“Why aren’t women having babies?” It’s the question on everyone’s lips as the fertility rate plummets to a record low in England, Scotland and Wales. A range of answers are always trotted out, from the entirely reasonable (childcare and housing costs; the motherhood career penalty) to the ludicrous (being so dim about our own fertility that we wake up one day realising we’ve left it too late). Yet perhaps it’s time we ask not only “why aren’t women having babies?”, but also “why aren’t men?”
Men are largely invisible in the birthrate debate. It’s ironic that amid all the pontificating and the policy ideas for encouraging more women to have babies – a conversation often being had by men – the other half of humanity is strikingly underexamined. Part of the problem is an absence of data: like many European countries, we don’t really have any on male fertility. Without data, we only have half the picture.
For the past 50 years the insistence has been that it’s always, only, the woman’s choice.
Now you’re wondering?
“Men are largely invisible in the birthrate debate.”
Does that include all the ‘pregnant men’ social media is trying to convince us we have these days?
We have excellent data on the numbers of abortions though, most of which are at the behest of women.
Funnily enough, the number of UK abortions over the past 3o years or so is remarkably close to the number of immigrants we have ‘welcomed’.
And…
Theo, well played.
It’s a thinker, that one
Given the ease with which single women on benefits get pregnant, I somehow doubt that the low birth rate has anything to do with men. If a woman wants to get sprogged up its not hard to find some unsuspecting sperm donor. A quick trawl of Tinder would suffice.
My body, my choice, sorry, but you have no say in this matter. Unless I decide to keep it, then you’re on the hook for 18 years of support.
After 60 years destroying the concept of the nuclear family, devaluing marriage, a woman doesn’t need a husband, insisting women should put carrer first, and now we have a birth rate problem. Oh.
People have grow accustomed to having shiny toys, expensive restaurant meals and lavish long haul holidays. All of these can be documented on Instagram to show everyone what a great lifestyle you are enjoying, even when in reality the car get scraped, the food is cold and the weather was only good enough for holiday photos on one day. Having to share disposable income on kids doesn’t support this lifestyle and the Instagram moments get reduced to “babys first step” which is of zero interest to the friends without children.
We have a nuclear family. Family meals at the table. Gave up going out when the nipper came along. Holiday with rellies. It’s been great.
The thing to me with most of this stuff is that it’s a massive expense with very little value.
iPhone: £800. Yes, yes, the camera on it is slightly better than a £200 Moto, but it is *slightly* now.
expensive restaurant meals: logarithmic curve of diminishing value as you spend more. You’ll get a really good meal at the Bell at Ramsbury or the Five Arrows at Waddesdon. A Michelin meal is barely better, for double the price. Also, learn to cook. Going out to dinner and spending £100 is maybe £30 of ingredients. If your labour is less than 2 hours, it probably makes more sense for you to cook it.
Long haul: there are a ton of fascinating places in Europe. A ton of great beaches in France, Spain, Italy. And personally, I just think people are madly overobsessed with travel. Like there are people who go wine tasting in Napa. Why? I’m going to the big annual tasting at Great Wine in Bath next month. 30 minutes on the train, £40 for ticket and travel, and I get to taste over 100 wines (I will probably manage 40-50). Why spend a grand and 2 days flying to California? I get it if there’s some burning interest, like I want to do the train over the alps. But most of this isn’t. It’s just people going places to show off on Instagram. Often the same sort of people who are “really into eco”.
Do you know one of the fun things with mothers working? It barely adds anything to the pot. Because after you deduct, childcare, needing a second car (and women want a nice one), work clothes (and women view it like a fashion show), eating out (because they don’t have time to prepare food/reward at the end of the week, there isn’t a whole lot left. The per hour net income with 2 children is a couple of quid an hour. If you upgrade to long haul, Apple and Tesla, that’s all the extra wiped out.
We raised kids on 1 income and it was fine. You don’t eat out much. You run on 10 year old cars. Hunting on eBay for second hand TVs (which are almost immaculate), recon laptops for the kids, caravan holidays in France (great).
“As the demographer Stephen J Shaw recently wrote, childlessness is on the rise despite the fact that most people still say that they want children. He highlighted how unplanned childlessness – or involuntary infertility – could often be down to simply not being able to find the right partner. This makes sense in light of what is being termed a “relationship recession” or a “mating gap”. People are simply not coupling up like they used to.”
One of my beliefs is that by the time you’ve left school, if you’ve been putting in a bit of effort chatting up girls, you’ve met people who are as good as you’re going to get. You’ve established your standard. If you didn’t hook up with a Marion Cotillard at school, you can scour the earth, you are not going to find some Eldorado with a Marion Cotillard-standard woman that is going to let you bone her.
It’s where I think a lot of this “travel” or “London” thing comes from for women. They spend a decade hunting for somewhere where the rules are different to Worcester. Where hot rich men want to marry a 7. And they pursue this hunt until the clock starts to run out. Of course, the rules apply in London. Lots of women want the 10s and the 10s are going to pick the best of them.
Now women couldn’t do this at one time. Contraception was unreliable, abortion was dangerous. You might do a bit of shagging early, but you’re going to be careful. You’re going to settle earlier.
“The anxiety-inducing statistic Shaw cites is that a British woman who reached the age of 28 without children in 2023 had only a 50% chance of becoming a mother. What he doesn’t ask is this: if most women still want to have children, what is happening to suitable, willing male partners as people enter their late 20s and 30s?”
Do women honestly not get this? Fact: the average pornstar retires at 27. Fact: there’s a $500bn cosmetics industry whose primary objective is hiding the signs of age. Men will do all sorts of crazy shit for young pussy. When you see a guy fighting another guy because “are you looking at my bird” that’s a 21 year old. I knew guys who got manipulated into all sorts of spending for girls out of their league. OnlyFans is a virtual version of this. Under 25s that send personal messages (actually some fat older woman in Malaysia, or AI) so men keep spending $20/month. Men still want to fuck 30 year olds, but they aren’t insane for it.
And we’ve created this situation that destroys the primary value of young women, because some women have this obsession with being “more than just a body” even though that’s the moneymaker under 25. We keep them in school to 18, we encourage “uni” and “career” which delays women dating. This girl with the bowl haircut is like this. Can’t grasp that not having children is because we push the start out by 5+ years. What really should happen is that women leave school at 15, get a job, probably settle down with a bloke at 20, have some kids. Later years of child rearing, say, 30, do some learning, and start the career thing then. You can write shit and do accountancy with grey hairs and saggy tits. If you actually want to go to Rome and Paris, do it then.
Lots of women want the 10s
Do they not realise that the 10s are mostly narcissists and some are borderline psychopaths? However stuff one sees suggests a lot of women who snag a 10 will put up with this.
I’m saying all around 10s. Not sure what that means to women. For men, I’m talking about the ones that defy the crazy/hot matrix. Hot, smart, non-crazy, big tits, no gag reflex. What’s their best combined Top Trumps score? Young Nigella Lawson, maybe?
Hot, smart, non-crazy, big tits, no gag reflex.
You obviously didn’t learn the key message from the Hot Crazy Matrix. That’s a tranny. You’re looking at a geezer.
There’s an exception: good-looking women who think they’re not. They’re not usually conventionally good-looking, mind.
Something I learnt early on. The more attractive a woman is physically, the less attractive their personality. Good looking women don’t need to learn to be nice people.
Women are insufferable.
Any questions?
Nah: the question on everyone’s lips is “Why aren’t transwomen having babies?”
“Why aren’t women having babies”?
But women are having babies, only it appears to be the females of a certain cultural society, who are most productive. The possibility that their culture doesn’t allow them to say “not bloody likely. I’ve done my share.” may have something to do with the most popular name for boys born in this country, being Mohammed ( in various spellings). The future for white, English, people approaching retirement would seem to be rather uncertain, if the majority, and the ‘democratically elected’ culturally enriched government decides to stop paying pensions.
It’s good to have you on this thread – so fucking true. The notion that a load of Islamists will pay out money to women still getting hammered on Prosecco in their 60s has to be the most delusional outside of ‘Funding the future’ I have ever seen..
People keep talking about “shiny toys”, holidays and whatnot as if Millennials are living lifestyles of the rich and famous and that’s why they don’t have children.
I think it’s more realistically because they can’t afford a bloody house and are paying extortionate rents. And the ones who do have mortgages are leveraged to the hilt.
Mass deportation is the solution.
“Mass deportation is the solution.”
Looks like Nige has been listening, abolishing ILR and replacing it with a far more stringent visa system. Its effectively mass deportation because millions won’t qualify for the new visas. No one with criminal records, no one who has claimed benefits, salary requirement of far more than today, and no right to welfare going forward, thats going to rule out most of the recent immigrants.
ILR is one of the steppings stones to citizenship. How does one become a citizen when there’s a gap in the process?
One doesn’t. We’ve got quite enough citizens as it is. And the one in question must by definition be a citizen of somewhere else too, so they can hie themselves back there if needs be.
Yeah, it’s one thing to have a policy. But should Reform get elected with a clear majority & legislate, it’ll be another thing implementing against the extra-democratic resistance of the entrenched Left. I only hope they’re thinking this through. After what happened with the Referendum outcome.
The laws are already in place that would enforce the new visa rules. Reform don’t have to legislate for that. Its already illegal to rent a dwelling to someone without a valid permission to be in the country. Ditto employ such a person either. So the only implementation will be going after rogue landlords and employers, not the illegals themselves. Once it becomes hard to get anywhere to live or work without a valid visa (and the benefits dry up too) then people will be forced to deport themselves. There’s a limit to the amount that can disappear into the black economy too. There’s only so many deliveroo or curry house staff needed.
Gamecock recommends mass self deportation.
“Get the hell out of here, or you will spend a year on Mingulay.”
They got themselves there; they can get themselves out.
Yes, that’s how it tends to work in practice. When Pakistan deported over a million Afghans recently, I don’t they went door to door.
Particularly for the kind of immigrants we don’t want – the economically inactive / Albanian drug gangs / 70 IQ tribesmen who are illiterate in their own languages never mind English – turning off the public sector money tap and cancelling benefits will make the decision for them. But we can certainly subsidise their flights out of the country, spending a few hundred quid a head to part ways is humane and infinitely cheaper than a lifetime on British benefits.
It’s more of a symptom of frivolousness.
I’m not saying that the housing situation is great. I would gladly have more built (I pissed off the neighbours when said I didn’t mind the housing being built in half the field). But some of this is also self-inflicted. The three bigger things than iPhones are:-
There’s a journalist who goes on and on about prices in London. And I once suggested moving to Reading. 30 minutes outside of London, take about 40% off your rent. Close enough for when you need to see an editor or whatever, but when you’re knocking out disposable trash, you do it from a reasonably OK provincial town. “But all my friends are here, and why should I have to move?”. OK love, I’ll send your name to the Cat of the Month Club to phone you. You say you want a house and a family but you’re not prioritising that.
But having an iPhone and doing long haul holidays and being able to go to that hip new Filipino restaurant is part of it.
WB – but who’s to blame for worthless degrees? Not the 17 year olds applying to Yooni, is it?
It’s a microcosm of everything that’s wrong in our society, we – the grown ups – have a duty of care to them – the kiddos. They don’t know any better. But we tolerate a situation where higher education has ballooned out of all proportion to the much smaller number of people who would benefit from a degree. And we’ve allowed the Mickey Mouse degree mills to coin it in while collecting public money and producing mostly fraudulent pretenses at knowledge and research.
It’s how “climate science”, the modern phlogiston, smothered actual scientific inquiry based on empiricism, skinned it, and is now wearing its face like Doctor Hannibal Lecter.
(My apologies to Dr Lecter, who did at least have a proper degree from a real university)
Yeah, it’s appalling.
It really gets me when I meet parents who are gleeful about their kids doing things like photography. Huge waste of money.
This discussion has become rather anti-iPhone. I got a present of my first smartphone in the summer. (I rather liked my ancient Nokia but was told firmly that I MUST get a smartphone.)
It’s a second hand iPhone and seems OK to me. It’s a pity that EE fucked up (at a great expense of our time) the transferring of my phone number to the new device but it seems to work now. Maybe the folly isn’t getting an iPhone maybe the folly is sticking with EE. The Young, however, tell me that all providers are NBG.
You don’t need to be a government monopoly to be a lousy large organisation. It’s a sufficient condition but not a necessary one.
Anyway, women and babies. Are they scared of the responsibility? Scared that they’ll change shape and it might be hard to reverse? Scared that their chap will vamoose? The trouble is that asking them is unlikely to elicit accurate answers.
They’re good devices. They are technically better than my £250 Moto. The camera quality still has an edge. Anyone doing photo/video work professionally should get one.
It’s more, well, is the extra £500 worth it?
The thing with smartphones, like all tech, is that when you’re in the developing era, spending a lot more gets you a lot more value. Like luxury cars had all the newest innovations in them. The cheaper ones would adopt it a few years later. Then car makers ran out of innovation. At this point, they became lifestyle brands. Which is also where Apple are at now. They used to be a company known for innovation, for making the best stuff. But really, you might as well buy Dells and Motos.
Why all this obsession with the quality of cameras? The majority of people seeing the image will be doing so on a phone screen. It makes no discernible difference. A plate of food or a selfie looks the same whatever is used. Bloody boring, mostly.
Sticking with EE is undoubtedly folly. You pay the same monthly fee for ever, which means that (if you stay on the same contract for three or four years) you’ll have paid for the phone twice over. I’m with Tesco Mobile, once the phone has been paid for, the monthly charge drops to just the airtime.
all providers are NBG.
I have several numbers on PAYG & I always top up the call/internet plans a couple days before they’re due. And inevitably I then get an SMS telling me there’s insufficient credit for the plan renewal. Despite the plans renewing as expected. It’s a scam so they can get the use of your money for the month.
It’s why I’ve stuck with PAYG despite the inconvenience. The experience of being incorrectly debited for charges & the effort needed to challenge them. The hanging around on help lines listening to recorded messages. At least with PAYG they haven’t already got your money.
From observation, when people have a choice to have babies, they choose not to.
Where are the men? Easy.
The proscription, for eons, has been “don’t stick it in crazy.”
Hard to find the non-crazy amongst young modern western women.
Listening to Stephen Shaw on a couple of podcasts recently, who has studied this extensively.
Basically, by the time women reach 30, there’s only a 50/50 chance of them becoming a mother.
And we as a society teach our lady children to spend their time having fun and establishing a “career” to be strong and independent and powerful and they deserve to be with a man who is rich and handsome and etc etc.
Unfortunately reality doesn’t give a shit what you want and will happily up and fuck things for no reason.
These lessons mean girls and women hold out for too long, thinking they deserve better all the time, not helped by internet dating where thousands of men message them constantly, until they get too old and the messages stop at which point the lass in question decides to settle down. But by this point the men their age who would have paired with them have either paired off already or got sick of being rejected and ignored and gone their own way, or become passport bros.
Then the women get to spend their twilight years with cats, watching the encroaching islamic takeover without any support.
But hey, at least they spent their early years making a company CEO a bit richer. Woo!
It’s really fucked up how the dream shifted from “find a man/get a house” to what we have now.
And I’m fully supportive of women who want to choose careers. I have worked with a lot of women in software who just do not want children. So that actually seems like quite a sensible thing. But they are also serious about their careers.
Women generally don’t actually care about careers, not real ones. They say it to sound like serious people, because other women now judge women harshly who want to bake cakes and raise kids. They want the Emily in Paris/Sex and the City fairytale. Watch a film or TV show about work, and if it has a male protagonist like The Big Short or Halt and Catch Fire, it gets into the details of the work. CDOs, reverse engineering the IBM BIOS. Men are interested in work, business, technology. A women’s show is just about dressing up, nice offices, and some bitchy female drama. It’s a modern version of Cinderella: designer clothes – gown, fancy office – palace, bitchy boss – ugly sisters.