefits from it while the rest of the biosphere slowly chokes to death.

I agree. It's a foolish thing to keep chasing. So many other things are missed in chasing (often fake) figures of economic growth and damaging the planet in the process.

StandFirm · 14/02/2026 10:43

Allisnotlost1 · 14/02/2026 10:42

Surely this will mean men who vote Reform are even less attractive to women?

They bloody well should vote themselves out of the gene pool.

Agrumpyknitter · 14/02/2026 10:43

theagreementwas · 14/02/2026 08:09

But don’t they also want to keep the 2 child UC limit and lower minimum wage? The combination of ideas seem a bit contradictory

Yes Reform want to keep the 2 cap limit so that they can afford a 5p reduction in the price of a pint because beer before children!

Gwenhwyfar · 14/02/2026 10:43

Owlbookend · 14/02/2026 10:28

Also it is not just women who need to be lectured about their choices about fertility & reproduction, but also 'young girls'. Nice.

Well, yes, because if you're going to have a large family, you better start young.

Livelovebehappy · 14/02/2026 10:43

Give over. A candidate gives his opinion. It doesn’t represent the policies and manifesto of the Reform party. Just a personal opinion. If we’re going down that road fgs, there’s many in the Labour Party who hold controversial views which don’t align with the Labour party’s published manifesto. That’s why Starmer can’t get many of his proposals through the party vote. Same with most parties.