For believing the drop in birth rate IS mostly because people who don't want children no longer have to have them

[CurdinHenry]

"Fertility experts" like Geeta Nargund in the news again insisting that "people still want to have children". Obviously some people wish they could have more children than they get to have. But it's never been a better world for people who are just not into it at all (or try one then realise it's not that much fun).

I don't think a survey asking people in vague terms if they'd like kids one day counts as proof of anything.

It was implied that most women were easily having multiple babies all the way up until 40...which just isn't true.

I personally think it’s nonsense. People are having children, just less of them. If you’re not, you’re not joining a brand new, never seen before club.

Im not sure stats back you up on that. Most women who try to have kids before the age of 40 will be successful without assistance.
Im in Australia. 1 in 5 births here is to a woman over 35
Births in Australia | Australian Institute of Family Studies

Isn’t it supposedly easier to have babies into your early 40s if you have been having babies regularly since your twenties compared to if the 40+ baby is your first?

Although there is of course the “last hurrah before menopause”/ actually your 15yr old daughter’s baby at that sort of age too.

Well it does, doesn't it... 20% of women in Australia, means80% of women are having them before 35... I.e the vast majority.

There's no doubt you are more fertile when you're younger.

Nobody ever said you can't have babies, it's just less likely.

I think ageism in career progression is also a factor - I completed my professional qualifications by 27 and started applying for the next step up, but got no interviews until my 30th birthday at which point suddenly everybody wanted me for it. And I didn’t want to start maternity until I had that next step on my CV so that I was in a better position to return. So that was three years hanging around, pushing things closer to the wire - fine if conception is then straightforward and you only want one or two kids but not great if there are any problems and you don’t even find out until 31+.

I think there are quite a lot of women whose first choice would be a stable comfortable home with an equal husband and some child(ren), but their second choice would be the freedom and income of being child free and their third choice would be an unstable life with an absent or unhelpful partner, but having children.

So if they feel they are choosing between options two and three in their current life then they won’t have kids, even though actually in an ideal world they would like some.

Or just a simple choice of not wanting to have children. It can be as simple as that. I know it’s hard for some people to get their heads round.

This is absolute nonsense.
I would love to only work 4 days a week or be able to split my year between 8 months and 4 months in Australia.

The fact I am doing neither does not mean I don’t wish to.

Plenty refrain from doing irresponsible things such as not having children they are not in a position to have. What they say they wanted to do is far more of an indicator than what they were unable to do out of circumstance.

But we are talking about the stated preferences of those who are childless who would have preferred to have children.

Hard agree but I think OP is a fanatical childfree person with an agenda.

Plenty of us are childless because we were only willing to have children within the context of number 1 of your scenarios. Number 1 never happened so neither did children.

It was linked in the comments I made. Quite clearly.

So you know people’s minds better than they know their own? Not everybody wants to reproduce irresponsibly.

I lived in a country with one of the lowest birth rates in the world (think bottom 3). There were a number of reason for this:
a) People married later - often in their late 30s early 40s so only had a chance for one child
b) Houses were so expensive it was virtually impossible to buy one without two adults in full-time employment
c) Childcare was actually quite cheap relative to other countries but more than one child made it very difficult to afdord when paying a morgage
d) Unmarried mothers were v v rare, if someone get pregnant then they nearly always married if they planned on keeping the child (usualy before showing)
e) Contraception very widely available so less unmarried mothers

But the really big ones where a) and b), finding someone to marry v v difficult and most of my friends who did entered into marriages where there parents/professional matchmakers had introduced them to each other

Fair enough

This was in response to "if they really wanted them, they'd have had them by now" - obviously yes, people who don't want children won't have them in any situation (unless they were forced, either directly or by the impossibility of the alternative).

I wanted children but I never met anyone. I couldn’t afford to have a child alone so that was that really and I’m 42 now