Why Labour is telling the UK to have more children
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/natalism-birth-rate-fg8dr7vxq?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit#Echobox=1751304374
Why Labour is telling the UK to have more children
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/natalism-birth-rate-fg8dr7vxq?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit#Echobox=1751304374
26 Comments
Housing and cost of groceries should be focussed on then
I mean to be fair they’re not directly telling people to have more children, they’re acknowledging the low birth rate and pointing to the measures they’ve taken to make it easier to raise kids, such as expansion of free childcare.
Kids ain’t happening because people have no money and no free time.
please have more kids so we have more people to sell things to! Please! The population must increase! we’re already harvesting your economic value at max! We need more of you!
You need to have more kids but we will do nothing to help like provide affordable housing and nationalise essential utilities among other measures to help with the cost of living because that will look too much like socialism to the right wing voters we’re trying so hard to pander to.
Didn’t start a family because it took me until I was 38 to get a house and that was through inheritance
Every Western nation: “Lets make cost of living spiral out of control, with unchecked housing costs, no climate initiatives, gut healthcare, education and social safety nets!”
…
“Why arent people having children?!”
Paywalled.
We as society should focus on making sure that it’s easy to have and support children for people who want to have them. Rather then try to force people to have children who don’t want to have them.
* Part time work, so parents both have time with their children
* Free daycare,
* Free education, don’t make people start their adult life with an dept.
* Affordable and available housing for younger people. Not just couples, it’s harder to get an partner when living with your parents.
* Affordable life in general. People need an decent amount of money left at the end of the month in order to afford children.
… because they’re going to make childcare affordable or even free for new parents right? …right?
To bring them into what? A fucked planet, war, political turmoil that doesn’t believe in actual science, resource wars in the next 20-40 years, a dried up job market due to AI and other technologies, mass migration when the planet becomes too hot to inhabit a good percentage of it.. What’s even the point in having kids if the future’s even bleaker than the present?
The only way to get people to have kids is for the incentive to have kids to be there and for the barriers in the way of having kids to be torn down.
Most people don’t want to have kids until they’re in a stable position to do so.
It’s not that complicated, stop trying to cater to rich people and start catering to the common people as you’re supposed to and you’ll get more kids.
I can’t afford even a single child and doubt I will ever be able to.
Hang on. Am I misremembering or did they u-turn on scrapping the two child benefit cap.
All the cash goes to the few, so nobody can afford kids and they are making it all worse, going after the poorest like the greedy Christmas ghost of a long dead Tory.
I’m sick of hearing their pish to be honest.
1990s to 2010s: Don’t have kids if you can’t afford them!
2020s: Wait, not like that.
Yeah, well you might want to fix the capitalist hellscape first. Let us know what your plans for that are.
Kids happen when it’s economicslly viable to do so.
Farmers back in the day had tons of kids to have more help on the farm. Economics.
People who have lots of kids today make enough money for there to usually be one breadwinner who is wealthy.
My grandparents generation you could have a single hard working parent with a manufacturing job buy a home, own a car, go on vacations, have 5 kids, and have a second family on the other side of town.
Now a person in this position had their spouse working full time and they only have 2 kids while renting and owning old fixed up cars.
One does not simply tell people to have kids.
One needs to create the necessary support structure, incentives, a stable, safe, inclusive and empathic environment, for kids to live, learn and prosper and adults to be able to support their families not only financially, but also emotionally.
No? I guess no kids then.
Can’t even afford a child let alone what that child would have to live through when climate change starts causing food shortages
Maybe give people hope then…you know cost of living is so bad, a lot my age can’t even afford a place to live…living with my parents at 43 kinda sucks and no woman wants to date you in that situation, so kids is impossible. Even if I had my own place, its too expensive, then climate change is worse than they tell us, so much so any kids today are unlikely to have much of a future, its selfish to have them.
Let’s be real. For the UK and all western countries, the short-term solution is bringing in immigrants that cost no social spending to raise, and they don’t have a long term solution.
“have more children! But not more money, and also the jobs are going to be cut. Haha no UBI either”
Telling people to have more kids doesn’t work.
You want people to have kids, then you need to make it financially smart to have kids. Government has to make people WANT to have kids.
Want to know why Africa’s birthrate is so much higher then then the rest of the world? Their economy is based on farming or exploiting resources with mass child labour.
Each kid a family has in Africa means that family has another financial addition to it.
Need more workers for the family farm? Have children = profits.
Need more workers for the mines in Africa? Have children = profits.
Need to pick more Cocoa for the giant chocolate corporations like Nestle? Have children = profits.
It’s reversed in western countries and those that are trying to update themselves from third and second world to first world economies. Children are seen as a financial detriment. Children have gone from 1 = 10,000$ per year profits in labour to 1 = 300,000$ net loss per 18 years.
(Side note, no I’m advocating for child labour, just pointing out that the country ripe with young people, high birthrates also has the highest child labour rates in the world.)
That’s a mortgage for a house ladies and gents. You could have a child, or save up for a home. It’s obvious which one people are choosing.
Next governments have started clawing back things for children. Schools are underfunded, sports and clubs and after school activities are clawed back. Daycare is expensive as shit. Governments continue to shrink these because they’re getting used less because the Country is relying on immigration more. Why fund 1-12 grades when your importing full adults.
Next no country had high birthrates if food and housing was expensive. It just doesn’t happen, period.
“But African countries have poor food production, explain why they have high birthrates-”
Again, they’re a farm economy. The more children they have the more food secure they become. Children = Farm workers. More workers equals more food. More food more sales, more sales the wealthier the family.
If countries want to boost births then they need to make it financially good to have them. Which would mean cutting back on immigration to increase wage growth for employers to search for workers and to compete with each other. Make homes cheaper, and food and goods cheaper as well.
Theres a reason the baby boom after WW2 happened, just replicate it if you want it to happen again.
Hahaha. Bit late to the party here aren’t they?
Too damn expensive in the UK. I moved abroad as many other European countries give tax breaks, financial support and other incentives to take away barriers to having children. Heck, in Berlin, they even give free fully funded childcare from birth to school age. And none of the child support tax trap nonsense either.
In this economy, and with WW3 looming over their heads? Really?
This fallacy again? For the 1000th time, there are two major misconceptions in the entire manufactured “population crisis” argument (even if we ignore the fact that our population grew over [3 times more in 100 years than the rest of history combined](https://www.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/photos/657156127/display_1500/stock-vector-world-population-graph-chart-on-white-background-past-present-and-future-time-chart-657156127.jpg)).
1 – People aren’t “not having children”, the amount of childless people (especially amongst the most educated) now is actually [lower](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/05/07/childlessness/) than it was in the 90s. People aren’t having a heckton of children like previous generations did, but claiming they’re “having no children” is wrong (and even the current numbers are [troublesome in the face of the current climate crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children) unless something is done about it fast).
2 – Comparing our generation with those that had multiple children is not just wrong, it’s dishonest. Having both parents work or having one parent work and another stay at home create a completely different environment. Our society is productivity-focused which means that everyone works. That’s perfectly fine but you can’t demand a productivity-focused society and at the same time the amount of children from family-based societies.
Even in my parents’ generation (I’m 36) whenever parents needed to go out etc. children would stay with their grandparents. Nowadays unless you have children past your 40s, the grandparents will both be working as well so good luck with that.
It’s really tiresome to see all this hypocrisy coming from our politicians, demanding both the productivity of our society and the large family focus of previous ones. Just cut to the chase and say out loud “we want more money and we want it from you”.
Cost of Living, Cost of Energy, and most people struggling to get a house and staying with parents into their 30s. Not surprisingly, how having kids is at the lowest of people’s issues when the majority are just barely surviving. The last good Era in the UK was the 90s, full of hope, and you could afford to live, let alone just scrape to survive.
Until a UK Government realises this and mandatory forces energy, food and house prices, or even rent control back to normalcy and not greed. Then, expect the next generation to be one of the most smallest populations of any generation. It really is that simple.