{"id":670255,"date":"2026-10-30T21:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670255\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T21:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:50:13","slug":"miriam-ocallaghan-theres-too-much-bad-news-about-having-babies-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670255\/","title":{"rendered":"Miriam O\u2019Callaghan: \u2018\u200aThere\u2019s too much bad news about having babies\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

RT\u00c9<\/a>\u2019s new documentary, Ireland\u2019s Population Crash, opens with a stark statistic. It tells viewers that in just one decade, Ireland\u2019s birth rate has fallen by a staggering 30 per cent. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fact that is worrying economists and demographers, who warn that if the trend continues, it could threaten Ireland\u2019s future workforce and place untold financial strain on the State pension system.<\/p>\n

Presented by veteran broadcaster Miriam O\u2019Callaghan<\/a>, the two-part documentary explores the multitude of reasons behind this downward trajectory and examines what Ireland\u2019s future will look like with fewer children. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to have a child, or if you don\u2019t want to have a child, that\u2019s completely your right. The only problem is, what will happen to the world if no one has children?\u201d O\u2019Callaghan asks in episode one. <\/p>\n

Before the documentary grapples with this question of a \u201cworld without children\u201d, it analyses how childcare costs and unaffordable housing are affecting young people\u2019s decisions around parenthood. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aIf you don\u2019t have a home, the last thing you\u2019re probably thinking of is having a baby. People say, \u2018I can\u2019t bring a child into the world. I have nowhere to bring it. I\u2019m not going to bring it into my parent\u2019s\u2019 spare bedroom\u2019,\u201d O\u2019Callaghan tells the latest episode of The Irish Times Women\u2019s Podcast. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just \u201cfinancial issues\u201d that are stopping people from having children, the mother of eight says. Discourse on social media, she adds, is also influencing decisions around parenthood. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s too much bad news about having babies,\u201d O\u2019Callaghan tells podcast presenter R\u00f3is\u00edn Ingle.” If you look at TikTok and Insta, it\u2019s all about how difficult it is and I think it\u2019s such a wondrous gift\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy only success really, I think – and I love my career and I love what I do – is that I have eight healthy, happy children, and I wake up grateful for that every day\u201d. <\/p>\n

To highlight how falling birth rates could affect Irish society in future, O\u2019Callaghan travels to South Korea, where the fertility rate stands at 0.8 births per woman and the effects of the declining population can already be felt. <\/p>\n

\u201cTwo things I thought were really shocking is that there are more nappies sold for adults in South Korea than there are nappies sold for babies and there are more baby buggies sold for dogs,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Although South Korea\u2019s birth rate has risen slightly in recent years, it is still significantly below the population replacement level of 2.1 births per woman, a threshold the country has not met since 1983.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThey have the lowest birth rate on the planet, and they have older people with robots because there are no young people to be friendly to them, or they didn\u2019t have children, so there\u2019s no one to mind them\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to live in a world like that. I didn\u2019t see a single child when I was in South Korea,\u201d she adds. <\/p>\n

You can listen back to this conversation in the player above or search The Women\u2019s Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. <\/p>\n

The first episode of Ireland\u2019s Population Crash is available to watch on RTE1 on Wednesday November 4th at 9:35pm, followed by episode two on November 11th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RT\u00c9\u2019s new documentary, Ireland\u2019s Population Crash, opens with a stark statistic. It tells viewers that in just one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,45750],"class_list":["post-670255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-joanne-mcnally"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}