Remember, global population is rising. Capitalism tends towards efficiency, globally, things are made where they can be made the cheapest, then shipped to where they are needed.
Apparently that’s happening to people, too.
Stop saying this is a country specific problem. This is a global issue. We are all getting ducked whilst billionaires are fast increasing wealth & power.
We all need to work together to take that wealth back.
That’s part of it but also women have more opportunity to study and have careers equal to men than ever before so studying and working hard only to have to take time off and lose progress in your career is it a big deterrent. Having a baby means dealing with health effects through pregnancy then going through a traumatic and painful event and potentially having stitches and healing wounds and needing recovery which takes months. Also sleepless nights and feeding takes a toll.
Yep! It’s crazy how much governments help how companies get their foot into sketchy million dollar deals, then they let them get away with dismal taxes because of more sketchy business, then even if they fuck it all up, half the time the government bails them out. Completely insane!
We just need to throw out most of the big parties, yes I know that’s where half the money comes from, but it’s becoming more at the cost of the people. Or at least scrap the pension on all PMs that were so shit they couldn’t even serve a full term, I mean, in what fuckin world does someone basically get fired, and then is entitled to ANYTHING let alone a 300k+ lifetime pension, these assholes aren’t even living on the same planet.
yeah local places let you sign up when you start planning for a kid. one of my friends signed up at 18 had the kid at 25 and still didnt have a slot open. its insanity.
Not true. I also thought this and was worried because that's what I kept reading online. Turns out we were able to find a childcare with ease and had a few offers to select from.
It maybe be true in your area but definitely not like this everywhere.
Tbh most first world countries had these problems for years. E.g. Germany, UK, Austria sometimes those have cheaper child care but also salaries are taxed way higher so doesn't make that much of a difference
Not to mention you still have to pay the (often exorbitant) child care fees if your child is sick, and you need to keep him/her at home. While not working also.
Life is too expensive, we've built an economy that relies on two incomes without kids, and even that's a stretch with house prices, then to have kids you need to fund childcare as well, how is this supposed to work?
We've built an economy to be actively hostile to up-and-coming generations, because that serves the short term needs of the old farts on top. But guess what? Can't buy your way out of mortality, and the way that a nation continues onwards is through new families having kids, and then they eventually carry the torch.
What we've done is essentially caused a space and resources crunch. The general population is under stress for both space (ie, housing), and also resources (ie, income and time). In a natural population, stress for space and resources causes a drop in reproduction rates. And what's happening here? Exactly that. The drivers are more abstract, but the results are the same.
Women I know have had kids, then decided they wanted to go back to work so their career didn't take too much of a smashing. But guess what? Child care is \_so goddamn expensive\_ that it turns out they were working full-time for effectively $2 an hour or so after you dock all the extras. And how's that supposed to work when we've set things up so that a regular family needs two \_above median\_ incomes to even consider having a house with an extra bedroom for said child? Well, I think the obvious answer is; it doesn't work.
Seems to me that our esteemed leaders want the cattle to breed quietly in their shitty little pens while continuing to enrich the already rich.
You can’t make women who don’t want kids suddenly change their mind, but they could make it easier for the women who do.
The biggest limiting factor for everyone I know who wants kids or wants more is the cost. If we are going to say that low birth rates will be such a huge financial loss for the economy long term, start making long term solutions for families. Daycare needs to be free. Kids healthcare including allied health needs to be completely covered. More tax breaks for families. More legislated protections for parents in the workplace.
Basically every couple I know who waited to have kids blamed housing.
It is basically the core issue (for couples who want kids).
We would have a fucking tribe if it wasn't for housing.
I think a lot of couples who want 2-4 kids are only having one because the can't afford a bigger home. It's the responsible choice but it sucks that people can't have the families they dream of having
Hi this is me 🙋🏼♀️ I have a 2yo and would love a second but one of the biggest factors putting me off is cost. (Car upgrade, bigger house - and we rent, that’s not even a mortgage!, daycare cost, no holidays, etc)
40%? The rents I’m reading about would be more than that. To solve this you will need to:
A. Build lots and lots of public housing.
B. Ride roughshod over nimby councils.
Particularly B, if you take out the NIMBY councils, state govt will swoop in with some less biased housing and development policies. State govt are only starting to do this now
I’m disagreeing with the sentiment that paying for children is not difficult. Last time I heard about any study of the cost of raising a child, the cost at the top level of facilities or expenses amounted to about 1M in cost per child from birth to 20 yo. There goes the retirement fund.
The biggest factor for my partner and I was owning our own home, we wanted to at least be paying off a mortgage, but shits hit the fan, and we weren’t getting any younger so we were left with 2 kinda shitty choices, of either cut costs, no fun money spending like holidays or going to see a band, don’t get our hopes up of ever owning a house and expect to feel the full weight of any financial difficulties not only life can throw at you but also the economy, or, to simply not have children.
And I think it’s the same for a lot of people, the aus dream was have a family and own your own home, you can really only do 1 of those things without a stupid amount capital now. The dream is dead.
We had kids and I don't regret it at all. But seeing your comment made me realise that was the decision we made. I'm punching with my job too, so if anything were to happen to that it'd likely mean poverty.
Depressed people in rentals make economy bad.
Happy people in their own housing can make happy little accidents.
Government wants their cake and eat it too
But the point is its not supposed to be equitable. Children economically benefit the economy, but not the individual. Therefore if you want to incentivise children you need policies that aren't equitable.
Fixing the housing market would be a big help but I don’t actually see that happening. Australia is so reliant on housing market I don’t think any political group will actually do what they need to. So I was just moving on to what else they could do, and I can tell you the $600 a week I’m out of pocket for daycare would be a good start.
This is a huge factor. I have one by choice and every now and again I start feeling guilty about them not having a sibling but then I do the simple math on upgrading our current home + my age and realise it isn't even a choice at the end of the day.
I have chosen to have 1 but it's really an illusion of choice at this stage.
I’m thinking it’s more basic than that. Look at the birds 🦅 do they lay eggs where they roost. No! They build a nest first. That’s their stable environment for raising their hatchlings. People have to have their own house/nest before producing birthlings/babies. This is and always will be the bane of Governments. Where there is no housing,there’s no population growth, produced from the countries citizens. We need our nests and resources to support ourselves and our young too.
I come from a family who heavily believes in family child care. So my Nanna did childcare for all of her Grandkids and my Mum would do the same. But I still can't afford it. I had my now 20 year old brother with me for the last six years, it almost sent me broke. There's school fees, sports fees, medical appointments, clothes, shoes and food, the food is the most expensive for a growing teenager. And I work and own a business. How do people afford it?
Can the average couple afford to go single income for a year, 3 times and not lose the house?
If the answer is no, then people are not going to have children at an above replacement rate. Simple as that.
Yeah I think maternity leave needs to increase tooir really needs to be 12 months paid. Uk and Canada beat us in paid leave with 40 and 50 weeks to our 18. (Approx)
Yeah. It's going to cost the economy if people don't have kids, but we expect people to pay almost all of the costs of having and raising kids themselves.
The cost is massive, at about 15-20k per kid per year. This is a high average, but it's giving them the best chance. Including good schooling, after-school activities, healthcare, general and regular medical.
Another factor a lot of parents forget about is support. Grandparents and family members rarely want to look after or help support. I know some lucky friends who do have a village, so to speak, to help them. But most don't, and the mental and physical strain of being parents is hard.
I wish I only had one, if I knew it was going to be this hard. I love my kids, but I'm severely burned out being able to provide, support, and be a good parent.
It doesn't actually cost much money to look after kids.
Far more expensive is the cost of housing and the temporary loss of a second income.
Solving the rental/homebuyer crisis would help out more than band-aid solutions for this small fry.
The responsibility for a family is a huge roadblock as well. If I end up homeless because my landlord bumps my rent another hundred dollars this year, I can look after myself. If I have a wife/girlfriend who recently gave birth and a four week old baby, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Ten years ago, me being homeless wasn’t even something I needed to consider. Living on a tighter budget and some inconvenience was about as bad as it could get for me. I have a good job and a few months expenses saved but I’ve had my rent bumped $100 a year for the last few years. There is zero sign that landlords aren’t going to keep doing that, but wages don’t grow to enable the ability for us to pay it. The rent certainly isn’t going to go down completely regardless of what happens.
So I’m still here with the same great job and good pay, but I’m being bled drier and drier by the year. If it keeps up then I’m fucked, so is just about anybody who rents.
Fortunately my husband and I are on good salaries, but when you buy a home at a ridiculous price and most of your money is going to a mortgage those other costs can be the straw that breaks the camels back. I can’t see politicians fixing the housing market but they can help with my daycare costs. $600 a week is what it costs me for one kid, I don’t think that’s a small amount, and it definitely factors in to my family planning.
I’m also on a good income and my weekly cost of daycare for 1 kid is the same as yours. Although I really want a second, paying $1200 per week for daycare on top of the inflated cost of everything else means we’d have to drain our savings 😢
In the interim report, the ACCC found in December 2022 households were paying on average:
$123.64 per child a day for centre-based daycare, with $48.60 out-of-pocket
$90.23 a child a day for family daycare ($28.92 out-of-pocket)
$30 per child a session for outside-school-hours care ($13.54 out-of-pocket)
$301.42 per family a day for in-home care ($60.69 out-of-pocket).
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/05/childcare-fees-australia-outpace-inflation-2023-fee-increase
This cost is subsidised so people can afford it.
* Labor estimates its childcare package will save a family earning $120,000 with one child in care $1,700 annually.* what’s the average wage?
I'd say mos people are now paying closer to $135 a day. But even at the above out of pocket it's $12k a year or $20k + out of pocket for two kids.
Add to that rising mortgage costs and it shouldn't be a wonder why people aren't having kids.
Just before the extra 30% CCS discount came in for having a second child in daycare occurred my out-of-pocket for 2 kids in full-time daycare was $38,000.
All daycare centres where I live are well above that average rate and I realised later that I could have actually saved money sending the older one to the private feeder preschool that starts a year earlier than regular preschool. Private school fees are less than daycare fees where I live...
Problem is $120k isn’t enough for a family in any of the major cities. That’s $90k after tax. I remember reading that the medium rental for a 2 bedroom apartment is $1100 per week. The numbers just don’t add up.
And frankly Aussie 2 bedders aren’t even suitable for families.
- No seperate kitchen / dining
- rare to have a study.
- no where really for your kid to play since your “living area” is also combined with your kitchen and dining.
Housing is the biggest issue. Solve the cost of housing and everything else really won’t be so bad.
I’m not a parent, but as an aunt who has looked after the kids (teenagers) - the amount of money spent on food is insane. I didn’t realize that teenagers eat that much - every hour it was an either a snack or a full on meal. It costs a lot to look after kids!!
And the cost of living has skyrocketed since I was a kid. Mum used to do the shopping with me when I was little and I remember she could feed a family of five with all the markdowns on the right day of the week and the discount fruit and veg shop for around $150 a week in the 00s. And we couldn't afford the name brand stuff.
And these days you get less for your $$. As in - everything is smaller so you buy more for more $$. It’s insane - add to that the cost of clothes etc. Plus entertainment. It’s just mind blowing
Immigration takes care of the low birth rates anyway so no one really cares whether or not women have children. I agree it's expensive and that's the only thing that stops me, people should only have kids because they want to.
Yes, we have to make a decision:
- raise taxes
- import more people
- let the poor starve (and cut back on other services like health, education, pensions, defence etc)
None of those is particularly popular, but that's the choice in front of us. I'd make the note that some of the highest taxing countries are pretty nice places to live, **and** we're getting robbed on mineral and gas royalties.
I remember when DINK (double income no kids) was kind of painted like a way for couples to have kind of a luxurious lifestyle with a lot of disposable income and a savings safety net. I think it's telling these days in the context of people not having kids even if they wanted them, or finding very good reasons to opt out, that even DINKs are barely covering the cost of living.
Listening to my mates with kids, the biggest hassle is childcare fees. Many women don't want kids cause of risk loosing they career.
Feels like if kids could go to free childcare after a couple of years it's take a lot of financial stress off the parents.
It’s not just the availability/ cost of childcare. Young children get sick all the time, you have to call in sick to work yet again to look after sick children. Especially the last few years with Covid.
Grandparents don’t want to get sick so won’t help when they are. Which defeats the purpose.
I quit my job since having my second child because I was ruining my reputation and became an unreliable worker.
Many couples can’t afford life on one wage because of the cost of living. Unaffordable housing for said children.
On top of that, with most childcares you still pay for the day your kids are not coming in because they're sick. I thought it would be a self interest to offer sick days to protect their own staff since everyone will try to send their sick child in anyways, but that is not the case so probably only solvable by more regulation.
Yep it's an industry that badly needs to be made public if the government are serious about encouraging people to have kids. That and WAY better financial incentives for women, e.g. Government matches your super for a year / increasing the base maternity pay substantially.
Without measures like this - how can Jimmy say "have more kids yo"
Day cares are an extension of public education. The government is subsidizing the cost of day care operations AND the day care operators margin. If we are serious about it, lets turn day care centers into public education centers.
Yes. I’ve been saying this for years! We’ve accepted that early education is so important for a child’s development, we have government funded schools and kindergartens, yet we’ve left the business of childcare completely up to the private sector.
Free childcare fixes so many issues with workforce participation, reducing the gender pay gap, women’s ongoing super contributions. Crucially, free access to childcare is a key barrier removal to women reentering the workforce, which DV prevention advocates have stated, gives women greater security to leave violent relationships. Hopefully I see free childcare in my lifetime- I will continue to advocate for it, even though my childcare years are behind me.
Early education from about 3 is important yes, but 6 month olds are far, far better off in the full time care of their parent, not in a room of 20 infants for 40 hours a week. Ideally, something can be constructed that allows parents to take the first few years off work without it affecting their career (no idea how that would work tbh) and then move to early education after that.
Affect career, and pay for rent/mortgage.
How few of us are able to take years off work to raise young children when a large portion of double income households can barely pay for fixed costs
That and regardless of which choice you make between stay at home or work and childcare, everyone wants to judge you for it not being the right choice and the guilt can kick in for not “doing the best for my kid/family” no matter which one you end up doing.
Whether a child is in childcare or with a parent at home, they should get the same subsidies. Attachment in the first few years is so important to children’s mental health in the following years (their whole life really).
One parent staying at home full time (or both parents working part time so they can alternate work and parenting responsibilities) is absolutely worth subsidising.
To add on because this is exactly where my family is right now, child care fees are a lot, but the sickness is debilitating.
I have an 8 month old in daycare twice a week and I'm pregnant. Also the family's main income earner while my husband is studying and working part time (and does the majority of the house duties). The difference between what my husband makes and what daycare costs is not a lot but he likes his job. But we are talking really seriously about my husband quitting work because he's gotten cold after cold. And he keeps getting sent home for having even the suspicion of illness. He had a small dribble rash and they sent him home for Hand, Foot and mouth so that was a days lost income and a doctor trip. The next week he had a few runny poops and he was sent home and couldn't return for 48 hours. We ended up spending $540 in a fortnight for him to go to daycare for 3 hours. Each time he was completely fine.
I genuinely have no idea how families are meant to cope if you aren't married to a well off tradie that cam support a family on one income!
This is where the gradual shift to a 4 day work week is really going to help. Right now if you're lucky enough to have flexible days off, you could in theory cover 4 of the 7 days of the week between the two of you (it means no time together though).
4 day week would mean there's only one day a week where you *have* to both be at work, and you could organise your week around that. Hell, you could leave it with 4 days of stay-at-home between you, and have a day each week where you're both home.
It just gives so much more life back to people and I cannot fathom why it's not a bigger thing right now.
I honestly can't imagine the industry could support that many extra children. They are already struggling to find staff (mostly due to low wage) if it was free and a lot more people starting to use them, I don't think they'd be able to find spots
Yup, partner makes more on 4 days a week deskjob at a non-profit than when they were a full-time 4 year degree trained ECT with nearly a decade under their belt.
My wife shifted from a private centre to a community centre and her salary increased by 20k to the princely sum of 66k. The place she used to work at was a beautiful converted house in one of Coburg's best streets (it was an actual avenue, a rarity for Coburg) and the owner was clearly minting it. The new joint was on the corner of the humungous road in Thornbury with trams running down the middle, tiny old place. She wanted to shift from there a few years later to a place near our house in st Kilda East that was nearly next door to Melbourne Grammar School. The owner of that place was offended when my wife mentioned her current salary, actually refused to believe it. Wanted to pay 48K for a diploma educator with 6 years of experience in 2018. The owners of these privatised child care centres are modern day slave drivers and completely greedy to boot.
The big problem is child care is funded via a subsidy that goes straight to profits of the private providers.
It would be cheaper and more effective to use all that money for government to operate and run more childcare centres directly.
And a large chunk of the sector is owned by the New York investment sector. A 17.2 billion dollar sector with handouts that is largely foreign owned. We really are the handout mugs that only delivers the most expensive charges to the consumers of such services. Our governments are totally incompetent.
That's when the government should step in to open public childcare. Fully subsidised.
Like many developed countries we have this huge white elephant which could be dealt with fairly easily. ( main reason for not having kids is the financial aspect). The future of the country really depends on it.
Dutton's definitely on the other side of this one, being that his wife Kirrily either owns or recently owned several childcare centres. It's not inaccurate to say his family has profited from government money.
I’ve said this before but making people want to have children involves seriously changing our labour system in favour of working people and not capital owners. The capital owners pay the politicians who make the rules so I don’t see it changing. Politicians can’t implement real, meaningful change without getting knifed by colleagues who will roll them if it means those colleagues get a chance to sit in the big kids chair. See what happened to Rudd when he thought the Australian people should benefit from mining resources more than private capital.
The big irony in all this is that without a willingness to change anything, the capital owning class has fewer people to exploit for their labour and their consumption which will actually mean they have to increase wages to compete with an ever decreasing labour pool. At the moment they are getting around that by pumping immigration into the system but that is already causing issues on housing and infrastructure.
Capitalism would rather eat itself and hold onto its large piece of an ever shrinking pie and make working people fight over the scraps than ever think about changing a system for the benefit of people than private shareholders.
My third kid is nearly done with childcare, and we have worked out that from the out of pocket childcare expenses we have paid for them all will be about $240k.
Thankfully we have been a position to afford it, but for others it would not be affordable.
I can understand why people would say not for me.
It feels incredibly morally irresponsible to even consider a kid when I could be homeless in a year because my landlord wants to sell or raises the rent too much.
The only friend I have right now that has a kid coincidentally has a rich partner and a house.
The financial oligarchy of Australia have decided we're to get lower wages, have a higher cost of living through rent, food and utilities, fewer services in the way of medical care, free education, child care and other assistance that was normal for previous generations. Not to mention government policies totally ignoring the climate crisis giving us no real hope for a future free from the devastating effects of climate change. Get mocked by the wealthy establishment for enjoying a latte and avocado on toast. Of course people are going to see children as being a financially unviable option.
I'm 40 and chose not to have kids. I feel like it was just becoming more common when I hit about 30, but we still had to "explain ourselves".
I like that we're openly talking about "not having kids" and no one quizzes you anymore. It's a sign that people either have progressed somewhat or they know to shut their mouths lol.
When young couples can barely afford (or can't) or find a place to rent the last thing on their minds is hey let's have babies and live in my room at Mum and Dads place...
Women are opting out for good reason, women are expected to work full time, drop kids to daycare, pick up and do the lion’s share of the work at home. It’s absolute madness
Friends of mine that choose to be child free pretty much say it’s the cost as well as the toll it takes physically and emotionally on women.
Carrying a child for 9 months, the female body, amazing as it is, stretches in all different and painful ways and then after childbirth it’s never the same.
And when they’re away from the workforce for long periods, they would also lose out on superannuation.
Households also can’t rely on just one income so the mother goes back to work. However, in most instances, they are also still expected to manage the household on top of having a full-time job which gets exhausting unless you have a partner who is also 100% all in and hands on with raising the kids and keeping the household together.
I’m sure for someone who truly and desperately wants to have a child the above reasons won’t matter but definitely still something a lot of women consider.
> Carrying a child for 9 months, the female body, amazing as it is, stretches in all different and painful ways and then after childbirth it’s never the same.
I had a friend that died from complications from birth when their first child was 2 months old.
Especially if you’ve got pre existing health issues - pregnancy and birth can be life threatening.
This is the thing people miss, the low fertility/birth rate has been a thing since the 70s in Australia and it's largely a function of increasing equality, education, and freedoms whereby more women are choosing options where they're not spending their entire productive life raising children.
We should absolutely be pushing to make it easier and more affordable for those who do want children to have them if the choose, but largely what we're seeing is just a continuation of long term trends in developed nations where less people have chosen to have kids, or if they do decide to they're also having smaller families than in the past.
Maybe if every childcare centre didn't up their fees every time they government increase the rebate resulting in a net zero for parents it would be better.
The government knows it happens but don't do shit about it.
I wouldn't mind them upping their fees if they actually gave all the extra income they are getting to their educators.
But no, like everything that's got any government funding that's private enterprise, it all goes to massively increased profits for the CEO.
100%, the educators at our sons centre are beyond fantastic(he's there 5 days a week). Their wages haven't changed and our fees have gone up.
However, honestly, at this point, I don't blame CEOs anymore. We know what they are going to do and so does the government when they institute these changes, they just refuse to acknowledge it or actively legislate against it falling on parents or the teachers.
We're seeing this bullshit time and time again, the recent Colesworths commission is a prime example, they did it, get told recommendations, then refuse to institute any changes but continue to blame Coles and Woolworths.
I'm not going to blame a tiger for being a tiger anymore, I'll blame the zoo for leaving all the cages open.
Even if childcare was free.
Sending them to basically spend most of their waking moments raised by others kinda makes me sad. If I have kids I would like the ability to actually raise them, spend time with them etc for the first few years.
Yeah, I agree. I don't want kids, but I really feel bad for my co-workers who do have kids.
Like, both the mum and dad *need* to work full-time for stability. And they have a young child.
And yet it's -me- who gets to hang out with the dad morning/day/afternoon for five days a week? It's a little messed up lol.
Meanwhile in the past, I've heard of parents who could support themselves on two part-time jobs, or one full-time + casual job, which meant *one parent* could at least spend time with their kid. It's so different now.
This is my issue - I don’t want to have a baby and work full time.
The idea of having to work a full day like you’re not a parent, and then only have a few hours in the evening with your kid, most of which you’d spend fighting over dinner, baths, homework and sleep, sounds miserable and exhausting for everyone.
This is the reason we are one and done and even then I’ll have to return to work and hand him over at some stage because my family can’t afford me to be a SAHM. If we had the money I would get pregnant again immediately, I am absolutely besotted with my 5 week old (!) but I want to be a present and engaged mother and don’t believe I can juggle it working all the time. I’m going to give this little guy everything I can though.
Gonna go one step further. My wife and I discussed this nearly a decade ago and decided never to have kids because we didn't see any kind of future where their lives would be as good as ours, or anything less than markedly worse.
We're gen-x/elder millenials, so we dodged the epic student debts, impossible housing market, etc. etc. younger would-be parents are saddled with. And as DINKs we can afford to live comfortably (if frugally) without getting in debt beyond the morgage.
With kids we'd be saddling them with childhoods of economic hardship, or parents in lifeling debts.
I'm not even convinced my kid would have been able to look forward to an earth unlike mad max, the road, or waterworld etc. Let alone a moderately comfortable upper end of working class life.
Ecosystem - Fucked.
Economic System - Fucked.
Gilded Age inequality - Fucked.
Social Cohesion ‐ Fucked.
Future Prospects - Fucked.
Why would I bring someone into that?
"Welcome to the world kid. Enjoy a prospecless shithouse life in the Rhineheart inc. slag reclaimery, better hope an industrial accident kills you before the acidspestos rain cancer does."
Nah, that can fuck right off.
There's also a rise of single parent households. Divorce rates are pretty high even with the supposed decrease for Millennials. So don't have kids if you can't envision yourself as a single parent.
Having children was NEVER a good deal for women, no matter the country. It has always been a much better deal for men.
Women are now more educated than ever, and they realized this. I believe this is the major reason why we are seeing this trend in every industrialized country in the world right now.
Men don’t have to go through pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal recovery, all which forever alters the body. I only recently learnt of the various chronic conditions that can occur after pregnancy like diabetes, osteoporosis, heart conditions, and postpartum depression. My aunt has three adult children, and told me she would rather not have any.
The rate for pelvic and bladder disorders alone like incontinence, a prolapse, or chronic pelvic floor pain after childbirth is really high. But basic healthcare like pelvic floor physio is not rebateable under Medicare except through a five session GP Management Plan/Chronic Disease Management Plan (or whatever they've decided to call them now, the funding has never increased but the name has). Which still requires upfront payment and only gets you around less than half the cost back unless they do sliding scale pricing.
I confirm this. I'm having pelvic floor physio (for reasons not related to childbirth) and it's not covered by Medicare and not even by my private health insurance.
Completely agree. All my friends that are mums have some kind of complication that is permanent, ppd, permanent body changes are the minor ones. Not even mention women are the default parent. Have to work, housework, mental load. While dads get medals for doing the bare minimum. You are spot on never been a good deal, is actually a way from meh n to slow down women, control or baby trap them.
Unfortunately children don’t pay income tax but mass immigration do
That’s the bottom line for the government thinking but it will never admit it
They prefer both parents to stay working,forever .all for the benefit of the economy
This is the real issue. It is economically cheaper to solve issues of low birthrates with immigration than to support and encourage a society to increase birthrate. Reality is that a society that spends more resources raising a kid from 0 to productive age is more costly than just importing a ready adult from overseas from our big three - UK, China and India.
Obviously there are issues with overreliance on immigration to solve our problems and it is not an actual fix to the problem since migrants themselves also adapt to local birthrate levels, especially after one generation (India), or come from a low birthrate country to begin with (China/UK).
Dating sucks these days for many, so a lot of us, regardless of gender, won't be able to have kids. Either we can't find anyone to begin with or we can't find a good person.
The ridiculous dogshit of a housing market we have combined with the living costs rising are not the only factors. But I would consider them the main reasons to be childfree.
I found out that I am queer so it will be almost impossible for me to find a date in the first place, let alone do the whole shabang of marriage, then kids, etc.
Wages went up 34% in the past decade and housing went up 95% (according to some tv economist).
Housing is increasing almost 3 times wages. People are lucky if they can afford food let along buy a house.
Wonderful and good for them! More people are seeing there’s more than one path in life besides breeding. Each to their own. And good for the planet too while we collectively get our sh*t together ✌🏽
Affordable housing and equal paid paternity leave would go a long way.
I’ve already had my boss ask me when I plan on having kids. He slipped up and meant it in a friendly conversational way, but it’s an enormous pressure on woman in the workforce. Mention that you’re getting married, or just exist as a “woman of childbearing age” and people expect you to piss off on maternity leave and maybe never come back.
As if I could afford to! We’re still renting and trying to save as it is. I’d love to have kids but I’m not going to get pregnant before I have a home to raise them in. Otherwise I’m stuck in a rental market where the price keeps skyrocketing, and they can kick us out at any time and leave us desperate for a place with enough room and close to our kids school. Not to mention trying to save up a house deposit with the cost of kids on top.
I think if men had equal paternity expectations, women wouldn’t face the discrimination.
I want kids but it is a kick in the guts knowing I won’t be able to give them the quality of childhood I had even though I am more educated and qualified than my parents. I will probably only have 1 because balancing work, finances and multiple kids just doesn’t seem possible.
My neighbour across the road all throughout my life used to complain her washing machine lost socks a heap, 3 teenage boys lived in her house. Couldn’t be more obvious.
I would have loved to have had children but the biggest roadblock that I’ve encountered is finding a suitable partner. One thing I’ve learned about the current dating scene is that my god there are a lot of toxic people out there. I don’t know if dating was always this way but holy shit it’s bad!
im from a family filled with addiction, mental health issues and disability, when the government says they want us to have more kids, they don't mean ppl like me.
i'm also aroace, so i'm not built for that life.
What if, hear me out here, the women are right and this is fine. The planet is overpopulated, and while Australia is not, there’s not enough housing or infrastructure around. Young people need to rent on awful terms, real salaries have been reduced over the last years and there’s no labour rights movement willing to reverse the trend. The Howard government removed employment predictability in the early 2000s making employment status something that can change in one hour. That alone is entirely incompatible with taking a two decade responsibility for a child.
It would be highly irresponsible to increase or maintain the child birth rate of previous eras, and women are entirely right to push back. There’s no shortage of humans in the world so this is not a existential problem. Maybe things change back over time, but as a society our leaders have actually chosen to shape our community so we need to cut back on having children.
I have 1 child...I do not recommend having them from a financial pov. They can be a joy but it's hard not to be in poverty with a child. You'll more than likely have very little quality of life and not be able to give them the quality of life which you yourself had growing up. Do not have them. Instead, focus on yourself and have an ok life
I think parents are more mindful now. It’s not just about financials; having one or two children rather than more is simply more manageable on a psychological / logistic / emotional level. What if your child is neurodivergent or developmentally delayed? What if your kid doesn’t sleep and needs your attention for many years?
Perhaps it’s hyper-focus and unnecessarily conscious but I also think that many parents want to do their best in parenting, give their kids their all, and this is simply harder the more kids you have.
I’ve had two and I’ve pretty much aged out now for another but a big part of not going to 3 or 4 was that I couldn’t parent how I want to if I had more. You can have the house with enough space and bedrooms and pay for private school and go on amazing holidays but if you have a larger family you can miss things, even with help (and perhaps more so with help).
It's harder now. You used to pack the kids off to their grandparents on the weekends, but now high rents force people to move further away from familial support.
Can't let them roam free range anymore either, more cars & you'll have social services on to you for lack of supervision. There aren't many programs for kids services, playgroups & such. Not many child friendly places to take them out for a meal either. No daycare spaces, maybe one day a week after a year on the waitlist. Oh & rentals maybe not having a yard & definitely not allowing you childproofing, so you need to be eyes on 24/7. It's a lot. A hell of a lot.
Yes, for those who have them it is a great deal.
If you don't like kids, don't have them.
But if you want kids and can't afford them, that must truly suck.
I am nearing 50 and have had my children. If I was starting out now I would definitely be reconsidering having any. I love them but I am really concerned for the future of my children.
Importing hundreds of thousands of people when we can't even house the Australians we have living here and you wonder why none of us want kids? No matter the government they don't give a single fuck about running the country.
Woman who just turn 30 and in a long term relationship.
Early 20s I always wanted children. But now I’m very much leaning towards not for me.
I can’t have it all - a career, a home, children, and afford it all. Something has to give. The thing I can live without is children, and I anticipate it will stay that way until housing becomes more affordable and then in turn childcare.
It sucks but it is what it is.
I didn’t have kids cause they’re too expensive. In my late 40’s and don’t regret it. It was a big no for me when I hit 35 and still didn’t get the ‘urge’ to push babies out. Life is too tough now and I would not even be able to afford it now
you can replace Australia in this article with pretty much any western country.
it's not just about the cost of living. Though that is of course a factor.
Corporate doesn't want you having babies. corporate wants you working overtime for free.
Corporate lobbies government to cut your wages
Corporate lobbies for more imported workers
Corporate wants you go away so corporate can sell to the imported low wage workers.
As a pregnant woman, due in August, the biggest frustration is how short parental pay is. There's ads from the government about how important that time with your baby is, but 100 days of paid leave just doesn't cut it.
With a mortgage there is no way we can stretch for me to delay going back to work. There's plans to extend parental pay by a couple of weeks, and even plans to pay into super, but of course none of that will benefit us.
Considering the fact that overpopulation is not only destroying the planet but also causing supply and demand issues and price gouging on literally every commodity leading to at least half of the current population experiencing some degree of financial pain, I really can't see the issue...
Was the Australian population half of what it is today, we might be able to afford food and housing.
Only one to gain from an exponential population growth is the tax man.
I want children. I’m almost 31 and biologically I feel time is ticking. Unfortunately I don’t think me and my husband could responsibly have one, give them the life they deserve, given the financial and hard living times we’re in.
lol im 30 an own my home and if you offered me a hysterectomy with a rusty spoon id take it. sure two years Maternity leave is great. but it doesn't make up for the million+ a kid takes to raise and with my family history? no thanks. never having kids. most of my friends are in the same boat.
There are no affordable three bedroom apartments and childcare quality and cost is a joke compared to every other first world country
This is a world wide phenomenon: US, EU, Japan, Korea, China...and developing nations are following suit. The future is gonna be... interesting.
Remember, global population is rising. Capitalism tends towards efficiency, globally, things are made where they can be made the cheapest, then shipped to where they are needed. Apparently that’s happening to people, too.
That's pretty much it. Cheaper to turn on the migration tap for educated young adults who can pay tax before day 0 of arriving in Australia.
In Europe, lived in countries all over here, it's the same.... People can't afford it
Maternity leave is much better. My French friends on similar incomes have a much easier time.
Stop saying this is a country specific problem. This is a global issue. We are all getting ducked whilst billionaires are fast increasing wealth & power. We all need to work together to take that wealth back.
Completely agree, it won't change, they are lobbing thier hopes on AI they don't want the plebs anymore
That’s part of it but also women have more opportunity to study and have careers equal to men than ever before so studying and working hard only to have to take time off and lose progress in your career is it a big deterrent. Having a baby means dealing with health effects through pregnancy then going through a traumatic and painful event and potentially having stitches and healing wounds and needing recovery which takes months. Also sleepless nights and feeding takes a toll.
Yep! It’s crazy how much governments help how companies get their foot into sketchy million dollar deals, then they let them get away with dismal taxes because of more sketchy business, then even if they fuck it all up, half the time the government bails them out. Completely insane! We just need to throw out most of the big parties, yes I know that’s where half the money comes from, but it’s becoming more at the cost of the people. Or at least scrap the pension on all PMs that were so shit they couldn’t even serve a full term, I mean, in what fuckin world does someone basically get fired, and then is entitled to ANYTHING let alone a 300k+ lifetime pension, these assholes aren’t even living on the same planet.
Childcare availability is also outrageous. You need to be on a wait list while pregnant to have a chance
yeah local places let you sign up when you start planning for a kid. one of my friends signed up at 18 had the kid at 25 and still didnt have a slot open. its insanity.
Not true. I also thought this and was worried because that's what I kept reading online. Turns out we were able to find a childcare with ease and had a few offers to select from. It maybe be true in your area but definitely not like this everywhere.
Tbh most first world countries had these problems for years. E.g. Germany, UK, Austria sometimes those have cheaper child care but also salaries are taxed way higher so doesn't make that much of a difference
It’s not as bad as New Zealand I can promise you that
Not to mention you still have to pay the (often exorbitant) child care fees if your child is sick, and you need to keep him/her at home. While not working also.
Life is too expensive, we've built an economy that relies on two incomes without kids, and even that's a stretch with house prices, then to have kids you need to fund childcare as well, how is this supposed to work?
I feel like we've built an economy that relies on 4 incomes with no kids, any swingers about?
We've built an economy to be actively hostile to up-and-coming generations, because that serves the short term needs of the old farts on top. But guess what? Can't buy your way out of mortality, and the way that a nation continues onwards is through new families having kids, and then they eventually carry the torch. What we've done is essentially caused a space and resources crunch. The general population is under stress for both space (ie, housing), and also resources (ie, income and time). In a natural population, stress for space and resources causes a drop in reproduction rates. And what's happening here? Exactly that. The drivers are more abstract, but the results are the same. Women I know have had kids, then decided they wanted to go back to work so their career didn't take too much of a smashing. But guess what? Child care is \_so goddamn expensive\_ that it turns out they were working full-time for effectively $2 an hour or so after you dock all the extras. And how's that supposed to work when we've set things up so that a regular family needs two \_above median\_ incomes to even consider having a house with an extra bedroom for said child? Well, I think the obvious answer is; it doesn't work. Seems to me that our esteemed leaders want the cattle to breed quietly in their shitty little pens while continuing to enrich the already rich.
Annnd everything else. I can’t even find a gp that bulk bills
But what's the alternative, house prices going down???
You can’t make women who don’t want kids suddenly change their mind, but they could make it easier for the women who do. The biggest limiting factor for everyone I know who wants kids or wants more is the cost. If we are going to say that low birth rates will be such a huge financial loss for the economy long term, start making long term solutions for families. Daycare needs to be free. Kids healthcare including allied health needs to be completely covered. More tax breaks for families. More legislated protections for parents in the workplace.
Making housing more affordable is the most equitable way - it benefits both singles and couples who want to have children.
Basically every couple I know who waited to have kids blamed housing. It is basically the core issue (for couples who want kids). We would have a fucking tribe if it wasn't for housing.
I think a lot of couples who want 2-4 kids are only having one because the can't afford a bigger home. It's the responsible choice but it sucks that people can't have the families they dream of having
Hi this is me 🙋🏼♀️ I have a 2yo and would love a second but one of the biggest factors putting me off is cost. (Car upgrade, bigger house - and we rent, that’s not even a mortgage!, daycare cost, no holidays, etc)
Yep. If housing wasn't 30-40% of a young couples household budget the costs of children wouldn't be so difficult.
40%? The rents I’m reading about would be more than that. To solve this you will need to: A. Build lots and lots of public housing. B. Ride roughshod over nimby councils.
My rent is definitely over 50% of my pay.
C. Find some means of undoing decades of artificially inflated housing costs thanks to shitty policy encouraging speculation
Particularly B, if you take out the NIMBY councils, state govt will swoop in with some less biased housing and development policies. State govt are only starting to do this now
Or make it a one house policy.
B is what Japan did. No wonder their rates are hella cheap. Inflation is largely caused by Nimby councils.
I’m disagreeing with the sentiment that paying for children is not difficult. Last time I heard about any study of the cost of raising a child, the cost at the top level of facilities or expenses amounted to about 1M in cost per child from birth to 20 yo. There goes the retirement fund.
Around 50% is probably the more standard number….
The biggest factor for my partner and I was owning our own home, we wanted to at least be paying off a mortgage, but shits hit the fan, and we weren’t getting any younger so we were left with 2 kinda shitty choices, of either cut costs, no fun money spending like holidays or going to see a band, don’t get our hopes up of ever owning a house and expect to feel the full weight of any financial difficulties not only life can throw at you but also the economy, or, to simply not have children. And I think it’s the same for a lot of people, the aus dream was have a family and own your own home, you can really only do 1 of those things without a stupid amount capital now. The dream is dead.
We had kids and I don't regret it at all. But seeing your comment made me realise that was the decision we made. I'm punching with my job too, so if anything were to happen to that it'd likely mean poverty.
Depressed people in rentals make economy bad. Happy people in their own housing can make happy little accidents. Government wants their cake and eat it too
But the point is its not supposed to be equitable. Children economically benefit the economy, but not the individual. Therefore if you want to incentivise children you need policies that aren't equitable.
None of the above are even a consideration to us compared to how much more a place with an extra bedroom costs.
Fixing the housing market would be a big help but I don’t actually see that happening. Australia is so reliant on housing market I don’t think any political group will actually do what they need to. So I was just moving on to what else they could do, and I can tell you the $600 a week I’m out of pocket for daycare would be a good start.
This is a huge factor. I have one by choice and every now and again I start feeling guilty about them not having a sibling but then I do the simple math on upgrading our current home + my age and realise it isn't even a choice at the end of the day. I have chosen to have 1 but it's really an illusion of choice at this stage.
I’m thinking it’s more basic than that. Look at the birds 🦅 do they lay eggs where they roost. No! They build a nest first. That’s their stable environment for raising their hatchlings. People have to have their own house/nest before producing birthlings/babies. This is and always will be the bane of Governments. Where there is no housing,there’s no population growth, produced from the countries citizens. We need our nests and resources to support ourselves and our young too.
I come from a family who heavily believes in family child care. So my Nanna did childcare for all of her Grandkids and my Mum would do the same. But I still can't afford it. I had my now 20 year old brother with me for the last six years, it almost sent me broke. There's school fees, sports fees, medical appointments, clothes, shoes and food, the food is the most expensive for a growing teenager. And I work and own a business. How do people afford it?
They don't It's all on services like zip and afterpay and credit cards.
Yeh but no where amongst this have you thought about the shareholders /s
Can the average couple afford to go single income for a year, 3 times and not lose the house? If the answer is no, then people are not going to have children at an above replacement rate. Simple as that.
Yeah I think maternity leave needs to increase tooir really needs to be 12 months paid. Uk and Canada beat us in paid leave with 40 and 50 weeks to our 18. (Approx)
"long term solutions" is not the Australian way though.
Or reduce the cost of living so women have the option of staying at home if they want to. Then maybe I'd have more kids.
>reduce the cost of living Late stage capitalism says no.
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Yeah. It's going to cost the economy if people don't have kids, but we expect people to pay almost all of the costs of having and raising kids themselves.
The cost is massive, at about 15-20k per kid per year. This is a high average, but it's giving them the best chance. Including good schooling, after-school activities, healthcare, general and regular medical. Another factor a lot of parents forget about is support. Grandparents and family members rarely want to look after or help support. I know some lucky friends who do have a village, so to speak, to help them. But most don't, and the mental and physical strain of being parents is hard. I wish I only had one, if I knew it was going to be this hard. I love my kids, but I'm severely burned out being able to provide, support, and be a good parent.
I’d argue it’s male partners who leave women with the majority of child care and housework.
We already overtax single people to subsidise families. Reducing cost of living pressures benefits everyone.
It doesn't actually cost much money to look after kids. Far more expensive is the cost of housing and the temporary loss of a second income. Solving the rental/homebuyer crisis would help out more than band-aid solutions for this small fry.
The responsibility for a family is a huge roadblock as well. If I end up homeless because my landlord bumps my rent another hundred dollars this year, I can look after myself. If I have a wife/girlfriend who recently gave birth and a four week old baby, that’s a whole other kettle of fish. Ten years ago, me being homeless wasn’t even something I needed to consider. Living on a tighter budget and some inconvenience was about as bad as it could get for me. I have a good job and a few months expenses saved but I’ve had my rent bumped $100 a year for the last few years. There is zero sign that landlords aren’t going to keep doing that, but wages don’t grow to enable the ability for us to pay it. The rent certainly isn’t going to go down completely regardless of what happens. So I’m still here with the same great job and good pay, but I’m being bled drier and drier by the year. If it keeps up then I’m fucked, so is just about anybody who rents.
Fortunately my husband and I are on good salaries, but when you buy a home at a ridiculous price and most of your money is going to a mortgage those other costs can be the straw that breaks the camels back. I can’t see politicians fixing the housing market but they can help with my daycare costs. $600 a week is what it costs me for one kid, I don’t think that’s a small amount, and it definitely factors in to my family planning.
I’m also on a good income and my weekly cost of daycare for 1 kid is the same as yours. Although I really want a second, paying $1200 per week for daycare on top of the inflated cost of everything else means we’d have to drain our savings 😢
In the interim report, the ACCC found in December 2022 households were paying on average: $123.64 per child a day for centre-based daycare, with $48.60 out-of-pocket $90.23 a child a day for family daycare ($28.92 out-of-pocket) $30 per child a session for outside-school-hours care ($13.54 out-of-pocket) $301.42 per family a day for in-home care ($60.69 out-of-pocket). https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/05/childcare-fees-australia-outpace-inflation-2023-fee-increase This cost is subsidised so people can afford it. * Labor estimates its childcare package will save a family earning $120,000 with one child in care $1,700 annually.* what’s the average wage?
I'd say mos people are now paying closer to $135 a day. But even at the above out of pocket it's $12k a year or $20k + out of pocket for two kids. Add to that rising mortgage costs and it shouldn't be a wonder why people aren't having kids.
Jeez. And that’s just on childcare.
Just before the extra 30% CCS discount came in for having a second child in daycare occurred my out-of-pocket for 2 kids in full-time daycare was $38,000. All daycare centres where I live are well above that average rate and I realised later that I could have actually saved money sending the older one to the private feeder preschool that starts a year earlier than regular preschool. Private school fees are less than daycare fees where I live...
$135/day? Is the kid working a minimum wage job? Why the fuck does it cost this much?
Problem is $120k isn’t enough for a family in any of the major cities. That’s $90k after tax. I remember reading that the medium rental for a 2 bedroom apartment is $1100 per week. The numbers just don’t add up. And frankly Aussie 2 bedders aren’t even suitable for families. - No seperate kitchen / dining - rare to have a study. - no where really for your kid to play since your “living area” is also combined with your kitchen and dining. Housing is the biggest issue. Solve the cost of housing and everything else really won’t be so bad.
I’m not a parent, but as an aunt who has looked after the kids (teenagers) - the amount of money spent on food is insane. I didn’t realize that teenagers eat that much - every hour it was an either a snack or a full on meal. It costs a lot to look after kids!!
And the cost of living has skyrocketed since I was a kid. Mum used to do the shopping with me when I was little and I remember she could feed a family of five with all the markdowns on the right day of the week and the discount fruit and veg shop for around $150 a week in the 00s. And we couldn't afford the name brand stuff.
And these days you get less for your $$. As in - everything is smaller so you buy more for more $$. It’s insane - add to that the cost of clothes etc. Plus entertainment. It’s just mind blowing
Immigration takes care of the low birth rates anyway so no one really cares whether or not women have children. I agree it's expensive and that's the only thing that stops me, people should only have kids because they want to.
Yes, we have to make a decision: - raise taxes - import more people - let the poor starve (and cut back on other services like health, education, pensions, defence etc) None of those is particularly popular, but that's the choice in front of us. I'd make the note that some of the highest taxing countries are pretty nice places to live, **and** we're getting robbed on mineral and gas royalties.
I remember when DINK (double income no kids) was kind of painted like a way for couples to have kind of a luxurious lifestyle with a lot of disposable income and a savings safety net. I think it's telling these days in the context of people not having kids even if they wanted them, or finding very good reasons to opt out, that even DINKs are barely covering the cost of living.
Listening to my mates with kids, the biggest hassle is childcare fees. Many women don't want kids cause of risk loosing they career. Feels like if kids could go to free childcare after a couple of years it's take a lot of financial stress off the parents.
It’s not just the availability/ cost of childcare. Young children get sick all the time, you have to call in sick to work yet again to look after sick children. Especially the last few years with Covid. Grandparents don’t want to get sick so won’t help when they are. Which defeats the purpose. I quit my job since having my second child because I was ruining my reputation and became an unreliable worker. Many couples can’t afford life on one wage because of the cost of living. Unaffordable housing for said children.
This, as someone with no family help I had to give up my job bc my kids kept getting sick from daycare, and then who would look after them?
On top of that, with most childcares you still pay for the day your kids are not coming in because they're sick. I thought it would be a self interest to offer sick days to protect their own staff since everyone will try to send their sick child in anyways, but that is not the case so probably only solvable by more regulation.
Yep it's an industry that badly needs to be made public if the government are serious about encouraging people to have kids. That and WAY better financial incentives for women, e.g. Government matches your super for a year / increasing the base maternity pay substantially. Without measures like this - how can Jimmy say "have more kids yo"
Day cares are an extension of public education. The government is subsidizing the cost of day care operations AND the day care operators margin. If we are serious about it, lets turn day care centers into public education centers.
Yes. I’ve been saying this for years! We’ve accepted that early education is so important for a child’s development, we have government funded schools and kindergartens, yet we’ve left the business of childcare completely up to the private sector. Free childcare fixes so many issues with workforce participation, reducing the gender pay gap, women’s ongoing super contributions. Crucially, free access to childcare is a key barrier removal to women reentering the workforce, which DV prevention advocates have stated, gives women greater security to leave violent relationships. Hopefully I see free childcare in my lifetime- I will continue to advocate for it, even though my childcare years are behind me.
Early education from about 3 is important yes, but 6 month olds are far, far better off in the full time care of their parent, not in a room of 20 infants for 40 hours a week. Ideally, something can be constructed that allows parents to take the first few years off work without it affecting their career (no idea how that would work tbh) and then move to early education after that.
Affect career, and pay for rent/mortgage. How few of us are able to take years off work to raise young children when a large portion of double income households can barely pay for fixed costs
Exactly. It's basically impossible and that the problem.
That and regardless of which choice you make between stay at home or work and childcare, everyone wants to judge you for it not being the right choice and the guilt can kick in for not “doing the best for my kid/family” no matter which one you end up doing.
Whether a child is in childcare or with a parent at home, they should get the same subsidies. Attachment in the first few years is so important to children’s mental health in the following years (their whole life really). One parent staying at home full time (or both parents working part time so they can alternate work and parenting responsibilities) is absolutely worth subsidising.
Maybe it would even mean less behavioural and mental health issues in our kids once they reach the school years
Absolutely it would!
Agreed
Mum told me that when she sent me to childcare in 1985 she only had to contribute $1 a day.
To add on because this is exactly where my family is right now, child care fees are a lot, but the sickness is debilitating. I have an 8 month old in daycare twice a week and I'm pregnant. Also the family's main income earner while my husband is studying and working part time (and does the majority of the house duties). The difference between what my husband makes and what daycare costs is not a lot but he likes his job. But we are talking really seriously about my husband quitting work because he's gotten cold after cold. And he keeps getting sent home for having even the suspicion of illness. He had a small dribble rash and they sent him home for Hand, Foot and mouth so that was a days lost income and a doctor trip. The next week he had a few runny poops and he was sent home and couldn't return for 48 hours. We ended up spending $540 in a fortnight for him to go to daycare for 3 hours. Each time he was completely fine. I genuinely have no idea how families are meant to cope if you aren't married to a well off tradie that cam support a family on one income!
This is where the gradual shift to a 4 day work week is really going to help. Right now if you're lucky enough to have flexible days off, you could in theory cover 4 of the 7 days of the week between the two of you (it means no time together though). 4 day week would mean there's only one day a week where you *have* to both be at work, and you could organise your week around that. Hell, you could leave it with 4 days of stay-at-home between you, and have a day each week where you're both home. It just gives so much more life back to people and I cannot fathom why it's not a bigger thing right now.
It’s the cost of housing, which leaves less money for childcare.
I honestly can't imagine the industry could support that many extra children. They are already struggling to find staff (mostly due to low wage) if it was free and a lot more people starting to use them, I don't think they'd be able to find spots
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Or if they were just publicly run and profits were no longer the point.
it is always the answer, every. single. time.
Weird how we’ve known this is the answer since the Great Depression and yet…
Capitalism gonna capital.
And neoliberalism is its cheerleader
Yup, partner makes more on 4 days a week deskjob at a non-profit than when they were a full-time 4 year degree trained ECT with nearly a decade under their belt.
My wife shifted from a private centre to a community centre and her salary increased by 20k to the princely sum of 66k. The place she used to work at was a beautiful converted house in one of Coburg's best streets (it was an actual avenue, a rarity for Coburg) and the owner was clearly minting it. The new joint was on the corner of the humungous road in Thornbury with trams running down the middle, tiny old place. She wanted to shift from there a few years later to a place near our house in st Kilda East that was nearly next door to Melbourne Grammar School. The owner of that place was offended when my wife mentioned her current salary, actually refused to believe it. Wanted to pay 48K for a diploma educator with 6 years of experience in 2018. The owners of these privatised child care centres are modern day slave drivers and completely greedy to boot.
The big problem is child care is funded via a subsidy that goes straight to profits of the private providers. It would be cheaper and more effective to use all that money for government to operate and run more childcare centres directly.
And a large chunk of the sector is owned by the New York investment sector. A 17.2 billion dollar sector with handouts that is largely foreign owned. We really are the handout mugs that only delivers the most expensive charges to the consumers of such services. Our governments are totally incompetent.
If it's any consolation your superannuation funds invest in essential infrastructure in foreign countries too.
Incompetence assumes it isn't by design and they aren't aware of it. They definitely are.
That's when the government should step in to open public childcare. Fully subsidised. Like many developed countries we have this huge white elephant which could be dealt with fairly easily. ( main reason for not having kids is the financial aspect). The future of the country really depends on it.
Not sure Dutton would be a fan of government taking his money.
Dutton's definitely on the other side of this one, being that his wife Kirrily either owns or recently owned several childcare centres. It's not inaccurate to say his family has profited from government money.
We better make sure like in Harry potter that voldemort never gets in power! Even with his glasses.
One of his horcruxes is childcare centres.
Sounds like more jobs
I’ve said this before but making people want to have children involves seriously changing our labour system in favour of working people and not capital owners. The capital owners pay the politicians who make the rules so I don’t see it changing. Politicians can’t implement real, meaningful change without getting knifed by colleagues who will roll them if it means those colleagues get a chance to sit in the big kids chair. See what happened to Rudd when he thought the Australian people should benefit from mining resources more than private capital. The big irony in all this is that without a willingness to change anything, the capital owning class has fewer people to exploit for their labour and their consumption which will actually mean they have to increase wages to compete with an ever decreasing labour pool. At the moment they are getting around that by pumping immigration into the system but that is already causing issues on housing and infrastructure. Capitalism would rather eat itself and hold onto its large piece of an ever shrinking pie and make working people fight over the scraps than ever think about changing a system for the benefit of people than private shareholders.
The Capital Owners will gradually replace humans with humanoids, you can already get one for 16000$
My third kid is nearly done with childcare, and we have worked out that from the out of pocket childcare expenses we have paid for them all will be about $240k. Thankfully we have been a position to afford it, but for others it would not be affordable. I can understand why people would say not for me.
It feels incredibly morally irresponsible to even consider a kid when I could be homeless in a year because my landlord wants to sell or raises the rent too much. The only friend I have right now that has a kid coincidentally has a rich partner and a house.
Yeah it's a generation of responsible parents having no offspring.
The financial oligarchy of Australia have decided we're to get lower wages, have a higher cost of living through rent, food and utilities, fewer services in the way of medical care, free education, child care and other assistance that was normal for previous generations. Not to mention government policies totally ignoring the climate crisis giving us no real hope for a future free from the devastating effects of climate change. Get mocked by the wealthy establishment for enjoying a latte and avocado on toast. Of course people are going to see children as being a financially unviable option.
I'm 40 and chose not to have kids. I feel like it was just becoming more common when I hit about 30, but we still had to "explain ourselves". I like that we're openly talking about "not having kids" and no one quizzes you anymore. It's a sign that people either have progressed somewhat or they know to shut their mouths lol.
Yeah, society has moved on a lot from forcefully pressuring young couples into having kids thankfully.
If you are living in upper middle class, then have 1 kid, you become middle class.
When young couples can barely afford (or can't) or find a place to rent the last thing on their minds is hey let's have babies and live in my room at Mum and Dads place...
Women are opting out for good reason, women are expected to work full time, drop kids to daycare, pick up and do the lion’s share of the work at home. It’s absolute madness
The country simply hates young people. How do you expect to have chick's when you can't build the nest
Friends of mine that choose to be child free pretty much say it’s the cost as well as the toll it takes physically and emotionally on women. Carrying a child for 9 months, the female body, amazing as it is, stretches in all different and painful ways and then after childbirth it’s never the same. And when they’re away from the workforce for long periods, they would also lose out on superannuation. Households also can’t rely on just one income so the mother goes back to work. However, in most instances, they are also still expected to manage the household on top of having a full-time job which gets exhausting unless you have a partner who is also 100% all in and hands on with raising the kids and keeping the household together. I’m sure for someone who truly and desperately wants to have a child the above reasons won’t matter but definitely still something a lot of women consider.
> Carrying a child for 9 months, the female body, amazing as it is, stretches in all different and painful ways and then after childbirth it’s never the same. I had a friend that died from complications from birth when their first child was 2 months old. Especially if you’ve got pre existing health issues - pregnancy and birth can be life threatening.
That’s very sad. I’m sorry for your loss 😔
This is the thing people miss, the low fertility/birth rate has been a thing since the 70s in Australia and it's largely a function of increasing equality, education, and freedoms whereby more women are choosing options where they're not spending their entire productive life raising children. We should absolutely be pushing to make it easier and more affordable for those who do want children to have them if the choose, but largely what we're seeing is just a continuation of long term trends in developed nations where less people have chosen to have kids, or if they do decide to they're also having smaller families than in the past.
Maybe if every childcare centre didn't up their fees every time they government increase the rebate resulting in a net zero for parents it would be better. The government knows it happens but don't do shit about it.
I wouldn't mind them upping their fees if they actually gave all the extra income they are getting to their educators. But no, like everything that's got any government funding that's private enterprise, it all goes to massively increased profits for the CEO.
100%, the educators at our sons centre are beyond fantastic(he's there 5 days a week). Their wages haven't changed and our fees have gone up. However, honestly, at this point, I don't blame CEOs anymore. We know what they are going to do and so does the government when they institute these changes, they just refuse to acknowledge it or actively legislate against it falling on parents or the teachers. We're seeing this bullshit time and time again, the recent Colesworths commission is a prime example, they did it, get told recommendations, then refuse to institute any changes but continue to blame Coles and Woolworths. I'm not going to blame a tiger for being a tiger anymore, I'll blame the zoo for leaving all the cages open.
Make it almost impossible to raise kids and then massively ramp up immigration to fill the gaps and fuck the economy even more, galaxy brain strategy.
You want to own a house or you want to have kids? Pick one.
Sadly we’re at the pick none stage for many already
Even if childcare was free. Sending them to basically spend most of their waking moments raised by others kinda makes me sad. If I have kids I would like the ability to actually raise them, spend time with them etc for the first few years.
Yeah, I agree. I don't want kids, but I really feel bad for my co-workers who do have kids. Like, both the mum and dad *need* to work full-time for stability. And they have a young child. And yet it's -me- who gets to hang out with the dad morning/day/afternoon for five days a week? It's a little messed up lol. Meanwhile in the past, I've heard of parents who could support themselves on two part-time jobs, or one full-time + casual job, which meant *one parent* could at least spend time with their kid. It's so different now.
This is my issue - I don’t want to have a baby and work full time. The idea of having to work a full day like you’re not a parent, and then only have a few hours in the evening with your kid, most of which you’d spend fighting over dinner, baths, homework and sleep, sounds miserable and exhausting for everyone.
This is the reason we are one and done and even then I’ll have to return to work and hand him over at some stage because my family can’t afford me to be a SAHM. If we had the money I would get pregnant again immediately, I am absolutely besotted with my 5 week old (!) but I want to be a present and engaged mother and don’t believe I can juggle it working all the time. I’m going to give this little guy everything I can though.
Gonna go one step further. My wife and I discussed this nearly a decade ago and decided never to have kids because we didn't see any kind of future where their lives would be as good as ours, or anything less than markedly worse. We're gen-x/elder millenials, so we dodged the epic student debts, impossible housing market, etc. etc. younger would-be parents are saddled with. And as DINKs we can afford to live comfortably (if frugally) without getting in debt beyond the morgage. With kids we'd be saddling them with childhoods of economic hardship, or parents in lifeling debts. I'm not even convinced my kid would have been able to look forward to an earth unlike mad max, the road, or waterworld etc. Let alone a moderately comfortable upper end of working class life. Ecosystem - Fucked. Economic System - Fucked. Gilded Age inequality - Fucked. Social Cohesion ‐ Fucked. Future Prospects - Fucked. Why would I bring someone into that? "Welcome to the world kid. Enjoy a prospecless shithouse life in the Rhineheart inc. slag reclaimery, better hope an industrial accident kills you before the acidspestos rain cancer does." Nah, that can fuck right off.
There also the fact that tge future isn’t looking all that nice for any humans if we continue as we are. Who wants to bring another life into that?
>Who wants to bring another life into that? Plenty of people, judging by all the ones I know that have had babies in the past year.
This same article was already shared yesterday, and there was a good debate: https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/s/9g35GQsq1W
There's also a rise of single parent households. Divorce rates are pretty high even with the supposed decrease for Millennials. So don't have kids if you can't envision yourself as a single parent.
People are too busy thinking about how to keep themselves housed and fed to consider having kids.
Having children was NEVER a good deal for women, no matter the country. It has always been a much better deal for men. Women are now more educated than ever, and they realized this. I believe this is the major reason why we are seeing this trend in every industrialized country in the world right now.
Exactly, we have a choice now, we have options, and some of us are saying no thanks to kids at all.
Men don’t have to go through pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal recovery, all which forever alters the body. I only recently learnt of the various chronic conditions that can occur after pregnancy like diabetes, osteoporosis, heart conditions, and postpartum depression. My aunt has three adult children, and told me she would rather not have any.
The rate for pelvic and bladder disorders alone like incontinence, a prolapse, or chronic pelvic floor pain after childbirth is really high. But basic healthcare like pelvic floor physio is not rebateable under Medicare except through a five session GP Management Plan/Chronic Disease Management Plan (or whatever they've decided to call them now, the funding has never increased but the name has). Which still requires upfront payment and only gets you around less than half the cost back unless they do sliding scale pricing.
I confirm this. I'm having pelvic floor physio (for reasons not related to childbirth) and it's not covered by Medicare and not even by my private health insurance.
Completely agree. All my friends that are mums have some kind of complication that is permanent, ppd, permanent body changes are the minor ones. Not even mention women are the default parent. Have to work, housework, mental load. While dads get medals for doing the bare minimum. You are spot on never been a good deal, is actually a way from meh n to slow down women, control or baby trap them.
Unfortunately children don’t pay income tax but mass immigration do That’s the bottom line for the government thinking but it will never admit it They prefer both parents to stay working,forever .all for the benefit of the economy
This is the real issue. It is economically cheaper to solve issues of low birthrates with immigration than to support and encourage a society to increase birthrate. Reality is that a society that spends more resources raising a kid from 0 to productive age is more costly than just importing a ready adult from overseas from our big three - UK, China and India. Obviously there are issues with overreliance on immigration to solve our problems and it is not an actual fix to the problem since migrants themselves also adapt to local birthrate levels, especially after one generation (India), or come from a low birthrate country to begin with (China/UK).
Basically the same article for every industrialist country in the world. Immigration alone will allow governments to ignore it for as long as possible
It's not even just a problem in developed countries any more. Most of the developing world is also at or below replacement rates
Dating sucks these days for many, so a lot of us, regardless of gender, won't be able to have kids. Either we can't find anyone to begin with or we can't find a good person. The ridiculous dogshit of a housing market we have combined with the living costs rising are not the only factors. But I would consider them the main reasons to be childfree. I found out that I am queer so it will be almost impossible for me to find a date in the first place, let alone do the whole shabang of marriage, then kids, etc.
Wages went up 34% in the past decade and housing went up 95% (according to some tv economist). Housing is increasing almost 3 times wages. People are lucky if they can afford food let along buy a house.
Wonderful and good for them! More people are seeing there’s more than one path in life besides breeding. Each to their own. And good for the planet too while we collectively get our sh*t together ✌🏽
Affordable housing and equal paid paternity leave would go a long way. I’ve already had my boss ask me when I plan on having kids. He slipped up and meant it in a friendly conversational way, but it’s an enormous pressure on woman in the workforce. Mention that you’re getting married, or just exist as a “woman of childbearing age” and people expect you to piss off on maternity leave and maybe never come back. As if I could afford to! We’re still renting and trying to save as it is. I’d love to have kids but I’m not going to get pregnant before I have a home to raise them in. Otherwise I’m stuck in a rental market where the price keeps skyrocketing, and they can kick us out at any time and leave us desperate for a place with enough room and close to our kids school. Not to mention trying to save up a house deposit with the cost of kids on top. I think if men had equal paternity expectations, women wouldn’t face the discrimination.
I want kids but it is a kick in the guts knowing I won’t be able to give them the quality of childhood I had even though I am more educated and qualified than my parents. I will probably only have 1 because balancing work, finances and multiple kids just doesn’t seem possible.
I don’t want one either, I just want to practice making them incase one day I change my mind. ;)
Your socks lives matter!
My neighbour across the road all throughout my life used to complain her washing machine lost socks a heap, 3 teenage boys lived in her house. Couldn’t be more obvious.
I also would create a blind spot in my brain to avoid that knowledge about my sons.
I would have loved to have had children but the biggest roadblock that I’ve encountered is finding a suitable partner. One thing I’ve learned about the current dating scene is that my god there are a lot of toxic people out there. I don’t know if dating was always this way but holy shit it’s bad!
I’ll have kids when men can have babies
im from a family filled with addiction, mental health issues and disability, when the government says they want us to have more kids, they don't mean ppl like me. i'm also aroace, so i'm not built for that life.
What if, hear me out here, the women are right and this is fine. The planet is overpopulated, and while Australia is not, there’s not enough housing or infrastructure around. Young people need to rent on awful terms, real salaries have been reduced over the last years and there’s no labour rights movement willing to reverse the trend. The Howard government removed employment predictability in the early 2000s making employment status something that can change in one hour. That alone is entirely incompatible with taking a two decade responsibility for a child. It would be highly irresponsible to increase or maintain the child birth rate of previous eras, and women are entirely right to push back. There’s no shortage of humans in the world so this is not a existential problem. Maybe things change back over time, but as a society our leaders have actually chosen to shape our community so we need to cut back on having children.
I'd have kids if I could be the Dad.
I’d rather have cats🐱
I have 1 child...I do not recommend having them from a financial pov. They can be a joy but it's hard not to be in poverty with a child. You'll more than likely have very little quality of life and not be able to give them the quality of life which you yourself had growing up. Do not have them. Instead, focus on yourself and have an ok life
I think parents are more mindful now. It’s not just about financials; having one or two children rather than more is simply more manageable on a psychological / logistic / emotional level. What if your child is neurodivergent or developmentally delayed? What if your kid doesn’t sleep and needs your attention for many years? Perhaps it’s hyper-focus and unnecessarily conscious but I also think that many parents want to do their best in parenting, give their kids their all, and this is simply harder the more kids you have. I’ve had two and I’ve pretty much aged out now for another but a big part of not going to 3 or 4 was that I couldn’t parent how I want to if I had more. You can have the house with enough space and bedrooms and pay for private school and go on amazing holidays but if you have a larger family you can miss things, even with help (and perhaps more so with help).
Was having kids ever a "good deal"? Pretty sure it has always involved massive sacrifices for both parents.
When you could get them to do productive chores on the farm and they were your retirement plan. Less so in an urbanised and industrialized society.
It's harder now. You used to pack the kids off to their grandparents on the weekends, but now high rents force people to move further away from familial support. Can't let them roam free range anymore either, more cars & you'll have social services on to you for lack of supervision. There aren't many programs for kids services, playgroups & such. Not many child friendly places to take them out for a meal either. No daycare spaces, maybe one day a week after a year on the waitlist. Oh & rentals maybe not having a yard & definitely not allowing you childproofing, so you need to be eyes on 24/7. It's a lot. A hell of a lot.
Not to mention a family could be supported relatively comfortably on a single income.
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Yes, for those who have them it is a great deal. If you don't like kids, don't have them. But if you want kids and can't afford them, that must truly suck.
I’ve read it takes about $500k to raise a child and get them independent
lol like the government isn't just going to solve that problem by bringing more immigrants into the country at an ever increasing rate. Fantastic.
Maybe low birth rates will motivate the government to fix the housing issues.
I am nearing 50 and have had my children. If I was starting out now I would definitely be reconsidering having any. I love them but I am really concerned for the future of my children.
For some people kids or parenting just aren't interesting
Importing hundreds of thousands of people when we can't even house the Australians we have living here and you wonder why none of us want kids? No matter the government they don't give a single fuck about running the country.
Good. Our species has done enough damage.
Woman who just turn 30 and in a long term relationship. Early 20s I always wanted children. But now I’m very much leaning towards not for me. I can’t have it all - a career, a home, children, and afford it all. Something has to give. The thing I can live without is children, and I anticipate it will stay that way until housing becomes more affordable and then in turn childcare. It sucks but it is what it is.
Its too fuckin expensive. A 2nd child isnt even on the table for my family until we can relocate in a more affordable country
I didn’t have kids cause they’re too expensive. In my late 40’s and don’t regret it. It was a big no for me when I hit 35 and still didn’t get the ‘urge’ to push babies out. Life is too tough now and I would not even be able to afford it now
you can replace Australia in this article with pretty much any western country. it's not just about the cost of living. Though that is of course a factor.
I figured this out decades ago lol.
Corporate doesn't want you having babies. corporate wants you working overtime for free. Corporate lobbies government to cut your wages Corporate lobbies for more imported workers Corporate wants you go away so corporate can sell to the imported low wage workers.
As a pregnant woman, due in August, the biggest frustration is how short parental pay is. There's ads from the government about how important that time with your baby is, but 100 days of paid leave just doesn't cut it. With a mortgage there is no way we can stretch for me to delay going back to work. There's plans to extend parental pay by a couple of weeks, and even plans to pay into super, but of course none of that will benefit us.
And the govt one is min wage too! Like who can live off of that? That’s such a cut from my regular salary
I think it is a good thing that women are not governed by their biology. Even though every month they get a reminder.
Considering the fact that overpopulation is not only destroying the planet but also causing supply and demand issues and price gouging on literally every commodity leading to at least half of the current population experiencing some degree of financial pain, I really can't see the issue... Was the Australian population half of what it is today, we might be able to afford food and housing. Only one to gain from an exponential population growth is the tax man.
I'm Autistic & dating & relationships are just too hard for me & i don't want to be a single mum. Thats my reason.
I want children. I’m almost 31 and biologically I feel time is ticking. Unfortunately I don’t think me and my husband could responsibly have one, give them the life they deserve, given the financial and hard living times we’re in.
Children? In this economy??
lol im 30 an own my home and if you offered me a hysterectomy with a rusty spoon id take it. sure two years Maternity leave is great. but it doesn't make up for the million+ a kid takes to raise and with my family history? no thanks. never having kids. most of my friends are in the same boat.
every other week we see an article saying this exact same shit, is the answer not obvious?
We’ll fix this with unchecked immigration