A society in which babies are in short supply is going to be superseded by one in which they aren’t. Nature abhors a vacuum/demographics is destiny…call it what you will, a civilisation without babies is literally dying out. If this is a result of its values, then perhaps it should.

Interesting piece but it’s very very simplistic about the historical changes and modern pressures or lack of them. For example, it is true that in the past people – especially women – had much less choice about becoming parents, but a) more affluent women had servants to do much of the drudge and-or restricting work of parenthood and b) for everyone else, the rather “automatic” (barring health problems) character of parenthood had paradoxical effects compared to the contemporary situation. Obviously most parents cared about their children (though there were also a lot of abandoned children), but there was much less psychological pressure surrounding the whole thing… Today in the west we have a strange development in which as people have fewer or no children, “expertise” and anxiety over child rearing have ballooned. Fewer children mean more investment in the individual child, emotional and material, delegation of child-rearing is looked on with some disapproval, whole schools of psychology hold parents responsible for everything that could go wrong in the child’s life or mind, and child-centered ideas of upbringing make the whole prospect seem hugely more terrifying.
But even more important are changing gender relationships. Modern demographers have for some time been criticising approaches to natality that focus purely on women and their decisions as if these were not strongly affected by the decisions and attitudes of men. In my generation of university educated women (I’m sixty), I know only one woman who very definitely never wanted to have children – and among the several childless women in my circle the primary reason for not having children was not finding a suitable partner (either no serious partner at all, or no partner ready to have children). This sort of issue, and there are many more, means that we are not quite dealing with a pure preference choice for childlessness among young educated women.
Oddly enough, the most dramatic declines in natality in Western nations have not happened, or been so sustained, in the most socially “advanced” states. Italy, and where I live – the CR like some other CE European states, are especially badly affected. Meanwhile in the Nordic states, there has been a degree of recovery… The most persuasive theory is that the worst hit are “in the middle” states with modern economies and educational systems but still quite traditional cultures when it comes to childrearing and the domestic division of Labour. This puts so much pressure on young women – who have so much more to lose than men, from whom they will not be able to expect much support – that without necessarily embracing any ideological point of view, they simply go on strike as far as having children is concerned.

I am being a bit flippant here but surely these are precisely the people we do not want reproducing. Imagine a monstrous regiment of millenials, GINOs*, many gendered, shrieking their pieties from behind a barricade of bureaucracy, “represive tolerance” and, of course, Elf and Safety. Then imagine their kids! On the plus side all 5 of my offspring claim to want kids but they are pretty steady and thoughtful – at least compared to me. * Graduate In Name Only

The problem is less that some women choose to forgo motherhood and more that couples who do want children often stop at two even if they are inclined to have more. I don’t have any data to hand but in the past larger families would have offset the childless but in the back 9 of my 30s I have no peers with more than two children and many who are childless.

You have addressed most of the reasons for this. The middle class couple in the intro to Mike Judge’s Idiocracy come to mind. There is never a shortage of reasons not to have another child.

The problem for upper middle class women is twofold; firstly the time at which they are required to invest most heavily in their education and careers directly coincides with their most fertile years. Realistically if you are waiting until you “make it” to have children you are likely already well into your 30s before you even start.

Then there is the problem I observe more frequently than women who are childless by choice which is those who aren’t. Many career successful women struggle to find a partner. There is some literature which supports the hypothesis that women mate across and up social hierarchy whereas men are more likely to mate across and down. This obviously limits the pool of potential mates for more successful women.

There’s something unspoken here, too: competition.

When someone in the middle class says that having children is too costly, it’s not just their own convenience they’re talking about – it’s the fact that they don’t want to end up raising their children to be downwardly mobile and in a lower social class than them. Their child must go to the best private schools, have tutors and activities, and get into Stanford. Just wearing hand me downs, going to public school, taking road trips to the lake in the summer and attending a state college isn’t good enough.

This also becomes clear when you talk to east Asians about having children – it’s all about having the resources to push them as far as they can rise. This reaches absurd proportions in Hong Kong and China’s Tier One cities, where celebrity test prep tutors become millionaires, there are pre-school “Early MBA” programs, and my five year old son would be considered unsuited for a good private school because he can’t read yet.

This happens to a lesser degree in the US and Europe, but it is present – especially among our urban middle and upper classes.

Women can do whatever they want and when they do, it’s no one else’s business but theirs. If people are so terrified that women having fewer/no kids will be the end of the UK, then maybe more voters should support better statutory maternity pay, equal pay, free childcare etc. Make conditions better for women to want to have kids and then maybe more would choose to have them. Society has to change NOT women.

No mention of BAME groups who do have larger families even if relatively successful?

I knew, from a very early age, that I would not”ever”want to have children. I was and am confident in this decision for no other reason than it was not an experience I care to have. I didn’t want to choose a blue or white ticket; I wanted to disregard the whole matter and resented the idea that such a choice hung over my head by simple dint of the reproductive hardware I possess.

As a woman now in perimenopause looking very much forward to the end of my ‘reproductive’ years, I feel no obligation to justify my choice to anyone, or to rationalize my choice by aligning myself with any sociopolitical argument to which my choice is conveniently relevant, regardless whether or not I agree with that argument.

I suppose I am justifying my choice here somewhat, only to make the point that women do not need to justify their choice of white or blue ticket, yet we still are often pressured to do so. In my Twenties and Thirties, I lobbied my doctors, in vain, to perform a tubal ligation. In every case, I was summarily dismissed and told that I could not know the workings of my own mind at those ages; that as I matured, my opinion on the matter was likely to change. I eventually gave up pursuit of surgical sterilization because the need to be legalistic about my reproductive choices demanded time and energy I preferred to direct into other pursuits.

The choice to pursue parenthood is an intensely personal one with dramatic public impact. I do believe that we, as a species, would do well to better consider the impact of our progenation, but ultimately, the only choice I can make about parenthood is my own. As I look forward to menopause, I also look forward to a time when we do not question, justify, indemnify, politicize and/or glorify the choice of a person to bear or not bear offspring. Far more of a priority is to address how those children who are ushered into our world will be raised, financially supported and educated. Until we can holistically address those questions and their impact, my choice is, and will remain, simply my choice. At least that is a win in women’s societal enfranchisement! I am grateful to those who suffered so that I may exert *that* much freedom over my life experience. Much gratitude to everyone who fought so that I may ignore the ticket dispenser as much as my body allows.

… all is not lost – many cultic incomers produce 6 or even 7 children, more often than not state supported too, especially up north … thus population expansion and replacement is assured and drastic demographic change is assured …

posted in error 🙂

The characteristics that Louise Perry associates with a freedom loving ideology seem rather shallow. Am I mistaken in such an interpretation? Of course, people are entitled to such views and entitled to choose to be childless but the ideology described is not flattering! (I realise that this is only one reason cited). Not liking kids seems a very rational reason not to have any.