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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 would tend to think that the anti-child crap is an attempt to justify/rationalise the lack of children, rather than a cause of it, though it could make it harder to increase the number of children again.

My daughter was born when I was 21. I started my first (non-temporary) job on the day she was due to be born, and she ended up being born seven days later. So in economic terms it was a shambles, and I wasn't at all ready.

We delayed having a second child until her mother was established in a job, but that relationship broke down before that happened.

With my second wife, we also decided to do the sensible thing and wait until we were "ready", but with one thing or another that didn't happen, and by the time we realised that the perfect time wasn't going to arrive we turned out to be too old. So one child for me (I always thought I'd have three) and one step-child for my wife.

I think the idea that people should only have children when they're "ready" is pernicious and needs confronting. The same as the justification for the two-child benefit limit, that people should only have children that they can afford. You are never ready to have a child, and a child can consume a limitless sum of money. It's a massive thing, but you learn as you go along, and in terms of being "ready" the most relevant factor is that health outcomes are much better for mother and baby if the mother is in her twenties (and the same for the Dad, to a lesser extent).

Find someone to have children with, and then have children*. You'll work everything out.

I don't regret having a child when I wasn't ready with, it turns out, the wrong person, but I do regret waiting until we were ready and missing out on having children once I had found the right person.

* Or don't have children if you don't want to, but don't try to come up with some grand justification about saving the planet, or whatever, just to do down people who do have children.

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.

Go and speak to Gen Z women and even some younger millennials, the attitude is pervasive. Universities have been teaching young women that kids, families etc... are a sacrifice and it sticks with them into later life. My theory is that misery loves company so those bitter childless academics are just passing their loneliness and bitterness onto the next generation.

You also have the problem of how can a family buy a house and get to a stable position in which they can have children.

Back in the 70s that was easy, back in the 90s we were able to do so but those graduating after me found it harder and post 2000 it’s got more and more impossible to buy a home big enough to have children in.

Until that problem is fixed many people are going to see having children as an impossible dream

In the 19th and early 20th centuries their great grandparents and great great grandparents rented their whole lives and still managed to have two, three or more children. Having to wait until your late 30s to be able to buy a home is not as big a factor as the relative decline of religion and more women going to university and having full time careers is in the declining birthrate

Good afternoon

You do know that times change and we live a far better life today despite all the problems we face

And why shouldn't more women go to university and have full time careers

Indeed our daughter in law did both and has three children, the youngest when she was 42

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.

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.

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Interesting article in the Telegraph saying Help to buy has created a whole set of housing problems at great expense to tax payers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a783b34855474f85

It's so left field I wonder what the long term agenda is for reform - actively building social housing?

The article is about Right to buy - which is different to Help to buy.

Yep I'm an idiot - but the fact that the Telegraph is saying right to buy (THE Thatcherite policy) was a bad idea with serious consequences is incredibly interesting.

Are we really saying that a council could not create a dwelling for less than £440,000. That's an endightment of current building costs, planning laws, council efficiency, and half a dozen other things before it's an endightment of Right to buy.

Yes, it is.

The crapulence of what is actually built for that money is another indictment.

In recent years, we have seen properties torn down as irredeemably defective which are a year or two old.

In some cases *before completion*

Building standards were higher before all the Polish and Lithuanian builders went home.

Nope. Barrat having been building shit for years.

With Polish labour. And all the other Eastern Europeans.

It’s a simple thing, that the Victorians understood. Hell, the Medievals had a clue on the subject.

If you have a standard, you get two things. A potentially better product for the consumer. You also create an opportunity for the unscrupulous.

A simple example is the minimum wage. As it goes up, this increases the incentives to pay people less.

During the early 2000s my relative who runs a building company tried to get something done about the following - in whole swathes of London, it was not possible to compete with illegal builders (cash in hand, illegal employment, gross violations of H & S, gross violations of building standards).

Nothing was done - because, as he was told, it was policy to ignore it.

The answer is not to abolish standards. But as those Victorians (and Medievals , with the Guilds) understood, a regulation or a standard is worse than useless without… drum roll… *enforcement*

What you need is simple, clear standards. And teeth in enforcement.

Instead we have had a nearly exponential increase in paperwork. And reductions in enforcement.

Imagine a big site. The Big Builders have actually subcontracted the site to A, who have subcontracted down the alphabet to about Q. Who digs the ditches for the foundation six inches less than plan - quicker, cheaper (less concrete and rebar). This is (largely) because Q is being squeezed on price.

The Big Builders know. But they don’t know in the legal, provable sense.

The inspectors look at the foundations for one house. That’s done properly. The others have been filled with concrete before they got there. So sorry. Just sign here.

When it gets found out, Q has gone out of business (different Ltd for each job).