Why British mums are not surprised by plummeting fertility rates
Government data has revealed that the fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to the lowest level since records began, sparking concerns from experts and politicians.
However, the decline comes as no surprise to UK mothers, many of whom are extremely familiar with the challenges of being a parent in modern Britain.
According to new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime stands at 1.44 children per woman in 2023, the lowest value since records began in 1938.
The decline in fertility rates is most dramatic among women aged between 20 to 24 years old and 25 to 29 years old.
‘Work doesn’t work for mothers’
Caroline Marshall, 36, from London, tells Yahoo UK that she isn’t surprised by the ONS figures because of how difficult it is to juggle a career and childcare costs. She recalls how she discovered that "work doesn’t work for mothers".
"I went back to work really quickly after giving birth in 2018. I had several role models of mothers who also had careers and worked full time in my family, so I thought that’s just what we did," the mother-of-two says.
"But I was really overworked there even before I got pregnant and I just had this feeling they weren’t going to be as invested in me. I wanted to try and work through that after the birth, and it still didn’t work out."
Marshall, who has since founded her own company Upsource and hosts the podcast Bump to Business Owner, says working mums continue to feel pressure on their careers clashing with their desire to have children.
"Becoming a parent is a huge change, and that isn’t a bad thing, but it really does change everything," she continues. "Even when the children become old enough to go to school, you still have to consider that school hours aren’t the same as working hours, so it still impacts your ability to continue working."
For many parents, the cost of raising a child has gone up and households increasingly require both parents to work in order to make ends meet. Amongst single parents, the costs become even more overwhelming.
As becoming a parent impacts women's careers significantly more than men, many are rethinking whether they can really have it all.
‘The narrative around motherhood is overwhelmingly negative’
Modern parents face a whole range of issues that can’t be ignored - but Michelle Kennedy, founder of motherhood community app Peanut, believes that many would-be parents are also shying away from having children because of "overwhelmingly negative" discourse.
"We must acknowledge that the challenges we face are very real. We don’t have adequate childcare systems in place and yet, we want women to work like they’ve never worked before and to contribute to the economy like we’ve never considered before," she tells Yahoo UK.
"That is a huge, fundamental issue. But we’re also not telling the stories of women who are doing it successfully, and instead all we see are the extremes - either total perfection on social media or overwhelming negativity in public discourse."
She points to the US Surgeon General’s recent advisory warning that parents are reporting high levels of stress, which can have a harmful effect on their mental health if severe or prolonged.
"That was such a terrifying headline. Who wants to get pregnant or be a mother after seeing that?
"Of course we’re aware of how hard it is to be a mother and a parent nowadays. But it’s also incredible and amazing. I think we are in danger of telling women that, in order to be a mother, you have to have everything be perfect, and I just don’t know if that’s true."
A survey by Peanut recently found that 84% of mothers want a more balanced depiction of parenthood, with 91% reporting that becoming a mum brought them more joy and fulfilment than they had anticipated.
"We wanted to enable women to have conversations about what's hard, but it's gone so far the other way that they feel like they can't say the good stuff too," Kennedy reflects. "That's actually really so sad."
Is the UK government addressing the declining birth rate?
The government recognised that childcare is one of the biggest costs facing working families and has taken some steps to make it more accessible for working parents.
Last year, the previous government announced that working parents will be able to claim 30 hours of government-funded childcare a week, over 38 weeks a year, for children aged nine months until school age.
This is a good indication that officials are starting to understand the financial pressure parents are under, but Marshall believes they are still “hugely out of touch about what it really looks like to be a working woman and a mother in 2024”.
"They need to understand that childcare should be as important as the NHS as an infrastructure, because that’s how we can support modern families," she says.
Kennedy adds that there needs to be more education to help parents understand what they are entitled to and what support is already available, because it can be hard to navigate without help.
"It’s not as bleak as you think it is," she says, adding that businesses also need to do their bit. "Other things still need to change, such as flexible working. Businesses can do more to support women in the workplace."
Watch: UK's fertility rate falling faster than any other G7 nation - with austerity thought to be 'principal factor'
Read more about parenting:
The rise of pregnancies in women over 40 as Kourtney Kardashian welcomes baby boy (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
Fears about falling birthrate in England and Wales are misplaced – the population is due to grow for years to come (The Conversation, 5-min read)
‘It's easy to get sucked into competitive parenting, but no one wins the baby race’ (Women's Health, 7-min read)
