"Motherhood may be venerated in an unreal and soppy way but the truth is that once we become mothers we are penalised in just about every area of our lives." Photo / 123rf
"Motherhood may be venerated in an unreal and soppy way but the truth is that once we become mothers we are penalised in just about every area of our lives." Photo / 123rf
Opinion by Suzanne Moore
OPINION
Not many people have 10 children, but Elon Musk does. “If people don’t have more children, civilisation is going to crumble,” he declared dramatically in 2021. Musk, it seems, is worried about the labour force declining. Low birth rates and a worldwide decline in fertility concern many others besidesMusk but he has the money to pay for the IVF treatments which produced his twins and triplets, and for a surrogate to produce a second child with Grimes. Is this a model we should aspire to?
Miriam Cates MP sounded a similar alarm at the National Conservatism conference, claiming that our falling birth rate was a bigger threat to the West than Russia, China or climate change. She blamed “liberal individualism” for failing to deliver enough babies. She then went on about cultural Marxism as such people do, as it is more important to hold on to a fantasy about why people are having fewer children than get to grips with the reality.
Are the “OMG! I forgot to have children” generation selfish women who have been stripped of hope by destructive left-wing ideology, or are they in fact making decisions based on much more mundane stuff? Stuff like not being able to afford a home of their own, the huge cost of childcare, the shortage of men who want to parent with them.
Tories such as Cates and Daniel Hannan who are voicing these concerns are echoing those of far-right leaders such as Italy’s Georgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who are explicit about the need to replace their populations. A certain number of babies have to be born in order to support an ageing population. If this doesn’t happen and it is not happening here, we need immigrants to help us manage. That is a hard thing for the right to acknowledge, but in the UK we would need the average woman to have 2.1 kids, and the figure is currently 1.58 in England and Wales and 1.29 in Scotland.
South Korea is trying to lift its birth rate by spending billions on daycare, subsidised nurseries, parental leave and even cash direct to parents. Photo / Rawkkim, Unsplash
Lower birth rates and falling fertility is a worldwide phenomenon. In Europe, France had the highest birth rate; the southern European countries – like Italy, Portugal and Spain – the lowest. South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong are all very worried about population decline.
We can see clearly, looking at the figures, that in countries where women are responsible for most of the childcare and domestic work, then the less willing they are to have children. In Japan, many women are flat out refusing traditional roles. In Italy, where many men go back to their mother’s house to eat, women rarely have more than one child. Partners become an added burdensome responsibility. Why would women want even more?
In countries like Norway and Sweden, where men help more with housework and childcare and there is less gender disparity, birth rates are not in such steep decline.
So in order to stimulate the birth rate, we require some joined-up thinking. In this country, housing is an enormous issue. If young people are living with their parents till their late 20s, then decisions about becoming parents in turn get postponed. Many women are more than aware of their biological clocks but do not want to go it alone or bring up a child in poverty. If they want to have children later, then we have to accept that fertility treatment must be available to those who want it, whatever their circumstances.
If we want to encourage women to have babies younger, then we need much better and affordable childcare and flexible working practices. I watch my daughters’ wages eaten up entirely by paying for nursery. It’s an insane situation. If two wages are needed to bring up kids, then we condemn single parents to barely getting by.
South Korea is throwing money at the problem (£99 billion - about NZ$197b) with daycare, subsidised nurseries, parental leave and even cash direct to parents. Singapore gives parents cash bonuses for babies, but Singapore understands that people may be “prioritising other goals”. Travel, career, education.
This seems to me the nub of it. Once you have an educated female population, then women understand that having children is but one of the choices they can make. If having a child has meant they have to be confined to the home doing most of the childcare, they will often veto having another child.
Politicians can worry about “replacement” and immigration and make up abstract reasons for a low birth rate – or they can listen to what women are saying. With their bodies.
If there is little practical help from the state and men are not doing their fair share, then fewer babies will be born. The modern woman cannot be treated as a baby-making machine to provide a workforce to care for pensioners. Motherhood may be venerated in an unreal and soppy way but the truth is that once we become mothers we are penalised in just about every area of our lives.
Yes, having a baby is a lovely act of optimism but we are realists above all else. Most women I know did not forget to have kids at all. Far from it, they desperately wanted more than they had. But it was not affordable.
