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.
“Don’t have kids you can’t afford!”
“Ok”
“No not like that”
Yeah it’s almost as if people don’t want to have kids when the conditions aren’t favourable to having them.
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.
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.
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.
I’m sure we are making up the difference with immigration
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.
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…
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.
What, the same economy that’s causing the falling birthrate? 🤔
It’s not getting better any time soon. Inequality is getting worse with every new round of quantitive easing.
Nobody on the winning side of QE will care until it hurts their pocket. The end.
I think cost and age are intrinsically linked. With things costing more, it’s might take longer for couples to be set with housing or finances before they choose to start trying. However for many, that might be in a couples 30’s or older when it’s harder to conceive or have healthy pregnancies than in your 20’s meaning couples have to think about IVF or other fertility treatments which again aren’t easy to get on the NHS and they therefore have to be able to afford it. If couples then have IVF successfully the chances are they might only have 1 kid rather than 2.
It’s all linked to affordability, if you could rent or buy a house earlier maybe people would feel better set to choose to have kids.
Most of the new born babies are Muslim now. And they just 8% of our population. The birth rate is so scared.
Maybe an economy based on infinite population growth is a bad idea…
People always trying to address the symptoms instead of the causes.
We chastise them for having them and chastise them for not. One could say we are happy only when we are a misery
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.
It’s almost like we need a UBI, it’s almost like capitalism wasn’t built to last like this
I can’t afford a fucking house where am I going to put a fucking kid?
I’m confused, is the problem that there is too much immigration and therefore too many people or that there are too few people because people aren’t having babies?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It should be welcome to large extent. Ever growing population just to feed GDP isn’t to be welcomed. Later generations will be happy that the population reduced leaving more space for them to live in.
Use AI and automation to service employment as much as possible and have appropriate taxes to offset fewer employees.
I’d have thought if the population declines so will demand. If the economy shrinks along with the dropping population wouldn’t that just be natural?
Sorry but I can’t help reading that title; obey, reproduce, and consume.
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)
Especially when u find out that the cost of nurseries is higher than rent in certain places 😅 total luxury
Sort the fucking housing and cost of living situation out then
Yeah so the middle and upper classes will have 1 or 2 kids because of time, delay of starting or cost of education or whatever, this is expected
And then the working classes will often have 2+ kids and that makes up for it to get up to replacement level
Guess what happens when you set a 2 child limit on the benefits the working classes need to survive?
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.
People aren’t having kids that they can’t afford.
People aren’t having kids in small flats or living at home with parents.
People aren’t having kids when the whole social stigma of dating has changed.
Also now dimly being understood in all modern economies that Children of Men is happening. But it’s being pasted over with immigrants so no one notices. For now.
33 comments
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.
“Don’t have kids you can’t afford!”
“Ok”
“No not like that”
Yeah it’s almost as if people don’t want to have kids when the conditions aren’t favourable to having them.
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.
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.
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.
I’m sure we are making up the difference with immigration
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.
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…
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.
What, the same economy that’s causing the falling birthrate? 🤔
It’s not getting better any time soon. Inequality is getting worse with every new round of quantitive easing.
Nobody on the winning side of QE will care until it hurts their pocket. The end.
I think cost and age are intrinsically linked. With things costing more, it’s might take longer for couples to be set with housing or finances before they choose to start trying. However for many, that might be in a couples 30’s or older when it’s harder to conceive or have healthy pregnancies than in your 20’s meaning couples have to think about IVF or other fertility treatments which again aren’t easy to get on the NHS and they therefore have to be able to afford it. If couples then have IVF successfully the chances are they might only have 1 kid rather than 2.
It’s all linked to affordability, if you could rent or buy a house earlier maybe people would feel better set to choose to have kids.
Most of the new born babies are Muslim now. And they just 8% of our population. The birth rate is so scared.
Maybe an economy based on infinite population growth is a bad idea…
People always trying to address the symptoms instead of the causes.
We chastise them for having them and chastise them for not. One could say we are happy only when we are a misery
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.
It’s almost like we need a UBI, it’s almost like capitalism wasn’t built to last like this
I can’t afford a fucking house where am I going to put a fucking kid?
I’m confused, is the problem that there is too much immigration and therefore too many people or that there are too few people because people aren’t having babies?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It should be welcome to large extent. Ever growing population just to feed GDP isn’t to be welcomed. Later generations will be happy that the population reduced leaving more space for them to live in.
Use AI and automation to service employment as much as possible and have appropriate taxes to offset fewer employees.
I’d have thought if the population declines so will demand. If the economy shrinks along with the dropping population wouldn’t that just be natural?
Sorry but I can’t help reading that title; obey, reproduce, and consume.
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)
Especially when u find out that the cost of nurseries is higher than rent in certain places 😅 total luxury
Sort the fucking housing and cost of living situation out then
Yeah so the middle and upper classes will have 1 or 2 kids because of time, delay of starting or cost of education or whatever, this is expected
And then the working classes will often have 2+ kids and that makes up for it to get up to replacement level
Guess what happens when you set a 2 child limit on the benefits the working classes need to survive?
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.
People aren’t having kids that they can’t afford.
People aren’t having kids in small flats or living at home with parents.
People aren’t having kids when the whole social stigma of dating has changed.
Also now dimly being understood in all modern economies that Children of Men is happening. But it’s being pasted over with immigrants so no one notices. For now.