Last year was the quietest year for maternity wards in England and Wales since 1977, according to the BBC's reporting on the latest Office for National Statistics data. Fewer than 585,000 babies arrived in 2025, the fourth annual decline in a row. The typical woman in those two countries is now projected to bear roughly 1.4 children over her lifetime, compared with roughly 1.9 fifteen years earlier. First-time mothers now average 29.6 years old — up by about two years over the same stretch.
One reason there are even this many births: 40% now involve at least one parent born outside the UK, up from 30%.
Stacey Waring, a 40-year-old nurse from Nottingham, told the BBC she chose not to have kids because it's "just not a very nice world to bring people into." Georgina Tuffour, a 35-year-old trainee nurse with three children, wants more but can't afford them — her son's drum lessons alone run £50 a month.
Oxford anthropologist Dr. Paula Sheppard points to a cultural shift toward "investing in fewer children rather than having lots of children with fewer things." She notes that even Nordic countries with generous family-friendly policies aren't seeing a rebound, suggesting that cash subsidies and parental leave can't reverse the trend on their own.
Sheppard also describes a self-perpetuating loop: "If you grow up in a society not seeing lots of babies, then it becomes harder for you to have babies." Fewer kids around means fewer cousins, fewer neighborhood playmates, fewer casual encounters with infants — and a generation that has less practice imagining parenthood as a normal default.
The UK isn't an outlier. Japan lost 628,205 people in 2021 and has been paying families to leave Tokyo. Elon Musk keeps insisting civilization will "crumble" without more babies.
Previously:
