The Daily Scribble

Every few months we’re told that Britain has a birth rate problem. The message is largely the same every time, economists worry about the workforce and politicians going on about pensions. They show the same demographics of an ageing population and the costs and imbalances associated with that. Before long, the conversation becomes about numbers. How many workers will we need? How many taxpayers? How many people must come into the country to keep everything ticking over?

The statement about the birth rate is made but no one ever seems to ask women. They are the ultimate experts on the reasoning, but we’re being told, mostly by male politicians, why we’re not having more or enough children. And let’s face it, the world most politicians live in doesn’t reflect the world of the average population. Most of us have to consider childcare and the price of the mortgage, living expenses and what’s happening in the economy. We can’t afford a nanny, or someone to manage the house.

When women are consulted the answers are interesting. It’s not the stereotype of women wanting to achieve, more that we can see it’s not affordable. The hackneyed eighties nonsense of women having to choose between a high flying career or having children isn’t part of the equation, although we’re definitely expected to be working full time and having babies.

Most women haven’t chosen careers over motherhood or decided that travelling the world is somehow more fulfilling than raising a family. The evidence paints a much more absurd picture. Many women still say they would like two children. Some would like three. Increasingly though, they are having one, or none, not because of their ambitions changed, but because their circumstances have.

There is an enormous difference between choosing not to become a parent and feeling that your quality of life and that of your child will be difficult. Money appears in almost every conversation. Rent levels are increasing exponentially and are already 20-30% more than in 2020,mortgages are up by 40-70%, food has increased by almost 39% in the last five years. Council tax, water rates, petrol and diesel and childcare have all increased by 20-35% in the same period. Gas and electric has doubled.
Generally speaking more than 90% of a woman’s full-time income is eliminated by the cost of childcare for two children. Which makes it mostly pointless when the cost of those children is in excess of that remaining 10%.

But the population replacement rate is needed at approximately 2.6 children per household.  The idea of having three children in childcare is laughable. The government need to choose between women being full time taxpayers or parents and give women the option. This isn’t a rejection of motherhood. It is often an act of reluctant realism.

Previous generations frequently began families while they were still building their lives. They bought modest homes, moved upwards as circumstances improved and accepted that they didn’t need everything to be perfect before having children.

Today many young couples feel they need stability before they even dare to think about starting a family. The difficulty is that stability arrives later than it ever has before, it’s even estimated that most young people can’t afford to leave home before the age of 25. Home ownership has become more difficult. Deposits take years to save but the basic wage in the U.K. doesn’t match the cost of living, never mind a mortgage. Especially for those under 21 who are insulted with a lower basic wage. By the time everything responsibly sought after finally falls into place, fertility has begun its own countdown.

And we live in an age of enlightenment. We know that the world is an enormous and exciting place to explore, many of us want to see it. Often before having children. Which in turn reduces savings, opportunities to set up first homes. Often now we need to travel for work too so there are commuter costs to factor in. The decision becomes the option to live a little or settle down, but rarely is it an option to do both.

Relationships matter too. One of the more interesting findings from recent research is how many women say they simply haven’t met someone they trust enough to raise children with. Becoming a mother still carries disproportionate responsibility. In my own work it’s known that women usually still carry more than 75% or more of the duties of raising a family. This is the cooking, cleaning, childcare, planning, shopping, appointments with doctors and dentists and sometimes more, home admin of organising purchases or services, buying clothes and shoes for the children, filling in school forms, helping with homework, planning celebrations, organising social interactions for everyone, buying gifts and often taking time off when the kids are inevitably sick. Then being penalised for not being reliable enough or prioritising work.  Women know that if the relationship fails, statistically they are more likely to become the primary parent. They know whose career is more likely to pause, the promotions they’ll miss, the pay rises which won’t apply. They know who society will expect to carry the invisible mental load. That inevitably changes the calculation.

Then there is modern parenting itself. There is a theory about the good enough parent but yet we are held to a standard which is far beyond this. Children must be constantly supervised, every meal must be nutritionally perfect, each milestone carefully monitored and recorded. Each emotion expertly validated and educational/social/developmental opportunity seized. Every online interaction watched. And then every decision judged by someone who has never met your family.

Perhaps none of those expectations is unreasonable in isolation but together they create an image of parenting that feels relentless, creating pressure. I remember reading in my children’s school that I was supposed to check the journal daily, help them with homework, read with them daily and fill in any responses to the journal. I read with my children daily anyway and felt the journal was pointless busywork so I resisted it. I have three children, all intelligent, all exceptionally articulate with the most broad vocabulary and command of English I’ve seen in most children I’ve worked with. The journal made no difference to their achievement but it would have taken a lot of my time. Time I didn’t have to spare whilst working full time and giving my 75%+ at home.

And then there is something I think receives far less attention than it deserves. Control. Parents increasingly describe the feeling that raising children no longer entirely belongs to them and the state is forcing earlier control with little evidence of benefit thus far.

A primary example is holidays. Once upon a time, parents decided whether taking a child out of school for a week to spend time with grandparents, experience another culture or simply enjoy a family holiday represented good parenting or bad parenting. They weighed up the benefits and costs. They accepted the consequences of a week missed in school. It was their decision because they were the parents.

Today that autonomy is greatly reduced. Families are effectively funnelled into the same handful of weeks every year. Airlines, hotels and holiday parks know it and prices are adjusted to take advantage of it. Everyone with school-aged children enters the market at exactly the same time and prices rise accordingly. 
Talking to merchants in Cornwall who often rely on tourism to keep some areas flourishing, they’re telling a story of struggle because the profitable weeks have reduced.  So some businesses flourish by charging significantly more during school holidays, others die.  Some can only house a certain influx so their profit line is capped.
The average cost increase for a family of four, be it a week in Spain or a four day break at Centre Parcs is around £900- £1,700, just for going one week later and tipping over into the school holidays.

It’s an insult to the public to be taken advantage of in this way, with fines for taking your children out of school. Yet still there is a greater issue in the principle. We don’t have children to hand them over to the state who treats them in the same way a factory might; making the best possible future taxpayer and forgetting that we are humans first and foremost.

Parents are trusted to make countless life-changing decisions on behalf of their children from birth onwards, where is the state then? During the nappy changes and the vomiting? We consent to medical treatment, where we live, we shape our children’s values.  Yet many feel they cannot decide whether one week away together as a family has value without risking penalties.

Whether people agree or disagree with that policy almost misses the point. If parents increasingly feel that raising children means surrendering more and more decisions to institutions, it inevitably changes how some people view expanding their family. That sense of autonomy matters more than the government can fathom. The conversation about barriers to increasing the birthrate has become almost entirely about managing the consequences rather than understanding the cause.

One of the most fascinating pieces of demographic work came from the United Nations Population Division in its report Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?  It was exploring a series of theoretical demographic scenarios and asking a mathematical question. If countries continued to have fewer children while people lived longer, how much immigration would be required to maintain the same ratio of working-age adults to retired people?

For the United Kingdom, one scenario produced an astonishing figure. Approximately 59.8 million additional immigrants by 2050. Britain’s population would rise to around 136 million.

The report itself acknowledged that these were theoretical calculations rather than practical policy because the arithmetic rapidly becomes unrealistic. Immigration can certainly contribute to population growth, but migrants also grow older, retire and require support themselves. In our case in the U.K. in theory we aren’t allowing migrants to work, which makes them a burden on the state instead. Worsening the problem.
The exercise demonstrated the scale of the demographic challenge rather than providing a blueprint for solving it.

If the maths become so extraordinary that even the modelling illustrates the limits of relying on immigration alone, surely that should prompt a different question altogether. Why have so many women concluded that having children has become such a challenge? There’s a decline in fertility but let’s look at the choice women have, or have had.

Britain has benefited from generations of people who have chosen to make this country their home. Our economy, culture, science, medicine and public services have all been enriched by people arriving from elsewhere.

But it is reasonable to ask whether any country can rely primarily on population replacement without also addressing the reasons its own birth rate has fallen.

Population growth, from whatever source, requires planning and the infrastructure must be strong and of high enough value that the quality of life doesn’t decline.

Homes have to be built, losing greenbelt land. Schools have to expand, which comes at local authority and government expense, via the taxpayer. Hospitals need staff and buildings but in an over -run and poorly executed NHS which is struggling, the option of growth is a dream. Roads become busier, needing more maintenance and affecting the air quality. Water supplies require investment but the water companies are struggling to maintain what already exists. Public transport has to develop to manage the growth. Communities need time and resources to grow together successfully but this too needs investment and opportunity.

What strikes me most is how simple many of the solutions women themselves describe actually are. Build affordable homes for the young people who are here now and will want to leave home in the next ten years. Create a reliable and high quality childcare system that doesn’t consume an entire salary. Enable flexible employment and recognise that some women can still happily contribute whilst working only the hours their children are in school. Normalise this. Educate young people to become partners who genuinely share parenting, with young men who respect women and society. Educate them about fertility optimisation instead of only how to prevent pregnancies.

Show that we are trusted to make good decisions for our families, and deal with those who won’t or can’t. Enable communities to build what they need in their unique geographical areas. The needs of a wild rural Yorkshire village is vastly different to that of inner city London. And use the models of other European countries, offer tax cuts for mothers who have children. Reduce it more with each child. Poland offers a monthly payment for each children, benefitting the whole family. France and others subsidise childcare.

The research shows that the birth rate increases with good childcare options, tax breaks, longer parental leave and a better work-life balance.  Furthermore, when fathers are given 3-6 months paternity leave divorces decrease by 34%.

Essentially the government want future tax payers because they’re mercenary capitalists. So by inducing each couple to feel their quality of life is either unchanged or in fact increased by having children – they will. Willingly. Most women just want to live in a country in which having the family they already wanted does not feel like an act of financial recklessness and where the government cannot be trusted with our future or that of our children.

Governments have become very good at discussing birth rates as though they were an economic equation. Workers versus pensioners. Tax versus dependency. But what is needed is confidence. People have children when they believe tomorrow will be stable and happy enough to welcome them into.

If women are repeatedly telling us that housing is unaffordable, childcare is prohibitive, careers remain vulnerable, relationships feel less secure and family life increasingly comes with layers of institutional oversight that leave parents feeling less trusted than previous generations, perhaps we should stop arguing with them and start listening.