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.

@Crushed23how old are you? It’s just your argument seems a little outdated.

People with higher incomes are now more likely to have dc vs poorer people.

Oh and.....which gov't ever came up with any long term policies😂

@Crushed23 who has a lower birth rate than the national average?

That’s a whole other thread!

People who don't want children haven't had have them since the 1960s. So that doesn't explain it.

There’s nothing wrong with drop in birth rate- in fact it is necessary for environmental reasons. Population is at it highest and there’s more disadvantages to this than advantages.

“In many Western countries, the traditional inverse relationship between wealth and family size is shifting into a complex, U-shaped pattern. While lower-income groups overall still experience higher fertility in some demographics, ultra-wealthy individuals and high-income earners in nations like the US, UK, and Sweden are increasingly showing stable or higher rates of larger families”

Economically though you want a smaller but younger population.

I am Gen X I love babies and small children I started relatively young (27) and (maybe therefore?) had very straightforward enjoyable pregnancies and easy labours. I so would have had more if 2008 had never happened and we had had more money. I let head rule heart in the end we have 2 a boy and girl 2.5 years apart. I am frequently told tbat this is perfect - actually I dreamt of having 4 or 5.

Yes, Victoria Beckham has 4 children. And the other Spice Girls? 3, 2, 2, 1…

To avoid my “outdated” views, let’s take a younger girl band. This is the millennial group Girls Aloud:

Cheryl Cole - 1
Nadine Coyle - 1
Kimberley Walsh - 3
Nicola Roberts - 1
Sarah Harding - 0 (died at 39)

Like I said, not exactly propping up the birth rate…

I agree with the posters saying that greater access to education and work options has had an impact - people don’t have to have children now (or in fact a relationship) so many choose not to.

@Crushed23but why are you even using celebs as examples?!

How can you even be sure that a supermodel or a pop singer didn’t want more dc?!

Agree with this I work with families whose children are removed for adoption through neglect, overwhelming very poor families with low educational attainment the fertility rate in these groups in often 》4 children, some women even in double figures which is extremely unusual in the general population. I also see similar families where the children haven't been removed again 5 children is not at all uncommon.

Who has claimed celebs are propping up the birth rates?! 😆

”The poorest 25% of young adults are twice as likely to remain child-free as the richest.”

” research published in July that looked at RCTs of interventions such as business training programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, found that women who became wealthier had significantly more children, not fewer.”

”Dutch people on higher incomes are more likely than those at lower incomes to have children.“

”van Wijk and his co-author identified that men and women in Australia, Germany, South Korea, the UK and the US are more likely to become parents as their income increases”

And when you start having dc matters in terms of how many you end up with, a lot of people cannot afford to start trying earlier.

”A woman who wants a 90% chance of realising her ideal family size of three children should begin trying to get pregnant with her first child aged 23. For a 90% chance of having two children, she should begin at age 27, and for a 90% chance of having one, at the age of 32.”

I’m am now mentally preparing a pitch for a quiz show called How Many Kidz? in which teams compete to guess whether Fleetwood Mac or Genesis have more children, or Westlife versus Take That…

Yes, but my point was that celebrities are a bad example of rich people and women's fertility because being pregnant multiple times is a huge disruptor to the career of an actress/singer/model. Showing me more lists of actresses isn't changing my point. Most rich wives whose work is totally flexible around pregnancy aren't publicly known, so it's harder to produce lists of family sizes.

Royal/political/billionaire wives are a bit more of an interesting group.

Catherine - 3
Zara - 3
Meghan - 2
Pippa M - 3
Melinda Gates - 3
McKenzie Bezos - 4
Priscilla Chan - 3
Carrie Johnson - 4

I’m using celebrities to make the point that those with wealth and access to the best support in the form of nannies, cleaners, housekeepers etc. as well the ability to pursue the best fertility treatments available, are not in fact having more babies than average - quite the opposite. Clearly there’s something more going on than “COL” when it comes to the number of children people are having (or not having).

I’m GenX too - my parents are boomers so they were there at the sexual revolution, the pill etc. So I was encouraged to explore every option, for which I’m grateful. I don’t like babies or small children (even when I was one) and the idea of effectively having no choice but to become a mother is actually terrifying.

And against the pressure for women to have more babies now is the real environmental impact of doing so.

All well and good to have a lot of children but, with limited resources and more extreme weather conditions etc, they or their children may not have the opportunity to do the same.

The curve will reflect "what you have to lose". If you have nothing to lose because you have nothing, then another child doesn't make much of a difference. If you have a moderate amount, you will be squeezed out of some leisure expenditure. If you have collosal wealth, a baby won't make a difference.

@TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis don’t bring logic into it! I think Kate would have had another dc but doesn’t fit with the eco credentials!

What do you think about the fact that the women you have listed are all in professions where a pregnancy is very limiting to performing, whilst I have listed women whose income and lifestyle is not dependent on performing?

Society still put pressure on women to have babies in the 60s/70s/80s though. Just because the pill was available,
society didn’t change its attitude very quickly. Those of us in GenX who chose not to go down that path had to deal with snarky comments and faux sympathy because we took a different path to the ‘norm’.

I imagine my generation would have been much smaller without the pressure still being applied to women to have children

Clearly there’s something more going on than “COL” when it comes to the number of children people are having (or not having).

People feeling like they cannot afford more dc is a big part of it though! And because some celebs have 1dc doesn’t make it less so 🤦🏻‍♀️

Tbf if they did want more children then they would go out and rent a woman for a few months and buy the baby. That seems to be what happens in a lot of cases

I’m not disputing that there are famous women who have more than 2 children any more than I’m disputing there are highly educated women with multiple degrees who have more than 2 children. I’m talking about the average. Women in the public eye (whether actresses, models, singers, TV presenters, politicians, celebrity doctors, famous entrepreneurs etc.) are not the ones propping up the birth rate. Yet they are ones for whom the barriers to having a large family (no nanny/adequate childcare, housing too small, can’t afford IVF to grow family, etc.) do not apply.