Is not having kids selfish? Some women in countries with the world’s lowest fertility rates think otherwise

Aoife Yi
26-year-old high school teacher, Didn’t want her to have own kids and have no plan for kids in the foreseeable future
Reason: -Seeing her parents
Grew up in a single-parent family in China and saw what her mum went without to be a parent. Thought her mum would have a more relaxing life without her
-What women loses from birth
prices” women may pay to become a mother in China — not just financial, but also opportunity costs
-“I’m afraid that I won’t have enough of my own time and will lose my individuality.”

Having kids to ‘rely on them’

Ms Yi
Worries about the demands and burden of being a parent
-Opposing thoughts
Parents: Must have a child so I can rely on them when I’m getting old
=> She doesn’t care what happens when she gets old as long as she lived a happy life.”
-Becoming a mother should be a “gift”, but it feels more like a “shackle and burden” for her at the moment
Chitra Panjabi
Was a teenager when she knew children would not be in her future
-Born and raised in a traditional community in Hong Kong, a region with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world
-Ms Panjabi’s husband initally wanted children, but she says her stance on not having them never wavered
Couple have now been married for 13 years
-“I imagined having a partner in the future, a career and life that would be fulfilling — and kids didn’t factor into it at all.”
-There was expectation that she would become a wife and mum and expressed disconnect or lack of alignment with this expectation
-Believes as women have more opportunities, they start to see the true costs of parenting
See the reality of what it means to be a parent especially without additional caregivers/nannies, and how much it costs. Therefore, more reluctance seem to grow towards birth and raising kids.

Asia grapples with falling fertility rates

The lowest fertility rates in the world are in East Asian countries: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and, recently China
-South Korea Birth rate
Back in February, South Korea continued its decline, once again recording the world’s lowest rates
South Korea, which now has a fertility rate of 0.78, is the only Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member with a birthrate below 1
-Japan Birth rate
Number of babies born in Japan fell for an eighth-straight year to a fresh record low
It was the lowest number of births since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899
-India and China Birth rate
Experiencing declines, with fertility rates dropping to 2 and 1.09 in 2022 respectively

Why aren’t people having kids?

Professor McDonald
Declining fertility rates are the result of a combination of factors related to the employment of women
-Work
“Employers in these countries demand loyalty to the company above all else — including family,”
“This leads to very long work hours that make it near impossible to combine work with child rearing.”
-Don’t have much help at home
Young men are required to work “even longer hours”
“Their employment vulnerability is also high, meaning that household work in couple families falls very heavily upon the wife,”
-Employer discrimination
As for the women who do have children, Professor McDonald says they are often faced with employer discrimination – even those who are considering having children
“The losses to potential earnings for women for having children are very considerable. In the face of these societal arrangements, women opt to have no children, even not to marry.”
-Housing and loans
Ahead of elections in April, South Korea’s major political parties vowed more public housing and easier loans to encourage childbirth, aiming to allay fears of “national extinction” as fertility rates crumble
After spending more than 360 trillion won ($270 billion) in areas such as childcare subsidies since 2006, the parties’ focus on population growth has failed to reverse record low fertility rates

Ms Yi
“Society, especially in China, assumes that women are the ones responsible of taking care of children”

Not just women in Asia wanting to be child free

-Deciding to have children
More women are weighing up the sacrifices, whether it is career goals or maybe their mental health, that they’ll have to make when it comes to deciding whether to have children
-India
So much of traditional norms are highly gender specific and that can make people feel boxed in,” Ms Panjabi says
-“I see a pretty incredible shift in feminist ideas in India, and I think more women are asking themselves if kids are what they really want. That is refreshing and powerful!”

Australia’s cost-of-living crisis driving similar choices

Australia’s total fertility rate — representing the number of children a woman would have if she lived through her childbearing years — was 1.63 births per woman in 2022
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics also revealed the average age of mothers has been increasing
In 2022, women aged 30-34 years had the highest fertility rate at 114.9 babies per 1,000 women, higher than 108.6 babies in 2001

Professor Notes

Aoife Yi
Grew up in a single parent family
Highschool teacher
Prices(Sacrifices) to pay
Time and opportunity costs(Can do other things)
Older people
Need someone to take care of me
Chitra Panjabi
Expected to become a women
Made it clear that she doesn’t want children
Peter McDonald
Expert, must have done a lot of research on this
Korea having the world lowest birth rates
-0.78 of rate. Less than one
-Not only korea, Japan birth birth rate growing lower eighth years in a row
-China 1.09, India has only two
Chart
Purple on the top India
Australia similar to US
CHina go down for a two years
Korea gone down, pretty much the whole time
Complex
Combnation of factors, research
More women in the workforce
Guys work late, employment vulnerability high
McDonald, many companiew not supportive
More public housing, housing costs out of control
Sexual harassment
Climate change..problems affected not want to bring a child to the world
Ms Meera
People not making a lot of money
Earning money not keeping up with inflation
Average age higher than it used to be
Australia Fertility rate
1940(Stone age): World in Depression
Went up and peaked up in 1861 3~4 kids
1978 Way down birth control
Right around 2008, gone down
2020 dipped and went up to 2020 between 2021
Why? People stuck at home
Katherine

Reference: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-17/fertility-rates-asia-declining-why-dont-women-want-kids/103576120