.png?width=1200&height=800&crop=1200%3A800&ssl=1 "‘Children bring more hardship than joy’: Readers on why the birth rate is falling")
Charlotte Cripps’ exploration of falling birth rates and “unplanned” childlessness has sparked a strong response from Independent readers, revealing the complex interplay between men’s readiness and economic pressures.
Many emphasised that men’s immaturity is only part of the picture. While some men are eager and committed to fatherhood, financial realities – soaring housing costs, childcare expenses, and the need for dual incomes – heavily shape family planning, constraining both men and women.
The rising cost of living and precarious employment make raising children daunting, several argued, leaving many households struggling.
Others pointed to societal expectations and pressures that can cause men to hesitate, even when they are ready to be good fathers.
In all, a clear theme emerged: blaming either gender for the falling birth rate oversimplifies the issue. Structural, cultural, and economic factors are central to when – or if – people have children.
Here’s what you had to say:
People want economic security before kids
The reality is more to do with economics than anything else. If men were more mature at a younger age in the past, it was due to grim necessity. Men and women haven’t fundamentally changed much in the last half-century, but the economic system they find themselves in has dramatically changed. It might have been normal 40 years ago for a couple to have kids by their mid-twenties, but it was also normal for them to be able to afford a house, and the relative costs of raising those kids were lower.
Women are also more interested in careers, and for most working people, the idea of a stay-at-home parent is an economic pipe dream, or at least means a significant reduction in living standards. Sensible people want economic security before kids, and that is getting harder to attain as a young adult.
Men feel less pressure to have kids, of course; they don’t have a biological clock to worry about in that regard. From a male perspective, the later they have children, the more economically and psychologically prepared they will be to raise them. It’s unfortunate that women don’t have the same luxury with time, but that is the reality of it.
However, it has to be said that if a woman really desperately wants children and hasn’t managed to find a man willing to share that journey with her, then, although I appreciate it’s a tough choice to be a single parent, she could use a sperm bank or adopt.
Accepting fertility realities
Biology is not going to change – fertility decreases with age; this should hardly be a surprise for anyone.
If you choose to delay having children because of career or life, that is totally fine and understandable, but you have to accept the risks that come with it – this is a choice, and that is what a lot of women are choosing. The average age of first pregnancy in London is somewhere between 35–38.
To make this a blame game is verging on the ridiculous. People need to take responsibility for their own actions and the reality they live in.
Cost of living makes children harder
There was a time when a man worked and a woman stayed at home to bring up children and do the housework. They both had a role to play within a marriage, and it worked well. Today it’s a different story, with the cost of living and people in full employment sometimes having to go to food banks to make their money stretch further.
The cost of living is so high that people have to accept it as normal to work hard and not save much. That is the reality of life for people in the UK.
A couple today both have to work to make ends meet and be able to save, and children are expensive to bring up – anyone with kids will tell you it. Then you have to pay mortgage or rent, food for everyone in the house, and household bills including council tax. Many don’t want children today because it brings more hardship than joy – another mouth to feed, another person to buy clothes for, and with two or three children, it becomes even harder.
There are many children brought up in poverty, and during winter, some parents have to decide between heating or buying food. Having children today is another cost that needs to be met, and so many don’t want them because it increases poverty.
Expectations on young men are unreasonable
I wanted kids; my brother never did, and our respective choices were the best for us. The irony is he was much more mature than me and better suited to being a dad than I ever became. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed being a dad and tried my best, but even I accept I had a lot of room for improvement. I’ve loved being a dad, but if I were younger and thinking about it today, I would not be having kids.
Why, you might ask? The expectations of young men today are, in my opinion, unreasonable and unrealistic. Unfortunately, the world has moved on faster than men’s ability to evolve quickly enough to be the men the world wants them to be.
Children used to be a life goal
Too many things have changed to say it’s men or women exclusively at fault. Economics changed – men could earn enough for two, and women were doing equally, if not more, taxing home work.
It’s known that women today take on both paid work and home work due to the slowness of men to adapt to two-parent working needs, compared with 2–3 generations ago. Humans are not that flexible to change overnight their evolutionary instincts and cultural momentum. I suspect it will take a few more decades at least.
Korea and Japan have tried to make it better by paying certain flat amounts to support childbirth, but it has not worked – perhaps due to a combination of not enough to compensate for pay losses, increased stress from cognitive work instead of manual work, and social media feeding people of all genders deluded “you can have your pie and eat it” mentality.
Having children used to be a life goal respected by society, while today it’s been culturally reduced to a duty – a chore added on top of surviving a confusing, stressful economic, climatic, and geopolitical landscape. The solution would be for societies to culturally reward parenthood, ensure job security, and pay enough sustainably that people can return to the natural reproduction-focused way they feel comfortable being.
We’ve reached breaking point
Back in the 1950s and 60s, it was entirely possible for a man’s sole wage to support a family of four or five children, own a home, and even afford an annual holiday. Roll on to the 1970s and 80s, and suddenly women had to enter the workforce in greater numbers, not necessarily for personal fulfilment, but because the household simply couldn’t survive on one wage anymore. Two incomes became the new baseline just to maintain a similar standard of living.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve reached breaking point. Couples are now dual-income by necessity, yet even with both working, the prospect of buying a home is a distant pipe dream. They’re trapped in the rental market, which brings a constant feeling of precariousness – just a few missed payments or a landlord’s decision away from potential homelessness.
It’s hardly surprising people are delaying or forgoing children. The only scenario where having children seems to pay off financially is when you don’t work and the state provides – and that reality breeds its own resentments among those working tirelessly just to stay afloat.
Where is the additional household income going? If families now require two wages where one once sufficed, yet people feel poorer than ever, someone must be trousering that difference. Until we address who is accumulating that wealth and reverse the trend of ordinary households getting progressively poorer, no amount of encouragement for men to “grow up” will fix the birth rate. People aren’t refusing to have children because men are immature – they’re hesitating because the economic foundation for family life has been systematically dismantled.
Financial challenges in historical context
I remember when my wife and I were considering having children, Thatcher had turned interest rates up to 17 per cent, a property crash was on the way, inflation was high, and we couldn’t rationally financially justify kids. It has only got worse since.
We wanted them, so had three wonderful children, but few can expect to rationally justify the decision at a personal level.
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.
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