Why women aren’t having babies

[SmudgeHughes]

I saw a young woman post this on social media recently and thought it was so well-expressed that I had to share.

‘The problem isn’t that men want more children but that too many men want them without restructuring their own lives to carry the burden of parenthood.

If men matched their desire with an equal willingness to parent like taking the night shifts, booking the appointments, shouldering the career sacrifices then women would be more open to the idea.

Until then, women are simply refusing to be the ones who pay the highest price for someone else’s dream.

That’s not selfishness but wisdom hard earned through centuries of women being told that family is everything only to find out that "everything" really meant everything is theirs to do.

Women are increasingly unwilling to subsidize men’s dreams with their own exhaustion. They are making rational decisions about their capacity and saying no not because they don’t love children but because they know love alone doesn’t neutralise burnout, stalled careers, unaffordable childcare or the silent erosion of identity that comes when one partner carries the bigger share of parenting.

So when men say they want more children women hear something different like, I want the idea of more children but I haven’t accounted for who will actually raise them.

It’s similar to someone who dreams of a puppy without calculating who will walk it or clean the accidents on the rug. Women have woken up to a truth previous generations often swallowed.’

There was more; just thought it was beautifully expressed.

It's this. It's not that men were great in the past, but more that it wasn't really acceptable to opt out of family life and you were a waster if you did so. You had to at least observe the conventions and expectations - Sunday lunch, church, visiting the allotment, social events, having friends and family round. There was an expectation always to be doing something useful (which I suppose might be why many men would go and hide in the shed!). It was obviously very gendered and women did most of the gruntwork around chores and raising children, but men were expected to be visible in family life to be respectable.

Unless you were incredibly unusual in the '60's there was someone at home preparing food for the family. Not so now.

I remember one of my little ones complaining because some of his friends had tomato and mozzarella salad, rather than just sandwiches and fruit. (It was that kind of - state - school.) Once I knew that’s what they wanted, that’s what they got.

Women can raise children alone. It doesn't mean they want to
Alot of women have been raised by single mothers who had to work and do everything at home. They may be grateful there mother did that for them, it doesn't mean they want to replicate the struggle. Some women were raised in a household with both parents and the mother still worked and did all the housework and raising of the children even though they had both parents. Again not necessarily an appealing option.
Why do you think it's a lack of confidence rather than choosing a preferable life for themselves?

This is a really good point. I remember in the 1980s single parent families were really unusual. In my primary school class in the 1980s, absolutely every child had married parents... except one whose parents were going through a divorce. This was widely talked about and seen as really quite exceptional and shocking.

I agree that men are now let off the hook far more easily nowadays. The bar is so low.

Indeed I had a child who doesn't like sandwiches, she prefered pasta pesto or home made sushi. There were days when it had to be a ham or tuna fish sandwich ( peanut butter was banned) but I did feel this was substandard.

I had children because I wanted children therefore I was prepared at the bare minimum to do it alone if my marriage didn’t work.
Luckily, I got a great husband and he also wanted children and we went on to have 3.
so, living out my dream, we were able to conquer his as well.
2 birds with one stone so to speak.

The head is always greener. It’s easy to say you wished you did XYZ more that your children are already born and have grown to adults

If you traveled and went up the career ladder, you might say you felt empty and wished you had kids instead.

Personally, I think there’s time to do both, it doesn’t have to be one or the other unless you want it to be that way.

Well that really is your choice OP.
A simple 'that's nice dear' and an eye roll would have put a stop to that.

Well actually my parents both worked so yes, I was unusual. But that aside, presumably someone is preparing this child's hypothetical lunchbox so the question still remains. Why is it any harder to do a healthy one than an unhealthy one?

There are various different reasons that are unique to each woman. Other things to take into account: Modern day Britain and the hellscape that is is quickly becoming, the cost of living, cost of childcare, not having the option to be a SAHM, not having the option to work FT, the overwhelming responsibility of it all, pregnancy and childbirth itself, lack of commitment demonstrated by the declining marriage rates, less societal pressure to become a mother.

I also think young people are taking longer to grow up. It's like they don't fully mature until they hit their 30's (particularly men)

It is also very difficult to get on the property ladder, the average age of a first time home buyer is now 34!

I think all of these reasons a leading to people leaving children to later, in some cases people may feel they have left it too late. This is reflected in the increasing age of a first time mum (29.2 yrs) and dad (33.6 yrs.)

I also think if you are a single woman in her 30's with her own place, a decent social life and an established career you may well be asking yourself if sacrificing these things is worth it. My friend is in this position, 32, and she has recently ruled out children once and for all after being open to the idea previously.

I often had a can of Shandy Bass (I was born in 1984) and a standard packed lunch was jam sandwich on white bread, penguin or wagon wheel and a little box of raisins! Breakfast was a huge bowl of chocolate wheetos or coco pops! So much sugar!

Its not really but I think it's just one example of how parenting and mums in particular are judged for every single bloody thing...and if you ever drop the ball, there will be some officious person ready and waiting to tell you how shit you are at child rearing

I remember a dinner lady confiscating my can of shandy bass in the lunch hall 😂

They'd call social services nowadays

I also think being an older mum works great for some (and obviously has its financial benefits), but for others, like me, there was no way I was giving up my nice lifestyle that I had taken many years to establish, once I reached my mid 30s. It would have been better for me to have kids - if i was ever going to - when I was young and broke, with no nice lifestyle to speak of yet.

I know 😂
To be honest the average primary school is ready to call SS if you put a chocolate bar in a lunchbox now.

It’s not just preparation, it’s buying and storing the bloody stuff. Everything is quickly perishable and expensive. 2 kids and I can easily get through a couple of cucumbers, a few peppers, 10 miniature boxes of raisins, 2 bunches of bananas and whatever else a week. Now consider they don’t last longer than a few days once opened, and a ‘weekly shop’ means nothing but UPFs towards the end of the week as the rest didn’t survive

Its not a UK thing
Its not a Europe thing
Its not a women going to work thing
Its not a housing costs thing
Its not an extended family thing

Birth rates are falling FAST the whole world over.

Only Sub Saharan Africa has a birth rate above 2.1 and its falling rapidly.

Given the chance women have less kids. Anywhere and everywhere.

Agreed. Some may call it 'being set in your ways,' which probably is true to some extent. If life is good why risk the upheaval for something that will turn your life upside down and you may regret.

I think people should be very certain they want to have children before taking the leap, even then I often read threads on here lamenting the life before kids.

The reason I have chosen to remain childless is because I just could not envision being responsible for something so helpless and needy. I'd have found it suffocating. I enjoy the spontaneity of going out when I want and not being beholden to anyone. I also was not putting my body through that.

Cars are one big reason. There isn't the space there used to be, and it would be much less safe to attempt to play outside in the way kids used to before there were so many cars. I've lived on my road 15 years, so very much during the car culture time, and even then the space taken up by parked cars has increased and so cannot now be used to play in.

And these things have a cumulative effect. Even if a parent isn't particularly concerned and would be fine with their child taking this risk, there's much less likely to be anyone else available to play out with than there used to be.

The thing is women have taken on a lot of men's traditional roles but men on the whole have not stepped up to take the load off women, and society, still mostly run by men, has not adapted properly either.

Men doing more wouldn't make more people have kids. Having more money wouldn't make more people have kids.

We're not having kids because our lives are better and our expectations are higher.

Children change everything. If you're fulfilled and happy, why would you change everything?

People aren't willing to settle for living on the bare minimum, giving their kids the bare minimum and having a small life any more, and that's a good thing. Women now have better things to do than devote years of their lives to changing nappies, and men have always had better things to do.

Places that don't have issues with below replacement fertility rates include Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Sudan.

Higher income + better gender equality = fewer babies.

It's an unpalatable truth but the best way to increase the fertility rate is to make life completely shit so people don't have anything else to live for. I do not advocate that, but all this messing about thinking that we would all have babies if we had a better standard of living ignores the reality of human nature.

Give people a better standard of living because it's the right thing to do, but don't expect fertility rates to rise.

I am very worried that people like Elon musk would absolutely support the shitter lives means more breeding idea

It's because we buy things now - too many.

It's hard to compare lifestyles across generations. Circumstances are totally different to the 80, for example, when it was still possible to live on a single salary, we had public transport so didn't all need to buy and run a car, job security was high, a large proportion of society rented property from the government at bargain basement rates, and private ownership was affordable with mortgage loan to income values typically being 2x, life was simply put easier.

Expectations of life were lower. People didn't expect to have three, 5 star all inclusive holidays per year - they just went to a caravan park in Lyme Regis. People didn't expect to drive a 70k PCP BMW M4 to work - they actually bought cars outright that they could afford. Typically a ford Escort or perhaps a VW. People didn't expect to have a showroom perfect kitchen and bathroom on a 24 month modernization cycle - they just kept surfaces clean and the plumbing in order.

Previous generations lived in a Britain incomparable to today, so it is hard to read across directly.

But we can certainly tone down the feverish consumerism, re-allign expectations, and try to put the substantive in our lives back ahead of the superficial. That may reduce some of the pressure on parents.

One memory I have of my grandmother was her amazement at how free women are today compared to when she was growing up, and that so many of her life choices were informed by the boundaries that dictated what it was acceptable for women to do.

When we look back with nostalgia to a time when it appears that family life was functional, we have to keep in mind that women were even better at smiling their way through adversity in days gone by than now, and that family functionality was still largely a product of a woman carrying the brunt of the load - with exquisite posture and a delicate smile.