Why more people want children than are able to have them
A landmark study reveals the barriers, both structural and biological, behind the UK’s fertility challenges and falling birth rates.
The UK’s birth rate is steadily falling, yet our new study found that the desire to start and grow a family remains high. In fact, 79%* of the 1,000+ people surveyed said they want more children than they currently have. So, what’s the real story behind declining fertility rates in the UK?
Our latest research explores the many paths to parenthood, revealing the complexity of the modern fertility journey. External pressures such as housing affordability, career progression and financial stability sit alongside physiological realities such as age-related fertility struggles and the increasing need for medical intervention and fertility treatment. Together, they paint a striking picture of what it means to navigate starting a family today.
The disconnect between what’s wanted, and what’s possible
Our survey shows that fertility often isn’t a story of choice, but of barriers. Many respondents cited external factors as key reasons for delaying starting a family. Around 26% pointed to career progression, while 25% cited lack of space at home and a further 25% said they simply couldn’t afford more children.
Yet financial concerns aren’t the only challenge. Some 52% of respondents shared that they required medical intervention during their fertility journey, which highlights that behind the headlines about the UK’s falling birth rates lies not a decline in desire, but a complex negotiation between work, life and timing.
“I had my children later in life not by design, but because of fertility issues. I didn’t know I had severe endometriosis until I struggled to conceive. That journey taught me that waiting is not always a choice.”
Laura Biggs, The Fertility Show
Work, life and the “biological clock”
For many people, ‘putting off’ parenthood isn’t a choice so much as a response to uncertainty. We’re raised in a culture where there’s often a ‘right’ order to things: forge a career, establish a stable home environment, build a financial cushion, and only then start thinking about starting a family. But biology doesn’t always follow the script, and while many of us are focusing on ticking off life’s other major milestones – whether that’s getting on the property ladder, securing that promotion, finding a partner or simply feeling ‘ready’ – our biological clock keeps on ticking, and can’t always wait.
The statistics show that people are having children later than ever. In 1990, the average age of birthing parents was 27, with intended fathers and nonbirthing parents averaging 31. In 2024, those figures were 31 and 33 respectively. And the past decade has seen birth rates fall across all but one age group – those over 40.
“I'm a young professional working as a journalist. Reporting on these issues [declining birth rates] has made me more acutely aware of my own situation—the tension between building a career that requires constant availability and flexibility, and the biological reality that fertility doesn't wait.”
Raya
Systems that feel designed to delay parenthood
Our own research findings and the UK’s statistics raise the question: are we choosing to start families later, or are we being steered there by systems that make earlier parenthood difficult to sustain?
Look closer, and a pattern emerges. Today’s fertility landscape isn’t shaped purely by personal choice, but by work cultures, housing affordability and availability, financial pressures that keep pushing family life further down the road, and many other factors that affect a person’s sense of stability. None of these systems were built with fertility in mind, yet they all shape the journey.
And still, in the UK, fertility education and support tend to arrive only when something goes wrong: when pregnancy doesn’t happen, when periods stop, when there’s finally a diagnosis. Until then, people are left to navigate critical years with little more than the reassurance that they can deal with fertility later on.
If we want to understand modern fertility journeys, and why so many people feel caught between what they want and what’s possible, we need to look further upstream. Because fertility is shaped quietly and gradually, long before it becomes a problem to solve.
Want to know more about fertility in the UK today? To read The Fertility Disconnect report in full, click here.
*Wild Nutrition (2026), The Fertility Disconnect: study data
