INAYA FOLARIN IMAN: Being a mum is no longer desirable for young women like me. But the consequences for this country are catastrophic…
For as long as I can remember, I’ve yearned to be a mother. As a toddler, I carried a doll everywhere, feeding her imaginary food, then dandling her as if she were a real baby.
When I reached my early teens, I’d beg my mother to have another child alongside me and my older sister. I wanted a younger sibling to nurture and was devastated when she decided against it.
I made no secret of the fact that I wanted to be a ‘young mum’ (a mother by 25 years old). When it came to dating, I warned prospective partners: if you’re not up for having children – and soon – I’m not the one for you!
Lily Allen with her children by her first husband – Marnie (left) and Ethel. Last week, the singer said having children ‘ruined’ her career
Now I’m 27, in a happy relationship – but still childless. I want a baby desperately, but it’s starting to dawn on me why thousands of women of my generation are delaying or opting out of having children altogether.
Today, across the world, birth rates are plummeting below ‘replacement levels’ – the number of children needed to maintain the population at its current level.
In 1964, there were 2.93 children born per woman in Britain, compared with just 1.55 today – much lower than the 2.1 figure needed to sustain the population without immigration.
The reasons for this are complicated, but much of it boils down to two things: an anti-children culture and an anti-children economy.
We live in a culture that no longer views having children as a collective ideal. Too often, parenthood is seenas an individual choice, a burdensome drain on the planet.
Back in 2009, actress Cameron Diaz, put it: ‘Honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.’ (In 2019, she went on to have a daughter via a surrogate).
In 2019, Meghan and Prince Harry revealed they planned to have just two children to lessen their impact on the environment
And in 2019, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle revealed they planned to have just two children to lessen 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 trumpeting the flawed ideology of the eco-brigade, who believe that our growing population is a climate change disaster.
Some women have even gone as far as ‘birth striking’ – refusing to have children until global warming slows down.
In 2019, the hard-Left US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said to her Instagram followers: ‘There’s a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it ok to still have children?’
Worse, though, are the ‘feminists’ who, equate motherhood with drudgery and sacrifice. Just last week, singer Lily Allen said having her two children ‘ruined’ her career.
On TikTok and Instagram, under the hashtag ‘Dinks’ (double income, no kids) young couples boast about their financial freedom and responsibility-free lifestyle. Or take the ‘tradwife’ trend, where women idealise traditional gender roles such as cooking, cleaning and child-rearing – but are regularly accused by self-proclaimed feminists of being ‘sexist’ and ‘backwards’ for doing so.
In 2009, actress Cameron Diaz, said: ‘Honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet’
No wonder that as a young professional living in London, I feel almost countercultural when I bring up the prospect of having children to my fellow twenty-somethings. Most of the time, people look at me with surprise, implicitly asking: How could you suggest something so ridiculous? Often, they joke, ‘I can barely look after myself’ or 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 in a long-term relationship where we both work full-time on a healthy income. A young couple in London on an average salary of £40,000 each, however, would struggle to save a deposit for a one-bedroom flat in an outer London borough, which comes in on average at almost £290,000. The prospect of losing half that income to look after a newborn, even for a short while, would be unthinkable.
And while my partner, 25, and I both want to be parents, delaying the issue feels easier than facing the prospect of losing half our combined income to raise a new baby and going against the trend set by our peers – so that’s what we’ve done. We will get round to it, even though we acknowledge that the longer we leave it, the harder it will be.
Of course, older generations will think this typical of a ‘snowflake generation’ who have it far too easy, frittering away savings on Netflix subscriptions, avocado toast and package holidays.
But the truth is that our wages are lower in real terms than our parents’ were when they were in their 20s and 30s – and we have crippling student loans to repay.
The result is that many middle and even high-income women are delaying having children until they’re sure they can cover the cost.
But this is a dangerous game. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to conceive. Even IVF has a 80 per cent failure rate for women aged 35-44. Research shows that, tragically, 80 per cent of all childless women say they wanted to raise a family.
Another major reason for that, of course, is not being able 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 did. Marriage rates have dropped dramatically over the past few decades.
And while some might choose to become single parents or have children out of wedlock, most still agree that having children in marriage is the ideal.
It is difficult to overstate the catastrophe that lies ahead if we do not reverse the trend of declining birthrates. In Japan, where the birth rate is 1.34, the Prime Minister has said that the country is on the brink of not being able to function. In South Korea, it is shockingly 0.84.
Britain’s population is aging at an ‘unprecedented degree’, the share of people aged 65 and above is on course to rise from 19 per cent today to nearly 25 per cent by 2040, according to a report by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).
In 1908, when the state pension was introduced, it was just 5 per cent. This will bring with it terrifying costs for pensions, healthcare and social care, with government spending on the elderly expected to quadruple from £225 billion to £950 billion by 2072, according to CPS estimates.
And our taxes will have to pay for all this – as a shrinking proportion of the working-age population will have to fork out ever-greater sums to support the elderly. Collapsing birth rates leave us vulnerable to dependence on mass immigration, which brings its own social problems.
Only a change in national outlook will do.
One of the few developed countries with a high birthrate is Israel. Getting married and having children is of immense cultural value in a religious country where many ancestors are Holocaust survivors. The memory of oblivion is all too close to home.
While Israel is perhaps a special case, there are things we can learn from them. Put simply, we need to raise the cultural status of parenthood, while not stigmatising those who choose otherwise.
Yes, parenthood can be stressful, expensive and exhausting, but the purpose and love you gain is one of life’s most eternal truths – as every mother will tell you.
It is high time we made it a national mission to become the most pro-baby and pro-family nation in the world. Otherwise we may not have a society left.
