Why do you think women worldwide are having fewer babies?

[KateMumsnet]

Hello all

We've been approached by an academic researcher at the Oxford Centre for Research into Parenting and Children who's working on a book called 'No Time For Children'. The book will explore why fertility rates - the number of babies being born per mother - are actually falling the world over, despite a widespread belief to the contrary.

In China, for example, the worried government is reversing its one-child policy - but many adult 'onelies' now believe that one child is 'about right'. The same is true in Japan and Singapore, and fertility rates are also falling in Africa, Europe, Latin America and all over Eastern Asia.

The book will contain chapters written by an impressive roster of academic contributors, but its authors would also like to hear what mothers themselves think is going on, and what, specifically, they consider to be the barriers to having more children. If you'd like to contribute, please do post your thoughts here.

my feeling is that in the past large families were useful for working together as many hands were more helpful even if they were more mouths to feed as success was often down to pure manual hard work.

however, success in life today generally depends on getting ahead in education and after-school activities and the fewer children you have the more time and money you have to invest in helping your offspring be successful in life.

also, most of us don't really believe that our children will die before they become adults.

Generally speaking, in the industrial West, etc etc,

There's a huge change in lifestyle for a woman once she has children - perhaps this wasn't such a marked change before women had careers and money of their own?

Children are incredibly draining - perhaps in the olden days there was more support/free babysitting available from friends & family living close by?

Cost - many of us want more for our children than our parents wanted for us [one example: a university education]

FWIW, both DH & I are from large families and neither of us would ever want more than two children.

because they can

tempting to stop there but - childrearing takes a lot of time and energy. It can, and often did, take a heavy toll on a woman's health. A mother's place is in the wrong - parents are always being criticised. If you have no children you have lots more money to enjoy yourself, instead of spending it on others. If you don't actually need children to support you in old age why would anyone want to go through it even once? Why aren't the researchers looking at why women still have any children now that it's a freer choice?

Cost is a big one here - i can't have it all. i will need to go back to work to meet the mortgage as we can't manage on one salary. when i go back i won't be able to have a baby straight away and then i will be too old (another factor)
my parents live in a wealthy area where there are lots of sahms whose husbands work in the city and they often have 3 0r 4 kid, suggesting that if you can afford to, you do have more, i would. One of my schoolfriends who lives there was when i explained to her that going to work when the youngest child started school wasn't a option if we were to keep her three bed house over our heads. she is pregnant with her fourth.
it's not just about cost for designer goods and private education (although for some it may be) it's about actually keeping the roof over your head.
similarly some of the families i know who are in HA and have reduced housing payments also have large numbers of children although again this isn't universal.

Also agree with the comment about no family support. i would love 5 hours off with my hsuband say once a month. but it will never happen. and it's draining without it. having an extra child makes it even more difficult and costly to get support.

I'm stopping at two for the following reasons:

1. I don't think an ever rising population is ecologically sustainable and I would like my children to have a nice world to live in. For all the rabbiting on about how many children people have in the third world, if you look at per capita resource utilisation you quickly realise that it is us, not them, that there's too many of.

1. I am almost 40. I left having my children to the second half of my thirties, as I just didn't want to have them before then. I was way too busy doing other stuff (career but also having fun) to want to interrupt it all to have babies.

1. I have no family nearby to support us, so until the dc are older no chance of some time off just dh and me. Having another child would put that back by x many years and just doesn't seem worth it.

1. And last but not least I have not had an unbroken night's sleep in 5 years. The idea of starting again with another baby makes me shudder.

1. Electricity. What could you do after sunset but have sex? Now you can watch TV, send emails or MN...

1. Contraception.

1. Attitude to contraception, especially among believers. In my home town almost all baptist families had 8 to 12 children. TV and contraception were considered evil. Somehow this has now changed.

Certainly the economics of having children has changed/is changing dramatically. Children used to be an economic positive for the family. They became productive much younger and with much less investment. In the West children have gone from being an economic positive for a family to becoming an economic negative (though a positive for the country).

Also people, women in particular, have many other options for their lives now. Fewer children means more freedom to try some of those options.

I thought it was pretty widely accepted that wherever educational and employment opportunities for women open up the birth rate falls? So I'd rather hope that it's following in the wake of a trend in favour of educating girls properly.

For me personally, in the West, it's cost and juggling work and children. If I'd loved my job and wanted to pursue further promotion I'd have stopped at two (or possibly even one). Instead have had third DC and accepted that my career is pretty much hosed. And DH had moved back into being an employee rather than contracting so we were more financially secure and could (just about, although have had a few gibbering moments) afford a third.

The shift from rural to urban living, has an effect, raising kids in a close nit rural community was easier than today's urban living where children need to be entertained all the time.

Effective safe contraception.

Not sure. I am pregnant with my 4th and have several friends with 3 or 4 (or more) children whereas my mum's friends had no children or 1 or 2. So am not very fashionable, clearly.

Access to contraception is the main one.
Increased movement from country into cities as well as falling infant mortality rates has meant that having a big family is no longer desirable or necessary.

Two children is enough. OK, I realise some of us would like a bigger family but there you go... Bigger families are fine if you can support them.
Even so, the world has finite resources and we are using them up too fast so need to cut back and think about the future generations, not just ourselves.

That's broadly true CrosswordA but as ever with big generalisations not necessarily accurate. I know several big families whose use of resources is more considered and frugal than families with one or two children who squander more. Of course these children will grow up but might well have learned habits which are more responsible than others. All depends on individuals of course.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but in a lot of cultures there is a huge pressure on parents to have a boy to continue the family name/look after the parents in their old age/work/provide for the family generally. Many families carry on having kids until they get their boy - or the heir and spare! This pressure is still prevalent in many countries but the worth of women is becoming more recognised even in some very traditional patriarchical societies so parents are more likely to be satisfied with their first child - whatever sex rather than carrying on having children.

Also the three Cs - careers, contraception and choice basically!

I have friends who have chosen not to have any children at all. Availability of contraception and society being more accepting of such a choice have doubtless played a part.

It would be interesting to know whether the birth rate in a country where the female population has access to education, financial independence, contraception and secularity has dropped or not!

sorry, should say:

It would be interesting to know whether the birth rate in a country where the female population has access to education, financial independence, contraception and secularity has not dropped.

Personally, I come from a long line of onlies, (my Mum was an only, as were my Nan and Grandad, my brother was a late surprise after a second marriage). To me, one just feels right. I'm never had the urge to have a second DC.
To be fair it's lucky we're happy as we are as there's no way we could afford another. The costs of childcare and a big enough house are totally prohibitive. DH works full time and I work part-time out of the home and part-time from home, so between us we have three jobs, and it's still not enough. I sometimes look at large families and feel a little jealous, but it's mostly a "how do they it? Wish I was that sorted" feeling, rather than a "quick, get me pregnant" one.

For what it's worth, I amn the only one of my group of friends to have had even one child, they all say it's a decision based on financial issues.

Education, choice, increasing elevation of women's position in society all contributing to women recognising that having a child/children disadvantages them in various ways, ranging from more serious things like income, health & job prospects through to things that may seem more trivial like figure, sex & social life. These disadvantages are usually felt to be more than made up for by the positives of having children, but those positives are in different fields - the disadvantages are still there & when you don't have children in today's materialistic, selfish society why would an intelligent, educated woman want to deliberately disadvantage herself in comparison to younger women, childless women & men? This leads to either remaining childless, having fewer children to limit the damage and/or later childbearing so less oportunity to have more kids. That sounds pretty negative, but it's pretty much what I thought before having kids in my late 30s. I guess it's basically the "women can't have it all" argument.

Because men don't want to commit until late 30s so women have less time before their fertility declines.

I think that over-population is created by patriarchies. Now that women are gaining more power and status, have greater access to contraception and to real economic independence, they are naturally choosing to have less or no children.
COnsidering the incredible physical and emotional toll that pregnancy takes on the body, I'm guessing human females are designed to have about a maximum of 5-6 pregnancies. The ridiculous numbers of children we have seen in the recent past, and continue to see in some countries (such as 12-14 children per woman) is too much of a physical burden on women.

UNtil quite recently women were not given the choice. Marriage was the only real career open to them and many didn't realize they could say no to their husband's "pestering". TOlstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstoy, for example, had 14 children by him, even though she was a very talented writer herself, judging by her recently published diaries. If she was born today, her life would look quite different. She would be able to pursue a writing career and divorce old Tolstoy for expecting her write out war and peace umpteen times for free while raising their children.

In Japan, (where I live) the reasons are a little different. The ageing male government created policies where it was difficult for women to work and raise children simultaneously. Their policies were similar to those in Italy. The thinking behind it was that if women were forced to choose between family and career, they would choose children.
This was a huge mistake. Given the choice, women choose work.

In countries such as the UK, where there is good maternity leave and decent childcare, and less of a glass ceiling, women tend to have more children, because they can combine work and motherhood quite well, and are therefore not forced to choose.

Sooty men love marriage. They're obsessed with it. It's women who don't want to settle down.

Are you suggesting that the patriarchy made up the number of people on the planet then

ColdTruth In patriarchal societies, broadly, a woman's status is pretty closely linked to her fertility - the more children, the more 'dutiful' she is seen to be; infertility can lead to being outcast.

Is that what you mean by "made up"?