Why would these young adults have children when there is no affordable housing? They have absolutely 0 security

The fact is, raising children and keeping up with domestic responsibilities, is a full time job on its own. You can’t expect women to have both full time jobs outside of the home and a bunch of babies. As a single mom, I have to work, but I wish I could give all my attention to what matters most.

I read a few days ago: My great-grandparents had 12 kids, my grandparents 6, my parents 3, I have 1 and my daughter has a cat (and the cat is castrated).

Late stage Capitalism is overtly anti family. My dad (who was a printer) in the 70s was able to have 2 children, a stay at home wife and a 3 bedroom house in a nice suburb of London on his very working class wage.

Why have I never, ever, once heard a politician urging UK people to have more children?

Unless being a mother becomes a paid job - with insurance and pension scheme - not much will change

Put nationals on a child benefit cap of two whilst importing families with over 5 kids each.

Dr Paul Morland says that immigrants in turn have small families... Absolutely the opposite to what is happening. I live in Tower Hamlets and the average immigrant family (mostly one demographic) has 4-5 children.

Increasing numbers of unemployable single parents with children and universal benefits is not the answer.

The ‘why’ is simple - unhappy people do not invest in the future. Britain is a miserable country.

Another reason why endless Economic growth is a spurious Economic Model. In Australia it is becoming so expensive to live that many young people cannot afford too many children. Poor Economic management by Economists and Politicians.

The irony is that the couples who can least afford it tend to have large families and the ones who are more affluent and better educated decide to have fewer children.

The second question is "Why haven't we seen any pro-natalist policies for natives to encourage higher birth rates?" Instead we have mass immigration exacerbating housing issues and putting natives off having kids... The third question is "Do we even need mass immigration to address the ageing population problem when the immigrants get old (we don't give them 5 or 10 year visas and make them leave) too and that we are in the 4th Industrial Revolution now, robotics and AI is going to make a lot of people unemployed. Do we really want to be bringing millions with no great love and affinity to this nation who are likely to be soon totally disenfranchised and demanding from the state? Who thinks this is actually going to work out? I can explain why/how AI is going to do this, it seems inevitable.

The fact that this channel only has 260K subscribers tells us all we need to know about why British culture is going to disappear. None of the native British give a toss, and we are undergoing a massive and organised invasion of a hostile foreign religion. Once the cities fall, it's all over. No invading force cares what you are doing in the shires. It's all about the population centres.

Hungary gives tax incentives for natives to have kids.

NO HOUSES=NO FAMILIES!

The ONS back in 2001, before it had been completely infested with blair cronies did a series of articles on 'replacement immigration' and strongly advised AGAINST mass immigration, & concluded a small improvement in birth rates would yield a similar improvement to dependency ratios, and, more importantly, be stable, whereas high immigration just delivers a bigger problem down the line.

Far left LABOUR God help us

You ARE being replaced. They just don’t look like you or speak your language.

It's not just about women and their views on having children. So many men don't want them or change their minds after having them

MY mother, my wife, my children..... these people are humans beings not extensions of your ego-

Its so common sense. More jobs, more productivity, safer cohesive societies, better wages, happier people, more children will follow in this current world. But hosing is unaffordable, no job security, dangerous environments, woke curriculums, turns people off building relationships, starting families, interest or incentive in working at all. No taxpayers= no tax= no welfare.

Yes,. The rate of theUK is better than that of Japan. But dont forget that the UK has massive migration from other cultures while Japan does not.

Women going into the workforce in numbers made labour cheap. Wages go down. Prices go up. Now we have mass migration and more inflation. This system is failing.

Some terrifying days ahead... if nothing really disruptive is done very, very quickly! Thanks, Peter, for your amazing Public Service!

Israel's high fertility rate is for the most part attributable to the ultra-orthodox community where families with six or more children are the norm rather than the exception. There's also a very high birth rate in the Palestinian territories. In a documentary about Gaza filmed a few years ago, one man was proud to say he had fathered 40 children with three wives, 22 boys and 18 girls.

Were I younger( i am 73) I would not stay in this country. The future will be constant fighting and tension between Islam/ the far left and Everyone else. Demographics plus immigration suggest the Islamists will be a very strong force and will have strong influence in parliament

Near the beginning of this interview, the ratio of workers to the retired was quoted. I find that to be dishonest. What should have been quoted was the ratio of workers to ALL dependents, including citizens who are too young to be workers and the adults who care for people who are too young to be workers. Also the unemployed and the disabled.

I feel I could probably write an essay on reasons why women had few, if any children in the past thirty years, not that I really want to, but that have not really been explored by the two men in this otherwise interesting talk. Hmm, might start a few notes. Writing from a New Zealand perspective, I can see how our specific situation saw the decline in birth rates clearly. These include from my own perpective, time and place in a rapidly changing NZ society of the era: Cultural: Sexual revolution from late sixties changed society for us compared with the quite different lives of our parents, making life new and with no model of what was to come, putting a different, almost enforced pressure that young women from the late 1970s on must absolutely not consider staying at home to be a home maker, even if many of us would really have preferred that life. That was very much part of the zeitgeist for my era of hitting child bearing age in mid 80s/90s. Contraception availability - which was welcome, of course, also the lack of a dating culture which changed from the formal, preferable dating scene of that of our parents and resulted for us in poor partnerships, broken relationships, fewer children. Neoliberalism - experienced in NZ very sharply, suddenly and horiffically compared to most of the rest of the world meant removing the option pretty much entirely of being a stay at home mother, and absolute societal rebuffing if one found oneself a single parent even for a short period. Neoliberalism in NZ from 1991, our absolute worst year, was almost akin to Stalinist level anti-family policies. Absolutely no parental leave compared with Europe until decades later. I personally knew no women who were home makers, mums at home on a permanent basis. A few weeks, months, maybe a year. Luckily for me I worked only part time from after the first year, wanting to be the best parent I could for my one child and part time working mothers were generally said to be the best option for the child, but that may have been social conditioning forced upon us, as well. Zilch child friendly work/govt policies, expensive childcare. Child friendly govt and work policies only started to improve from mid 2000s in NZ. And of course, absolutely lack of affordability; the low wage economy that was deliberately, intentionally created by govt policies from 1984 onwards in NZ. Once the top quality of living standards in the world up to the 1960s, NZ regressed way below that of the OECD thereafter, and still languishes near the bottom, today. So, yeah, absolute social conditioning stemming majorly from govt policies really made the worst impact over the past few decades, at least in NZ, although improved in the recent decade and a half. I wonder if all of the above contributed to our, at the period through the 1990s, of such horrific child abuse in our country. No excuse of course, but the societal breakdown was definitely implanted by successive govt policies of the period. Reflecting back, I feel robbed of having had no societal option to have had the extremely important role of being a long term, stay at home Mum. And our society and future is the poorer for it

We are becoming the new Lebanon

I believe that Social and economic depression and also overwhelming forced demographic change imposed on us by successive governments has reduced the economic and social viability of having larger families in the UK.

One reason that we import doctors from places like Ghana (etc.) is that we've degraded status, wages, and working conditions of doctors, scientists, academics, (etc.) in real terms, to the point where young people are no longer attracted to joining those professions. We need to make essential professions attractive again.

None of these solutions will be contemplated by what Britain has just voted in sadly. To many British have the political memory of a gnat.

It’s economic for me. The majority of my 9-5 wage (university graduate) goes to housing, food, heating, etc. and I can’t see it getting to much better later on. I think housing is a huge thing, it’s easily most of my wage to keep a roof over my head.

It isn't just economic issues. I am in my 50s, live in London, and took the decision not to have a family many years ago. I did not want to bring up children in what has become a violent cosmopolis, where Christian values and English cultural history is under continual attack.

no chance im having kids with the direction the uk has gone over the last 30 years. F whats happening. not putting them through this crap.

Why is it that voting for the likes of Trump is a "backlash"? Why can it not just be that he, and those like him, represent the wishes of a lot of people? Just how many more countries need to vote rightwards, and their right of centre populist (that is to say, popular) politicians grow hugely in support, for them to stop being referred to as "a backlash"?

Handmaiden’s Tale is completely relevant as young women are used for their fertility by the wealthy when they themselves cannot afford to have her own child.

I am 57, I had 3 kids then adopted 2 more. So I have 5. What they are all facing now is that, even though they all would love to have at least 3 kids each, they cannot. They can’t for a simple reason: housing. There is no way they can afford a home, with all their effort, their university diplomas, they can just afford a “studio”, that is, a non-bedroom “apartment”. As housing is now something people invest in, they expect 30-80% return. This “return” is pushed onto renters and buyers… so now we have a young generation that cannot afford to rent nor buy their first home. How can they have or adopt kids? They just can’t!

Blame the building societies. They started to take husbands' and wives' incomes into account when making loans. This was in the 1960s. House prices doubled. Then it took two incomes to buy a family sized home.

As an ancient postwar child who chose not to have children, it was still a joy being a ‘favourite uncle’ who, of course, ignored parents and dished out copious quantities of icecream, seaside rock and all the ‘wrong’ things that made children happy. That was MY choice. What is NOT MY CHOICE is the dishing out of largesse from my taxes (yes!! I’m still paying tax!!) to non-indigenous arrivals on our shores who continue to absorb more and more child benefit by having more and more children. This is not a flippant comment, just come to my town of Bolton on any weekday and walk around or travel on the bus - it’s simply out of control, since the non indigenous aren’t working they also obtain many other benefits. 👍🇬🇧👍🇮🇱👍🇬🇧👍🇮🇱👍🇬🇧👍

The problem is no one is looking to turn of the tap of indefinite leave to remain and citizenship after just 5 years which is why everyone coming legally or illegally. U.K. sitting on a ticking time bomb as all 3 million who arrived since 2019 will be given citizenship - there is no way the demographics of the U.K. will survive this because numbers higher than in last 1000 years and their birth rates higher so it’s all over unless someone wakes up and changes the laws Temporary work visas only- they will still come but will never get citizenship- this will take pressure of housing etc and support locals to give birth

Simple answer: People who dont work are rewarded while people who do work are squeezed dry of their money. Its the definition of insanity

And to add the establishment answer will be more immigration.

Someone needs to investigate how many MP's has children..... especially ones who are of an age to be eligible for the draft.

Something I noticed in the workplace over many years is people complaining their taxes being spent on other people's children and how the Governments keep allowing so many people in from other Countries. I always ask these people how many children do you yourself have? And almost invariably the answer is Zero!

Every message to girls and women is anti traditional family. The Barbie movie represents our age perfectly.

You are wrong to say "it appears the world has given up having children". It seems it only concerns non-islamic world

Homelessness and lack of financial security is definitely a put off

I love how Peter lets his guest reply fully and only interrupts for clarification

think peculiar things like the cladding crisis have also played a factor, following the dreadful fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017. Many other tower blocks were found to have similar cladding problems, which now needs removing, but there have been multiple rows about who should pay for the work. Thousands of responsible young people, for whom the flat was their first step on the property ladder, found themselves with a bill of more than a years wage. Meanwhile, their flat is unsaleable and many go to bed worried about another fire. Often, there are fire wardens now on duty every night. Not only can these young adults not afford a family, but who would want a baby in a place at risk of fire?

"The material thing" may seem irrelevant to you, big man. But if you are working 12-hour shifts for companies like Amazon, where you have to relieve yourself in a bottle and then pay high costs in rent for a small apartment and so on, it only seems logical that having kids is going to be way down on your list of priorities. That kind of stress wears people out and dampens the desire to get it on. Indeed, if working conditions aren't compatible with family life and our economic overlords want to squeeze as much out of their workers as possible, I doubt the population decline will stop soon. It amazes me that the top 1% of the population that complain about the majority of the population not having kids don't actually see that they are coming across like the old slave masters who complained about their slaves not breeding. Would any sane person want to bring a child into the world knowing they'd be little more than wage slaves/serfs for their tech overlords? Besides, if it's such a big problem, why not go out and start having loads of kids yourself, big man. Just do what Genghis Khan did, if you know what I mean. If you don't want to do that, then pay people to have kids just like you pay them to clean windows, go down into sewers and fly planes. People respond to the economic incentives in front of them; clearly, there aren't enough economic incentives to have kids.

A child is two dependents: the child himself and the adult who must care for, or teach him. An ageing population is a matter of supporting the elderly, instead of babies and their mothers.

Immigration always crowds out indigenous family formation in a developed economy that has no space to expand into (land) or resources that require exploitation (UK doesn’t have these in any measure that could not be exploited by the indigenous workforce: see coal mines). Young indigenous as far back as the 70s started to make rational economic and social decisions when they saw the beginning of resources being redirected to immigrants over the indigenous. This carried on at a steady rate until the 90s when it accelerated vastly under the Blair “rub their noses in diversity” project got going. And so here we are.

I’m unable to have kids and it’s devastating. I can’t believe people are choosing not to have them these days. I’m expecting to see a lot of people shouldering a heavy burden of regret in the years to come.

Worth mentioning that relationships between men and women has also descended into utter chaos since the rise of social media and online dating. People don't want to enter seriously into long term relationships and a lot only seem to have children by accident, if at all which makes them more unloved than in previous generations where children were properly planned for. Either the man or woman (both, even) sleeps around which results in divorce and ultimately single parent families. We know how damaging it often is for children growing up with only one parental influence. Add into this mix the fact that people now largely want to date purely on looks and not personality (thanks mainly to people living a life online in pictures and adverts), and you end up with a generation of people with completely miserable lives.

My preferred strategy would be to give women who have already had kids free university tuition. The problem now is not teenage mothers, its women (and men) in their late 30s & 40s whose aged seeds and eggs are simply not as virile as they were a decade earlier. See Ed Dutton and his commentary on spiteful mutants. Instead of career first, then kids, it should be kids first, then career. Even employers would probably like it as there is no maternity leave & care to worry about.

The problem is that most single women are not attracted to most men. Thats why there are so many people not marrying and having families. The people who do get married and have families are having enough children (2-4). But they can't make up for all these people who are not finding partners.

There are many facets to this discussion Women in the workplace = less opportunities for men = less money for men = less married women = less early formed families = less children Add in Central banks creating inflation making life even more expensive and all of the above issues become greater problems... Families matter, housing matters, cost of living matters. Women that want families but NEED to work to maintain their standard of living (or luxury) CANNOT have families early and thus less children. Economics is a major cause of demographic ills. So what is the core problem that creates economic stress? Inflation of course or the Cost ofLiving.... but how is it caused? The Central banking monetary system creates inflation via money printing. It destroys families by impoverishing them. It creates immigration as a short term sugar for fixing demographics. End the central banks and create wealth for the masses!

Why have children you are not allowed to raise in the country, language, and culture of their birth?

Promoting children should come together with promoting and incentivising stable 2-parent families, with steady income and a large support network of grandparents, friends and church/community. Being a non-believer myself, I feel jealous about the community that churches offer, but I just can't force myself to listen to all the drivel about non-existent prophets and celestial intelligence. We should be realists, and realists must realise that we need to support monogamy and a community support network to allow people to procreate

One thing we could do to help fertility in both the biological and demographic sense, is to end the mass-manufacture of artificial hormones. The presence of these in the ground water supply is hurting both men and women, so they should be banned as an environmental toxin.

"I don't think we should go back to the 50's, I think we need women in the workplace" Then you have chosen death for your country. Good night.

I'm in the U.S. I am a mother of two children ... why do these pod casts about why aren't people having children featuring two old guys, or two young guys with no kids?

The average cost of raising a child from birth to 18 in the UK is £223,256. This includes housing and childcare costs. That’s around £12,400 a year, or £1030 a month. How many can afford (1) nevertheless multiple children?

Whenever I'm out and I see people with their kids they're always crying and running around, and the parents look so stressed out and miserable! I decided a long time ago I don't want to live like that.

Its got to the point now nothing can and won't be done, just sit back watch the show its going to be spectacular.

There is nothing better than a family! But a responsible one! As many children as you can afford ,feed , and educate.

Well done for introducing the feminism issue into this conversation Peter, thank you. Perhaps the author doesn't wish to be anti-feminism because he knows damn well there's a good chance of being 'cancelled' if he was! Honestly, we really need to stop pussyfooting around this issue if we want our culture to survive let alone thrive. So the author spoke to feminists - good show! Did he also talk to anti-feminists though? There's quite a few of them around and many of them are female.

Voddie Bauchim talks about three steps of brainwashing, the second of which is "Jamming". This step is characterized as massive social pressure to endlessly qualify every statement you make that is counter to The Narrative. "I'm not saying go back to the 50's, I'm not against women in the workplace, I'm not saying I'm anti-feminist" you say over and over again, until you forget to take your own side, and you ultimately say "I don't have the answers". Recognize what has happened to your mind. Reject it. Avoid situations where people continue to affect your mind this way. Hold fast to the truth. Say what you have to say, without qualification. Do not fear to embrace solutions from the past, they worked.

"We're not going back to the 50's or the 80's" And here's where you give the game away. The 80's went back to the 50's. There's no reason the 20's and 30's can't go back to the 80's, except all the whiners saying "can't be done, can't be done". It's pathetic.

Here's my take: the 'rules' underpinning the current notion of marriage and family are repulsive. Sensible women aren't interested.

The maddest statistic of all is that the US, the original 'nation of immigrants', has 21% of births to a foreign born mother. The UK, historically a nation of emigrants, has 31% of births to a foreign mother, ie 50% higher than the US. The most incredible thing about all this is that the UK, despite having literal third world,developing country levels of explosive population growth these last few years still has a stagnant economy, even underperforming nations like Japan or Italy.

Delaying having children also has an impact. Consider having 2 kids at age 18 vs having 2 kids at age 38. In one scenario, when you reach age 38, your children are already having children. By delaying, nearly an entire generation is being skipped. There are fewer young people to support an aging population.

Ythe thing that the author misses about the low birthrate is not that Japan's population will go back to 100 million and there will be one worker per retiree, but that the population of children will drop by 90%. Which means a long turm population of Japan will be 14 million. In South Korea the population of babie will drop by 95% in 3 generation.

People have replaced children with household pets. Dogs and cats now are the children. It is bizarre how pets are treated. If you ever see people out and about, and not cloistered with a screen, it is with their dogs.

One word............ freedom.

Around me, women do want children. It’s their boyfriends (shouldn’t be boyfriends anymore) who « don’t feel ready ». It the case for every single one of my female friends ! Why don’t we talk about this issue ? It’s such a childish mindset.

There are two major obstacles to increasing birthrate: - Prospects of the future - Financial wellbeing You don’t have children if you can’t afford it and if the future is bleak. There is also a fundamental problem in relation to our monetary system. It relies on new people existing and taking on debt in order to grow the monetary supply. This is going to have to change. We need a fiscal based monetary system.

Talk about betting on every horse in the race; couldn't get the interviewee to give anything but indefinite answers.

Maybe the falling fertility rate is an act of nature of which we have no control. Nature works in mysterious ways. We just need to find solutions in dealing with less people. More volunteers, more intergenerational households, being more self sufficient etc.

very interesting discussion. Your guest might find it boring, but he really hasn't got a clue about women and I'm afraid women are the key to this....

Our biggest demographic crisis now is the Labour government.

"I don't have the answers." So clearly, we should not follow your advice. A good start would be, look at the approach you've taken (rejecting the 50's, forcing women into the workforce) and doing the OPPOSITE.

It may be time to focus on your men. A study was done on male and female lottery winners. It found winning made men much more likely to marry than women it also decreased divorce rates. Men would use new found resources to build families, whereas women would use said resources to exit families. Right now the majority of university graduates are women. Women under 30 are out earning their male equivalents, and marriage rates are at all-time lows. People are leaving it very late to form relationships, this is especially bad for women whose fertility takes a nose dive after 35. (Note that when you break down the fall in birthrate the greatest fall is from women under 25. For women over 30 it has increased) Women naturally prefer to pair with men who are more successful and confident than themselves. Focus on your men, find ways for them to succeed. Families will naturally form.

Most people can't handle work and children at the same time properly ... because work pays the expenses... suffer the children ... when they become adults... have less children...

Pension payments should be linked to fruitful offspring , e.g. for every tax paying offspring , the retiree receives £150 per month from the state. If the person refuses to raise a child , their selfishness means they do not receive a pension.

Many people leave it until they are over 30 yrs old when fertility is already declining. This also means that you only have energy for 1-2 kids. Some at this age fail to get pregnant. Therefore the average birth rate is below 2.

Some of it is development and comfort… but most of it is how much we work for so little. My wife and I are 29, we spend very little. One 32k job wasn’t enough to cover expenses so my partner got a part time one too. Cost of living is through the roof, we waste billions on new arrivals that attack us in the street, and inflation. So we try to save each month and children get further away as each set back hurts savings. Your landlord sells so now you need a moving lorry, your employer goes under, you’re fired for wrong think or speech. Can just never get out of the ditch at the speed the government can dig it deeper. Whites want kids…. We struggle to have them.

The Macro picture of demographics is distorted from the actual experience of young people’s opportunity to afford a family.

Because media was telling climate change and that AI will take all jobs.

The cost of living as well as our expectations of what constitutes a ‘decent life/standard of living’ is likely a huge factor. Higher levels of educational attainment among women and delays due to establishing one’s career are related factors. All of these are valid and we’re not going to turn back the clock so we will likely having incentivise couples / provide more support. Older women (who would have retired) in previous generations and might have helped with childcare are having to work for longer often due to economic circumstances (some may be related divorce) and also increase in pension age. It’s something of a wicked issue. Not an easy one!

University should be from age 30 onwards , young people should spend the time 18 to 22 creating families , and upto 30yrs, raising families.

That's the fptp sistem which is designed always for majorities.... every little problem has to wait 4 years to be fixed... meantime it just gets worse... that's the moments you wish you had 71 MP's instead of five...

To ensure survival of offspring people don't procreate in uncertain times. War, famine. Depression recession, hyperinflation. Feminism, antimale family courts. ETC. Mouse utopia.

For a demographer he seems very ignorant of the simple reason why the replacement rate is 2.1 and not 2. It is not infant mortality. Mortality can strike at any age and thus is not factored in It is the fact boys are born at a slightly higher rate than girls, so with a replacement rate of 2 there will be slightly fewer than 1 girl/womb born per woman and a gradual collapse would still occur.

Feminism. The End.

Money and lack of it .. middle / working class has been destroyed

One of the reasons is both the man and woman have to work now.

Weak discussion, avoiding hard truths (many of which have been mentioned in other comments) and a lukewarm cup of milky tea guest. Disappointing.