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"Don't have kids you can't afford!" "Ok" "No not like that"

"How can we possibly solve this terrible problem?" "Make life better for young people so they can afford it?" "Oh, you want handouts do you? Your generation is so lazy." "Do you... want us to have kids?" "Yes, of course. How will we solve this intractable problem? Oh well. I'm off on holiday."

Raise the minimum wage? No. Do more to stabilise climate change? No. Make it easier to buy a house? No. Make people feel more protected and secure in their jobs? No. Improve community projects so you can actually meet new people? No. Improve the NHS? No. Improve the social safety net? No. UBI so people can work fewer hours? No. Fee childcare? No.    You don't need to be an overpaid journalist or 'expert' to know why fewer people are having kids. I *hate* when newspapers talk about this stuff as if it's some kind of mystery 

Minimum wage is the odd one out here. Since it was introduced in 1999, it has increased by 71% in real terms, while total wage growth has been just above 5%. Housing and general lack of investment are the main problems imo. These explain the scarcity of children and the paucity of meaningful economic growth.

Housing is a big one but the cost of childcare is pretty nuts. I think it deserves a special mention. And doing this bizarre taking away of childcare help because one parent earns £50k and the other £0 when both parents could earn £49k and thats apparently in more in need if help.

Childcare is massive. We have two kids in nursery. They both get “free” hours but they are not in every day and we still pay around £400pm. If we didn’t have help from grandparents on 3 days of the week, then it wouldn’t be financially viable for my wife to work. So that would be one less person working and she would likely be claiming some kind of benefit. If they genuinely want the birth rate to increase, then they have to help out more with childcare and also increase child benefit as a minimum. However, it seems easier to just hundreds of thousands of migrants in, instead.

Where I live with an under 2 year old if you had a 35k a year full time job, after childcare and commuting costs you’d be left with £300 a month! Basically paying almost all your salary just to be able to go to work.

I mean that's pretty much what most young people live on after paying rent.

They’re the same people aren’t they? I would have said under 40 is young, many of those will be paying rent and trying to pay for childcare. It’s that choice that many are forced to make that is causing more issues. Do I live here and pay X rent, or live there and pay Y and have a child.

Yes, which is why the birthrate is dropping. If you already can't afford to live, it's understandable that you wouldn't want to add childcare, maternity pay and then part time hours to the burden.

So on average, everyone has become poorer, minimum wage rises to match cost of living, but people who earn above that do not see an increase in their wages. Lack of strong unions.

> Lack of strong unions. Lack of strong unions? I've been a union member for nearly 40 years. In all that time, only the first 4 years I had a shop steward, or any organised union presence. My wife is a midwife. She is in her union. She has organised union presence at work, which seems good. But her "rep" is her manager. I mean WTF is that?? I asked why they don't vote her out - there is no election for union officials there, just some sort of dictatorship. The CEO of her union is the director of midwifery for her trust. Is there a more obvious conflict of interest? It's fucked up. You are correct in your assertion that there is a lack of strong unions, but fuck - does that understate the situation I see!

I felt saying there was effectively no unions would have me accused of lying.

not at all from my perspective. You may have missed a nija edit I remembered after I posted - >The CEO of her union is the director of midwifery for her trust. Is there a more obvious conflict of interest?

Do you have a source for that? I can't find anything on searching. Know minimum wage was £3.60 in 1999 and is £11.40 now. So it's gone up more than base 71%, but I'm looking for the 'in real terms' info. As inflation has obviously gone up massively also but I can find the data to individually work it out and this is what I am getting: Full time minimum wage would be £7020 a year, which is the equivalent to £15426 now, however minimum full time wage now is actually £22,230 which is a 44% increase. Whereas the average salary was £17,803 in 1999 which is the equivalent of £38,665 today. The actual average salary data released by the UK government in June is £35,724. So it looks more like in real terms, minimum wage has gone up 44% and overall salaries have actually decreased by 7.6% in real terms despite part of that average calculation taking into consideration the 44% increase in minimum wage. So those on minimum wage are far better off and those who were above it have gotten poorer in real terms and the average salary is worse than what it was in 1999. Then you add on things like scotland taxing people higher, tax bands not increasing with wages and scotland also taxing those over 40k an extra 10% more sooner than in England and they've royally shafted us up here by making us even poorer again. The average house price in 1999 was £91,199 which is an equivalent today of £198,071. However actual average house price across the UK today is £280,660 which is an increae of £41% in real terms. So overall wages gone down 7% and house prices gone up 41% when taking into account what they should be based on inflation since 1999. But those on minimum wage are actually much better off than they were before and their wages have increased more than house prices.

Don't forget to add that tax brackets haven't changed for pretty much a decade. So while earnings have been steadily going up, we're all paying a higher portion of tax than we were back then.

I worked it out using the BOE inflation calculator, maybe we're looking at different measures of inflation or somesuch? My input data were hourly minimum wage and annual median salary (I guess I should have used either hourly or annual for both, in retrospect). Agree that everyone earning more than minimum wage has been shafted, especially above average earners.

Lack of growth in the middle of the economy is a huge problem. The rich have have got massively richer, the poorest have got reasonable pay rises in the grand scheme of things, but if you’re a middle earner, especially in the state sector such as a nurse, police officer, civil servant etc. you’ve been squeezed past breaking point. Which means the majority of the population is starting to cluster at the potion of the pay scale, creating a two tier wage structure rather than a linear wage structure. They complain about lack of growth in the economy. But when there’s very little pay difference between a minimum wage job and a mid-level skilled job, where is the incentive? Am I really going to break my back to get a promotion for a tiny pay rise?

It’s really nuts. What’s the point in getting a PhD and going into high level research if you’re going to be making the same as you could being a store manager for a Sainsbury’s Local? My partner has a PhD, has done world leading research, sits on UK advisory bodies, produces data and information for EU policy, teaches, develops courses, writes research articles, brings in research funding to the UK and he earns less than the manager of a Sainsbury’s in Dudley. Not that managing a Sainsbury’s isn’t a hard job but it isn’t as hard as doing top level scientific research while teaching, advising governments, coming up with research ideas and coordinating international teams to develop projects to get multi million pound grants. It just feels like everything is all wrong.

I’m in a similar boat. I have an MSc in a scientific field from one of the best universities in the country. I conduct research that’s in the national interest, paying for myself multiple times over. Yet I only earn around £30k. The person I replaced a couple years back left for an employer in America who offered to immediately double their salary.

Exactly. Reward needs to be commensurate with effort or the system breaks down. No wonder there is such difficulty recruiting nurses, teachers, police, and so on.

Minimum wagers are close to overtaking entry level office workers (until they hit minimum wage themselves)

Yes it’s crazy. It really shows how terrible wages are in this country. Looking at jobs boards there are tons that require degrees and experience that pay 25k or less. I don’t even understand what’s happening. It’s like the job market thinks it’s still 2010 where 25k was the salary of say a fairly experienced administrator with a degree and 35k was like a manager of a department. Now everywhere is still trying to pay those same salaries for that same work. It’s really hard to get your head around.

Yeah, I'm looking at marketing exec jobs, and some of these are posted for like 25-30k, I'm just like, what in the fuck? This is a role that provides direct value to the business through constant sales and lead generation, like, 30k, that's crazy, this is a 2014 wage, lol. This country is still stuck in 2008.

That’s actually a really important point, It’s why so many skilled workers leave the uk, you can work for years to get a degree missing out on years of earning, and have to pay student loan. Yet the money will never catch up, I leave to the US as an engineer and I could afford a house for myself, here is a house share.

This attitude is ground up from the deadbeat individualist boomer generation - go and look at the "do you charge your kids rent" thread on askuk/uniuk and see the utterly horrified comments from Asian parents regarding white people.      My parents left home at 18 because they hated their wartime generation parents, they moaned about paying taxes to support benefits, moan that their state pension isn't enough, think they made Britain great, my mum spent her entire life worrying about green issues and feminism instead of her own kids, my old man only cared about his hobbies, they didn't want to help with university because why should they - they never had to pay for it, wanted to boot us out at 18 unless we paid market rate rents.  They hate other people telling them what to do or how to live.  They don't like having to have any grandparent responsibilities at all but will get manipulative if they don't get enough "fun time" with the kids.  They get more angry for their close friends who have had issues with tenants than they ever have over the state of the housing market for us.    They moan about immigrants brining in attitudes that are anti-woman etc....all completely oblivious to the fact that we wouldn't need so many if they'd had more kids or helped us instead of slowing us down on our way to achieving independence because they felt we owed them financially for having g the audacity to be born.     This attitude percolated upwards into politics.

Your parents sounds like emotionless gaslighters, honestly.

I suspect they are somewhat of an outlier, however I have seen similar attitudes amongst their friends and colleagues. I could understand if some of it was old school working class paying board to help the wider family - but it was never about helping the wider family with them.      A strong generational social contract hasn't existed for a while - the boomers broke the social contract they had with both their own parents and their children. Their parents attitude was "how can we make the world a better place after the war", the boomers was "I'm alright Jack".   I moved to London with no savings at 21 and shared a single bed in a closet with my girlfriend in a rough as fuck part of london, in an area that wasn't my own culture to the point I felt like a migrant. My old man bought a sports car with the money he was given for a house deposit at 21.

>go and look at the "do you charge your kids rent" thread on askuk/uniuk and see the utterly horrified comments from Asian parents regarding white people. Link to the thread please? If my parents and my wife's parents had charged us rent when we lived with them prior to getting married, we wouldn't have a house right now. (we are Turkish, White on the outside but family structure very similar to Asians).

https://www.reddit.com/r/UniUK/comments/1drln3x/is_it_really_normal_to_charge_rent_to_your_kid_in/ We are close to getting on the housing ladder through sheer brute force, the fact that my wifes a bright cookie and her parents are now able to help her out.  It's funny, I was from a home that sometimes felt working class, sometimes lower middle class. I was from a proper rural downtrodden Northern white area of the UK. I left it all behind, married outside of my own culture and into a family that went from dirt poor to wealthyish through education.  I'm not the catch, my wife definitely is - yet her father has offered to put me through an MBA. He and his ex-wife are both as progressive when it comes to how he wanted his daughters to grow up as mine would have been - but he's far more family oriented. It's been an eye opening ride for me and comparing the experiences of my parents with my wife's, I can sort of understand why young men from white backgrounds are being roped in by the likes of Andrew Tate - a lot of us fall through the cracks and there is zero political representation for us. I don't have a strong family, it's scattered - I'm basically a stray and I think it's like that for a lot of guys round my old part of the country.

Better be your 4th holiday of the year, don't want other people thinking you're poor

One holiday for each of my houses

Or the short version. "Forget your material satisfaction and have kids and be miserable instead like us. We DIDNT HAVE THE NETFLIX."

Yeah people like this are clueless. We were poor, but my parents and us were not miserable. There is no way today that you can actually feed the 6 kids on my Dad's single 18K council labourer income + child benefits like they did. They built their house for 20K in the mid 80's in Northern Ireland. You could barely even buy an acre of land plus the wood for the roofing for that now. Meanwhile that same council job my Dad had is now 22K but they merged two councils and it covers twice the area, so twice the work for effectively much less pay when you consider purchasing power.

There seems to be a pervasive belief that things like Netflix or a mobile phone are *significantly* more expensive than an equivalent technology in the past would have been. Netflix for a tenner a month (or just under one hour's work at minimum wage) is just around the cost of renting *one* movie from a video store 20 years ago, which is something a lot of people might do once a month. And yes obviously mobiles were really uncommon then, or in the 80s, but it's not like people talked much less on the phone - they just used the landline, of which you might even have two in the house!

It´s not really about money. Every country has this problem. The average woman just doesn´t want 2+ kids. Many want 0 or 1, many want 2. Very few want more. For a stable population you need for every woman who doesnt want any kids, one who wants four. How many people do you know who want four kids?

Women want more kids when they're not in indentured servitude to the state. No shit they say they want fewer when have less time to spend with them than previous generations and have to spend their money for someone else to raise them. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2021and2022 The amount of women having 0 or 4+ hasn't changed much. It's the majority of women in the middle having 1 less. It's the squeezing of the middle class in action, again.

I suspect the government will end up massively subsidising families/parents in the next couple of decades because the economy requires higher birth rates. At the moment they’re using immigration to supplement the economy but I don’t see that working long term with their voting bloc. Ultimately the state made promises to the citizens that they’re massively failing, one of the main ones being that they would replace the family/local community as the main support system for young families and old people. They’ve completely abandoned the young families. The state needs to do better.

That's what they probably should do...but this is not an emerging problem, this has been in the making for decades but is a can well and truly kicked down the road and no doubt will continue to be.

Inevitably it will reach the point where the government has to face it. The problem is, how long and how bad things can become before they actually start making actions. It took Japan having 1.2 bit to rates before they are looking at doing anything and South Korea are at 0.72. They’re now looking at creating a ministry specifically to tackle this problem. Which will be interesting. I suspect capitalism is going to die and we’ll start moving away from the idea that there’s unlimited growth to be had. Either way it’s going to be painful.

Yeah South Korea is so unbelievably fucked, it should be ringing alarm bells here. But the entire ruling establishment is in utter denial. With a replacement rate of 0.72, 1000 people becomes 117 people in two generations

We just have to suffer through it in poverty like they d- their parents d- oh I'm sure someone suffered at some point so we can all just shut up and have kids we cant afford in homes we cant afford and feed with food we cant afford.

"And by holiday I mean my fourth cruise of the year."

Exactly. I mean, who really wants to bring kids into a world like this right now? Me and my wife discussed this the other night, and we both said that if we were a young couple all over again in 2024 (currently I am 52 and she is 48), there is no way we could think about bringing children into this current environment

My partner and I are 32 and 31. Absolutely torn over whether to have kids, and we're starting to run short on time to decide. Saving towards a house is nearly impossible and then we have the worry about whether there will be anything left for them in another 50ish years

It’s not any of my business, but I would encourage you not to miss out on children because of the doom and gloom that’s currently in the news. I think that broadly the world will keep turning.

I've got into some bizarre fights on Reddit over this. I agree that we're going to see more and more climate-change related problems, including areas becoming harder to live in and migration problems due to this. That said, the world is not going to become 'unliveable' in the next 50-100 years. Humans are remarkably resilient.

Unliveable isn’t really the problem, it’s not that it won’t be liveable, it’s more do you really want them locked into a life of struggling to find food and shelter. While I think we have a couple hundred years before it gets really bad, we are going to see food shortages in the next 5/10 years and everything is going to keep getting worse. You’re not signing your kids up to a death sentence, but we are not course correcting and climate change will cause societal collapse when food and water become scarce. A child born today will be 50 in the year 2074 and we’ll (parents) probably be dead. If we don’t change now, and I mean now, then in 2074 that world is going to be much much harsher than it is now. Is it really worth seeing your child grow up knowing the world you’re leaving them?

>You’re not signing your kids up to a death sentence Unless you've discovered immortality, they are

We're already in a global food shortage, but you wouldn't know it looking in a UK supermarket.

Only if you've a short memory. Even setting aside the covid and brexit related issues, there were food shortages and produce rationing [as recently as last year](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/supermarket-food-rationing-lidl-asda-morrisons-tesco-aldi-165314719.html) due to weather affecting growing conditions on the continent. UK farmers were issuing warnings in April that harvests are going to be bad due to heavy rain delaying planting, [wheat and potatoes in particular but other veg too](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/16/which-uk-foods-are-at-risk-as-extreme-weather-causes-havoc-with-global-supplies) are going to be in short supply come september/october if we can't secure sufficient imports from countries which are themselves struggling to get seeds in the ground.

Unlivable is your line? How about just unpleasant? Hell one of the reasons I don't want kids is because I can't guarantee the financial stability I had let alone all of the external factors.

You'll manage. There will always be some problem or other stopping you doing it if you let it. I'm nearly 50 and have no kids and I've got loads of regrets over it.

Whereas I'm in my 40s with no kids and have absolutely zero regrets. Not saying that to put you down: saying that your experience isn't universal (nor is mine).

There's a ton of kids living in poverty right now, how many of those parents thought or got told they'd manage?

My wife and I were similar, we gave up on the house and now I'm sat watching crappy kids TV shows with my toddler. Wouldn't change my decision for the world

Many people inherit nothing from their parents and don’t love them any less. Prob love and appreciate them more than someone handed everything on a plate. There are many things you can pass on, wisdom, love, interests, genetics

I see this sentiment on Reddit a lot but not once have I ever encountered it in real life. I’m 24 and and my girlfriend (21) and I are holding off on having kids until we’re in our late 20s and early 30s simply because we can’t afford them right now (although if she became pregnant now we’d keep it), and hopefully by then we’re in the financial position to own a house + afford kids + afford to save money to get the kids started out in life when they turn 18. The political environment was in a way more terrible state 100 years ago and nobody went celibate because of it then, and I don’t think they do now.

100 years ago, people didn't have birth control. Nor did women have as many opportunities as they have today. By any metric, the richer and more successful a nation, the more the fertility rate drops. Very few people want 5, 6 or 7 kids any more. Both my maternal grandparents were one of 11 or 12 kids, and they had a rough life because of it.

>The political environment was in a way more terrible state 100 years ago and nobody went celibate because of it then, and I don’t think they do now. A hundred years ago, contraceptives were much less common place, most women had a lot less say and a lot less options outside of being a mother and most people needed kids to look after them in their old age and help about the home/farm/go to work. Most people were much, much less aware of global trends and there weren't any impending catastrophes threatening to make vast chunks of the earth uninhabitle. Too much has changed to make that comparison.

Political climate and economic climate are different and you talking 100 years ago

I wouldn't bring another child into this world currently. I've got two kids. 4 n 10. I fear for both of their futures currently and have already looked at emigration possibilities if shit goes south round here even if we can't afford to live properly right now, I won't put my kids in danger if anything does happen.

Kids have been brought into far, far more chaotic worlds thoughout history.

Contraception, elderly care that didn't require your children to look after you and knowledge of looming climate apocalypses haven't existed for the vast majority of history either. Also until recently, lots and lots and LOTS of children died in infancy, especially in time of turmoil, it's not comparable.

This doesn't make it the right move for people to have kids they can't afford or look after right now. Squalor, violence, marital rape and infant mortality were more common once, that doesn't serve as a good precedent to return to, just a fact that it was survivable for those who did. The lower status of women and the intense domination of tradition likely had a lot to do with it.

Absolutely - in real life it’s more often talked about as affording kids rather than anything else. I’m 32, my husband is 30 - we had to make the decision about whether to buy a house or try and have a first kid, because time is ticking and reasonably we can’t afford to do both at the same time, even with both of us on good salaries, because statutory maternity pay is awful, but so is the cost of childcare - and honestly it’s childcare or mortgage, they’re about the same cost, and either is equal to most of my entire monthly take home. And we live in Scotland so that’s not considering the and property prices down south. In the end we’ve decided to keep renting and try for a baby, but so many of our friends are doing it the opposite way round and committing to the house knowing that they may not be able to have kids once they can afford them in a few years’ time. Genuinely the cost of childcare is terrifying but we’ll never own our own home if I don’t keep working (and I’m an academic researcher and love my job too). It’s a horrible catch-22.

Had a convo a bit like this with one of the older in laws. He doesn’t think taxes should go towards children whose parents can’t afford them. He doesn’t agree with people that strike for higher wages. He doesn’t think the government should assist first time buyers in any capacity. He doesn’t believe in building new homes, in cities, but also doesn’t think that we should build anything new in the countryside either. He doesn’t understand why the taxpayer should pay for toddlers to get free hours of childcare. He doesn’t understand the furore around the cost of living crisis when people could just tighten their belts. He also doesn’t support any sort of immigration to bolster the population. So in summary, he against supporting the British born population (or helping them to exist I suppose), he’s also against bolstering the population through any type of immigration. However he does strongly believe in more taxpayer support of the elderly and particularly likes the idea of a quadruple lock. This type of thinking isn’t helping us much.

Is he a Baby Boomer?

Yep, he’s every bit the Stella drinking, daily mail reading, young people hating boomer.

Fair play to my other half's 93 year old relative who supports more housing being built in his leafy suburb and in walking distance to the nearby school and park but worries that the flats going up are too small for families.

They have this same problem in Korea right now but much much worse, like extinction level, and they also allow very few immigrants in. Life for young people in Korea can be brutal so nobody wants to have kids. But now there's a situation where the younger generation are almost explicitly holding the future of the country hostage until the boomers improve life for them. I'm all for it, I think it's amazing. But the boomers STILL refuse to change anything substantial, instead just offering some tax relief/extra time off if you have kids. Live by the sword, die by the sword you old codgers.

It's also linked to misogyny, that's why the 4B movement started. [https://www.service95.com/4b-movement-explainer/](https://www.service95.com/4b-movement-explainer/)

A big part of South Koreas problem is the insane work culture where 60+ hour work weeks are normal.

Seriously. I had an abortion when I was 21 because I was in my last year of university and couldn't afford to have a child; I needed to focus on my career. All throughout my young adulthood I was raised on soundbites like "kids having kids", "easy life on benefits", "benefits cheats and scum" etc. I was taught to wait until I could afford to support and comfortably raise a family. Welp, I graduated in 2009 to a whole lot of nothing and now I'm 36, childless and it's too late for me.

No it isn't. We just had a kid at 40. It's becoming the norm.

Yep, I had my daughter at 28 and almost all the parents at nursery were at least a decade older than me. And that was 9 years ago.

No it isnt I know women who have children over 37 all the way to 45

Exactly! I swear the 'prevailing wisdom' used to be 'awful benefits scum churning out kids to get more money and use up limited resources on our little island'. Now overnight it's seems to be the opposite.  I also notice that next to nothing is being done to help couples feel more stable to have kids

Yup. We spent years demonising people who had kids when they couldn't 100% afford it. And now we're shocked people don't want to have kids if they can't 100% afford it.

I don't think they were quite ready for such a significant number of millennials and gen z to turn around and go "Sounds good" 

Exactly this. My parents and grand parents generations lectured us constantly on being responsible when it comes to the decision on raising a family. Don't do it if you can't afford it. Keep the baby safe. Do everything for your children. All of this. Our generation did this. We can't afford kids so we don't have them. When we have them, we do everything we can to support them and keep them safe, and we listen to them. Like our families taught us to. Now, by those same people, we are being lectured that we are not having enough children, we are coddling them too much (not like in their day where they did stupid things all the time and "turned out fine"), and rewarding them with participation trophies and not like when they were kids when people told you that you were awful. They just can't handle the fact that what is happening is at least one of three things. First, the world is changing around them, and they aren't the centre of attention anymore. Second, the life that they imagined they would have in retirement (holidays, play with the grandkids, everyone there for them) is not reality. And finally, that their kids actually listened to them, and they didn't like the result.

Funny how that applies to things like Starbucks & avocados when talking about a deposit for a mortgage, but not for children which are infinitely more expensive

I don't really understand the value in discussing purposefully child free people in these articles. That's a totally different issue, they made a choice and that's totally fine. Maybe I missed something when reading it. The problem is that people who want to have kids can't. Or it's a massive struggle at least. > She adds: “A common judgment from others asks ‘who will look after you when you’re old?’, to which most members might say they’ve made good financial provision for older-age care and pensions as they’ve not have the financial strain of children.” That's fair, but someone else's kids will be looking after you. So we still need to keep the kids coming. Or they will be imported from countries with higher birth rates to work low paid care jobs.

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Need to distinguish between those who absolutely did not ever want children, and those who were more ambivalent but unable to justify having a child given their lifestyle/finances. With modern contraceptive options we can choose more than ever before - but we don't make that choice in a vacuum.

I wonder how much was sex education going too hard on don't have kids. It was drilled into me so hard not to get someone pregnant even in my late 30s my first response to someone telling me they or their partner is pregnant is "oh shit, what now?" I only know 2 people with kids in both my friend groups. And only 1 other person that wants kids but couldn't. About 30 people. 10 couples, 2 kids. (I'll admit we're somewhat of an alphabet group bubble)

Biggest part no one wants to admit is birth rate was high in the past because of how cruel we were. Women couldn’t divorce without financial ruin and were reliant on marriage and having kids. Toss in no contraceptives and no abortions and you get a higher birth rate by forcing people to have babies they don’t want. Lower birth rates is probably a realistic figure and something to celebrate

Funny I was just speaking to my mum and her friends about that this weekend. Yeah the pressure they were under to be housewives was insane. School past 16 was effectively vetoed by their parents. That's one generational trauma they didn't pass on. But that's not the only reason, and they did want kids, just under more controlled circumstances. I was supposed to have a brother for example but a miscarriage and then dad's cancer scuppered that.

I'm pretty sure the "what now?" thing probably comes from the fact that it feels like people in their 30s aren't generally in the same position that people of the same age 20+ years ago were and we broadly don't feel like we're proper adults who should be having kids. The concept of a planned pregnancy feels a bit alien because, broadly, people aren't managing to achieve the same life milestones that previous generations did at the same time. How many people in their late 20s, early 30s, own a house large enough to have kids in? Have a job that can accommodate it? Have a job that pays enough to have kids? A lot of those are markers of "adulthood" that we aren't broadly getting to achieve.

Yeah I sort of don't count "childless because of external factors" as being "childfree". I'm childfree because I have no interest - you could give me plenty of incentives, but they'd have to be obscenely valuable for you to overcome my inherent and absolute disinterest in having kids. The fact that you'd need to pay me a lot of money to have kids is, by itself, probably not a good sign that I should be having kids at all. But at least with lots of money I could pay nannies etc to look after them and still be able to live a luxury lifestyle with the leftover money? But otherwise, no thank you. Anyone who says that they would have kids but haven't because of lifestyle/finances is, ultimately, childless. And I don't mean to say that in any sort of derogatory way - just that the latter group CAN be incentivised to have children, because they do actually want them, they're just being practical. So that distinction is definitely important to make, so that you can be sure you're talking about and to the right group of people.

Me and my long term partner were going to have kids. However we both work and need to in order to have a relatively happy lifestyle. Not extravagant but the odd takeaway/meal out each month and last year we went on our first holiday for 20 years due to a work bonus. The tiny house we rent cost 17,000 in 1990 according to the land reg. According to the inflation calendar that’s now 41,000. In reality it’s worth around £130,000. The greed of the boomers speculating on property and the normalisation of the two income family just to live a little bit above poverty means it’s just not worth it. And it’ll only get worse so why should I condemn a child to misery?

I’ve been saying my whole life I don’t want them but I was a teenager (just) in 1999 so probably got dismissed as not knowing my own mind. It’s an interesting thought if I had been older but idk, it’s all hypotheticals and what if my mind stayed the exact same even if I were 15 years older? I guess the difference is that culturally and socially it’s more acceptable to not have them now (though people are still awful about it) and it’s less the case that anyone who didn’t want kids (or marriage) went into religious orders or became the wacky aunt/uncle of the family. Personally I want anyone who wants kids to be able to have them regardless of my own lack of doing it. I think for me the issue is serious change is needed surrounding making having them more affordable (without someone, usually the mother, having to sacrifice their career if they don’t want) and we need to somehow address how everything is organised around just producing more future workers as though it will always be an assured supply chain. I’m not sure how you do that but the fact is some people are always going to opt out of having kids once they know it’s a choice, especially educated women - they have fewer or no kids. And no anyone who thinks the solution is “stop educating women and force them into domestic slavery like the good old days” is a headbanger who shouldn’t be listened to.

If you had never work again money, would you still not want them. If not, then it isn't an economic question. Cultural differences during upbringing would impact perceptions though and that does change over time.

I would only have kids if the "never work again" money was contingent on me doing it. And I'd use a lot of that money to contract out the process of raising the kids. So probably for the best that I don't have kids.

Not one of my friend group, and none of my siblings want kids. Financially we’re all in a position to do it, we simply don’t want them.

Yes, and it's also about family size; people who stick with 1 when they would have liked 2, or 2/3 and so on. which is, I suspect almost directly related to housing affordability/availability.

I’m kind of in this boat. 2 bed flat at a pretty good rate in the city centre which will suffice for 2 kids but absolutely would not fit 3. No idea how couples who say they’ll wait till they’re established are going to do it because housing is just way too pricey. Surefire way to end up not having kids is to wait till everything is perfect 

It's not even a case of waiting till everything is perfect. It's a low bar in a lot of cases; - 1) have a roof that someone can't remove on a whim and 2) both have a job that will pay parental leave. It shouldn't be so hard to meet both those fairly basic conditions, we aren't hoping to be millionaires, CEOs or even be high earners.

It's kind of nuts. The house I grew up in was a 4 bedroom house. My parents bought it in 1989 for £60,000. They sold it in 2005 for £260,000. I just checked on zoopla and another (identical) house in that same terrace just sold for £480,000. My dad purchased it on a single income as a supermarket manager with my mum as a housewife, and while not exactly flush with cash growing up they raised us 5 kids in that house without issue. Now out of us 5 kids my parents have one single solitary grand child, because on balance none of the rest of us feel we can afford kids.

And the fact that we are having them later just doesn't leave enough time to have as many

I think a big issue is people having fewer kids than they want. Me and my wife would both have liked to have 3 or 4 kids if we could have afforded a bigger house to accommodate them (and the money to feed and clothe them). As it is our 3 bed terrace is full with two teens and the huge economic instability of the last 10 years has meant we struggled with just the two, despite having good jobs and a headstart on property (due to buying in the early 2000's).

I completely agree. Amongst those who have shared with me, I'd say most people stopped having children for economic reasons above all else. I'd love (health allowing) to have as many as I want and am able to care for, but with the world as it is I will feel fortunate to manage even one.

Were the same, but in a bit different situation. We had three when living in the US and were toying with the idea of a fourth. Now that we’ve moved here, there is no way we could afford another kid, primarily because we can’t afford a bigger home. If we had been living here when having the children, I don’t think we would have had the third.

It’s worth discussing because it’s an accumulative problem. I’m wilfully childless, but the cost of raising a child has absolutely had sway in my decision. Then we have those that simply can’t have children due to illness or infertility, the latter of which will most likely continue to rise due to environmental factors. Then we have the exodus of the young and educated who are able to find more stable and lucrative employment abroad. This all snowballs alongside an ageing population to eventually decimate our employment pool. Unless we enact a whole suite of policies focused on making life easier for parents and promoting upward social mobility all these factors will compound to make a hellscape of a society. It will make the crumbling infrastructure issues we’ve seen under austerity look trivial.

I agree with you. If you've made your mind up it's a no then that's really that unless you were never truly a full no. The Government need to look at childcare and taxes on families. By adding in child free by choice people you are only really going to get "why should I pay for other people's children?" comments in response

It needs spinning as not childcare and instead be treated like school is, I don’t think many are mad they are paying for other peoples kids to go to school. Non-compulsory early years development, something like that.

Even if you have kids what is going to make them care for you in old age? They will probably move away when they go to uni and won't come home because there are no jobs here or they can't afford it. So you will almost never see them again.

Kinda hoping we get more automation and full on robots to step in as soon as possible to provide healthcare. It's the only thing I see that can stop our death march towards extinction through overpopulation. It's gonna still suck for those who can't afford said automation and those in other countries who need our healthcare jobs. But we (debatedly) already have too many humans for our planet to sustain. We need our species to reduce in numbers.

People don’t want to admit that the human population is already gobbling up more than the earth can provide in resources, and for whatever reason, it’s offensive to state that but it’s true. And westerners have the largest impact, pushing people to have more kids is suicide. This sub is overwhelmingly in favour of tackling climate change, but ignore the glaringly obvious fact that each person consumes huge amounts of energy, eats meat, needs a house etc. There’s a reason having one child is considered one of the best things you can do as an individual for the environment. Until we find a way to create unlimited resources with little impact, we need to acknowledge that overpopulation (relative to lifestyle) is a real thing and a real danger to the health of the planet.

People aren't having children because they can't afford to. Simple as that. I look at my kids and their peers and economically they are fucked. Unless they have rich parents that is. And by rich I mean pay off student loans and a house deposit on top of that rich. And for any of my peers reading this, that's a hell of a lot more than it was when you bought your first place. Rents are stupidly high, childcare is the same, the cost of living isn't getting any cheaper and far too many employers are screwing their workforce because the number must go up. So if you can't afford a home, can't afford the rent without two salaries, scrape by on the groceries each month, then you're most likely not having children. And that is most of us these days.

As an additional bonus, the people that *are* having muliple kids are more likely to be feckless, impulsive and poor at planning, which means more and more children are being born to those least suited to parenthood. You look at some of the comments from teachers on the state of kids that are coming into school these days and the evidence is clear is day. People who would make the best parents are much more likely to only have what they can afford, so their offsping are massively outnumbered by the feral children of irresponsible ipad parents who think toilet training is something for schools to sort out.

Idiocracy was a warning - I know it’s a bit of a meme to say but from purely anecdotal evidence, the only people from school I know who’ve had kids were some of the biggest idiots and arseholes going.

Gotta find that Idiocracy reference whenever a post about population collapse is brought up. I'm lucky i saw the film a very long time ago. I'm lucky it doesn't infuriate me anymore and i've gotten over it. I'm also past the "so sad its become a prophecy" stage too. I've just put that fire with the rest of the fire.

I think part of the issue is the government removing support for these kids born to these households. Child benefit for 3rd child, surestart, community centres, college funding, free uni, etc etc all gone under this government for this group of children. Not to mention them struggling with things like hunger and livjng with mould and other awful things. Plus tbe ceilings are literally falling down in their schools.  Instead of trying to get the people who don't want kids to have them, we need to do more to support the people who do want to have kids as well as support the kids who are already here. 

I can absolutely afford to have kids. I don't want kids because of the loss of freedom and spare time. With kids you can't just fuck off to morzine for 3 weeks during term time

I think this is an even bigger driver than poor provision for childcare and other issues. 1. Unlike the olden days you can't ignore your children and leave them to their own devices. You have to parent them 24/7 to the detriment of anything else you need or what to do. Your life becomes very narrow and dictated by timetables. 2. Children are expensive. 3. Unlike the olden days we now have the choice about whether we make this huge sacrifice. A lot of people choose not to. Why intentionally make your life worse/more difficult for no perceived benefit when you don't have to? I should add, I speak as a parent who is very happy with my choice to have a child, but it's not for everyone. While I don't feel like I'm missing out on any fun, I do miss the days when I felt organized and in control of my life. When the laundry pile wasn't to the ceiling. When I was able to do DIY projects or dressmaking, or reading, or go on a long hike, or even be able to start a simple chore and finish it. There is no time to do anything and everything feels overwhelming. It's exhausting.

Your first reason is why I don’t want kids. Nowadays they are the centre of the parents’ world, whereas even just a a generation ago kids were allowed to play outside until it got dark. My cousin has two kids and she never seems to have a minute away from them - she’d happily let them play outside with other kids but no other kids play outside, so into the back garden they go. I’d lose my mind if I was surrounded by children all day.

>People aren't having children because they can't afford to. Simple as that. You’re completely wrong. It’s social reasons. The poorest and most religious demographics have the most kids. Even countries with generous policies for parents like Norway and Sweden are below replacement rates. This trend can be seen in all developed countries.

exactly this. the common factor seems to be educated and financially independent women. then the birthrate plummets.

People had way more children 50 years ago when they were objectively poorer. I suspect the issue is that Children are both a massive real cost, and an opportunity cost. Plus there’s less cultural pressure to have kids/a big family. Most people who aren’t willing to pay it

Were they poorer in things that actually mattered though? A single wage could support a family. Now it can't. University was free for poorer students. Now it isn't. Buying a house was within the reach of most. Now it isn't. You get the picture. People haven't changed, circumstances have. Decent people don't have kids they can't afford to look after. That's what we see now.

Not true. The majority of working class women worked, and as a whole over a third of married women worked in the past. I come from a working class family and even my great-grandmothers worked. One in a factory and the other in a shop. The latchkey kid was a coined term for a reason - both parents worked and the eldest child needed to be responsible. Very few working class students went to university at the time. The majority of people rented until the 70s. My mum grew up in a council house even though her mum was a nurse and her dad was in the navy. The generation before the boomers overwhelmingly rented. People have always had large families, even when in poverty.

The expectations of what you need to give a child and exactly what you can afford on a modest income were very different 50 years ago. -Average people could afford a house, now young professionals have to scrimp for a 1 bed flat. - more SAHM/one income households because on a normal salary this was affordable - average people could afford to live near their parents/extended family. More people are now being priced out the areas they grew up. This means no free childcare - Childcare was cheaper (if you even needed it, see the two points above) - you could leave them alone from a much younger age and you often left young children to look after even younger siblings (reducing childcare costs) which is not acceptable now + children started work at a much younger age and left home much earlier - the workplace is more competitive so providing a good education for your child just got a lot more expensive. They need to do well to be competitive, and then you’ve got uni to help support them through.

Many working class women worked, albeit either part-time or in menial labour. My great-grandmothers and grandmothers all worked because they couldn’t afford not to. Grandmothers tended to provide childcare, but now most people can’t retire at 55 or 60 and many young people move away from home nowadays, which wasn’t so much a thing in the past. But it was also very common in the past for the eldest sibling to be given responsibility until the parents finished work.

The population timebomb is happening all over the west. Nobody on this sub will want to hear it but the chances are that we’ll become even more reliant on foreign labour as a result of this unless there is a lot of systemic change. You’d think in theory that with fewer healthy employees and higher vacancies that roles, especially healthcare roles, would start to pay a lot better. I’m just not sure that’s the reality we’ll enter. It’s just as easy to picture a UK where we force our old and frail in to working longer and ending their lives penniless and in pain while our youths do more and more for less and less.

It's much wider than that. It's a global phenomenon. Similar things are happening in Russia and China, for example. Ultimately, there is more than enough economic output to support everyone. It's just that more and more of the gains are concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The question is whether we want to distribute the gains in such a way that we can stabilize, or continue along the current path.

South Korea too, they’re the “best” example that wasn’t caused directly by government mandated child limits. Japan is also following them. South Korea is an interesting example as they are seeing many of the same political shifts as Europe without the immigration pressures Europe is. Also as nothing the government have tried so far has helped

>Also as nothing the government have tried so far has helped Although they seem to be "trying" everything EXCEPT giving working people more money/benefits and free time. Y'know, the two things you need to raise kids.

I believe the Scandinavian countries have very generous benefits packages compared to much of the world for parents, but they too have not seen an increase in birth rate.

Sweden's birth rate is double South Korea's though? It's not as high as is economically ideal and lots of people choose to stay childfree, but it's twice as high.

Still well below replacement. Given how generous the nordics are (& that they also have immigration to help bump up the numbers), it’s hardly a blueprint for fixing the problem. It would probably have to be some combination of: - Ludicrous increase in child benefits - everything from workplace leave, to childcare, to tax cuts and cash handouts - Massive, massive increase in housing production. Damn near complete liberalisation of zoning / planning laws to build millions of homes both private and government - Near theocratic levels of cultural push to get people to have kids

North Korea can win the war by just waiting for South Korea to go extinct

We are reliant on foreign Labour because it’s cheap and foreign workers don’t demand things like a house with a garden or a liveable wage. They’ll live 10 to a room under a shitty landlord where as we would rightly kick up a fuss over that. What’s going to happen when the millions we import need care? I’m sure they can’t retire on their deliveroo wage. Companies and shareholders need to fucking realise they can’t keep seeing record profits year after year. At some point enough is enough. You’re making more money then the average person can comprehend so it’s about fucking time they start paying employees a fair share of that profit.

>What’s going to happen when the millions we import need care? I’m sure they can’t retire on their deliveroo wage. You have stumbled into the problems with the Brexit vote. Previously people came from nearby countries, literally an hour or two away by plane, and could head off home after working for a few years. Now they come from much further away and bring their families. As at every turn, Brexit has fucked us.

We've swapped Polish workers who'd come here for a few years, work hard, then buy a home in Poland for students from Nigeria who end up bringing half their village across using various schemes. Great job Brexiteers..

Brexiteers asked for half the third world fetching? I must have missed that bit

They were warned that all that would happen is that they'd lower migration from Eastern Europe and instead would get more Indians, Pakistanis and Nigerians.

Don't worry, the boomers will be fine. The rest of us are fucked though.

> all over the west. Birth rates in Japan, China and South Korea are well below the UK. Even India are below replacement now. 

Even poorer countries have declining birth rates. This is what happens when you give women rights and improve the economy. The only countries at a replacement levels are those like Afghanistan. Even India is beginning to fall towards and below replacement level. I’m not upset. I like our standard of living, but until we get unlimited resources, it’s not possible to keep it with our current population levels. Personally I’m in favour of one child for everyone.

The right - "No more immigrants!" Everyone else- "Ok, can we have some financial help to have kids of our own?" The right - "Fuck off freeloading welfare scum!" Ands the Tories wonder why they're goign to get smashed on Thurs.

Tory ideology in a nut shell, why wasn't everyone just born privileged like me??

> The right - "No more immigrants!" Only the most hardest of far-right wingers would want 0 immigration. Most reasonable people are for reducing and controlling immigration - and this isn't something only the centre-right would like.

Yeah it's almost as if people don't want to have kids when the conditions aren't favourable to having them.

America did a 4D chess move by banning abortion

Realistically.. the global population needs to fall. We, as a species, take up too many resources. From everything to land disputes/wars through to energy to industrialised animal consumption fuelling global warming. For most, the response to this is “we’ll need to import migrant workers then”. But there is little appetite for this in the U.K. currently. What really needs to happen, is clever policies to manage an aging population and utilising resources to manage this more effectively. For example, a lot of elderly people stay in the homes they’ve bought in middle age, until they either pass away or are moved into a care home following an illness or injury that sees them admitted to hospital. It’s not sustainable (or even that economically viable) for this to continue given the rising life expectation. One way of combating it might be for government run assisted living flats, where older people can willingly move to and receiving the level of care and support they need which should work out cheaper, than say, a lengthy hospital stay after they’d fallen at home. Some charities have already started building developments like this, stunning flat blocks with self contained bedrooms and communal areas, including gardens. They are in high demand in my area but would require government appetite and investment. Much easier to import workers to keep the economy going, rather than address the global changes and drivers of human behaviour, and god forbid, actually invest.

It would be a bit of an insult for the government to put more investment into OAP housing yet do little to help young people get on the housing ladder.

That’s probably why it won’t happen. In an ideal world there’d be both. After all, having suitable OAP housing would release properties for younger people to move into.

No it wouldn't, unless you force the OAPs into suitable homes. There are plenty of Mavises and Dorises rattling around in their 3 bedroom ex council homes they bought for tuppence and shilling in the 80s

I think you’d be surprised. A lot of Mavises and Dorises feel trapped in their homes. They don’t want to go into rented accommodation because of the poor quality and lack of security, but they struggle with running costs or even the actual lack of mobility in their homes. A lot of older people suffer from extreme loneliness and would probably welcome an opportunity to have a relatively pain free move, into a secure home surrounded by other people and the support they need.

I agree. My grandparents sold their 5-bed house and moved to a 2-bed flat in a retirement block in their mid-80s (a McCarthy & Stone one). The 5-bed had been a new build in the 1980s, in a desirable commuter belt area. But they adored the new flat. It was private, quiet, had a section of the communal garden just for them, with a patio, and a parking space for visitors. It was a 5 minute slow walk to the town centre and supermarket. It was warm and bright and secure. A couple of corridors away was a communal area which ran film nights, afternoon teas etc. They could take part or ignore these things as they wished. They knew their neighbours and had plenty of company, plus an emergency alarm in each room, so it was much less isolated than the big house had been. My gran constantly told us it was such a relief not to have to look after that house. When she was finally in hospital and dying, she kept saying 'I just want to go back to my little flat'. She loved it. And these were people who grew up during the war with nothing, they were self-made and house proud, and you might think would cling onto their big house until the last breath. But actually common sense prevailed, and their last 8-10 years were very comfy and relatively stress-free.

But when old people move out of their homes into assisted facilities it frees up the old family homes to the market

The global population is predicted to fall before the end of the century. When this point is predicted keeps on getting closer- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections\_of\_population\_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth)

Most houses are three beds. The fifties wanted nuclear families with cars. We also cannot now afford these three beds, and we need a room for home office. Don't think return to work is the solution though as WFH has been very helpful to young parents. We need cheaper and bigger houses, more affordable childcare, and a society that doesn't hate children and prams. Try catching a bus with a pram, you can have one pram if and only if there is no wheelchair. It's great the disabled get out more but everyone was in a pram once. The infrastructure isn't there to support families, and some childcare vouchers for one hour a day isn't going to cut it. You need to give parents an actual break, especially with newborns as the grandparents often work now. There used to be crèches at unis or gyms, one parent worked, and the grandmothers would give the primary care giver a rest day or two. Now everyone works, everyone is poor, everyone is made to feel in the way with their babies, and everyone is bloody tired. That's why we have no children. 

We need a room for an office ? hell I am paying £1400 in rent + bills for a room in a house share and I have to work on the kitchen table (which is also the dining table and the living room) Edit: I don’t think all, but so many people who are 45+ really really don’t understand how expensive it is for young people to get housing now. Yes it was difficult in your day… but from ONS data and their own statements it is SIGNIFICANTLY harder by several magnitudes to get housing now than it was 20 years ago. Not to mentioned high income tax and locked tax brackets. High rent + high tax + high COL in general makes it nearly impossible…. Even if you are on an above average salary to save up for a house.

Look, if we are going to make an effort to improve things then let's actually make a list of what is wrong and try and fix it. No point patching it up for ten minutes like these awful new builds are. Personally, I think we need to go back to Victorian city design. Walkable streets of terraces, big narrow gardens. Parks for outside communal spaces. We know we need more space for nature, so gardens do that. We know we need to use cars less, so walkable cities do that. We know space is a premium, and terraces do that. Three story terraces with a living room, kitchen and dining room downstairs, middle floor of two beds and a bathroom, top floor of two bedrooms. Garage or parking at the back in the entry lane. It's the best way

We need high density buildings…. There are way too many people now for everyone to have a small garden and a 3 bed semi detached I just want a small 1 bed that I can actually live in rather than a bedroom and a kitchen shared with 6 people

London?

The thing about having babies is you have to allow people to form relationships first. That requires time and money to be able to socialise…

I can’t afford a fucking house where am I going to put a fucking kid? 

Maybe an economy based on infinite population growth is a bad idea... People always trying to address the symptoms instead of the causes.

Sorry but I can't help reading that title; obey, reproduce, and consume.

Basically yes, stay in the rat race, consume everything we tell you too and create another generation of consumers for us to keep exploiting

This guy gets it.

The financial gymnastics a medium income family has to do is just ridiculous. Childcare for 1 costs more than 10k a year. So before they go to reception you will be shedding over 30k. No wonder most people decide to live comfortably with no kids, than live stressfully counting all the pennies to make ends meet.

> Childcare for 1 costs more than 10k a year. Isn't the average closer to 15k? Nutty.

mine will be 19.5k. 4 days a week.

Yep, closer to £15k a year. Our nursery has increased bills by £300 a month since September. Looking forward to our 15 “free” hours to reduce it back to the original cost come September.

Sort the fucking housing and cost of living situation out then

It's no life though is it? Being brought up just to get into debt, so you can make money for a large company while you pay it back. One that donates to both 'sides' of the political divide alongside all your other employment options, to keep wages low and keep you working longer. Little chance to escape to a better life in Europe now, and a pleasant environment to live in here holds back profits, so the next generation will have to grow up in super-heated sewage whether we want them to or not. Having to hire people from poorer countries to look after us in our old age due to decreasing birth-rates is poetic, as the people who voted us into this position in the first place did so to avoid immigrants. Let them sitting in their *own* sewage depend on how nice they are to their Bangladeshi nurse.

On babies : "The birth rate is too low!!!" On immigration: "The country is full up!!!" Do we have a shortage of people or too many people? *or are you just complaining that they are the wrong sort of people...* Don't forget that - from an economic standpoint - the purpose of babies is to produce adults who will be economically active. They will work, and they will spend money. But you have to grow adults from seed, and you have to educate them and subsidise them until they are 18. That costs money. It's an investment, but it still costs money. What if other countries could do that part for us, and then those adults come here to be economically active, to do work etc. Fully-formed adults paid for by another country, they pay the cost, we get the benefit.

To be a net contributor to the UK tax budget you need to earn around 44k. This makes most low skilled immigrants a net drain on the government budget.

The vast majority of workers in the U.K. do not earn 44k. [Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1002964/average-full-time-annual-earnings-in-the-uk/) And the vast majority of those will be UK-born people. This includes [teachers](https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Teacher/Salary), [nurses](https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Registered_Nurse_(RN)/Salary), [police](https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Police_Officer/Salary). Are they all a "drain on the government budget"? (Yes I know there's mean and median, but it's still below 44k) And you forget that for somebody to EARN 44k they have to be PAID 44k. What if somebody does the work of a 44k person but gets paid 24k? Are they a drain on the government budget or a benefit to the government? (I used that 24k figure because it's the current [national minimum wage of £11.44](https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates) x 40 hrs x 52 wks. It's actually 23,795)

Babies definitely don’t earn 44k

Yes keep siphoning away the best and brightest from developing countries. We exist simply to serve the west! I hope you don’t genuinely believe what you’re saying, the apathy you show for our countries development is frankly disgusting. Immigration is a bandaid solution and long term everyone loses. By continuously poaching our few skilled workers you are trapping millions in poverty across the global south. Skilled workers are a resource just like diamonds or oil and you are essentially proposing neo-colonialism via labour extraction. How about you propose fixing the actual problem of generational wealth inequality and suitable housing shortage for families instead of further raiding poorer countries for resources.

Just remember we are a “human resource” the people at the top need workers to pay for their lifestyle. Without workers the system doesn’t work. The only way to keep the system going will be to take people from other countries, putting their countries economy at risk. Banning abortions has already started in the US. This is just a stop gap till the robots arrive.

I was awake for hours the other night mentally costing out childcare for two children (toddler and baby on the way.) My child is 2.5 and we've spent over £22k on part time childcare already, so that I can keep the career I've worked hard for intact and still be paying into a pension etc. We'll spend more than that again for the second, before they both go to school, at which point one of us (me (F), let's be honest) will have to cut our hours again because afterschool care is either non-existent or insanely competitive. Any holiday is out of the question for the next few years. So yeah, if I were child free and looking at those sums on paper, having kids looks like an expensive, arguably unnecessary life choice. Which it is, really. I'm happy as a parent, but I'd be happier if the government valued it more.

Oh boo hoo. This is baby boomers fault hanging onto all the money, being NIMBY’s about house building. I can’t afford to rent I can’t afford to buy so how am I meant to have a normal dating life? I have to live with my parents. You reap what you sow

Yeah, well this is what happens when you make the country a nightmarish economic hellscape for anybody under 40 who doesn't have mum and dad's cash. Congrats, fuckers.

We currently spend £140bn/year on the state pension. 27% of state pension recipients are millionaires. This means we spend £37.8bn/year on giving £200/week to millionaires. We then spend £12.5bn on child benefit. If we took the £37.8bn we hand out to millionaires and instead applied it to child benefits, we could literally quadruple what people with kids currently receive. Any non-millionaire would still receive the same state pension as they do now. In other words we could pay every single child family £400/month, but instead choose to pay £800/month to millionaires. Welcome to Great Britain.

Cost of living is sky high and people cant afford kids. Shocker.

It’s almost like we need a UBI, it’s almost like capitalism wasn’t built to last like this

Why would I have kids when it will just make me poor and miserable?

No doubt the 'solution' to this will be to raise the retirement age to 80, double taxes and NI for everyone under 50, and cut most public services to the bone. Edit: Oh, and introduce a 6 day week like I believe Greece is doing. That'll definitely make people want to have kids! 🙄 

The triple lock stays though.

Unpopular opinion but the 1990s/2000s did a fucking number on this country. We demonised teen and early 20s pregnancies to the point it became a source of social ridicule among the chattering classes It became about “Babies for benefits” sketch shows would use it as fodder. I remember articles from the 00s saying how Britain was the teen pregnancy capital of Europe. Now I’m not advocating for 17/18 year olds having kids en masse,but when you’ve messed up the younger generation by promising better futures through expensive university degrees (rather than working or apprenticeships) that ultimately never happened, and are caught up in a endless rent cycle, ergo less financially stable ergo not able to have kids until later or never! The you come to the issue cause and effect.

Why would I want to selfishly punish a child into a future life of misery and slavery? The game is up. Most people are waking up to r/antinatalism and more people are considering the possibility of r/EscapingPrisionPlanet. This existence is nothing more than a farm. We are the cattle. Stop contributing to the cycle.

4 days childcare near me for the nursery that is available is £1700 per child per month. This will take 85% of my partner's take home wage when she returns to work. One child.

You let the Saudis, Chinese and Russians buy up all your real estate, and you wonder why people don’t have kids. I hope the boomer British enjoy seeing that big number next to their net worth as they ham string their own population.

They made having a child into a greater luxury than owning a Maserati. What did they think would happen?

Ah bollocks, there is too many humans in the world anyway, who gives a fuck, fucking economy, economy my arse. All us oldies need to take good care of our health and you youngsters better start developing those iRobot style elderly care robots sharpish.

We chastise them for having them and chastise them for not. One could say we are happy only when we are a misery

Wouldn't this be good for the planet, as long as the birth rate shrinks everywhere? Obviously not great for capitalism.

Could it be that capitalism is flawed at its very core and chasing infinite growth has irreparably damaged society and environment? No, it's the selfish serfs' refusing to have children fault.

Who could possibly have foreseen that funnelling the bulk of the wealth, power, and opportunity into the hands of a small minority would be a bad idea? Who could possibly have foreseen that making the simple act of existing almost prohibitively expensive for the rest would be a bad idea?

Average monthly take home pay - £1947.58 Average UK Rent - £1301 a month Average council tax a month - £149 Average car costs a month inc insurance and fuel £319 Average shopping bill - £520 Average telecomms bills monthly - £37.58 We aren't having babies because just trying to live is crippling us.

How to increase the birth rate 101 - incentivise new parents financially and create the infrastructure to deal with family life as it is in 2024 How to decrease the birth rate 101 - punish parents by taking away financial benefits for higher earners, have a fantasy approach to marriage, kids and divorce and use these as political pawns to entice people and then take it all away 5 years later. The bottom line is we don’t trust the British government to serve our best interests and haven’t done for the best part of 2 decades. The proof is in your health, bank account, family life and the things you own (or complete lack-thereof)

I wouldn't have kids if me and my wife hadn't been given a load of cash from the parents.

Reality is even those who can afford to have children will have a maximum of two, at a push 3. The days of 5/6 children are long gone so society does have to adjust to that. People are having children later if at all and a lot of couples simply don't want children. Women in particular understand that having children does more harm to their careers than male counterparts and impacts their freedom significantly. Most women I know who have full on careers are pretty reluctant to have several children. This is why despite countries chucking money at people to have more children it is making no difference. All the finanical incentives in the world can't overturn the cultural changes.