The correlation between smartphones and delayed reproduction part 2

[Quietterry]

Last thread ran out of pages.

It would appear the birth rate in India has also decreased when it used to be super high (hence having a billion people)
CRED founder Kunal shah seems to agree internet may have played its part.

As for the posters adamant that nothing had changed in the uk in the last 25 years and claiming they didn’t know anyone who had children at 25 back then. Here’s some statistics for you:

United Kingdom (England and Wales): Exact cohort data tracks that 33% of women born in 1972 (who turned 29 in 2001) had at least one child by age 25. For the cohort turning 25 exactly in 2001 (born in 1976), childbearing hit a generational low point, where fewer than 30% of women had given birth by their 25th birthday.

So if nothing had changed about 60 out of 200 people I went to school with would have had kids by now

Very funny but I haven’t lived at home since my daughter was a newborn never used my parents as babysitters either

So how did you fund your living expenses? Genuine question given that living costs are one major reason why people have children later. It is difficult to earn enough money for rent, food, bills and childcare as a 16 year old.

As pp have said, financial reasons are likely to have more effect than smartphones per se. If you can’t afford to move out from your parent’s house never mind have a standard of living where you wages bought what it did in the past, why would you take the financial burden and risks of parenthood?

I am not young so don’t know what men in their 20s and 30s are like but if manosphere crap is a major problem amongst men then that’s rightly going to turn people off dating never mind reproducing with a man. Why would women accept working to pay 50% of the bills and doing 95% of the housework and childcare?

I think it’s good that people who don’t want kids aren’t having them. They shouldn’t be labelled as a problem with society and should be respected for that decision. Red pill types like having kids as a sign of their virility and trapping their partner. It’s a good thing if this kind of man doesn’t become a father and risk creating another woman hating generation.

Yes, far too many men see fathering kids as proof of masculinity/virility, but actually parenting them as another matter entirely.

I’m almost your mums age and didn’t get a smartphone until I was 33. I still hadn’t had kids by then.

But who are these peers? MC? WC? Did they go to university? Do postgraduate degrees? Move away from where they grew up? Work in fields that require some time to establish, and possibly multiple short term contracts before a permanent contract?

I admit to claiming universal credit, I’m just saying I didn’t live at home or have my parents raise my children if that’s what you’re thinking.
Im also not saying anyone should have children at 16 or even 25 or even ever if they don’t want them.

Im just surprised so few have had kids yet when my mother was my age a lot more of the people she went to school with had had children. It’s a big shift

we’re talking over 200 people. All doing different things now, some went to university but also quite a few who didn’t and just work regular jobs that anyone could do

I think women can’t “unknow” how hard having children can be on them in so many ways, not just physically. That knowledge and ability to compare and share has become more available through social media.

How do you know the reproductive status of these 200+ people?

Do you realise the stats you quoted don't support your argument?

I think you have answered you own question. You couldn’t afford to have a child on your own at age 16 - whether it be UC, other benefits, family help. No 16yo could.
Others have delayed until they could.

To add, not sure why you see needing family help as inferior to using UC.

Why are you still surprised when you've had over 1000 responses explaining the financial pressures most people feel, the life experiences people want first and why statistics mean what you're seeing is not that unusual.

You've just refused to acknowledge all these realities to keep repeating I'm so surprised and I think it's phones.

But it’s only a big shift where you and your mother live as others keep telling you. A huge percentage of people on this thread are your mother’s age. I am your mother’s age. My friends are your mothers age. I don’t have a huge amount of friends, but the ages my close friends were when they had kids were : 29, 33, 35. 38 and 39. I don’t know a single close friend who had a child by 25. And none of us had smart phones growing up as they didn’t exist. As I said earlier I first got one at 33 and I hadn’t had kids by then yet.

The U.K. birth rate has been dropping pretty much consistently since the peak birth years of 1957-63

see eg this site here (the graph is a bit further down the page).

there’s no way declines in births in the 1970s are due to smartphones.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/united-kingdom/birth-rate

most countries in the world have quite high levels of smartphone ownership, but some countries do not.

countries which don’t have high levels of smartphone ownership include North Korea, Eritrea and various African countries.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-lowest-number-of-smartphones-per-capita.html

To be fair, most men now seem to do more of the childcare than before smartphones/computer games were invented (and yes, I know mothers didn't usually work FT OTH then). But some-not all-men used to think it was right for mums to change every nappy, while they read the paper.
As for the birth rate, some say for the environment, we need fewer births. Others say we are in a crisis with an ageing population. We don't really know what AI (when linked with robotics) will do to affect the need for more /fewer humans.

Humans. Are not. Going to go extinct. Not for declining birth rates, at least, although the planet changing to a climate norm other than the one we evolved for will cause difficulties, as will the increased reliance on computers. And I have no glass ball to foresee immense meteor strikes.

There’s 8 billion of us on the planet, on every landmass.

There may have to be some listening to women and the lower class is all. While this may seem like the end of existence to male elites, it really isn’t.

You seem not to understand correlation and causation or have listened at all to peoples responses on your first post. Not the brightest are you…

For the cohort turning 25 exactly in 2001 (born in 1976), childbearing hit a generational low point, where fewer than 30% of women had given birth by their 25th birthday.

There were no smartphones in 2001, so I'm unsure what point you're trying to make by quoting this statistic

My generation (born 1970s) had kids later than my parents’ generation. We also had fewer of them. But neither of our generations had smart phones before we had children. So what cause do you attribute to that, OP?

My point is 30% of 25 year olds had children the year I was born, according to the statistics anecdotally my mother says most people she knew had children by then.

Im now 25 myself and looking around and seeing barely any of my peers have had children I’m talking less than 3% of people I know my age.

Funnily enough there was a newspaper piece published yesterday by a woman talking about how she had a child at 25 and it was much discussed on twitter where people were basically saying what I’m saying now. That they are 25 and barely anyone has kids

Birth rates are falling globally, they are very strongly linked to economic development (look up the demographic transition model). They are strongly linked to the emancipation of women and in countries of increasing wealth, the high cost of living.

India has for many years been implementing a variety of population control measures including free sterilisation (and sometimes forced) as well as increasing access to free education for girls because they are the most populous country in the world and if they don't slow down birth rates standard of living will not improve. In such the same way China did with their One Child Policy. China has now lifted the policy but birth rates are not picking up because young Chinese don't have the same lifestyle as their grandparents in 1979.

In all cases phones aren't the cause, they are just a by product of the globalisation which has led to all this economic growth, which has led to better education and then subsequently to rising costs and falling birth rates.

No-one is necessarily disputing that.
The age at which women have their first child has been rising for decades and has predated the smart for and internet.
But that doesn’t mean it is because of smartphones, as explained by nearly every poster on this and the other thread.

You've tracked the subsequent lives of 200 people you went to school with?

I could tell you something (job, how many kids, married or not etc) about four. In one case, only because he's now the headmaster...

Bloody hell, are you still going on about this? 🤪

Have you understood how your “but I know 200 people” was completely ridiculous and wrong statistically yet?