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Why people don't want kids anymore (apparently)

My own excuse(s)

  • money, we have just about enough to live on
  • housing, I was renting till I was 40 (so 2 years ago)
  • neither of us have or are close to family so all of that unbilled support isn't there and neither of us have a particularly strong social network

Those are the main ones, others are available
 
Hmm, I cannot agree. I've heard this before from people (usually older members of the extended family) who weren't comfortable with my choice not to have children, perhaps they were worrying that I was or would be secretly unhappy.

I agree that it's not an entirely rational business, and we certainly get a hormonal injection to make us enjoy parenthood once we're there, but the problem is that it doesn't work that way for everyone. The "just go for it and then you'll find you love it" philosophy comes from the time when people could not talk about not loving it. Then there's also the sunk cost - what's the point of looking back?

There is always the option to have children later (including adoption). If on the balance it doesn't seem like a good idea, maybe it isn't. In my experience, people who want children feel that the benefits outweigh the negatives, even if they look at the situation rationally. And people who don't shouldn't be prodded in that direction by well-meaning parents. Just because it worked out for you doesn't mean that it wouldn't ruin someone's life.


It's one of those decisions where there's no preview, you could love it, you probably will love your kids but at the same time it's a massive risk that if you end up regretting having kids has ruined at least three people's lives.

Sometimes it's just more rational to say "I'm not sure and won't risk it" rather than doing that. At least to my mind.
 
People who bemoan the low birth rate, are usually attached to growth as a concept. Growth in population terms means that there will be enough younger people in work whose taxes can pay for the pensions of the older generation.

If there is population / fertility decline, this balance becomes more precarious.
 
I was more speaking from an emotional point of view. Some people still have children despite not wanting them, for all sorts of reasons. But that number has fallen considerably as your statistics show. So the number of people who don't want children is the same, regardless of whether they have them or not. People just have more choice.

I imagine there were many, many resentful parents in olden times who felt they couldn't voice their utter horror as another unwanted pregnancy revealed itself.
I see; sort of unmeasurable stuff, then?
 
People who bemoan the low birth rate, are usually attached to growth as a concept. Growth in population terms means that there will be enough younger people in work whose taxes can pay for the pensions of the older generation.

If there is population / fertility decline, this balance becomes more precarious.
And specifically, the rise of childless aged folk will, inevitably, place ever more demands on the adult social care 'system'. Unpaid geriatric care from children must save the state tens of billions, but with greater proportions of the childless reaching old age that element of unpaid care will decrease. We're already back to levels of childlessness not seen since the immediate post WW1 era when the shortage of marriage partners reduced marriage and family prospects.


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This 2021 Economist piece was bigging up the non-economic factors lying behind declining fertility rates:

One study of Britons born in 1970 found that the two most important reasons for remaining childless, among both men and women, were that they did not particularly want children or did not meet the right partner. That hints at a broad change in norms and expectations. A new paper on America by Melissa Schettini Kearney and two other economists comes to similar conclusions. They think fertility is declining not because of economic pressures, but because people’s assumptions about life and families have changed. In particular, children are thought to require much more effort and attention than was the case in the past.

and seeing this consequence:

Few old people are childless today. Those celebrating their 80th birthdays this year belong to a cohort born in 1941, among whom only 11% ended up child-free. Falling fertility and growing lifespans mean that the number of childless 80-year-olds will triple over the next two decades, according to the ons, and seems likely to rise thereafter. That will put more pressure on the care system, because old people without children are more likely to receive formal care.
 
The demographic stats don't really support that impression. The E&W total fertility rate* is genuinely falling, particularly if you take a longer term perspective. The TRF has also been below replacement level, (2.1 children/woman - pink line on graph), since the early 1970s, meaning that any population growth is going to be from net immigration rather than 'natural growth'.

Though, in support of your observation, until fairly recently, (2016), there had not been great change since the early 1970s, but the decline in TRF over the last 8 years has been significant and the subject of MSM reporting.



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• The number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with age-specific fertility rates currently observed. The reference period is three years preceding the survey.
That chart shows very clearly when a woman's ability to choose whether to have children arrived: the arrival of the contraceptive pill in 1960. The birth rate plummets after that date, stabilising in the mid 70s before a further decline since around 2010. I guess it's that most recent decline that's the focus of the thread.

Of course contraception existed long before 1960, going back to ancient times, but it wasn't widely available, was unreliable, uncomfortable and condoms (the modern style latex ones were only mass produced from the 1930s) relied on men, which is similar to saying unreliable.

For most of human history deciding whether to have children wasn't really a choice. If you had a hetrosexual sex life, like the majority of people, it was just a likely consequence. Whole moral and social systems were built around what was seen as just a fact of life.

If you look at longer term trends even the post-war baby boom was a historically low birthrate. Here's the a chart going back to 1550:

tfr.jpeg

Until improvements in health, sanitation and living conditions arrived in the later 1800s the average number of children each woman had was somewhere between 4 and 6. But there was a much higher infant mortality rate too. My great-great-great grandad Henry had 23 children with two wives. His first wife died in childbirth, 8 of his children died as babies.

Is it a coincidence that more people are choosing not to have babies since austerity kicked in and most regular people's standard of living, people's ability to get by and make ends meet, to house, clothe and feed themselves, has declined noticeably?
 
People who bemoan the low birth rate, are usually attached to growth as a concept. Growth in population terms means that there will be enough younger people in work whose taxes can pay for the pensions of the older generation.

If there is population / fertility decline, this balance becomes more precarious.
Of course, much of the 'pro-family' pro-natalism of the right and far right goes hand-in-glove with their anti-immigration stance; they know that without replacement level social reproduction it is only net immigration that will satiate capital's demand for cheap labour.
 
Trigger warning: pointless conspiracy thinking here
In the UK we have "the nudge unit" - which i take to be a wider think-tank ideology that looks to manipulate public behaviour by pulling subtle levers, usually economic.
What I wonder is to what degree, if at all, the climate crisis is being responded to by nudge unit policies of making energy expensive (so people use less), and making life expensive in general as a way to reduce population in a variety of ways (including killing vulnerable people off as well as making parenting a financial nightmare).

...Its just thoughts that have crossed my mind, Im not saying this happens, but its the kind of thinking I could well image happening in the corridors of power. There's many a eugenicist in Whitehall. I appreciate this is happening globally, but that doesn't necessary negate it. China's one-child policy is an interesting case in point
 
Trigger warning: pointless conspiracy thinking here
In the UK we have "the nudge unit" - which i take to be a wider think-tank ideology that looks to manipulate public behaviour by pulling subtle levers, usually economic.
What I wonder is to what degree, if at all, the climate crisis is being responded to by nudge unit policies of making energy expensive (so people use less), and making life expensive in general as a way to reduce population in a variety of ways (including killing vulnerable people off).

...Its just thoughts that have crossed my mind, Im not saying this happens, but its the kind of thinking I could well image happening in the corridors of power. There's many a eugenicist in Whitehall. I appreciate this is happening globally, but that doesn't necessary negate it. China's one-child policy is an interesting case in point

The nudge unit was feted briefly as it offered a pretend magic bullet for softening austerity, then was told it had to be commercially self sufficient and bid for work through open competition, then it was told it would be spun out, and nobody but NESTA wanted it. It has been deader than a dodo for a decade. I knew people who worked there and they were very, very glum.
 
Trigger warning: pointless conspiracy thinking here
In the UK we have "the nudge unit" - which i take to be a wider think-tank ideology that looks to manipulate public behaviour by pulling subtle levers, usually economic.
What I wonder is to what degree, if at all, the climate crisis is being responded to by nudge unit policies of making energy expensive (so people use less), and making life expensive in general as a way to reduce population in a variety of ways (including killing vulnerable people off as well as making parenting a financial nightmare).

...Its just thoughts that have crossed my mind, Im not saying this happens, but its the kind of thinking I could well image happening in the corridors of power. There's many a eugenicist in Whitehall. I appreciate this is happening globally, but that doesn't necessary negate it. China's one-child policy is an interesting case in point
I think the main stumbling block to that level of tin-foil hattedness is that, though the old are useless mouths to neoliberal capital, they are electoral gold-dust to their political wings.
 
Trigger warning: pointless conspiracy thinking here
In the UK we have "the nudge unit" - which i take to be a wider think-tank ideology that looks to manipulate public behaviour by pulling subtle levers, usually economic.
What I wonder is to what degree, if at all, the climate crisis is being responded to by nudge unit policies of making energy expensive (so people use less), and making life expensive in general as a way to reduce population in a variety of ways (including killing vulnerable people off as well as making parenting a financial nightmare).

...Its just thoughts that have crossed my mind, Im not saying this happens, but its the kind of thinking I could well image happening in the corridors of power. There's many a eugenicist in Whitehall. I appreciate this is happening globally, but that doesn't necessary negate it. China's one-child policy is an interesting case in point
There seems very little evidence the British state has properly got its head around the climate crisis, certainly not well enough to run this kind of secret background population reduction campaign.
 
From what I've read, places that have already tried this sort of thing (propaganda / tax breaks etc) haven't been particularly successful.
Yeah, well as long as the right's commitment to being "pro-family" extends to little more than socially regressive/anti-woke culture warfare, it's doomed to be irrelevant. Real "pro-family" pro-natalism requires commitments to public expenditure in incentives and public services.
 
The nudge unit was feted briefly as it offered a pretend magic bullet for softening austerity, then was told it had to be commercially self sufficient and bid for work through open competition, then it was told it would be spun out, and nobody but NESTA wanted it. It has been deader than a dodo for a decade. I knew people who worked there and they were very, very glum.
yes but as i said im taking nudge unit as a wider think tank ideology of social manipulation in an "end of history" pro-market orthodoxy in government. banning x adverts before y oclock is an example
 
yes but as i said im taking nudge unit as a wider think tank ideology of social manipulation in an "end of history" pro-market orthodoxy in government. banning x adverts before y oclock is an example

I’m intrigued that you see policies like targeted regulation of advertising aimed at improving public health as being pro-market social manipulation. All the people involved genuinely believe that they are restraining the worst excesses of capitalism.
 
Yeah, well as long as the right's commitment to being "pro-family" extends to little more than socially regressive/anti-woke culture warfare, it's doomed to be irrelevant. Real "pro-family" pro-natalism requires commitments to public expenditure in incentives and public services.
Agree would add also Christianity is still a factor in the mix in parts of the continent
In Poland welfare payments are paid per child precisely in this spirit
 
I’m intrigued that you see policies like targeted regulation of advertising aimed at improving public health as being pro-market social manipulation. All the people involved genuinely believe that they are restraining the worst excesses of capitalism.
in that its about nudging behaviour rather than dealing with bigger structural issues
lets leave it anyway, its a derail
 
Agree would add also Christianity is still a factor in the mix in parts of the continent
In Poland welfare payments are paid per child precisely in this spirit
Interesting, if US-centric, article here about pro-natalist policies, their efficacy and cost.

Meanwhile, here in the UK we have a soi-disant "progressive" government that won't even lift the 2 child benefits limit that condems millions of kids to poverty.
 
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Interesting, if US-centric, article here about pro-natalist policies, their efficacy and cost.
i do hope no amount of tinkering will stop the trend
the fact its expensive gives hope they wont try it much and it wont work much anyway
everything we know about the economic and political direction of the political class around the world suggests depopulation will only continue
 
I'm not sure that if you hadn't a choice it would even be experienced as a want or a not want. Not in the same way as now anyway where there are alternatives that can be imagined.
There’s a section in the Waste Land about having children and the lack of choice. It’s seen as a natural consequence of marriage.

It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
 
I'm not saying anything new here but yes it's just so difficult now.

I never considered having children when I was younger because I never thought I would be financially stable enough (I.e. paired up with someone) to live in secure housing and have disposable income. When out of the blue that happened, we tried, it didn't happen, that's ok. Even now with a mortgage and good jobs I know we would struggle to pay more out.

I was talking to my cousin last night, same age as me, married with 2 young daughters. Modest terraced house with just enough space. He and his wife both work full time at decent jobs. If it was 35 years ago it would be straight forward. But with their mortgage increase this year and nursery fees, they're running at a loss every month and using savings. They are lucky to have some. But it shouldn't be so hard! And just getting worse.
 
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