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.

I don't think it's phones. People have just learnt to expect more from life. Once you have a child, your focus should be them for the rest of your life. There's no need to hurry into this situation, IMO.

It is careers not phones. If you want to be decent in many careers you have to be at least 30 before you have kids so you can get the experience & the qualifications. At 25 I was pretty much just finished my training contract, climbing up the corporate ladder. Pretty much all Doctors are still juniors by then. If you want a decent career and you have kids at 25, it’ll put you back a lot as a woman.

Plenty of us use our phones way less as adults than we did as teens.

There's a whole myriad of things we do differently as adults.

Lots of factors.

Finances - people at 25 barely have a job these days never mind a house & resources to bring up kids.

Feminist ideology has told young women to be powerful bad boss bitches and get careers which often means long hours. Hence why many leave it so late m, they need medical intervention or miss the boat completely.

An increasingly selfish world lived through social media doesn’t place much value on raising families. This site is full of the challenges of being a parent so many people in their 20s look at it and simply say no.

Hard now to find a stable relationship these days. People have insane & unrealistic expectations of what they expect from a partner. They never look in the mirror themselves!

'you arent judging them for it"
Goady comment.

Yes well that’s what I’m saying I can count on my fingers the people I know in my generation who have had kids. But my parents generation (pre phones) most had kids by now

I was still at uni in my mid twenties. Married at 26, first DC at 30, second at 36. I am early 40s. I wouldn't have wanted children any younger because I was too busy living my best life. I work in education and the phone thing doesn't seem to be stopping them at all

Why are you avoiding questions on how you have funded your life to date? You don’t have to answer of course but I wonder why.

I had my first baby in my early twenties and I’m still the only one from my old friendship groups who have had kids.
I like being a younger mother though, I’m glad I had them now rather than when I’m pushing 40. I do think life’s changed a lot and people are choosing to have them later or not at all.

Perhaps the government could run a new campaign?

'Kids, get off your phones and start having sex!'

You won't have experienced this directly, but before people had a phone with them, they often bought a newspaper on the way to and from work, and were more likely to carry a book with them to read. There was never much more than very isolated small talk on public transport.
The age you have your first child is mostly linked to your social class, income and education. Smartphone use is widespread across society, so you wouldn't see those differences if it were really smartphone related.

Because they are still only 25ish?

Don't want them yet.

Trying to establish career/housing.

'older parents' is a disadvantage? Wow.

I’m surprised you’re surprised.

I had mine at the same age as you and even now in my 30s most people I went to school with don’t have kids yet. Children are extremely expensive, time consuming and hinder your career prospects. People now have a lot more sex information and put it to good use.

It’s also localised - DD is only young and even
though we don’t live in a deprived area, about 20% of the girls who graduated in her year have at least one kid. I find it bonkers and it’s not due to lack of phones.

I’m always an anomaly in these discussions because I also had children in my late teens then again in my mid-late 20s. I still went on and gained a PhD, did a post doc at Oxford, am a relatively successful academic. People assume teen parents are all basically Vicky Pollard and I’m like hello… But anyway.

I expected to be the youngest with my older DC but I’m fairly surprised I’m still the youngest with my younger DC despite being 27 when the youngest was born. It’s just the way things are now, people wait until their late 30s or 40s to have children. I fully understand why and am not judging, I’d prefer my own DC to do this and have told them as much.

We’re birders so go to RSPB reserves every so often and yesterday saw two sets of parents with very small toddlers, both looked to be in their 50s rather than 40s. That took me by surprise a little though obviously not unheard of - I think David and Victoria Mitchell had a baby last year in their mid 50s.

Are they bollocks, you’re part of that generation.

Schools don’t let kids just sit scrolling generally and they get a very short time for lunch. As for incels causing a rift, what a load of nonsense.

Most people don’t have kids in their teens because they have more opportunities, ambitions, choices and autonomy than they did 60 years ago. Bugger all to do with phones and incels.

Ffs, are you really trying to pretend you don’t understand that by 25 not that many people have got to the settling down phase of their lives.

By the time people finish Uni they are 21, VERY VERY few people will have met their person at that stage. They then go get a job, start their lives, maybe meet a few people and look around until they are happy. Then a few years later they buy a house, then they get married, then they have children…so you are looking at it being 30ish.

I had mine at 20, with my partner who I had been with since I was 17…but it was an accident. I would never have been planning to have a child before I finished uni, before I got a proper job, before I had moved in with him (we did move in before our child was born).

When the generations before us had kids they didn’t have to worry about having a job, just a husband with a job and they could focus on looking after the home and children. Of course they had them younger…but they also didn’t have the same level of freedom and choices that we do now. Yes they were probably much improved on their own parent’s generation, but ours is even more free for women to be who we want to be and not just be defined by being parents (unless we choose that life)

And as a final point, many/most are not willing to have children at such a young age because it can mean being forced into private rentals or social housing and it becomes so much more difficult to then to save and build a deposit for your own home.

Even back when I was 25, some 20 odd years ago, I didn’t have 1 friend who had kids. We had all not long left university!

This isn’t a new thing, OP.

It's Starmer and Labour.

I am 60, I had my first child at 26 and I was the first person in my friend group to have a baby, by several years. We didn't have mobile phones and were all doing lots of socialising and dating, but none of wanted to have kids young.

You are still very much a very springy chicken.

Tbh, I don't want my kids meeting boys at school and getting pregnant at 15/16. You're really not the poster child for connection you think. Of course it's easy to have a kid whilst you're still at school if you want one or are careless or unfortunate:

• lots of time with people and natural connections
• raging hormones on both sides
• no consideration of financial implications
• underdeveloped brain so not able to fully consider consequences

All that changes wildly once you're an actual adult and independent.

The cost of living and housing is not ideal but decades ago they had loads of kids in a tiny house sharing one room. And no I’m not saying it’s a good idea to hark back to that.

You're absolutely right - decades ago they had kids in those living conditions. These days people say, er, no thanks - I'd rather wait to afford better living conditions for my future offspring.

I think you're conflating two trends that are not causal. One is that life, careers, society has got more expensive, difficult and precarious so that people are waiting to have kids later. The other is the rise of smart phones. Both of these trends have increased in recent years, but I don't agree that the latter is causing the former.

"no longer a spring chicken" at checks post 25?!! HAHAAHAAAAAaaaa. OP, you are a BAAAAABYYYYY girl!!!!

Seriously though, you are absolutely a spring chicken at 25.

I'm saying this as someone who had their first child at 25 nearly two decades ago and I was an outlier then. The other parents in my 18 yo's school class and sports teams make me feel like I was a teen mum even though I was an adult with a mortgage and a full time job when we had our first baby.

People thought our first was an accident because at 25 we were so young. He wasn't. Even my mum said "but you're so young" and I pointed out that she was the same age when I was born. It was definitely more normal in the late 70s/early 80s to be having your first baby in your mid twenties because most of my school mates had mums the same age as mine.

The other mums at baby and toddler groups when I had mine at 25 were closer to 35 on average. And that was nearly 20 years ago.

My older teen kids are about a decade older on average than the children of my siblings, my school friends, my husband's school friends.

Your children will have friends with mums who are closer in age to your own mum.

I rolled with it and have friends of all sorts of ages. My husband and I are in our 40s having a whale of a time with the freedom we have compared to a lot of our friends. My career's getting more exciting. My kids are doing cool stuff and following their own ambitions and curiosities with work, uni and school. It's all good.

Agree. When mortgage lenders cottoned onto two people going to work because it meant they had more money, the criteria for lending changed. And they would count two salaries rather than one. Unless the one was huge and no risk for the property being purchased.
The 80’s when social housing was sold off too. That impacted as well.