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 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.

This would explain the current USA administration ecomonic polices - heavily restict abortions and contraceptive access and fuck up the economy for millions.

Have to wait and see if it works for them.

I think lots of things have made parenthood harder and recent UN report found more couples round the workd feel like there are more barries to having more kids- it's also change to a cap stone event - something you do when life is sorted which is taking ever longer due to social and economic changes when it was once something done alongside life events like building careers and saving for house.

You have to be pretty sure and ready to take risks at time when most of the media zeitgeist narrative is about how awful parenthood all is.

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

Interestingly, even in most of those places the fertility rates are dropping too. They just have much further to fall than elsewhere.

It’s also the extra curricular stuff. Constantly running around to get people to ballet/ drama/ music lessons/ swimming lessons. It’s really hard to juggle multiple children whilst still giving them the opportunities you’d like them to have.

That village was still all women.

Women who didn’t have their own earning power. Women who got older and older and knew entering the workforce in entry level jobs would be physically demanding. Women who felt trapped in bad or abusive marriages because the alternative was grinding poverty for the rest of their lives.

Much of it was, but also worth pointing out how much the task of keeping children entertained was basically outsourced to other children in the vicinity, in a way that's much less possible now.

But not falling on adult men, either way.

Given the choice, why would anyone choose to obliterate their finances, destroy their career, and give up any semblance of freedom for the 20-odd years it takes to raise one or more kids?

So many men walk away having decided parenthood and responsibility isn't for them after all. And who gets left holding the baby and running themselves ragged?

The motherhood penalty is very real and it's not worth it. Not by a long chalk.

THIS
The birth rates in the war torn countries you have listed there
are NOT high or holding steady.

There are very few reliable statistics
but what there is shows demographic collapse

I love my children more than anything, I adore them, but the reality is that they completely take over your life.

Mine and husband's daily life is now structured to fit around them.
We have sacrificed so much in order to put them first (as do 99% of parents I'd hope) but you literally do give up your life and your freedom to enable theirs.

If I could have my time again I wouldn't have children.... and I say that as being married to someone who is an amazing dad absolutely does his 50%.

Agree with this. I see so many women in their early - mid 30s saying “I’d like kids one day”, “we plan on having kids in the future” etc. feels like the biological clock is being completely forgotten about or they’re in denial. Seems like they want to get their lives to a level of perfection it’ll probably never end up being. They’ll end up panicking at 40 and spending their life savings on IVF and ending up in a financially worse position then if they’d just done it naturally in their 30s when their lives weren’t quite “perfect enough”

DH and I both learnt to swim in school - our kids got a very few number of swimming lessons in school not enough to learn. So we had to pay for them to swim and get them there. Upside is they are much better swimmers than us downside number of kids in area who can swim at all is down and it cost us a huge amount over time and was an additional thing to sort for years.

When DD1 was at secondary they made changes to extra musical instruments lessons we got as group lessons in school - so we'd have to go elses where and pay more - so she stopped - but the cuts slowly worked down into primary school.

Our parents all say they never had the homework or shear number of dress up days or parental involved days we had with ours. At same time when my brother and I fell behind due to SEN - there was space and support in school to catch up - with our kids that space and support was gone and kids who caught up all had outside support of some type and one that didn't just got futher behind.

Ds is 21 my finances are fine, I have an excellent career. In fact knowing that others were relying on me was the most enormous kick up the backside in respect of going for promotions and working hard.

In terms of " any kind of freedom" you would have to be more specific. But I do take issue with this basic sentiment- I do not think that narrative is remotely helpful.

My ex partner was very supportive of my career until the mention of babies. Suddenly he foresaw a future where he'd work and I'd stay at home or only work part time. He also decided I wasn't domestic enough.

Now that relationship is over I'm pursuing my dreams more than over but I may now never have children. That's a choice I've had to make. Really makes me wonder if you can 'have it all'. Seems people do manage it but it's largely down to the right partner.

I find it interesting that so much of the conversation is about women choosing not to have children.

I agree that there is a growing proportion of women who fall into that category, but around me I see women tied to men who are dragging their feet. Waiting years to propose, eventually giving her a shut up ring but wanting a long engagement of at least 3 years, then claiming they need a bit of time to be married before thinking about kids. Women who want kids but don't want to risk starting over in case they don't meet someone in time, and still find the clock runs out.

It is Peter Pan syndrome on a huge scale. Some of DH's friends genuinely don't seem to realise that they're in their late thirties not their teens. They go to clubs popular with younger women, and haven't realised they're the creepy men in the corner. They harbour delusions of waiting for the "right girl" who is perpetually in her twenties and waiting until they're "ready to settle down" without realising they've timed out their own biological clock.

The sentiment being "not remotely helpful" in your view is all very well, but it's the truth.

I have a bunch of kids. All women. Love them madly. They are all happy adults living their own lives. I was the sole breadwinner and did very well under my own steam providing for everybody, and some.

It was a killer and there were times I had to lock myself away and cry because it was all too much.

I don't recommend motherhood to anyone who isn't prepared to stare down the barrel of total self sacrifice to breaking point.

In my circles its definitely the women craving more babies and the men hesitating over the costs involved, quality of life spread thinner due to increased duties in the home and impact on sex life etc. Plus after a couple of kids it seems most men feel fairly satisfied wheras many women still have that broody urge which is very inate and biological for some.

Also - I should mention this was back in the day when women (including me) would find themselves being sacked because they were pregnant. There was no such thing as free childcare. Things are a lot better for women now, but my goodness there is still a gaping chasm between the impacts on mothers and the choices of men.

It is Peter Pan syndrome on a huge scale. Some of DH's friends genuinely don't seem to realise that they're in their late thirties not their teens

I see that in the media and RL - I think a lot of the messaging around biological clocks needs to be directed towards men - if they actually do want kids.

I had one in the early 90s, I wouldn't have wanted one now as it seems so much harder and more bother

Yanbu.
Ithink its totally true.

I also think women are also totally awake to the fact the societal issies around having kids.
They basically have to push water uphill to if they want a child.
Society itself is now designed in a way which makes it so hard. In many ways its NEVER been harder to have a child. You need more money (which you must earn - you need a career, not a job, your career cannot pause...you might still get fired anyway...if you dont then its 2k pm for subsandard childcare and guilt) then even more time more energy, more planned days out and specially curated lunch boxes.

You have to really want it and really work for it... and at the end you are told you are doing / did a shit job.
if your child isnt perfect it's somehow your fuck up because you were x enough or didn't do Y

I didn’t want kids in my thirties. Even if someone said it might cost me more in fertility treatment (luckily it hasn’t), I still wouldn’t have cared. Having a partner you trust and share the responsibility with is more important to me than having a baby for the sake of it.

My life is pretty easy, I work full time, get plenty of time to myself/with my husband/with my child. We have quality family time, I don’t feel stressed or overburdened. I would prefer not to have children than have a child with someone who wasn’t an equal partner.

I think it’s becoming more acceptable to say that you don’t want children, or you’re not bothered either way. Children are still seen as the mother’s responsibility and there is something lacking in your womanhood if you don’t want them or are not bothered by them. Hopefully things are starting to change.

My youngest was just getting to the stage of being self sufficient, I was just getting to have more time to do things for myself (after being SAHP), and partner wanted another child.

I categorically said NO exactly for these reasons. I chose to be a SAHP when they were little, but even as they got older I was firmly stuck in what I could do as had to work round his job as main breadwinner. I love being a Mum and love my children dearly, but everything would have fallen on me once again to make sure he could keep his job - which he only progressed so far in as he didn't need to worry about child care.

This is a sly way of saying women simply aren't mature enough to knuckle down and do the hard work of raising kids these days. I - and lots of my childfree friends - are perfectly mature and know precisely what it takes to raise a child: hence why we've chosen not to. It's not a lack of maturity, nor do I think I'm the first generation of woman to discover that it's difficult - perhaps just the first generation opting not to do it because it's become (more - but not completely, evidently!) socially acceptable to say it's not for us.

I am so, so glad that society is wising up to the hardships of having children these days (especially for women) and that opting to not have children at all is now becoming a much more valid and common decision for couples to make. It might not be good for population levels but I think it's a really positive step forwards that the expectation of couples to have children is slowly disappearing.

Agree with @boxofbuttons

its not lack of maturity....
it's lack of williness to sacrifice themselves on the altar of parenthood while their "partner" stands stage left feigning obliviousness / pretending he has seen something interesting in the middle distance as she bleeds out...

Having children with an engaged, caring committed, loving partner who is a present father is hard enough due to structural issues in society (by that i mean the rigid patriarchal constructs) so I can totally see why women (who know have a choice) think fuck this.

Men (because lets face it they are still in charge at a societal level) need to improve societal conditions so women feel secure enough to have children (via improved social and economic policies) and they need to raise the bar dramatically for fathers

I had a rant in our local garden centre at the weekend at the 2026 wall planners and calendars called " Mum's Planner" or " Mum's To Do list". There wasn't a single " Dad's planner".
Almost all the household admin falls to the woman. Christmas is a prime example . DH will ask what WE have got for the DCs or what WE are having for dinner or what WE got for his sister. He does fuck all of the planning admin side of life.