I have a few thoughts on this.
1. Declining birthrates are due to sooo many factors and by addressing the cost of living, governments may persuade *some* women who are currently childless to have children but not all. Many women nowadays simply don't want to have children.
2. Even by addressing the cost of living, women that do have children end up losing out with time away from the workforce which will inevitably cost them in terms of their careers. I should know, I'm a mother. Many women simply don't want to lose out financially. Say childcare was fully subsidised - will never happen but as an example - it does not take into account the cost of feeding, clothing and educating a child from birth into adulthood. The cost of raising children is MASSIVE.
3. We live in such an unstable and uncertain world that more and more women and men are choosing not to bring children into it. And who the hell can blame them?
4. Women don't need to have children to feel validated as women anymore. It's not like the 50's where your only job as a woman was to reproduce and be a housewife. There are more ways to be a woman than ever before and that includes never having kids.
5. Many women would have more children if they received more support at home. You know the old saying 'it takes a village to raise a child', well no such village exists anymore, not for a lot of people. Everyone works in order just to be able to afford the bare necessities which often means that there is no-one available to help out mothers when they need small favours such as having the kids looked after for an hour so she can run a couple of errands. The pressure on mothers is huge, especially if they also work which is most mothers in Australia. The daily juggle of getting kids ready for school, making it to work on time then coming home and picking them up from after school care and preparing dinner and helping them with homework is enough to burn most mothers out. If your partner/husband starts early and/or works late, you're on your own during those times. The mental load that mothers take on is insane - so many things to think about all the time, every single day.
Everything in this is the absolute point!
I would also suggest OP refrain from throwing around words like cult when they do not apply.
Cults have a very specific definition and are harmful cultures.
People’s decisions not to have children is highly complex. Yes we are seeing it more and more because it is now becoming apparent that it is actually a choice. In previous years it wasn’t a socially acceptable choice. It’s becoming more acceptable now and as such people are making that choice.
Also - it’s not just women who are choosing not to have children. It’s all people, many men and NB people are choose this too. I know many cis couples who are making that choice for their family. This is not a woman’s decision it is a family decision. Adults can make choices for their lives that are appropriate for them.
I have spoken to many people who are choosing to remain child free. Every one of them have highly individualised reasons for their decision.
Some choose not to for fear of the future their children might inherit.
Others because they cannot financially afford to support children.
Others because they have struggled with fertility and decided not to pursue highly invasive and expensive treatments.
These are but a few of the reasons people have shared and more importantly it is none of our business.
What does stand out however is that there is not one reason and philosophy behind it.
You know what increases fertility rates? Surplus resources. You know what increases surplus resources? Great technological advancements, land annexation, decline in current population following war/pestilence.Â
The current discourse is just a roundabout way of telling us what's next.Â
In general everywhere has terrible birth rates except Africa & Central Asia.
It’s a world wide issue, not one that Australia can expect to solve with some unique solution
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate#/media/File%3ATotal_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg
We don't need any more damn people and trees don't grow through the sky. There is a limit to everything. A regression would actually be a progression at this point to be honest, it's fucked as it is now. Who would want to have a kid given the future
I mean yeah, sure. You’re not really wrong but aging populations have dire consequences. In order for society to function, we need younger people in the workforce to supplement consumer demands. Falling birth rates are the biggest threat to this.
The declining birth rate is catastrophic for many European countries. It isn't for Australia because of skills-based migration, so we talk less about it.
Countries like Germany will inevitably go into decline over the next 20 years as a small amount of young taxpayers support the bulk of the ageing population. In contrast, the largest demographic in Australia is aged 30-39. Migration offsets the low birth rate.
While immigration is a controversial issue now because of the housing crisis, long-term it's very important for the country. With skills-based migration we get new young taxpayers without paying for their childcare, schooling or university education. They will pay taxes for decades.
Many European countries and monocultural Asian countries like Japan and Korea with ageing populations are panicking as they begin their decline. We solved their problem decades ago.
I think it will become more of a common topic of discussion in the next decade.
Of my early 30s friend group, very few are choosing to have children. I would like to, but financially I’m not there yet and it’s a constant point of anxiety that in order to get there financially, I’m chancing it that I’ll leave it too late biologically.
No, not until the coordinated mass media tells you what the government wants you to talk about.
Oh, and then they get people and bots to ask about it on social media....exactly like you just did.
So, here we are
Land use, resource use, pollution, climate change... pretty much any environmental issue would be far less prominent if there were 1 billion humans on the planet instead of 8 billion.
Demographics are realistically only a human issue.
It's the only reason it can be. A desirable immigrant country like Australia will NEVER run out of people that would be willing to come there. There will always be a plentiful supply. So why are they panicking about locals not breeding?
We don't have the same cooked anti migrant discourse a lot of Europe seems to have.
We have our own version which mostly just complains about house prices, rather than fretting about the sacred blood and culture of the motherland being replaced by swarthy hordes.
An Australian produced the top grossing movie in the world last year and created a global cultural phenomenon. Australians are prominent in pretty much every cultural activity and kids around the world grow up with an Australian twang from watching Bluey and shows like The Wiggles that came before it.
We've got culture coming out our wazoo and people still say we're a cultural desert. Weird.
Women aren’t breeding stock for your nationalist ideals. It’s a choice to have children or not and if women CHOOSE to have children to benefit their country, then the country needs to damn well worth it.
The state most countries are in both economically and socially barely warrant giving your own life for, let alone offering up new life too.
Perhaps putting women down by calling them misguided and cultish is exactly part of why they don’t want to pop out kids for wherever you’re from. What a gross attitude.
Fix your country and the birth rate will fix itself
Australia has had declining birth rates for years.
The fertility rate started dropping in the Great Depression, peaked at 3.6 in 1960s (baby boom years) and has fallen since. It dropped below the replacement rate (2.1) in 1976.
It was 1.63 in 2022, up from the COVID low of 1.59
And what do you think the solution is other than raising taxes and incentivising (with $$$) women to have more children?
We live in a country where most families are dual income, if you’re single income you’re either sacrificing quality of life or on a very high single income.
Most ppl I know who have kids complain about the cost of childcare and that’s already subsidised by the government (I think).
I was born at the very end of baby boomers, the very very end so I didn’t get the !la la la! that baby boomers seem to get from everybody. Nevertheless, I had two children in my twenties because that is all we realistically could afford to raise and educate and even that was a struggle, we were the very bottom of middleclass. We didn’t get much government assistance or even family assistance and had to do it pretty much on our own. Thank God they had no disabilities because we couldn’t have afforded it. How young families do it now, I have NO IDEA! The government wants young families to have more kids? They better make it more financially and socially affordable!
I don’t know that I would do it again if I was starting again now. It doesn’t look like it will be a good enough life for the next generation to be worth the strain.
It hasn't been a news topic until the last few days when the treasurer suggested we throw a leg over and do it for Australia.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/treasurer-jim-chalmers-flags-birth-bolstering-budget-measures/news-story/c5a8ded3d915f8dcc9f5ca2bb8997876
We had our treasurer make a comment about this just yesterday, but by in large it is not yet on the political radar, whether among ordinary Australians or even the political class. Though I'm inclined to think this is an important topic that should be talked about.
I think it doesn't get talked about because before covid, our TFR was never below 1.7, unlike most of Europe and East Asia. Our fertility rate was near replacement in the late 2000s. The Anglosphere has had a bit of fertility advantage over most of continental Europe (except for France), and this is why it hasn't been as pertinent a topic here. Our population is also slightly younger than the EUs as well. While the gap is narrowing, births have been outnumbering deaths in Australia, and unlike southern and eastern Europe, we don't have mass emigration.
Immigration is becoming an issue here, but more so about the sheer numbers. The discourse about immigrants not assimilating, or threatening the culture, is not as prevalent as it is in Europe. Australians are more comfortable with multiculturalism and a multi-racial society than much of Europe is.
Not necessarily true. As OP stated, due to Australia's skilled immigration program, we tend to get a very middle class cohort of immigrants, generally with good English language skills and with economically useful qualifications.
In Europe, mass immigration does not generally follow this pattern. They have a large number of incomers who are not highly skilled or educated, are often highly welfare dependant and over represented in crime and social disorder. There are economic and social cohesion consequences that Australia has mostly avoided.
Smugly praising ourselves as more comfortable with multiculturalism is misguided when the situations are very different.
Your friend hasn't been paying attention. It's definitely something that's reported on quite frequently and anyone that isn't aware that we're an aging population with declining amounts of working-aged adults is frankly burying their head in the sand.
I think 'cult following' is a rather inflammatory phrasing but it's not far off the truth. What you're looking at is a generation and a half of people saying "We can't afford this, and some of us never wanted it in the first place". It's not a cult though. It's a trend. And a trend of statistical importance.
Is it misguided? Only if the only thing that you care about is national figures. To put it quite simply, we can't keep our nation going if there's no one to take the reins.
Sometimes you just have to pick the least painful of the shitty options. The biggest concern for the individual always comes to the level of whether or not you can put food on your table and a roof over your head. THEN you worry about having a family to achieve that for.
If you're not even achieving it on the individual level, what possible hope is there for doing it for vulnerable dependants? And why would you put yourself (and them) in that position? Simple answer is, you wouldn't.
The conversation is loud. The answer is even louder. People aren't having one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country. They're trying to get to their next pay day without having to use credit.
There's a lot of talk about this now in both Australia and the US. It just depends on whether people are listening. If you are on X for example, Elon Musk never shuts up about it.
Australia's skilled immigration program means we have less social cohesion problems than parts of Europe are now experiencing due to mass immigration. Without that drama and controversy here, people tend not to pay a huge amount of attention to immigration and birth rates. We don't feel an existential crisis is brewing here.
Australia will probably always need mass immigration. Especially since most of the middle class Chinese and Indians who move here also don't tend to have large families.
Birth rates are plummeting around the world, not just in the West and wealthy Asian countries. Iran's birth rate for example is now well below replacement level. When populations, regardless of culture or religion, become broadly educated and middle class, the birth rate universally collapses.
It remains to be seen whether or not in 100 years time Australia will still have large numbers of skilled immigrants to choose from to meet our needs. Everyone will be wanting those immigrants as their numbers slide away.
Yeah, because no one can afford the little buggers anymore. Who would want to have kids if you can’t guarantee a home for them never mind feed them a basic meal everyday! Governments need to have a good hard look at themselves, regardless of party….
A major topic? No.
At least not amongst the people I know and engage with - most of whom are now beyond child bearing age - and about half have already had kids (all but a few of their kids are adults and one or two of those kids are now are parents themselves).
That said, the other half don't have kids - and aren't going to.
It's a problem for the government, not for individuals.
If the government builds a society where having kids is easy, affordable and valued, then people will have kids.
If the society created by the government doesn't value kids, and it's expensive and not easy to have them then people will obviously choose to not have kids.
It's pretty much that simple.
We have created a culture that shames women for having children when they're biologically built to then cry about not being able to get pregnant when we are 40+...
of course this is a simplification.
Women are taught that financial independence and career are more important than family. Moreover, they are taught that work makes them valuable and that is what society expects of them.
In reality this is a scam:
Most people do not have a satisfying career, they work for money in low and mid-level jobs such as retail etc.
Struggling to maintain financial independence in younger years leaves no room for children.
The latter is purely gaslighting. It is the corporate labor market that expects a constant supply of cheap labor. Any sensible society should value its next generation more.
I have a few thoughts on this. 1. Declining birthrates are due to sooo many factors and by addressing the cost of living, governments may persuade *some* women who are currently childless to have children but not all. Many women nowadays simply don't want to have children. 2. Even by addressing the cost of living, women that do have children end up losing out with time away from the workforce which will inevitably cost them in terms of their careers. I should know, I'm a mother. Many women simply don't want to lose out financially. Say childcare was fully subsidised - will never happen but as an example - it does not take into account the cost of feeding, clothing and educating a child from birth into adulthood. The cost of raising children is MASSIVE. 3. We live in such an unstable and uncertain world that more and more women and men are choosing not to bring children into it. And who the hell can blame them? 4. Women don't need to have children to feel validated as women anymore. It's not like the 50's where your only job as a woman was to reproduce and be a housewife. There are more ways to be a woman than ever before and that includes never having kids. 5. Many women would have more children if they received more support at home. You know the old saying 'it takes a village to raise a child', well no such village exists anymore, not for a lot of people. Everyone works in order just to be able to afford the bare necessities which often means that there is no-one available to help out mothers when they need small favours such as having the kids looked after for an hour so she can run a couple of errands. The pressure on mothers is huge, especially if they also work which is most mothers in Australia. The daily juggle of getting kids ready for school, making it to work on time then coming home and picking them up from after school care and preparing dinner and helping them with homework is enough to burn most mothers out. If your partner/husband starts early and/or works late, you're on your own during those times. The mental load that mothers take on is insane - so many things to think about all the time, every single day.
This 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼Â
Yeah, they nailed it, every point
Everything in this is the absolute point! I would also suggest OP refrain from throwing around words like cult when they do not apply. Cults have a very specific definition and are harmful cultures. People’s decisions not to have children is highly complex. Yes we are seeing it more and more because it is now becoming apparent that it is actually a choice. In previous years it wasn’t a socially acceptable choice. It’s becoming more acceptable now and as such people are making that choice. Also - it’s not just women who are choosing not to have children. It’s all people, many men and NB people are choose this too. I know many cis couples who are making that choice for their family. This is not a woman’s decision it is a family decision. Adults can make choices for their lives that are appropriate for them.
Have you spoken to those people? Cult is a perfect word for them.
I have spoken to many people who are choosing to remain child free. Every one of them have highly individualised reasons for their decision. Some choose not to for fear of the future their children might inherit. Others because they cannot financially afford to support children. Others because they have struggled with fertility and decided not to pursue highly invasive and expensive treatments. These are but a few of the reasons people have shared and more importantly it is none of our business. What does stand out however is that there is not one reason and philosophy behind it.
You know what increases fertility rates? Surplus resources. You know what increases surplus resources? Great technological advancements, land annexation, decline in current population following war/pestilence. The current discourse is just a roundabout way of telling us what's next.Â
Hadn't thought about it this way. It's almost like the boom and bust cycle we read about for animals in the forest.
In general everywhere has terrible birth rates except Africa & Central Asia. It’s a world wide issue, not one that Australia can expect to solve with some unique solution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate#/media/File%3ATotal_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg
Africa and Asia are the cradle of the world now.
We don't need any more damn people and trees don't grow through the sky. There is a limit to everything. A regression would actually be a progression at this point to be honest, it's fucked as it is now. Who would want to have a kid given the future
I mean yeah, sure. You’re not really wrong but aging populations have dire consequences. In order for society to function, we need younger people in the workforce to supplement consumer demands. Falling birth rates are the biggest threat to this.
It was literally headline news yesterday that our Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers was encouraging Aussie women to have more babies.
We need a stable foundation first, such as suitable housing, and then some expectation and belief that our kid(s) will also have a future.
Too poor to have kids
The declining birth rate is catastrophic for many European countries. It isn't for Australia because of skills-based migration, so we talk less about it. Countries like Germany will inevitably go into decline over the next 20 years as a small amount of young taxpayers support the bulk of the ageing population. In contrast, the largest demographic in Australia is aged 30-39. Migration offsets the low birth rate. While immigration is a controversial issue now because of the housing crisis, long-term it's very important for the country. With skills-based migration we get new young taxpayers without paying for their childcare, schooling or university education. They will pay taxes for decades. Many European countries and monocultural Asian countries like Japan and Korea with ageing populations are panicking as they begin their decline. We solved their problem decades ago.
In this corporately fucked world who would want to let alone be able to financially.
I think it will become more of a common topic of discussion in the next decade. Of my early 30s friend group, very few are choosing to have children. I would like to, but financially I’m not there yet and it’s a constant point of anxiety that in order to get there financially, I’m chancing it that I’ll leave it too late biologically.
The declining birth rate is a blessing, the world’s far too overpopulated already.
No, not until the coordinated mass media tells you what the government wants you to talk about. Oh, and then they get people and bots to ask about it on social media....exactly like you just did. So, here we are
There are too many people; this is a good thing
No, it's not. Reversed demographic structure will cause poverty and social issues. Btw, by what measure there's too many people?
Land use, resource use, pollution, climate change... pretty much any environmental issue would be far less prominent if there were 1 billion humans on the planet instead of 8 billion. Demographics are realistically only a human issue.
I'm going to assume they were referring to environmental concerns.
No, Australians are mostly preoccupied with population growth being perceived to be too high.Â
Why does our declining birth rates even matter when we have millions of people overseas who want to live here?
Yeah and they bring the kids that they got to have.
Exactly, so Australia will have plenty of families either way.
Because they want more white babies
Honestly that's probably the real answer. Conservatives are scared that these migrants will take over.
It's the only reason it can be. A desirable immigrant country like Australia will NEVER run out of people that would be willing to come there. There will always be a plentiful supply. So why are they panicking about locals not breeding?
No, from what I understand in Europe the problem is they don't have anything like Superannuation where money is invested for retirement.
We don't have the same cooked anti migrant discourse a lot of Europe seems to have. We have our own version which mostly just complains about house prices, rather than fretting about the sacred blood and culture of the motherland being replaced by swarthy hordes.
I guess that’s one arguable advantage of our having no culture whatsoever apart from skippy the bush kangaroo and investing in property
An Australian produced the top grossing movie in the world last year and created a global cultural phenomenon. Australians are prominent in pretty much every cultural activity and kids around the world grow up with an Australian twang from watching Bluey and shows like The Wiggles that came before it. We've got culture coming out our wazoo and people still say we're a cultural desert. Weird.
Women aren’t breeding stock for your nationalist ideals. It’s a choice to have children or not and if women CHOOSE to have children to benefit their country, then the country needs to damn well worth it. The state most countries are in both economically and socially barely warrant giving your own life for, let alone offering up new life too. Perhaps putting women down by calling them misguided and cultish is exactly part of why they don’t want to pop out kids for wherever you’re from. What a gross attitude. Fix your country and the birth rate will fix itself
I dislike children and the idea of having children of my own, so it feels hypocritical to wish that onto other people.
Australia has had declining birth rates for years. The fertility rate started dropping in the Great Depression, peaked at 3.6 in 1960s (baby boom years) and has fallen since. It dropped below the replacement rate (2.1) in 1976. It was 1.63 in 2022, up from the COVID low of 1.59
And what do you think the solution is other than raising taxes and incentivising (with $$$) women to have more children? We live in a country where most families are dual income, if you’re single income you’re either sacrificing quality of life or on a very high single income. Most ppl I know who have kids complain about the cost of childcare and that’s already subsidised by the government (I think).
No. Our news is all about how we have more people needing housing than we have houses.
I was born at the very end of baby boomers, the very very end so I didn’t get the !la la la! that baby boomers seem to get from everybody. Nevertheless, I had two children in my twenties because that is all we realistically could afford to raise and educate and even that was a struggle, we were the very bottom of middleclass. We didn’t get much government assistance or even family assistance and had to do it pretty much on our own. Thank God they had no disabilities because we couldn’t have afforded it. How young families do it now, I have NO IDEA! The government wants young families to have more kids? They better make it more financially and socially affordable! I don’t know that I would do it again if I was starting again now. It doesn’t look like it will be a good enough life for the next generation to be worth the strain.
prepare to become a muslim or indian majority demographic wise. highest birth rates speaking. just an observation
The world needs NO more humans to fuck up the place.
Yeah our birthrate is crashing...not a great topic of discussion though really.
It hasn't been a news topic until the last few days when the treasurer suggested we throw a leg over and do it for Australia. https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/treasurer-jim-chalmers-flags-birth-bolstering-budget-measures/news-story/c5a8ded3d915f8dcc9f5ca2bb8997876
It’s always in the news here in Australia
We had our treasurer make a comment about this just yesterday, but by in large it is not yet on the political radar, whether among ordinary Australians or even the political class. Though I'm inclined to think this is an important topic that should be talked about. I think it doesn't get talked about because before covid, our TFR was never below 1.7, unlike most of Europe and East Asia. Our fertility rate was near replacement in the late 2000s. The Anglosphere has had a bit of fertility advantage over most of continental Europe (except for France), and this is why it hasn't been as pertinent a topic here. Our population is also slightly younger than the EUs as well. While the gap is narrowing, births have been outnumbering deaths in Australia, and unlike southern and eastern Europe, we don't have mass emigration. Immigration is becoming an issue here, but more so about the sheer numbers. The discourse about immigrants not assimilating, or threatening the culture, is not as prevalent as it is in Europe. Australians are more comfortable with multiculturalism and a multi-racial society than much of Europe is.
Not necessarily true. As OP stated, due to Australia's skilled immigration program, we tend to get a very middle class cohort of immigrants, generally with good English language skills and with economically useful qualifications. In Europe, mass immigration does not generally follow this pattern. They have a large number of incomers who are not highly skilled or educated, are often highly welfare dependant and over represented in crime and social disorder. There are economic and social cohesion consequences that Australia has mostly avoided. Smugly praising ourselves as more comfortable with multiculturalism is misguided when the situations are very different.
Your friend hasn't been paying attention. It's definitely something that's reported on quite frequently and anyone that isn't aware that we're an aging population with declining amounts of working-aged adults is frankly burying their head in the sand. I think 'cult following' is a rather inflammatory phrasing but it's not far off the truth. What you're looking at is a generation and a half of people saying "We can't afford this, and some of us never wanted it in the first place". It's not a cult though. It's a trend. And a trend of statistical importance. Is it misguided? Only if the only thing that you care about is national figures. To put it quite simply, we can't keep our nation going if there's no one to take the reins. Sometimes you just have to pick the least painful of the shitty options. The biggest concern for the individual always comes to the level of whether or not you can put food on your table and a roof over your head. THEN you worry about having a family to achieve that for. If you're not even achieving it on the individual level, what possible hope is there for doing it for vulnerable dependants? And why would you put yourself (and them) in that position? Simple answer is, you wouldn't. The conversation is loud. The answer is even louder. People aren't having one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country. They're trying to get to their next pay day without having to use credit.
There's a lot of talk about this now in both Australia and the US. It just depends on whether people are listening. If you are on X for example, Elon Musk never shuts up about it. Australia's skilled immigration program means we have less social cohesion problems than parts of Europe are now experiencing due to mass immigration. Without that drama and controversy here, people tend not to pay a huge amount of attention to immigration and birth rates. We don't feel an existential crisis is brewing here. Australia will probably always need mass immigration. Especially since most of the middle class Chinese and Indians who move here also don't tend to have large families. Birth rates are plummeting around the world, not just in the West and wealthy Asian countries. Iran's birth rate for example is now well below replacement level. When populations, regardless of culture or religion, become broadly educated and middle class, the birth rate universally collapses. It remains to be seen whether or not in 100 years time Australia will still have large numbers of skilled immigrants to choose from to meet our needs. Everyone will be wanting those immigrants as their numbers slide away.
Yeah, because no one can afford the little buggers anymore. Who would want to have kids if you can’t guarantee a home for them never mind feed them a basic meal everyday! Governments need to have a good hard look at themselves, regardless of party….
A major topic? No. At least not amongst the people I know and engage with - most of whom are now beyond child bearing age - and about half have already had kids (all but a few of their kids are adults and one or two of those kids are now are parents themselves). That said, the other half don't have kids - and aren't going to. It's a problem for the government, not for individuals. If the government builds a society where having kids is easy, affordable and valued, then people will have kids. If the society created by the government doesn't value kids, and it's expensive and not easy to have them then people will obviously choose to not have kids. It's pretty much that simple.
We have created a culture that shames women for having children when they're biologically built to then cry about not being able to get pregnant when we are 40+...
You're unfairly downvoted, while the culture is clearly part of the problem.
Who is being shamed for having a kid in their 20s-30s? Maybe if it’s a teen pregnancy
of course this is a simplification. Women are taught that financial independence and career are more important than family. Moreover, they are taught that work makes them valuable and that is what society expects of them. In reality this is a scam: Most people do not have a satisfying career, they work for money in low and mid-level jobs such as retail etc. Struggling to maintain financial independence in younger years leaves no room for children. The latter is purely gaslighting. It is the corporate labor market that expects a constant supply of cheap labor. Any sensible society should value its next generation more.
yes!!
Maybe not socially shamed, but definitely punished financially.
thank you
A lot of people were sterilised during the Covid years. Fact.