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If the government does want to fix the birthrate then they need to start working with positive male social influencers like Joey Swoll and family first women influencers to really push home the message that having a family is a good thing, having kids is a blessing, and whatever perceived sacrifices there are don't come close to the emotional rewards of having amazing children in your life everyday.

If male influencers want to influence the TFR then they should be encouraging stay at home dads who are eager to help with the chores, and not just the fun stuff like the cooking.

But I don't think it will make much difference. The drop in TFR is a worldwide phenomenon, even in places not noted for its Woke University professors like Russia and Iran.

Isn't it about being a team? This is the issue, people treat it as transactional or adversarial but marriage is teamwork, especially in a family situation. It's not about "oh I cleaned this so you need to clean that", at least I've never seen an example of a successful marriage that works like that. When the bookshelves fell apart last month I didn't tell my wife, "you didn't clean the house last week so I'm not going to fix them" that just seems like an insane way to live.

My first wife was very into keeping score. A terrible way to live. She used to allege that I was washing dishes slowly to avoid doing other chores.

With my second wife I know that she wants to do things to make my life better and vice versa, so there's no need to keep score.

I just can't imagine living that kind of life and I'm glad you were able to move on from that. One of my friends struggled with this, he's also divorced now as his ex-wife used to keep score all the time and value his "contribution" to the household lower than what she would do. He eventually got fed up of being belittled and tested everyday so filed for divorce, luckily there were no kids for him and he's now happily married again just last year. I remember being in the room when she did it to him and all of us just felt so awkward afterwards.

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

He ended up on Newsnight (I think). The lady interviewing him was appalled by his statements - and seemed to think that he (the medico) should keep quiet about it. Because he was damaging hopes and dreams.

Apparently the term "geriatric pregnancy" is now outdated, and "advanced maternal age" is used instead.

I kinda feel like the previous term more accurately conveyed the reality of the situation. And it applies to men too, to an extent.

But the whole way in which careers and employment rights and recruitment, etc, are structured push women into delaying motherhood. We'd need to seriously rethink that if we wanted society to accommodate women having children in their twenties.

I am sceptical...

I did my Obstetrics 40 years ago and I cannot remember it ever being referred to as "geriatric pregnancy," just advanced maternal age, and it always has been clearly taught that fertility drops off fairly quickly from the mid thirties onwards. This is widely known amongst women too, hence the phrase "biological clock". None of this is news to anyone.

Ask any young woman what the problem is and better than evens they will say that they never meet a man who wants to commit to a long term relationship and kids. The problem of extended adolescence is mostly a male one.

What makes men grow up? Running their own home is high on the list, whether that is at 18 or 28.

My Mum told me that I'd grown up a lot after my daughter was born.

Perhaps male adolescence is extended because they're not becoming Dads?

Which is cause and which is effect?

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

Most of us cannot even go for a jog as easily in our 30s and 40s as in our 20s, seems pretty common sense that many things come with more physical and other risks.

I was just musing to myself the other day, is there anything, anything at all, physical or otherwise, that I'm getting better at? The answer is no (unless you count musing to myself, which I don't think you can).

So learn something new. Anything.

Yes. That's what I'm thinking. A craft. Hands not brain.

I can recommend knitting. Compatible with watching TV or listening to the radio/music or just chatting too.

If we want to reverse demographic trends we need to create a society where women feel economically secure having children in their 20s and 30s.

I don't think it's just economics, I think women (and men) have been rewired to not want a family by media, bitter academics who never had kids and the nonsense and pervasive idea that having kids is a sacrifice rather than hugely rewarding experience for both parents.

Really, the question is one of emotion than rationality. People have been convinced for decades that having kids is a huge lifestyle negative but it isn't. I remember when my wife and I were having "the talk" about starting a family she was in her late 20s and all of the "advice" she read online was that it would be her sacrificing her career and that kids weren't that great and why should she have to go through it all etc... but when she spoke to her aunts, her friends who had kids the story was completely different. Every single one said they wouldn't change anything and that emotional aspect really convinced her rather than any kind of economic security given that both of us are pretty high earners.

Academia has been telling women that having kids is a net negative to their lives but consistently studies show that women who have children are far, far happier than those who don't with better emotional stability, even those who get divorced or are single parents.

If we want to raise the birth rate then this is probably a much more important step than anything to do with economics. People had kids for centuries while being poor.

If that was the case, then places like Iran would continue to have really high birth rates.

After all, the media is state controlled, and if there are any "bitter academics who never had kids" then the people don't hear about them.

Iran's birthrate is just above the UK's.

Birth rates have fallen everywhere, which suggests the problem is global in nature.

I don't know about that but I do know how pervasive the anti-kids/anti-family stuff is everywhere across modern media, social media and in universities from bitter older academics who didn't have kids. Again, it's one of those anecdata vs official statistics situations, I guess I just don't believe the same people who try and tell me the sky is green anymore and call me uneducated for disagreeing with them.

The idea that women aren't having children because of "bitter old academics" is ridiculous enough to require a bit more than anecdata.

You really don't know how pervasive it is in universities across western countries. Go out and speak to Gen Z women about their university experiences and what the diet of information was from their professors. I've got cousins who talk about this stuff to my sister and to my wife at family gatherings all the time (both of whom have kids), one of the more delusional ones called my sister a gender traitor for giving up her career for 4 years to concentrate on her family. It's genuinely terrible out there.

On the flip side we've got younger men being fed a diet of the most awful women hating shite on social media and is it any wonder that the birth rate is crashing?

It's not economics or anything rational driving down western birth rates, it goes well beyond that. I say this as someone who was convinced just a few years ago that better economic incentivisation for kids would solve the issue but I realise now that it's so much more complicated than simple maths.

You're a splendid chap Max, but really? How many professors even talk to undergrads if they can help it, let alone about this sort of thing? Not that it doesn't happen at all, but I rather doubt that it happens enough to tilt the statistics.

I suspect Max is a 40 something going on 80. Theyve just had a really interesting prog on radio 4 about GenZ girls and their politics and how their social concerns are greater than their male equivalents which is why they are big fans of Zack and Sultana and they care about immigrants and Gaza. It was like an oasis in a desert and quite uplifting.

I have two girls (13, 19) and a boy (16) and it is quite notable the difference in their interests/concerns. The girls are ultra woke, the boy is a bit of an edgelord.

On the other hand my 18 year old son is ultra woke and my 12 year old daughter is showing proto-Thatcherite tendencies.

At 3, 1 and 0 happily we don't have to worry about that yet! I do think this generation is going to be very anti-clanker.

Who's surprised?

An agreement was in place in 2006 for errors caused by bugs in the software to be corrected, or for Fujitsu to pay the Post Office up to £150 per transaction if it failed to do so.

The revelation directly contradicts the Post Office's claims during criminal prosecutions - which led to hundreds of wrongful convictions and civil cases that destroyed livelihoods - that no bugs existed capable of causing accounting shortfalls. It also shows the Post Office knew almost two decades ago that Horizon could not always be relied upon to record transactions accurately

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqlkx6n15ero

Inconthhhheivable!

Don’t worry, no one senior will be prosecuted.

The danger, as I am sure Ms Cyclefree would attest, is that too many prosecutions are pursued and the whole thing gets unwieldy. It would be better to focus on a hndful of slam dunk cases.

These should of course be aimed at the more senior staff. I would definitely start with a couple of chief execs.

Too many? So far the police have interviewed four people in relation the post office scandal. That is over 5 years at a cost of £7m with a current headcount of 100 people.

If they really find that too unwieldy lets just forget all about it.

It's a bad sign. It suggests they are sifting through the mountain of paperwork before interviewing people. This is a mistake, not least because some of the suspects are getting on a bit. It's not just the victims that are dying off.

It may also be because the police are shit scared. Successive Governments, senior civil servants and leading names from the business sector were all complicit. If the police are to get serious, they will want to be sure someone has their back.

Not so much shit scared as “why risk upsetting things by being seen not to be a Safe Pair of Hands?”

Run an enquiry for a decade, spend its of money on office jobs for people who will remember you for giving them a cushy number. When your report is published, and it’s too late to prosecute, *you* will have a rep for being a Safe Pair of Hands. Good way to get promoted, that.

I share your cynicism, generally, but the chair of the Inquiry, Sir Wyn Niceoldthing is no fool, and I don't think he'll be taken for one.

I think he knows what has been going on, and will say so. It will then be difficult for the police, and indeed the Government, not to act.

Yes, but when? 2029? Before hell freezes over? Before England win the Ashes in Australia?
Where is the urgency? Nuremberg Trials were in 1946.

Labour tells councils not to adopt 4 day week working

Sounds like common sense in this economy

Hmm. Depends if it’s about clockwatchers or getting the job done. My contracted week is 36.5 h, over 5 days. But realistically, as an academic, (a) no one is checking and (b) I do more than that most of the time and fail to take all my leave, plus working weekends for recruitment events.

I genuinely think if you set someone their tasks and they have achieved it in four days, then that’s fine.

I know I've said this before, but I work 24-7.

That's 24 minutes an hour, 7 hours a day.

I may jest, but I don't think that is too far off the mark for many of us, once you factor in coffee breaks, loo breaks, chats to colleagues, the odd domestic chore when wfh, and of course dipping in to an online discussion site every so often.

It depends. When I have a complex case I can step up the work rate remarkably and get prodigious amounts done in very little time. But it is exhausting and for short bursts only. I could not possibly work at that rate most of the time. Most of the time we potter along, doing enough to keep the emails answered, the engagements met, the routines followed. It's dull and I can't deny I feel more alive when genuinely pushed. I would just make myself ill if I kept it up for too long.

I suspect that we are not well suited to a steady "7 or 8 hours a day at a steady pace, week in week out, for years". My mental image of a hunter gatherer lifestyle seems much more to have ups and downs at multiple timescales: seasons where there's lots to do and off seasons where life is slower paced, weeks when you're busy and weeks with less exhausting chores, and intense hours and hours spent idling.

When I first got involved in software development many years ago I was told by a wise old programmer that most coders can't write good quality code for more than 2 hours per day. Their brains just get tired and start making mistakes or get distracted by time wasting activities.

I've found this to be broadly true, but flexible depending on the difficulty of the task. These days I write hardware description language, which is much harder than writing software, and I struggle to do one hour of useful work. The rest of the day is spent on less demanding things like writing documentation or arguing with people on the internet.

I think 2x2hr blocks of 'good' development work and I count it as a good day. Sadly, these days I have endless short meetings so the chance of a 2hr block are a fantasy compared to continual interruptions to explain 'why isn't that done yet?' :-(

I sometimes wonder if people who just spend their days floating from meeting, to meeting, to meeting understand that people who are trying to get the underlying work done don't find that a very helpful way to spend their time.

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

He ended up on Newsnight (I think). The lady interviewing him was appalled by his statements - and seemed to think that he (the medico) should keep quiet about it. Because he was damaging hopes and dreams.

Apparently the term "geriatric pregnancy" is now outdated, and "advanced maternal age" is used instead.

I kinda feel like the previous term more accurately conveyed the reality of the situation. And it applies to men too, to an extent.

But the whole way in which careers and employment rights and recruitment, etc, are structured push women into delaying motherhood. We'd need to seriously rethink that if we wanted society to accommodate women having children in their twenties.

I am sceptical...

I did my Obstetrics 40 years ago and I cannot remember it ever being referred to as "geriatric pregnancy," just advanced maternal age, and it always has been clearly taught that fertility drops off fairly quickly from the mid thirties onwards. This is widely known amongst women too, hence the phrase "biological clock". None of this is news to anyone.

Ask any young woman what the problem is and better than evens they will say that they never meet a man who wants to commit to a long term relationship and kids. The problem of extended adolescence is mostly a male one.

I think you're underestimating how strong the propaganda directed at young women is. Every sense of the word 'settling' has negative connotations.

Sure:

But if that was the major cause of declining birth rates, then countries with more traditional values (like, say, Iran) would have much higher birth rates. And they don't.

If we want to reverse demographic trends we need to create a society where women feel economically secure having children in their 20s and 30s.

We also need to produce men who can be good husbands and fathers so that women will feel emotionally secure having children in their 20s and 30s.

I don't think the Andrew Tate generation are going to help with this.

British society has always been quite anti-child. Eg kids should be "seen and not heard", boarding school, public support for the 2 child benefit cap etc. My wife and I were lucky to have been brought up in families who didn't share those kinds of attitudes, and maybe that's why we have three children.
I think there are lots of factors behind the declining birth rate, and it is a global phenomenon. But I do suspect that being much more ready to see children as a blessing not a burden and an investment not a cost would probably help.

I think your last sentence is absolutely 100% true. Kids aren't a cost or a burden, they're brilliant and I know that if we didn't have ours I'd living through a lifetime of regret. Again, the answer to this question is emotional, not monetary. In countries where they have huge incentives to have kids the birth rate is barely above ours, there's been this huge global push across all forms of media to discourage women from starting families and, as you say, paint children as a burden rather than a blessing. That's the attitude we need to change.

I am not sure that leaning on women to have kids is the best way to go about it. My wife wanted to have 3 kids because she knew I would play my part - I would be there for the childcare and do my fair share in terms of domestic tasks, I wouldn't be in the office all hours or down the pub after work, I would support her so she could have a meaningful career as well as having children, and I wouldn't cheat on her or run off with someone else leaving her holding the babies. Being a father means you can't always focus on your career and your weekends and evenings are not your own anymore. I think a big part of the problem is that women rightly expect more from their life nowadays, and men aren't willing to play their part to help make that happen.
I guess the other elephant in the room here is that the world is going to shit and maybe some people don't want to bring children into that. Thinking of my children trying to survive in a world of rising temperatures, depleted natural resources and growing fascism is the only thing that makes me regret our choice.

I don't think the world is going to **** any more or less today than it was at any other point in time.

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

Most of us cannot even go for a jog as easily in our 30s and 40s as in our 20s, seems pretty common sense that many things come with more physical and other risks.

I was just musing to myself the other day, is there anything, anything at all, physical or otherwise, that I'm getting better at? The answer is no (unless you count musing to myself, which I don't think you can).

You could take up something new, then you'll be better over time.
A new language for instance.
I've taken up bouldering as the kids got into it and in the future, when snowboarding is looking less sensible, I intend to be much better at skiing than I am currently

Ah yes, that's true, and I plan to. A craft, I think. I've been watching Bronowski's Ascent Of Man for the first time, what a beautifully written and presented work, and it made me feel downright unworthy. Need to get these hands working. Owe it to my species.

Me, I'd like to take up Ancient Greek. My school performance wasn't good enough to get to grips with the middle pluperfect or the stylistic issues of the [edit] men/de dichotomy.

I did 2 or 3 weeks ancient Greek at the end of 5th year at school. I was supposed to be studying it the following year but I didn't go back and went to University instead. I can remember thalssa meant sea and that's about it. I regret not getting a better education before I focused on law.

Sometimes I feel that education is wasted on the young and we should do more of it later in life when we can appreciate why we're doing it.

Some people do.

My wife decided to change careers and has started at University this year to qualify for the job she wants. She's absolutely loving it.

Says there's no way she'd have chosen this path at 18 but it suits her now and will still get a good couple of decades of career after graduation.

She'll also graduate about the same time as our eldest is starting her GCSEs and looking forwards to what she wants to do after school, which will hopefully be inspirational.

She is not the oldest on her course.