Women are not having more children because of competition from “new fun technology” academic on R4 Today programme

[Tootingbec]

Not because of the cost of childcare, or the impact on our careers, pensions, financial independence, or because of women not accepting sub- standard relationships anymore etc etc - I could go on!

No, according to Dr Alice Evans (interviewed at about 6.50am) it is because improved technology and leisure gives women more options around “fun things” they can do instead of have children. And we need to make parenting more exciting and enjoyable and easier to compete with (I quote) “this new fun technology and other fun stuff”

🤨

Without any irony she then goes on to say in a “this is really fascinating!” tone that another reason is lower marriage rates and that “marriage rates are falling in countries like Iran, Turkey and Egypt!” Ya think Dr Evans?! Women in countries with horrific violence against women and girls and where women’s rights are going backwards, are weirdly not wanting to get married and have children?!?

Honestly it was the most facile examination of falling birth rates and why women might be opting out of marriage, relationships and child bearing I have heard

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Ah, no one is going to say live on air ‘it’s because children are irritating and expensive dicks, who harpoon your career/finances’. Yes, let’s say it’s because of iphones.

Because we need enough people of working age to be paying tax in order to fund elderly care and pensions.

I think it’s more the sharp drop thats of comcern really. There will be a painful adjustment period at some point. A slow decline is one thing but if you look at the TFR rates theres been a sharp decline across a lot of the world

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

I suppose I do know a lot of people who didn't have kids, or stopped at one, because it enabled them to maintenance hobbies etc and do "more fun things".

But I know more who would have liked to have more than one but struggled with fertility and weren't able. Most of my friends didn't start ttc until their mid 30s and there are loads of reasons as to why that is.

I know they always discuss the birthrate in terms of how many children women are having, obviously far easier to establish than how many children men are having but it's downright lazy to ignore men's role.

Our culture at the moment encourages men to stay responsibility free and believe that they have all the time in the world to have children.

Did she explain why women having fun is a problem?

I looked into this issue and it’s not at all as I’d believed; the projections for South Korea, leading the way on low birth rate, are sobering to put it mildly. Population collapse won’t be much fun for anyone, and we should probably worry more about it.

I don't agree that birth rates fall as women gain access to education, contraception and other basic rights. I think they reach their natural level when women aren't forced to reproduce against their will and are no longer treated as breeding cattle.

I blame tamagotchis. Who wants a real human when you can click to feed pixels to a duck thing?

Just a couple of reasons that exclude technology, off the top of my head with no deep thought, each observed through family and close friends:
Some people I'm close to have chosen not to have children because those children will inherit a damaged planet.
Practically, you can only fit 2 car seats in the average car, people less likely to have more due to infrastructure.
If you need 2 wages to live comfortably at what point do you put living comfortably on hold to have children?
Younger generations aren't rushing into relationships, when they are ready they can then find they have issues trying to conceive.

I suppose the real reasons just aren't interesting enough for the BBC!!

I heard a fascinating programme, I think also on radio 4, about falling rates of teen pregnancies. One of the factors (aside from better birth control options) was technology meaning teens are just spending less time hanging out with each other, thus less chance to hook up and get pregnant.

Similar with adults, if you have a full gaming system, a tv with choice of dozens of movies and tv shows, why would you go out? In 1984 leaving the house was just much more attractive.

So just meeting a potential partner is more difficult now.

I didn’t want any children but was persuaded by my ex-DH as he was desperate for a family. My pregnancy was awful, the birth ended in an emergency c-section and my post natal care was dire. Obviously then ex-DH didn’t step up as promised and continued his life as before. I was left doing everything for DS. Needless to say he is an only child.

There are so many things that need to improve before having children is seen as a good choice for women to make. The NHS needs a major overhaul so women aren’t fobbed off with substandard care during their pregnancy and birth experience. Birth injuries need to be taken seriously and treated, you shouldn’t be told that incontinence and pain are to be expected and you have to live with them.

The cost of living is ridiculously high, house prices are way beyond an average wage and nursery fees are astronomical. The education system is broken with teachers leaving in droves because of poor pupil behaviour and low morale in schools.

Should you be unfortunate enough to have a disabled child, you will need to jump through hoops just to get their very basic needs met. You’ll be expected to care for them 24 hours a day with no respite because none is available. It’s pretty much always the women who sacrifice their careers and lives to fulfill the carer role in these circumstances.

Men are able to walk away from their children at any point without a backwards glance, leaving women to raise them often in poverty because child support is so low.

But hey yeah, the birth rate is falling because I like a few games of solitaire on my iPhone.

This woman based her 'smartphones = lower birth rate' theory on the fact that women in sub-Saharan Africa have less access to smartphones and they have more children than women in parts of the world where phones are widely available.

What seems to have slipped her notice is that women in Sub-Saharan Africa have less access to contraception than women in other countries with lower birth rates.

She's talking absolute bilge. Headline grabbing nonsense.

That only works if the younger generations have jobs, and moreover jobs that pay enough for them to be net contributors.

Let's take Italy as an example. The birth rate is 1.24 children per woman. The youth unemployment rate is 20.4%.

And then there's AI.

Recently, I have listened to an interesting podcast where a researcher said that one of the main reasons for women in Asian countries to decide not to get married and have children is the availability of social media and Netflix - ladies there do not want to be housewives anymore, they want to have a life like "Emily in Paris" (real quote) - to be independent, have their own income and live a more fulfilling life. I think the same might apply to any country where the situation of women is not that good...

This. Having child is a massive physical time
and financial commitment. Lots of women just don’t want to do it. So come up with another solution.

My grandparents owned a 4 bedroom house, they had a daily cleaner and sent their children to the small local private school. They went on holiday abroad once a year. My grandmother cooked and did all the child/house admin and tidying. She did quite a bit of dressmaking and often went to the cinema after lunch. Everyone thought she was doing a great job and no one thought she wasn’t pulling her weight. My grandfather worked 9-5 brought in a steady and decent income in a fairly low-stress job. He came home for lunch every day. He did his hobbies at the weekend and everyone thought he was doing also doing a great job. They were both working/middle class and left school at 14 to get jobs so they didn’t come from a wealthy background.

I’m not saying that life was necessarily better in the past but I do think it was easier for more people to have children and still live quite comfortably.

Your grandparents life sounds idyllic @Neemie .

I also know quite a few women who were in long term relationships with men since university who kept kicking the can down the road about kids (and in some cases marriage) and when finally the women said now or never many did reluctantly agree to start trying but a few also saw the break up of their relationships because men think they have forever to settle down and have kids because they don't actually have any of the hard work of gestating or birthing a baby or that they can still crank out a dribble of sub par ejaculate at 45 before they finally go flaccid forever more.

Other issues are the sheer cost of living, the cost of housing and the cost of having children. Women either have to pay through the nose to keep working or if they choose to take a longer break from work to look after their child they lose so much career wise, we could learn a thing or two from Scandinavian countries on this and help women to return to work after an extended break when having children and not to suffer so badly in terms of pay and career progression.

Then their is just more information. Not everyone wants to be a parent, not everyone who is a parent loves it or thinks it was the right choice for them. I don't think access to Instagram or animal crossing is going to stop those who do want to be mothers from having kids nor is lack of access going to persuade those who don't fancy it.

Obviously it would be better it people looking to find a partner and start a family were better able to connect but a reduction in unplanned pregnancies seems like a good thing to me.

Yes. She should spare a thought for all the other species that are being driven to extinction because human beings are hogging the planet. They have real population decline problems, and it's being forced on them.

Agree that a falling human birth rate isn't necessarily a bad thing - perplexed as to why it is automatically considered so.

Expecting 'Woman's Hour' to have any intelligent comment about anything is doomed to failure I'm afraid OP. Sometimes they have good guests, but the show itself is often quite aggressively anti-woman and particularly anti-working class women. It's very much focused around the interests of middle class BBC luvvies as far as I can tell. Occasionally they are forced to talk about important things like the FWS judgement but you can tell it's through gritted teeth and they avoided the arguments for years.

What I would be interested in is a show on is why so many academics are pissing public money away studying shite like this when there are real world problems to consider. Like for example why the media runs so few stories about wholescale removal of human rights and murder of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Is it this Dr Alice Evans? Alice Evans | King's College London

Her page says this... "Biography
Dr Alice Evans is writing 'The Great Gender Divergence': why all societies have become more gender equal, and why some are more equal than others."

Ummm, can someone tell her about Afghanistan and Iran? I don't think either has become more 'gender' equal - or maybe she thinks all the women are identifying into their oppression? Which isn't 'gender' based but sex based.

That could be solved by immigration, couldn't it? Globally, there's no shortage of working age people.

And there in lies the issue.

Even some of the most liberal types who are pro immigration, would struggle with the implications of the scale of the immigration levels and social change that would accompany it.

Its a conversation thats needed, but its one that opens a can of worms that is difficult to manage without getting very heated and very tribal very quickly.