I want to talk about Mitch and Laura, something that is very personal to me and something that is very hard for me to articulate. I always have trouble trying to find the right words and the right ideas to get across when it surrounds fertility and having children.
I'm thirty seven.
Years old and I have been on quite the fertility journey with freezing eggs, trying to freeze embryos and been unsuccessful, trying to freeze embryos again and getting just a few, which you know, is not ideal, but it's better than none. And I constantly have this battle in my head of do I want kids or not?
Is that a decision I really want to make? Can I have kids or not?
You know?
Do I want to risk trying and falling pregnant and having one and then it's not what I wanted? Do I not want them because I don't think I can have them. I can't work out which came first, the chicken or the egg when it comes to being able to have kids or wanting them, and I think I've mixed those up a lot in my head.
I saw some statistics that have.
Come out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that have revealed that I definitely am not alone in this feeling. So we are now at an all time fertility low. So we are now averaging one point five babies per woman.
Whereas we used to average three point five y five. This is Australian Statistics. Australian Statistics twenty twenty four current. This is current.
Yeah, so what we're seeing is this. I mean, they obviously went out and ask people why. But one of the biggest reasons is the financial dedication that you need to make to have a child. The cost of living is at an all time high, but inflation is not going along with that.
People are not able to afford to have a child anymore.
Some people are choosing more selfishly because they want to keep traveling or they don't want to give up what they see is the privileged life that they live. But we're seeing people just physically say I really would love to have a child, but my fertility is not great, I can't afford IVF or I cannot afford daycare, schooling fears a roof over my head.
Absolutely, And I mean I have friends. I have two kids myself, but I have so many friends who have children, and they have they have decided not to have any more. And it's not because they don't want to have a bigger family or an extended family. It's because they physically can't afford it. I mean day care fees alone, if you don't get subsidies from the government or you know,
you're on a duel income household for one child. When my daughter goes to school, it's one hundred and eighty five dollars.
A day per child a day a day per child. It's nearly four hundred dollars for two kids. Yeah, day, It's crazy.
And the thing is is that there are so many moms out there who would love to go back to their careers, who would love to go back to work, even if that's part time, but they're not able to go back to work because it's cheaper to be a stay at home mum than it is to put your kids into daycare.
And like, so the system is broken.
The system doesn't support mums and it doesn't support having these bigger families, and I think so many people feel that pressure.
So britt for you at the moment where it is because we've hung out outside of the show and with our friends, and it consumes a lot of your thinking. We talk about it personally a lot you having kids in your fertility journey.
Yeah, And like I like, even all last night, I was in tears all night just because it's all I think about it. And every time I go to voice it out loud, I get up to that because I don't know if I can have children, and then I don't know if I do have them, how.
I can physically do it.
And I know I'm not alone in that feeling, and we do have a biological clock and we do have pressures, and I hate that women have to feel this way. And like I said, I know I'm not alone in it, and I can't. I cannot work it out in my head. Like I just like I said before the chicken all the egg, I can't work out if I'm questioning it because I don't think I can have them. Like I said before, I tried to freeze some membryos, you know,
and we got zero. When I tried to freeze one, and I got one that had a disability and wasn't viable with life. It's a real challenge and I just am having a hard time working it out in my head what I want and what's the right thing, and do I go down that route?
It's going to change my whole life.
And also, now women have the opportunity to have a career, and a career is very important to me.
We never used to have that option.
So I know there's a lot of women out there now that are like, Okay, great, Now I do get the choice to go and chase something else that traditionally only men could chase. And then do they have to make that sacrifice of a family to do so?
I think we open the lines because you bring up a very interesting point of view, and you too, Laura, like the finance is involved, and then you say the economy and the world and the state of the world, and you know, is it ethical to bring kids into this world?
Well, I'd love to know.
Yeah, people, if you're driving right now, give us a call here, because I would love to know if you have kids and you don't want any more, or if you know that you do not want children, I'd love to know the why, because there has to be more of a reason that we're seeing this huge dropping fertility rates in Australia.
And I'm really interested in the why, right
What'll take you cause me next the pickup