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.

Times have changed, people are having babies in their thirties and later but also generally birth rates are said to be at an all time low! I think a lot comes down to affordability!

The world is burning, and people can't afford life let alone a child. Also, thinking you're basically over the hill at 25 is so absurd.

I don't forget they exist lol. Not sure where you get that idea from. I also see mine from time to time

People are being more conscious about the decision to have a child, rather than expecting the taxpayer to pick up the bill after them. I saw the girls in my year who got pregnant at 16 and see how their life’s panned out and I’m SO glad I knew what birth control was and focused on getting my qualifications and a good career.

It was just ‘the done thing’ before. Lots of people didn’t even think about why they were having kids. People have more choices now, and having kids (with all
that entails) is less appealing to people in their 20s. Not sure why that would be surprising to anybody 🤷🏼‍♀️. Things change - it’s the way of the world.

I see you say your mum is mid 40s I'm 45. Had my kids at 32 and 35. Most people I know were late 20s at least before having kids

Only a handful of people have babies AT AGE 25 - because the average age for a woman to have her first baby in the UK is 29 and the average age for a man to become a father for the first time is 33!

Most people don't want to start that early because they've got other things to do before putting a child first. Once you have a baby, that human is more important than you, forever. You worry about them, forever.

Additionally most people prefer to try to be financially secure before having children, as well as having done a few years of being young, free and single, a few years enjoying being a couple, worked on establishing a secure career path or stable job and home etc.

It's not that your peers won't have children but that it is unusual to have a baby before your late 20s, and has been for decades.

I'm in my 50s and the only one of my friends who had her (first) children in her early 20s had a surprise pregnancy at 38 (same husband) and chose to keep the baby, so never got the child free early retirement and travel at 50 she'd been working towards.

I can assure you that 20 years ago I barely knew anyone with kids in their early 20s. We had phones then too. It’s not as long ago, or as different, as you think. Which you will realise when you are older 😊

I find it interesting that on these age threads, nobody ever seems to have fertility issues or regrets about being an older mum ever, or wishes they got more time to see their children and grandchildren grow up etc.

Presumably women who had children young recognise that they had to maybe choose a different career or couldn’t go out weekend. That’s just how it is. I don’t see the unfaltering declarations of positivity.

There are pros and cons to both.

Your mum was also far younger than average nationally having a baby in 2001, if she's only in her mid 40s now! The UK average age for a woman to have her first baby was late 20s even when your mum had you.

It's nothing to do with mobile phones for god's sake. That's just showing your naivity. I went out socialising loads, had boyfriends. I just didn't want a child young!! I wanted to enjoy life in my 20s, went travelling, went uni, had a career. I then met my perfect partner and had kids in my 30s. Same as a lot of people.

Times have changed. I’m 35 and my similar aged friends are just starting their families or have under 5s. We spent our 20s travelling and starting careers and buying houses etc.

I think most people are posting about general trends and how they fit into them, and why things are as they are, not about what's "better" or "worse".

Most people don't know in their teens or early 20s they have or will have fertility issues, and having a baby with a teenage boyfriend when you're 17 (or even with a boyfriend you're not sure about at 24) just in case would seem to be a very high cost way to mitigate that theoretical risk!

But I thought no one can afford to buy in their 20s. Never mind but a house AND go travelling.

Maybe some of them did each thing, rather than all of them doing all of those things...

There’s a massive massive drop in the number of people wanting children.

My parents got married late 20s started having kids early 30s, my in laws the same. They are all late 60s early 70s now. None of this group ever claimed a benefit. I was in my 30s when I had my first, my parents had instilled a work ethic in me that means I knew I had to be able to support a child before having one.

I don’t think having a phone delayed my having kids. Are you suggesting people are too distracted by phones and don’t want to have sex?!

I am several years older than the OP’s parents and no, it wasn’t the norm to have kids before 25 back then (we’re talking early noughties, not 1950s). I remember reading sometime then that the average age of motherhood had reached 30. I don’t remember if this was an average for all children born or just the first child but certainly most of my friends at the time seemed to stay child-free for most if not all of their twenties. There will be a wide demographic variation though. Women with a university degree tend to have children later than those who left education earlier and have done for decades.

OP’s parents who are still only mid 40s will be at one end of the range as they appear to have had the OP when they were around age 20. Children born to young parents are more likely to have children at a younger age themselves, hence the OP having a child at 16 and not thinking it particularly unusual. But there has been a big drive since the 80s at reducing teenage pregnancies by better education and promotion of safe sex, meaning that some of those children born to young parents broke the cycle they were born into and waited until they were older and more financially solvent to have children themselves.

I don't know, is that what you do? Because I don't.

Oh, did you mean because I still count them as my family and they are part of my life, even after they turn 18? 😂

I had my son at 28, which was actually considered pretty young where I live. I’m 36 and he just turned 8. My mom had me at the same age. Just because you had a child at 16 doesn’t make you the norm, and it certainly doesn’t mean everyone else is late.

The average age for first-time mothers has been rising for decades. People aren’t postponing kids because they’re staring at their phones. They’re postponing them because housing costs a fortune, childcare costs a fortune, education takes longe and people have more options than they used to.

Having a nine-year-old at 25 is unusual. Having your first child in your late 20s or early 30s isn’t.

And if we’re going to be judgmental about other people’s life choices, are we asking the obvious follow-up questions too?

Were you still living with your parents when you had your son? Who was watching him while you finished school? Did you stay with the (presumably) boy who knocked you up? Did you finish your education? Did you build a stable adult life first, or did everyone around you have to scramble to help make an incredibly difficult situation work?

Because having a baby at 16 isn’t some moral high ground. It doesn’t make you wiser, more mature, or ahead of everyone else. It just means you became a parent about a decade earlier than most people do.

Everyone else isn’t behind. You’re the outlier.

I’m talking more about people being so certain they did everything the best way. Where are all the people with fertility issues who wish they had kids 5, 10, 15 years earlier? Or who have life limiting illnesses or simply wish they had more time?

I think theres often a lot of bravado, which makes sense as it’s a very important and permanent decision and everyone wants to justify they did it the right way. But every single thread goes down like this.

Yet someone has basically called me selfish for having retirement plans that don't involve around my adult kids. One at least of whom will be in their 40s by then

25 isn’t a spring chicken?

Jesus Christ, I’m 42 and I would give ANYTHING to be 25 again (where I was still child-free) 🤣🤣

I think she was suggesting earlier in the thread that it's because they don't meet prospective co-parents by chatting on the bus, due to being distracted by phones.

I'm older than the OP's mum and used to listen to a Walkman and read a paperback on the bus to work, to block out the sound of other passengers sniffing... I met my husband (father of my children) at a party when I was 25 - just imagine what would have happened if I had talked to my fellow bus passengers a few years earlier 😆 I did have a brick phone - it sent sms messages on a tiny screen big enough to show about eight words.

This.