WHY DON’T YOUNG PEOPLE WANT KIDS?
They can’t afford it
The UK fertility rate has dropped faster than any other G7 nation’s, falling by 25% since 2010. According to a number of different research studies, the main reason young people don’t want kids is the cost. There’s a ‘fertility gap’: a difference between what young people ideally would have and what they believe is realistic for them now.
A briefing by the Resolution Foundation called Bye Bye Baby surveyed a snapshot of 32-year-olds. Roughly three-in-ten women and a quarter of men blamed finances for not having children. An Ipsos poll of 18 to 50-year-olds for The Independent backs this up.
44 per cent of adults plan to delay having children, or are deciding against it altogether, with the cost of raising children, concerns about the general cost of living and the expense of childcare cited as key reasons.
Housing is another key pressure: the escalating costs of renting or buying, compounded by stagnation of salaries and instability at work.
According to an article by Victoria Peckham in The Times, almost a third of UK 20-34-year-olds still live with their parents. And of those that don’t, many have to give half their take-home pay to landlords, as well as sacrificing another sizeable chunk to pay off their student loans.
“I’ve heard from lots of people that the choices that they wanted to make have been constrained, in terms of when to start a family and how many children they have, by factors like the cost of childcare, housing costs, instability at work.”
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They’re worried about the state of the world
In the Ipsos poll of 18-50-year-olds, while a third of respondents said they weren’t having children because they simply didn’t want to, others said they were put off by fears about climate change, with worries about how global warming will affect their child’s future, and how having children may harm the environment.
A survey of 16-18 year old school students for Fertility Journal also found that the state of the current world was a big concern, listing overpopulation, climate change issues and an unstable political and economic environment as major barriers to the thought of having children.
Job uncertainty is also fuelling their fears. One in ten 18-24-year-olds neither work nor study: (NEET) and that figure is higher for 16-24-year-olds. Youth unemployment is on the rise.
The Financial Times reported that roles advertised for recent graduates were 33% lower than a year earlier and 12% below 2023 levels. With such a volatile job market, and wider financial challenges, how are young people expected to be able to plan for a family?
“With climate change and overpopulation I do not know if having kids will be fair on them, especially if nothing changes.”
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They can’t find a partner
The Resolution Foundation briefing found that many of the young people it surveyed wanted (at a minimum) two conditions to be met before starting a family: being in a committed relationship and living in stable home.
When a group of 32-year-olds were asked to state their reasons for not (yet) having children, around a third of both women and men said they didn’t have a suitable partner.
Some researchers are blaming technology: our obsession with our phones has put the boot in on human to human socialising. The evidence across a number of countries suggests the sharp drop in fertility rates correlates with the same period smartphones became widely adopted. According to the FT writer John Burn-Murdoch:
“Falling birth rates appear to be part of a broader phenomenon of young adult singledom, isolation and deteriorating wellbeing.
Given the likely link to technology and social media, the best hope of reversing the trend may be to change our digital habits — whether through cultural shifts or government regulation.’
“It is quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling.”
