Víctor Manuel Ibarra, 80 years old, had nine siblings. His late wife, Sonia Rojas, six. The couple had three children and only the eldest, Cecilia, has been a mother. He has two wives, of which one, 30, rules out motherhood. He broke up with his last boyfriend because he wanted to start a family. The second, 16, wants to have children young. The reduction of the Ibarra Rojas family is not anecdotal in Chile. The South American country is at the bottom of the region in the birth rate ranking, with 1.5 children - the same as Cuba, Costa Rica and Uruguay - according to the latest report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF). In 2023, Chile recorded the lowest number of births in a decade, with 173,920 births, continuing the downward path since 2013, when 240,000 were registered.
The Ibarra Rojas brothers grew up among cousins, accustomed to long tables and crowded family parties in the municipality of San Bernardo, in the southern area of Santiago, where their father worked repairing locomotives in the workshop of the State Railway Company. The patriarch, his three children with their respective partners and his two granddaughters participate in today's meetings.
The family clan meets with EL PAÍS in a large house with gardens belonging to Víctor's second son in a rural area in the south of the Chilean capital. The octogenarian listens attentively to the reasons of his 55-year-old son, named the same as him, about why he decided not to be a father. The owner of a catering and event production company met his current partner at 27, who warned him that due to health issues she could not be a mother, which was not a problem because since then he was clear that he did not want to start a family. . “Between the ages of 25 and 40 you achieve financial independence, you can travel, you want your apartment alone and life goes by quickly. When you reach 40, you are already too old to have children,” he points out. His older sister, Cecilia, differs. She had her second daughter at that age. 4.7% of births in Chile in 2023 were to women between 40 and 44 years old, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The youngest of the siblings, Carolina, a 38-year-old journalist, has been in a relationship for four years and explains that over motherhood she has decided to prioritize other things, such as professional development and adventures. “They always tell me that I have two years left, but my mother had me at 40 and my sister was a mother at 40. So it is a possibility, but not to this day,” she points out. She mentions the importance that freedom and the need to have economic stability to start a family have always had in her life. “If that aspect is lame it is difficult,” says the communicator and today a biodance student. “If I'm not a mother, it's not something that affects me like the idea that I don't have children, that I'm going to be left alone. That thing is not there for me.”
That thing is in his brother. "I'm happy with what I've achieved, I'm fine, but obviously one also thinks about when one is old, who can take care of you because the children have that job... I mean, he," he says, looking at his father. "He has us and he counts on us," says the businessman, who plans to end up in a nursing home. “I don't know who is going to take care of me, I don't think my niece is going to have her story or her parents are going to be old,” adds Víctor, who has three dogs and declares himself an animalist and lover of nature. . “You have to pour love somewhere, because that is natural.”
When Cecilia had her first daughter, her mother helped her a lot in caring for her because she worked as a secretary. Years later, Sonia fell ill and Cecilia thought about giving up on her to take care of her. To check her health, she took some tests and discovered that she was pregnant. Her mother died a month before the new member of the family was born. “She taught us this… to love each other as brothers,” she says, alluding to the obvious complicity and affection that the Ibarra Rojas have for each other. The theme of care is recurring during the conversation. 30.4% of young women - under 29 years of age - who do not have a paid job or are looking for employment would return to the labor market having a place to leave their children, a figure that, in the case of men, represents only a 4.4%. The main condition for them is an improvement in working conditions (23.4%), according to the National Youth Institute (Injuv).
Archive photographs of the Ibarra family.FERNANDA REQUENA
The same survey indicates that between 2018 and 2022, young women without children who would like to be mothers fell from 64.8% to 55%. Cecilia's eldest daughter, a 30-year-old nurse, says that she does not want to be a mother. She broke up with her last boyfriend, who she lived with, because of that. She “she likes to travel, she says she wants to have a good time, have a car, go out and party.” Her friends, she adds, are all in the same position. The case of her teenager, 16, is different, who wants to be a mother and young so she can enjoy her children more. Always based on the Injuv survey, the percentage of people who consider that women who have children feel more fulfilled than those who do not, fell from 21.1% in 2015 to 14.8% in 2022.
Víctor Manuel Ibarra, the man with a large family who became a father at the age of 22, is not distracted during the conversation, but he does not intervene either. His son asks him if it affects him not having more grandchildren. “No, everyone makes their own decisions,” he replies. What happens to him when he hears his children say all these things? “I know what they are like. I put the maximum to her, the oldest one, she does everything. And here is my son... I am very proud of him, for his work, for his determination to live, to prosper. Also from my youngest daughter, the only one who graduated from college,” he describes with satisfaction.
While family trees are shrinking in Chile, by 2024 it is projected that the proportion of older people will be higher than the percentage of those under 15 years of age. And in two more years, those over 60 will exceed 20%, according to the INE, which will enter the country into a “very advanced” stage of population aging.
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