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.

Yes,the government and men & other stuff are factors, but shouldn't be given as the main cause.

Exactly, people acting like it has to involve terrible birth injury & constant ferrying around & terrible behaviour & constant entertainment/hobbies/expensive parties etc

Plenty of childrearing cultures have not involved this. This is not children's fault, we are bringing the extra unnecessary stuff in via peer pressure, the NHS is failing maternity care etc

What knowledge....does your husband nor help very much..?

Tbf the fact that there could be a birth injury or mother could die is something women consider. It's not inevitable but it is possible
Just the basic childcare is expensive before you consider any optional extras, having to take annual leave during school holidays, having to pay for wraparound child care even once they're out of nursery or having to drop some work hours to pick them up from school
Not everyone has family that can pick up the slack if you want to stay in a full time job
It would be naive to think you can continue your life as it is without having to make some sacrifices to meet the minimum basic requirements to looking after a child.

Yes, the main joy of parenting is the love. Its the love and delight and connection and bond you have with your children. Its the love you receive. Nature has evolved us so that the bond and love we have for our children is incredibly deeply rooted and isn't like any other love.

Yes it involves work as well as pleasure, yes it involves giving up some other things, but so does every decision and so does everything worthwhile.

Yep. Women just dont want that huge responsibility regardless of whether it is 50/50 or not. Leave them alone.

This is a good point. I'm sorry for the birth injury comment, that was very wrong. I get why people talk about the risk, what I meant was that we shouldn't accept the huge NHS risks now due to bad care. Other countries have much better often.

Even if maternity care was better, it can never take that risk away 100%
If someone isn't adamant they want a child enough to sacrifice the things that are required to meet a child's basic needs, then it isn't unwise for them to make the choice to not have children. Regardless of whether it's a health based reason or just that they like their free time to be their own without worrying about making sure they are providing enough care and support to a small child.

Also on the picking up point, UK gov needs to improve schools generally. Then children could more easily walk to a nearby school if it were good. Less cars around would help too.

I do strongly agree women should think through potential physical risk before having children. That's also why I'm strongly pro choice.

I saw a proper analysis of this (statistically, not just "I saw on social media").
It said that if women hadn't had children by 28, they had a 50% chance of having them.
They also said that the birth rate is low not because the women having children were having smaller families (the number of children per woman who has children hadn't changed that much) but because more women weren't having them, and it was not that they didn't want to - they didn't meet a partner in time.

So either they didn't meet anyone willing to be a dad until they were definitely too old (and didn't want to even try to have DCs) or they didn't meet him until they were old enough to have problems conceiving and then it was 50/50 whether they could have children at all.

That's not saying 28 is old and you must grab someone by that age and settle down.
It's saying that before that, the choice is yours; after that, it may not be yours, it may be biology's choice.

But in essence it is men's choice, because it is the absence of a man who's willing to be a dad that was preventing women from having children at the age when it's easier to conceive.

For myself, I met DH when I was 35, but then had a series of miscarriages, and we ended up adopting. So I didn't give birth to the number of children I wanted (though I have the exact number I wanted!).

In my 20s I wasn't thinking "loads of time, sod off lovely men I don't want you now", I was thinking "I'm happy working at my lovely career, but would jump at a partner who was willing to consider home, work, and kids" and all the men I met were either just wanting fun (didn't want to settle down, or have kids), or wanted a woman who wouldn't take her job seriously (wanted a home and kids but didn't want me to have a career). And my 20s were AGES ago so this is not a new phenomenon.

Even if the school is in walking distance, if you have primary school children, you probably wouldn't want to be letting them walk home alone to wait for parents to finish work in 2 hours tome

I should add that the researchers were surprised to find women who had children, were having the number they wanted - not fewer. They thought that was what would be causing the birth rate to fall, but it isn't.
And this would explain the number of "larger families" on here - I thought it was just a US phenomenon where either a trad wife has a huge family, or a woman who can't get maternity leave just gives up work and throws herself into a large family.

Yes,,working hours are also a big part of the issue.

Very many families did this in the 80s and 90s without the benefit of live camera feeds to their phones with two way communication capabilities enabling them to monitor their children and respond to any issues in real-time that we have today.

People did many things in the 80s and 90s, doesn't necessarily mean they were positive things.
I haven't got children, but if I did, I wouldn't be happy for a 5 year old to walk home alone and stay in the house alone for 2 hours for me to get home from work. Even with cameras in the home, who's watching the cameras while working/commuting?
I'd imagine a school would be referring you to social services pretty damn quick if you told them to release your child from school as you'll be at work and they'll be heading home alone

I saw a proper analysis of this (statistically, not just "I saw on social media").
It said that if women hadn't had children by 28, they had a 50% chance of having them.
They also said that the birth rate is low not because the women having children were having smaller families (the number of children per woman who has children hadn't changed that much) but because more women weren't having them, and it was not that they didn't want to - they didn't meet a partner in time.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2018

Women are having smaller families than previous generations, but two-children families remain the most common family size

That's the ONS take - I've looked better though their figure previously as birth gap guy who all over right wing media blaming accidental childless claims family size isn't decreasing yet UK stats didn't seem to follow what he was saying when Iooked.

Other demogrpahers I've seen seem to be waiting and seeing if there is a late flurry of children in women's later years or if the 28/30 milestone is going to hold true and there actually isn't a solid concensus.

I've also seen a lot of bandy about in UK ratio for childen born vs children wanted is currently 2:3 - but less sure where that figure comes from. Did see paper but can't remember where - or how reliable it was and then it was quoted in media.

Oooh, prickly...

Schools can't release a child until year 5 with the parents consent, in which situation their duty of care has been fulfilled at the point of release.

"Latch key kids" was a thing in the 80s when women were returning to the workplace to allow households to become double income. I would hope that this is not something over which some women would seek to disparage other women today as they did then.

I think it is many reason. Off the top of my head;

Less examples of a ‘village’ - people move away from family due to finances and it is harder without that support

Women have stepped up - gotten full time jobs but men haven’t. A lot of men still act like their partners are SAHM, leaving everything to them

Not quite sure what you think was prickly about anything I said tbh
This thread is about why women aren't having children now. One of those things is expensive child care or having to drop work hours to be able to pick up kids.

If school won't release a child to go home alone, then they can't be a latch key kid like they might've been in the 80s/90s, parents need to pick them up or put them in after school club
Even if the school let them go home in year 5, they'll be 9 or 10 years old at that point. So that's 9 or 10 years of reduced working hours or paying for childcare. It's not insignificant

It seems a very men-centred explanation. What my partner would or wouldn't do played no part in my decision to be childfree - I didn't even get to the stage of considering it, I just didn't want them. It reads as though the author is shying away from the unthinkable proposition that not all women 'love children' by focusing on the role men play.

Thank you for sharing your opinions

You're welcome

More WFH could help with this issue. Some jobs have better hours, ofc depends in job

One of the functions of a "village", although I doubt anyone would put it this way, is to make it so that young people see lots of other people around them with kids and see it as the default life step. You can see all your peers just ahead of you slotting into this life. You meet actual live cute babies! I didn't ever see babies in my 20s! They were alien to me!

It's interesting because a lot of people find having children very meaningful (even if difficult) but if you're putting together a pro/con list and treating it as just one of a neutral series of possible activities, the con list seems very long. The pro side is like, "feel vague sense of contentment and maybe fill hole in soul?" and the con side is 100 horrible things involving dirty nappies and never sleeping again, plus not getting to do any number of higher status activities like get a promotion at work or go on an adventure holiday.

But having a child is not really a neutral activity, it's a fundamental instinct of living creatures. It should of course be possible to opt out, but I think for some sets of women it's an alien lifestyle that you have to opt into, and it doesn't really stack up on paper until you actually see it start to happen around you (maybe in your mid 30s...)