For as long as I can remember, I have aspired to be a mother. When I was little, I carried a doll everywhere, feeding it imaginary food, then shaking it like it was a real baby.
When I reached my early teens, I begged my mother to have another child alongside me and my older sister. I wanted to have a younger sister to raise and was devastated when she decided not to.
I made no secret that I wanted to be a “young mother” (a 25 year old mother). When it comes to dating, I’ve warned potential partners: if you’re not ready to have kids – and soon – I’m not the one for you!
Lily Allen with her children from her first husband – Marnie (left) and Ethel. Last week the singer said having children ‘ruined’ her career
Today, I am 27 years old, I am in a happy relationship, but I still do not have children. I desperately want a baby, but I’m beginning to understand why thousands of women of my generation delay or choose not to have children.
Today, around the world, birth rates are falling below “replacement levels” – the number of children needed to maintain the population at its current level.
In 1964, there were 2.93 children per woman in Britain, compared to just 1.55 today – far below the figure of 2.1 needed to support the population without immigration.
The reasons for this are complex, but it largely comes down to two things: an anti-child culture and an anti-child economy.
We live in a culture that no longer considers having children to be a collective ideal. Too often, parenthood is seen as an individual choice, a heavy burden on the planet.
In 2009, actress Cameron Diaz said: “Honestly? We don’t need any more children. We have a lot of people on this planet. (In 2019, she had a daughter via surrogate).
In 2019, Meghan and Prince Harry revealed they planned to have just two children to reduce their impact on the environment.
And in 2019, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle revealed they planned to have just two children to reduce their impact on the environment, telling Vogue that “we should be able to leave something better behind for the next generation “.
The Sussexes and Diaz were slamming the misguided ideology of the eco-brigade, which believes our growing population is a climate change disaster.
Some women have even gone so far as to “go on birth strike,” refusing to have children until global warming slows down.
In 2019, far-left US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told her Instagram followers: “There is a scientific consensus that children’s lives are going to be very difficult. And this leads, I think, young people to ask themselves a legitimate question: is it acceptable to still have children?
Worse still, it is the “feminists” who equate motherhood with a chore and a sacrifice. Last week, singer Lily Allen said having her two children had “ruined” her career.
On TikTok and Instagram, under the hashtag “Dinks” (double income, no children), young couples tout their financial freedom and their lifestyle without responsibilities. Or take the ‘tradwife’ trend, where women idealize traditional gender roles such as cooking, cleaning and child-rearing – but are regularly accused by self-proclaimed feminists of being ‘sexist’ and ‘backward’. to do this.
In 2009, actress Cameron Diaz said, “Honestly? We don’t need any more children. We have a lot of people on this planet’
It’s no wonder that, as a young professional living in London, I feel almost counter-cultural when I discuss the prospect of having children with my fellow twenty-somethings. Most of the time, people look at me in surprise, implicitly asking: how could you suggest something so ridiculous? Often they joke, “I can barely take care of myself,” or my girlfriends tell me, “I don’t want to sacrifice my career.”
In other words, being a parent is no longer desirable for my generation.
Economically speaking, I can understand why. With rent and other housing costs soaring and a low-wage job market, having children has become a luxury.
I’m lucky enough to be on the property ladder and have a long-term relationship where we both work full-time on a healthy income. A young London couple on an average salary of £40,000 each would, however, struggle to save a deposit for a one-bedroom flat in an outer London area, which averages almost £290,000. The prospect of losing half of that income to care for a newborn, even for a short time, would be unthinkable.
And although my partner of 25 years and I both want to become parents, delaying the issue seems easier than facing the prospect of losing half of our combined income to raise a new baby and going against of the trend set by our peers – so that’s what we do. I did. We will get there, although we recognize that the longer we leave it, the harder it will be.
Of course, older generations will think this is typical of a “snowflake generation” who have it far too easy, wasting their savings on Netflix subscriptions, avocado toast and vacation packages.
But the truth is that our salaries are lower in real terms than our parents were when they were in their 20s and 30s – and we have crippling student loans to pay off.
The UK also suffers from some of the highest childcare costs in the world, at around £936 per month, according to Money.co.uk, or multiples of £511 in France, £271 in Germany and £155 in Sweden respectively.
The result is that many middle- and even high-income women delay having children until they are sure they can cover the cost.
But it’s a dangerous game. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to conceive. Even IVF has an 80% failure rate for women aged 35-44. Research shows that, tragically, 80 percent of all childless women say they research raise a family.
Of course, another major reason for this is the inability to find a long-term partner. For many reasons – online dating, social media and Covid to name a few – thirty-somethings are having less sex than our parents. Marriage rates have fallen dramatically in recent decades.
And while some choose to become single parents or have children outside of marriage, most still agree that having children in marriage is ideal.
It is difficult to overstate the catastrophe that awaits us if we do not reverse the trend of declining birth rates. In Japan, where the birth rate is 1.34, the prime minister said the country was on the verge of being unable to function. In South Korea, it is a shocking 0.84.
The UK population is aging to an “unprecedented degree”, with the proportion of people aged 65 and over set to rise from 19% today to almost 25% by 2040, according to a report from the Center for political studies (CPS). .
In 1908, when the state pension was introduced, it was only 5 percent. This will bring terrifying costs to pensions, healthcare and social care, with public spending on older people expected to quadruple from £225bn to £950bn by 2072, according to the CPS estimates.
And our taxes will have to pay for all of this, as a smaller and smaller proportion of the working-age population will have to pay ever larger sums of money to support the elderly. Collapsing birth rates leave us vulnerable to reliance on mass immigration, which brings its own social problems.
Only a change in national perspective will be enough.
One of the few developed countries with a high birth rate is Israel. Getting married and having children has immense cultural value in a religious country where many ancestors are Holocaust survivors. The memory of oblivion is all too close to home.
Although Israel may be a special case, there are things we can learn from it. Simply put, we need to elevate the cultural status of parenting, without stigmatizing those who choose otherwise.
Yes, parenting can be stressful, expensive and exhausting, but the purpose and love you gain from it is one of the most eternal truths of life – as any mother will tell you.
It’s high time we made it our national mission to become the most baby- and family-friendly nation in the world. Otherwise, we may no longer have a society.