In the past few years, a frustrating trend has emerged in reporting on the UK’s falling birth rate. Every month or so, a study reveals new statistics pointing out that either fewer people are having children, or that the average age for first-time parents is increasing. Then a slew of alarmist headlines collectively decide that these stories are actually about women — women “prioritising their careers”, “forgetting to have children”, remaining “childless” into their thirties.
The latest example of this came last week, after a report from Britain’s IVF regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), revealed that the average age of people starting IVF treatment had passed 35 for the first time. By waiting longer for IVF, the report warned, couples are jeopardising their chances of success. Naturally, the conclusion of the subsequent handwringing in the press was that “women are leaving it too late to have babies”.
The UK has the fifth most expensive childcare in the world. Then there are the unprecedented renting costs
Correct me if I’m wrong, but l say it takes two people to make a baby. Yes, birthrates are declining across the world. But this is not a result of selfish young women simply “forgetting” to have children (a laughable concept, given the incessant societal pressure on women to think about it). Nor is it, as former Tory MP Miriam Cates claimed at the National Conservatism Conference last year, a failure of “liberal individualism”, or the “narcissism of the ‘me’ generation”, as her former colleague and MP Danny Kruger declared.
There are myriad reasons why fewer people are having children. For starters, the UK has the fifth most expensive childcare costs in the world, behind only the US, Ireland, New Zealand and the Czech Republic according to the OECD. An acute housing crisis, unprecedented renting costs and the pernicious “two child” benefit cap, which punishes people for having too many children and pushes larger families into poverty, hardly presents an attractive economic landscape for would-be parents. Young women today are also more likely to have gone to university and be in work than previous generations — of course we want to live more independent lives before parenthood. But among my peers, it is the economic, rather than social factors, which are the most prohibitive.
Of course, there is no denying that everyone’s fertility declines with age. But, when it comes to IVF, there is also the problem of inadequate NHS provision. Extortionate waiting times, exacerbated by the pandemic, mean that women who want children are often either forced to wait years for treatment, or turn to private healthcare. If you start looking for help in your early thirties, it could take several years to get there.
The criteria for accessing NHS fertility treatment can also be restrictive, and varies depending on where you live. Few single and same-sex patients qualify for NHS funding — in most areas they must prove they have tried several rounds of artificial insemination without success, entirely at their own cost.
We need to be able to have thoughtful, inclusive conversations about parenthood. But within the moral panic and pro-natalism surrounding conversations about falling birthrates, rarely does there appear to be any robust attempt at diagnosing why people are having fewer children. As is often the case, it’s not women, it’s the economy, stupid.
Why are we jailing protesters for longer than rapists?
Last week, five Just Stop Oil activists were sentenced to the longest ever jail terms for non-violent protest in UK history, after conspiring to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway. Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam was sentenced to five years for conspiracy to cause public nuisance, while Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin — who is just 22 — all received four. Their offence was planning peaceful protest, specifically speaking on Zoom calls to recruit potential volunteers. In six months in 2022, 20 rapists received sentences of less than five years. Two weeks ago, a man in Swindon convicted of raping his ex-partner was sentenced to four years and seven months.
Most of us accept that climate change is an existential threat. Yet climate protesters are deemed of greater concern than rapists. Our prisons are full, with the Government planning to release prisoners less than halfway through their sentences. Are peaceful climate change protesters really people we think deserve to be locked away?
