But that’s not everyone, not even close to the whole generation. Instead, millennials are weighing up the cost of childcare, the overburdened NHS, decades of cuts to the infrastructure that allowed Brits to become parents comfortably, or at least manageably. I know some who’ve moved to cheaper cities in the UK specifically to have a child, or to be closer to grandparent daycare. But I also know that I’m not alone in my position, of hoping that easier days are coming, and that I’ll find a way to have a child when they do.
Today’s pampered little darlings simply aren’t grasping how much their parents – and even more, their grandparents – gave up when they had children.
There never has been a time “comfortably” when measured against today’s living standards. It’s a delusion.
If people actually knew what living standards were like in the 60s and 70s perhaps there’d be less whingeing?
“”If people actually knew what living standards were like in the 60s and 70s perhaps there’d be less whingeing?
No, there’d be exactly the same amount. Because it shouldn’t happen to them.
Remember when during covid everyone couldn’t go out to eat all the time, or go on holiday, didn’t have any transport costs, and everyone stayed at home pretty much 24/7, and as a result even though their wages were maybe 80% of normal they saved money hand over fist?
Well that was what it was like in the 60s and 70s. Everyone ate their food (that they cooked themselves) at home, maybe went on holiday once a year, had a maximum of 1 car per household (which was used sparingly), and many rode a bike, took a bus, or walked to work, and the biggest form of entertainment was sitting around the TV at home of an evening. And everyone wore hand-me-downs, and made do and mended everything.
Live like that again, and perhaps you too can have 3 or 4 kids. Basically living in the those times was a bit like having covid restrictions all the time, except without social media, internet shopping and vans delivering everything to your door.
We took a packed lunch and a flask to work as well.
One of the regulars here once made the point that, go back 50+ years and you’d find the middle classes darning socks.
1965: 7.7m vehicles on the road. 2025: 42 million. 1965: 5m trips overseas, 2024: 95m.
“I know some who’ve moved to cheaper cities in the UK specifically to have a child,”
This is a very normal thing and has been for at least 20 years. London and Bristol are fun places for young adults. You can go clubbing, have a wide array of arts, global cuisine. But a lot of people leave them for Reading or Swindon when they get married. Because your priorities change to: bigger house. And you can get all the kids stuff like parks, indoor play centres, McDonalds in Swindon.
“But I also know that I’m not alone in my position, of hoping that easier days are coming, and that I’ll find a way to have a child when they do.”
Jesus Christ, love. You’re 37. You’re not going to get Edwin Starr walking 3 days, with feet hurting, to see you. And every day you age, men are less likely to make sacrifices to get inside you. Do no mothers tell their daughter about men? Do women not look at how old the women in James Bond movies and porn are?
“It’s also societally more acceptable — see again the millennial Princess of Wales, who had her first child aged 31, compared with Princess Diana’s 20 and the then Princess Elizabeth’s 22. Even traditionalists might be swayed into having children later.”
But which actually makes logical sense? Attracting men and sprogging aged 22 or at 30+? What are you going to do for a decade before? Study, travel work. Why can’t you do those at 40+ when you’re getting grey hairs and saggy tits?
We have this girly fantasy that is a disaster: go to yooni, get a career. But in truth, most women don’t have careers. They have jobs. And most of them do jobs that they could have done at 16 with GCSEs. The ones that want to go and study science, great. I don’t want to stop the girl nerds, but that isn’t most degrees that they do. It’s useless shit like psychology and English. We’ve massively inflated the female university population for almost no benefit. It not only costs money, but it means women are delayed 5 years beyond what they used to do of work and finding husbands. Shag around as a teenager, then find a bloke to settle down with.
The women doing this right are actually the working class women who aren’t part of all this middle class bullshit and go to work as soon as they can and live in unfashionable places.
FFS, go on YouTube – there are all manner of programmes from the 1950’s onwards showing what life was like back in the day. Panorama, Man Alive, ITV and BBC shows. I watched one this morning on how hard it was in 1957 to live when you were only on £12 a week with six kids to feed. One couple were lucky, they only had to find “13 bob for the mortgage”……….Another women had an income of £101 a week, but “£56 went on income and surtax”.
WB @ 11.57 “Shag around as a teenager, then find a bloke to settle down with”. That’s how Angela Rayner got started. Just look at her now…….
“Do women not look at how old the women in James Bond movies and porn are?”
I guess the MILF section is confusing her
I’ve a hypothesis that high tax causes total fertility rates to drop significantly below replacement. Then tried to falsify it by looking at immigrants from low tax countries to higher ones, but TFR of the immigrants tended to that of the natives over time.
So at first analysis high taxes will destroy the human race.
I didn’t have a bedroom of my own until I went to university. No foreign holidays, of course, (except for two school trips), no central heating, no refrigerator, no tumble dryer (and a washing machine a little late in the day), no lifts to school, no second car, little “eating out”, and no second channel on the telly until I was too old to be much interested in the telly anyway.
Mum did sow and darn; Dad had a south-facing greenhouse to grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer, and some years grew strawberries in the garden at the sacrifice of some grass. I had a tiny patch of garden for growing raspberries. My household duties included polishing everyone’s shoes, drying the dishes for Mum, bringing in buckets of coal, chasing mice with a shovel and, whenever asked, laying and clearing the table.
Society was safe, we had a river to swim in, countryside to tramp in, shore to paddle about, my schooling was mostly good-to-excellent, we had a fine public library. I got to shoot and sail, and play rugby, cricket, football, and golf; there was a school debating club, and a drama club, and I edited the school magazine. In my last year at school a friend and I would take a bus on Sundays to go to watch Continental Films at a Film Club twenty miles away. Much better than Hollywood though I remember only one by name – Bicycle Thieves.
I worked around the harbour in my school summer holidays when I was big enough, and saved my earnings in my motorbike fund. For part of one summer, when I was still too young to be a labourer, I ran the town meteorological station – a rather fine boast but all I had to do was turn up at the same time each day, read the rain gauge and the max/min thermometer, and record the results. These may be the only fully trustworthy met data available for the UK, certainly more trustworthy than the rubbish fabricated by the Met Office nowadays.
One of the regulars here once made the point that, go back 50+ years and you’d find the middle classes darning socks.
Hey! I darn my socks! And patch the pockets in my trousers. Not going to let good clothing go to waste just ‘cos one spot is damaged. That’s like euthanasia as a treatment for a headache.
Dvořák Symphony No 9, Largo
Literally millions of people in the UK get married, have kids, buy houses each year. It’s not impossible. It’s easy as soon as you stop fancying yourself as a victim and get a grip.
Freelance, low-paid, femi-whinger – Charlie Gowans-Eglinton – once again fails to face reality. She wants babies, but she can’t accept that her career choice (freelance fashion/woman journalism) and her attitude (Wingwoman podcast?) have made her goal of babies highly unlikely. And she gives the impression of being most men’s neurotic nightmare. Cougardom and cats beckon to her…
@ Marius and jgh
I gave up darning socks 40-odd years ago when the price of socks slumped for some reason and I reckoned that the cost of an occasional new pair was less than the value of my time spent darning them. AFAIK my (upper-middle-class) mother never gave up darning socks.
@ Jim
In the 50s it was still regarded as one’s patriotic duty to wear hand-me-downs; not so much in the 60s and even less so in the 70s.
Back in the day you were considered a parvenu if you hadn’t inherited your evening dress and morning suit.
Literally millions of people in the UK get married, have kids, buy houses each year.
There does seem to be an increasing number of women who think having kids is some sort of fashion choice rather than being the product of meeting a guy you want to share your life with and kids being something that adds to that shared life.
” not so much in the 60s and even less so in the 70s.”
Thats news to me, who grew up in the 70s wearing out of date fashions provided my great aunt’s Methodist church jumble sales. Which did roaring trade by all accounts.
I disagree. I think they’re quite away – what they’re not seeing is the ROI on children anymore.
Children have always been an investment – they’re your retirement plan, extra labor in the homestead, etc. But not the state is your retirement plan, machines do so much of the home labor that there’s not really anything to do with the extra hands. So they become ‘hobbies’ for the rich. And the average person? They’d rather spend the money on themselves.
Notice that the only people who do have a lot of children are those who are getting economic incentives (more welfare money)from the government to do so.
They’re not too poor to have children, they are *too rich* to want to.
john77: I factor that in, the HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE waste of time trekking around shops buying clothes massively outweighs the couple of minutes watching the news on the TV waiting for the kettle to boil while putting a couple of stitches in a sock.
@ Jim
IIRC in the 50s, there were weekly jumble sales in my patch – I don’t remember them more often than a couple of times a year in the 70s
@ jgh
At that time I didn’t have a TV, didn’t trek round to buy socks (just walked into M&S or John Lewis when nearby and bought some): buying darning wool of the right colour was more difficult and more time-consuming than buying socks.