Left out Education which is universally accepted worldwide as main contributory factor to having kids older/less kids.
Point 8 can’t be serious
10. Lack of schools.
They were 15 years building the new local school and the 3rd year it’s open it’s oversubscribed by 50% in some classes.
Shouldn’t it have been built with twice the capacity for future proofing?
Lack of desire for children is down to a comedy of f**k ups by successive governments who won’t plan, won’t allow for “joined up thinking” , would rather not build infrastructure over offending a few residents and won’t try anything to fix issues unless it can fix it all in one go.
All these issues need small iterative fixes and thinking 20+ years down the road, not just to the next election cycle. There are no parties who have this ability.
We should throw money at the problem and see what sticks.
Most countries in the world are looking at a demographic crisis but we could avert it now. Culturally we’ve had high birth rates so we should avert it before it becomes the norm.
Subsidized childcare is one solution.
Large tax breaks for families who have more than two children would be another.
Many other options.
Its fair expensive to have a lod when you’re belting out serious money in the aul rent.
I can barely afford myself, never mind kids
It all comes down to money for my family personally, between the cost of childcare, the difficulty in both mother and father having to work to afford rent/mortgage and food.
We really struggled with the maternity and paternity benefit as well, it’s nowhere near enough to cover day to day expenses, so you either have to plan really well and save up to cover maternity leave or go back to work earlier than you intend and have to pay for childcare (which is very difficult to find if your kid is under 1)
Contraception is free, children are expensive, you’re welcome.
I had to Lea d Ireland in 2015 as I could no longer afford to live in my own country. I have two children. Would have loved more but even two has been a huge financial worry. I had my first during the 2008/9 recession and was already pregnant when shit hit the economic fan
The Actual list is nine things required to encourage people to have kids.
1 affordable & suitable place to live
2 affordable & accessible childcare
3 less return to work/office more work from home
4 end to careeer penalisation for time off for kids
5 more financial security – less cost of living crisis
6 extend free fertility treatments
7 Build child services, schools, reduced waiting list etc
8 completion of NCH
9 sleep
The article is Dublin Live quality.
My family’s name has lived long enough.
There are a lot of societal and practical factors involved in this, but one of the core problems is simply this –
Being a mam is inherently shite craic to a lot of women, from early pregnancy all the way to the kids-are-finished-college stage, and maybe beyond.
It has a baseline of shite-craicness that is simply inbuilt. You will have to experience most of a year taking a physical hiding with potentially permanent effects, for example. You will have to lose most of your waking day to caretaking for a non/low verbal dependent, for years, and you will never have the same freedoms and mobility that you had before in life. That’s for starters.
It’s almost rude to point this out, but it’s true. Even women who *want* kids describe it as something worthwhile “despite” a whole shopping list of stuff. I’ve had multiple women *with* kids tell me in deadly seriousness that they’re sure they’d have been happier in life if they hadn’t had them.
Now, society can deal with this by either making it so that women don’t have much choice in having them regardless – which was historically the case and is unacceptable – or, it can compensate for and/or address so much of the stuff that makes being a mother such a massive pain in the arse, on a fundamental level, that it’s worth doing regardless of the inbuilt crapness.
But the latter is not something you can do by nibbling around the edges. It would require reordering all kinds of social mechanisms on a level that won’t happen.
In the meantime, lots of women who might have entertained the idea otherwise can’t justify it for the cost to them demanded, so won’t bother, and lots of women will never even consider it so long as they have *any* kind of alternative available.
(a) money
(b) morality
No intervention can change low birth rates (save something silly like giving a million € if you have a child).
Stephen J. Shaw, data scientist and demographer, is researching this problem on planetary scale, and the conclusion is simple yet staggering. Our entire culture, across the planet, shifted into making it a target to have kids at 30 (first kid). Look around you, look when women around you, your friends, women you meet in Creche, or shops, they all aimed for 30 to pop the first baby. After 30 fertility rates drop significantly as does the energy to deal with babies. And if we start making babies at 30, on average we won’t have even 2 kids. Some women will wait a bit longer, and end up in unplanned childlessness.
This number 30 is unmoved even if we provide everything else.
If it was money, poorer countries would have lower birthrates
Modern society is not compatible with having children, everything literally screams don’t reproduce and people are punished for having kids.
Good luck! The birth rates will continue to plummet. Be ready for 0.5-0.8 birth rate in 5 years.
Im 30 and single, even by the time I meet someone and get for enough into a relationship to stsrt thinking about kids, the time frame will probably only allow for maybe one. And that’s assuming I want to make a financially ruinous decision
There’s a reason the only people my age with kids are the thick lads I knew from school who definitely didnt plan it
A tenth reason is just not wanting them even if everything aligned and it was more affordable.
alongside all of that’s it’s also a very valid thing to just not want kids lol. Some people just don’t want them full stop. I’ve never wanted kids just because I don’t fancy being a parent. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
No home, no money.
Too expensive
Interesting that religiosity isn’t mentioned. Good or bad it correlates pretty strongly with fertility.
Isn’t there less of an expectation to have a family/long-term relationship now that would preclude having constant? I have never looked at research around this so my awareness is only anecdotal but very few people I know have kids or mention anything about wanting them.
22 comments
Left out Education which is universally accepted worldwide as main contributory factor to having kids older/less kids.
Point 8 can’t be serious
10. Lack of schools.
They were 15 years building the new local school and the 3rd year it’s open it’s oversubscribed by 50% in some classes.
Shouldn’t it have been built with twice the capacity for future proofing?
Lack of desire for children is down to a comedy of f**k ups by successive governments who won’t plan, won’t allow for “joined up thinking” , would rather not build infrastructure over offending a few residents and won’t try anything to fix issues unless it can fix it all in one go.
All these issues need small iterative fixes and thinking 20+ years down the road, not just to the next election cycle. There are no parties who have this ability.
We should throw money at the problem and see what sticks.
Most countries in the world are looking at a demographic crisis but we could avert it now. Culturally we’ve had high birth rates so we should avert it before it becomes the norm.
Subsidized childcare is one solution.
Large tax breaks for families who have more than two children would be another.
Many other options.
Its fair expensive to have a lod when you’re belting out serious money in the aul rent.
I can barely afford myself, never mind kids
It all comes down to money for my family personally, between the cost of childcare, the difficulty in both mother and father having to work to afford rent/mortgage and food.
We really struggled with the maternity and paternity benefit as well, it’s nowhere near enough to cover day to day expenses, so you either have to plan really well and save up to cover maternity leave or go back to work earlier than you intend and have to pay for childcare (which is very difficult to find if your kid is under 1)
Contraception is free, children are expensive, you’re welcome.
I had to Lea d Ireland in 2015 as I could no longer afford to live in my own country. I have two children. Would have loved more but even two has been a huge financial worry. I had my first during the 2008/9 recession and was already pregnant when shit hit the economic fan
The Actual list is nine things required to encourage people to have kids.
1 affordable & suitable place to live
2 affordable & accessible childcare
3 less return to work/office more work from home
4 end to careeer penalisation for time off for kids
5 more financial security – less cost of living crisis
6 extend free fertility treatments
7 Build child services, schools, reduced waiting list etc
8 completion of NCH
9 sleep
The article is Dublin Live quality.
My family’s name has lived long enough.
There are a lot of societal and practical factors involved in this, but one of the core problems is simply this –
Being a mam is inherently shite craic to a lot of women, from early pregnancy all the way to the kids-are-finished-college stage, and maybe beyond.
It has a baseline of shite-craicness that is simply inbuilt. You will have to experience most of a year taking a physical hiding with potentially permanent effects, for example. You will have to lose most of your waking day to caretaking for a non/low verbal dependent, for years, and you will never have the same freedoms and mobility that you had before in life. That’s for starters.
It’s almost rude to point this out, but it’s true. Even women who *want* kids describe it as something worthwhile “despite” a whole shopping list of stuff. I’ve had multiple women *with* kids tell me in deadly seriousness that they’re sure they’d have been happier in life if they hadn’t had them.
Now, society can deal with this by either making it so that women don’t have much choice in having them regardless – which was historically the case and is unacceptable – or, it can compensate for and/or address so much of the stuff that makes being a mother such a massive pain in the arse, on a fundamental level, that it’s worth doing regardless of the inbuilt crapness.
But the latter is not something you can do by nibbling around the edges. It would require reordering all kinds of social mechanisms on a level that won’t happen.
In the meantime, lots of women who might have entertained the idea otherwise can’t justify it for the cost to them demanded, so won’t bother, and lots of women will never even consider it so long as they have *any* kind of alternative available.
(a) money
(b) morality
No intervention can change low birth rates (save something silly like giving a million € if you have a child).
Stephen J. Shaw, data scientist and demographer, is researching this problem on planetary scale, and the conclusion is simple yet staggering. Our entire culture, across the planet, shifted into making it a target to have kids at 30 (first kid). Look around you, look when women around you, your friends, women you meet in Creche, or shops, they all aimed for 30 to pop the first baby. After 30 fertility rates drop significantly as does the energy to deal with babies. And if we start making babies at 30, on average we won’t have even 2 kids. Some women will wait a bit longer, and end up in unplanned childlessness.
This number 30 is unmoved even if we provide everything else.
If it was money, poorer countries would have lower birthrates
Modern society is not compatible with having children, everything literally screams don’t reproduce and people are punished for having kids.
Good luck! The birth rates will continue to plummet. Be ready for 0.5-0.8 birth rate in 5 years.
Im 30 and single, even by the time I meet someone and get for enough into a relationship to stsrt thinking about kids, the time frame will probably only allow for maybe one. And that’s assuming I want to make a financially ruinous decision
There’s a reason the only people my age with kids are the thick lads I knew from school who definitely didnt plan it
A tenth reason is just not wanting them even if everything aligned and it was more affordable.
alongside all of that’s it’s also a very valid thing to just not want kids lol. Some people just don’t want them full stop. I’ve never wanted kids just because I don’t fancy being a parent. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
No home, no money.
Too expensive
Interesting that religiosity isn’t mentioned. Good or bad it correlates pretty strongly with fertility.
Isn’t there less of an expectation to have a family/long-term relationship now that would preclude having constant? I have never looked at research around this so my awareness is only anecdotal but very few people I know have kids or mention anything about wanting them.