To find all these "why aren't people having children any more" arrives absurd

[CurdinHenry]

It's not really a mystery is it

The real intrigue is why people still do

It's not a logical choice, it's something else that's very hard to describe

Articles not arrives, sorry sorry

Yeah they annoy me too, it's pretty obvious why. I suppose they are guaranteed to get lots of clicks so that's why they keep being written and published.

Agree everything is for clicks nowadays

What's your actual point? What's so obvious?

It’s unclear what you mean

I think it’s bullshit? Most people I know have children. And some have gone through a lot and a lot of expense to get there - repeated IVF, donors, adoption. As a childless person I find these articles particularly irritating because if what they were saying was true my life would feel like the norm, and I can tell you that it definitely doesn’t. I feel like all the people writing these articles have children and don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

I don't think there's any particular mystery or intrigue - like anything else in life, some people want to do it, others don't.

Yes agreed. The more power, more financial independence and more educated women are, the lower the birth rate. This is seen all over the world.

When given the choice, far fewer women have children than is 'expected'.

Its a life of drudgery being responsible for another being so not sure why it would be logical to choose it!!

We breed out of something innate, not logic. When we are able to use logic, we dont choose it anymore

Articles/society just dont want to acknowledge this, and thats ok. Humans want to think we are something special and that humans need to coninue indefinitely. But we are just one species and may well die out in time.

It is a fact that the birth rate is declining

What annoys me about these articles is that they are never addressed at men just at women. Why are women not having babies is always the question. Well why not ask men what they will do to support women with having children? Step up, support, care instead of pissing off when it gets hard and boring. And then not paying child support. That's why women are reluctant to have children

Most people have kids
families are smaller and only children on the rise due to cost of living

I thought something like 1 in 5 people in the UK ends up child-free? Hardly a minority. Among affluent circles I imagine it’s a higher %. You only need to look at celebrities.

Also, these articles typically describe falling birth rates and people having far fewer children, rather than just the phenomenon of having zero children. And that trend is undeniable - hardly anyone has more than 2 children, with 4, 5, 6 children being incredibly rare these days.

ETA: in response to @CatesandAle

I’m more baffled these days why people have more than 1 or 2, especially people who are clearly struggling and yet busily posting they are pregnant with number 4 etc

Many people are struggling to have a house suitable for a family now.

Pretty easy topic for any budding journalist to write up. Same as most “psychology today” or “men’s health” articles.
I always envision some recent grad trying to make some spare change.

Once women free themselves from the treadmill of being children/being around other children/being around other young women with children/being told that the need to find a man and get married/being asked "when are we going to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet" the whole thing falls apart fairly quickly. Once having children becomes something you actually have to decide to do of your own volition, and you get chance to weigh up all the positives and negatives of doing so, it's not much of a surprise that more women are choosing to decline.

Did you mean to type ‘majority’? Because yes, 1 in 5 is a minority. I’m also puzzled what you mean about celebrities. Most of them have kids. A huge fuss is made when one of them, eg Jennifer Aniston, doesn’t. If anything I’d think they’re more likely to have kids because they can afford help and IVF etc to have children later.

birth rates have been declining for years but I think the powers that be thought it was maybe a blip? I remember people thought covid would lead to a baby boom.

Housing is a huge reason why people have fewer dc

I don’t get it, but for slightly different reasons than you

I’m hearing a very old recycled narrative about women leaving it too late to have children. I don’t understand what that’s about. And they’re saying that women don’t understand that IVF may not work. I think women do understand that.

Perhaps it’s just part of a narrative about undermining women.

People make this kind of comment as if journalism has never been about trying to get as many eyes as possible to read the piece.

Whoops I meant “tiny minority”.

There seem to be more child-free celebrities than regular people, IME. A habit of mine is to google the cast of any TV show I’m watching, and more often than not more than 20% of the cast who is older than 45 is child-free.

I watched White Lotus season 3 on a flight recently, so I’ll use that as an example:

Key cast members over 45:
Michelle Monaghan - 2 kids
Leslie Bibb - 0 kids
Carrie Coon - 2 kids
Parker Posey - 0 kids
Walton Goggins - 1 kid
Natasha Rothwell - 0 kids
Jennifer Coolidge - 0 kids
Sam Rockwell - 0 kids
Jason Isaacs - 2 kids
John Gries - 0 kids

Quite agree! If you look at global populations where birth rates are falling it is more than the cost of living issue. Many women and men are choosing not to have children for a whole host of reasons. Louise Perry has done some interesting podcasts on the subject

Perhaps they are looking at the statistics that tell us the birth rate is declining, and that we are at the lowest level since 1997, and that it is below the level that sustains an economy, and that we give 55% of welfare spend to pensioners and this is the only demographic that is growing whilst the number of working age people shrinks.

Just guessing though. Maybe they looked at CatesandAle’s friends and just got it all wrong.

It took me a while to understand the post. Is your point that there are many logical reasons not to want children, but there are far fewer logical reasons to want them? People who want children typically do it for emotional reasons, not logical. And it might be interesting to study that, rather than continue listing all the reasons why people might not be having children.

Is that the point, or have I missed it? If it is the point, then I agree. I’m childfree for all the usual reasons, including that I have never experienced this “instinct” that some people say they experience, which makes them feel that they simply must have a child and none of the logical arguments against it matter one jot. I’d love to understand more about this feeling, and understand why I don’t have it.