Why does barely anyone my age have kids?

[Quietterry]

I’m 25 and had my first young so she’s 9 now and yes I was very young having her but I’m no longer a spring chicken and looking at my cohort who went to school with me out of 200+ people I can count on one hand who’s had kids.

Im not judging them for it I’m just curious on what changed when my mother was my age practically everyone she knew had kids by 25!

I know there’s different theories on this and they probably all have some merit but I’m leaning towards thinking it’s phones. I heard recently some people spend 8 hours a day on their phones.

Honestly? It’s insanely expensive to have children, lots of women want more freedom to travel, have a career and just live freely without being tied down. 25 is still really young. I’m 32 and don’t feel remotely ready for children - perhaps I never will.

If your mum had you at 25, then she’s around my age. In my friendship group I had one friend who had her first child at 26 and she was the exception - everyone else tended to get married late 20s, then have kids around 30, or older depending on how things worked out.

I had my dc when I was 20-22, I always felt young compared to most of the mums at school. Looking back now and if I had my time again I probably would have waited a little longer to have kids, though it’s great to be in my early 40’s with 2 adult kids, there’s no way I would want to parent a small child in my 40’s.

I can see why less people are having children, why a lot ore waiting until their late 20’s or 30’s, I can also see why people chose to get a dog instead 😬. I’m not sure I would want to bring a child into the world at all with the way things are at the moment.

It’s not hard to believe if you understand even the most simple statistics.

Quite apart from anything else OP, my biological clock didn't start ticking until 38.

Between 16 and having ds, I took a'levels, a degree, a masters, renovated two houses, worked internationaly and travelled to 36 countries. And paid off a mortgage.

i took a uk job at 42, met ds' dad, pregnant at 44. Ds arrived at 45.

Now I'm 63, ds is off to uni and I can retire. 😊

id much rather have lived the life i did live in my 20s & 30s and risk fertility issues being an older mum tbh - id prefer to have had no kids at all but lived that life - it was worth the risk for me.

There actually is a lot of difference. This was the time in my life where most change and opportunity so far happened (career advancement, traveling, moving, opportunity to relocate abroad etc).

I think it is to do with the rise in school leaving age, the increase in young people staying on in education to degree level which makes them 22 or 23 at least before they even get a full time job and this also delays them meeting a partner.

I'm 53 now and degree educated. When I graduated at 22 I was in no way way ready to be planning a family- I had a career to embark on, I was still single, I was renting in shared accommodation and had no money behind me. It took me until I was 30 to save for a deposit for a house, meet the right man and spend 3 years dating him and having fun before committing and settling down together and planning a wedding, and then I was 32 before I decided to have a family.

Consequently we were able to give our children a stable home-life as we both had a good income and life experience to bring to our parentlng. I Can't imagine how 16 year old parents can offer their children the same chances in life.

I aged ten years in my first year of having each child. That might complicate the stats ;-)

I don't think peopl ehaving children well before the age of 25 has been common for a long time. I am 50, most of my friends' parents are now in their mid-late 70s, or early 80s. PIL had their first when they were early 20s.... but it took nearly 10 years before they had another.

So basically, since women properly entered the workplace and had options for their lives, and were getting better eduations.

We have seen this age thing drift further up. So many of my friends' parents were having them in mid-late 20s whereas now it's more likely late 20s to early 30s, with plenty of people having children even later. But that's still true of workplace and education. If, as a woman, you want to train to be a doctor, that's a long time of training and residency and all the ret of it before you consider havnig children. For example.

I always thought I'd have kids in my mid twenties but it would have been very hard if not impossible with the line of work I went in to. I realised pretty quickly no one around me was a mum. I think if I'd gone into a more stable career, I would have had children earlier and probably more than two. Happy with my choices, but I think work culture for me was the big decider.

Because most 25 year olds are in the very early stages of their career, unlikely to be financially secure and are enjoying having to focus only on themselves. 25 is a VERY spring chicken. The 25 year olds I know are either 2 years into their careers. If they’ve done law or accountancy they aren’t even qualified, they’re saving and living at home and if they’ve got any sense they’re enjoying the freedom of weekends and lots of holidays

I’d be quite sad if any of my kids had their own children at 25. I had my first at 28 and looking back that was so young.

also 25 not a spring chicken?! What are you talking about?!

In many ways getting married and having children would of been a life milestone not so long ago. As a young woman you’d leave education, perhaps work but you’d be expected to get married and have children.

Improvements in women’s education, lower infant mortality, employment and birth control give women choices and have raised the maternal age for a first child and lowered the number of children per woman on average. The 25-30 age group is now the most common for having a first dc. I think followed up by 30-34. It does change by area/ income. Statistically speaking you are a spring chicken

Yes, exactly what I was saying in my posts - the common factor is that we all went into further education, both my generation of family and friends and my parents’ generation of f&f. Men AND women.

They can’t!

My sister was 16 (3 years old than me) when she had her first, 17 when she had her second and her children didn’t get the same life experiences as my children that I had 15 years later, she simply couldn’t afford it even with all the family support she received. But she had no oomph in her to achieve in life, so this may not be case for all teenage mums.

Same.

Higher education, travelling, lack of stable long term relationship.. there are lots of reasons. Also peoples' brains are not fully developed until 25 so it makes sense to wait until late twenties or older before starting a family.

My granny had her first (and only) at 37
My mum had her first (me) at 30
I had my first at 31
My dc are 31, 29 and 20 and none of them have children yet. Ds2 is the only one who is married and only one of his friends has a child. A baby born earlier this year. I know very few people who have had babies when they were under 25 in my generation or my children’s.

The average age of a 1st time mother in the UK is 30, afair.

Well, yes, and the average woman didn't have children by 25 20-30 years ago either. The average age of a first-time mother was 27 in both 1996 and 2006. It's now 29.2, so there has been a shift but hardly seismic.

I wanted to go to university and have a career, so having kids didn’t cross my mind as a teenager or my early 20’s. There was one girl in my year group who had a teen pregnancy, the vast majority of us didn’t until late 20’s to 30’s.

I had my two at 35 & 36yrs. I’d travelled, studied, built a career and lived. I personally feel that I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I’d had a child young. I now also feel no resentment or like I’m missing out on anything by raising children now. I’m financially stable, enabling me to be a SAHM whilst they’re in their infancy.

I think the fact that the economy and the socio-political landscape are borderline on fire at the moment is a deterrent. Women also have choices, they don’t want to be straight out of school into motherhood.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/population/have-kids-settle-down/

this is interesting:

'the average age of women at first birth today (29.6) is not very different to what it was in 1938 (29.0), and fertility among women in their forties was higher at the start of WWII and during the 1940s than it was in 2010.
The average age of women at first birth was lower at the end of the 1960s than at any other point since 1938. Before the 1960s, the average age of women both at their first birth and across all births was higher '

(my bold)

Oh you are a spring chicken at 25. Very much so

Absolutely!

I'm in my 60s and had my children at 30 and 32. My mother had me when she was 35, Her 3 sisters all had babies in their 30s and 40s. My 3 female cousins all had babies in their 40s. We're an entire family of aged mothers!

I had my first at 24 and people were shocked at "how young" I was! It was crazy to me - I'd been to uni, done two years of travelling and we had a house. I didn't feel "young".
I am now 31 and still the only one of my peer group to have children which seems a shame. I have quite a bit of family who had children later in life (late 30s, early 40s) and they've all said they wished they'd had children a lot sooner.