Are families falling out of fashion?
It’s official, families are out of fashion, announced an American ‘influencer’, Sean Monahan, founder of K-Hole, a trend forecasting group, according to The Week magazine (26 February 2022). To quote: ‘Flat whites, earnestness, avocados and millennial pink are among the things predicted to be on their way out, along with…..having babies.’
How seriously should we take this claim? Is it just a piece of American media nonsense, or – according to the cliché – ‘when America sneezes, the UK catches a cold?’
Ever since our household stopped taking a daily newspaper, we have had The Week instead, a compendium of the week’s news and views from a wide – and, hopefully, therefore unbiased – range of media sources. Here is a sample of some of the relevant headlines over the past few months:
Pope Francis: pets vs. babies - the Pope says, ‘Renouncing parenthood diminishes us. It takes away our humanity.’
Motherhood: why are we putting it off? The article (from the Office of National Statistics) offers a positive line in that, while women now have a choice as to whether to become mothers, this is a cause for celebration, not concern. But it goes on to say that our present media is presenting motherhood in such a negative light, in TV programmes such as ‘Motherland’ and in films like ‘The Lost Daughter’, that many women are discouraged from having children. The Facebook group ‘I regret having children’ has 42,800 followers – and Rachel Cusk wrote unflinchingly of her experience of motherhood in books such as ‘A Life’s Work’. Maybe it’s time to redress the balance?
Declining births: will civilisation crumble? comes from the Tesla and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk – himself a father of six – who claims that we need to increase the population of younger people to support an increasingly ageing population; birth rates have fallen below the 2.1 births per woman, needed to maintain a healthy economy, to only 1.58 in England and Wales – and even lower (1.29) in Scotland. In Britain in 1964, the birth ratios stood at a peak of 2.93 live births per woman, nearly double today’s figure. According to data from the Social Market Foundation (20 Sept 2021), by 2050 a quarter of Britons will be over 65, up from a fifth today – and where will the workforce come from to subsidise them? There is a ‘pronatalist’ group which argues for more government intervention, in the form of cash payments to parents, more generous parental leave and cheaper childcare – but will they have the desired effect of creating more babies? And can we as a country afford these measures?
The main reasons for the fall in the birth rate seem to stem from: higher levels of female education; improved contraception; falling fertility rates as women defer starting a family; job insecurity; high housing costs and the high cost of childcare, not to mention women opting to follow careers rather than motherhood as their life’s work. Fine, if childlessness is by choice, but less so if it is not - and worrying for the economy if we are failing to provide the necessary workers to sustain our society in future.
Other headlines from the past few months include: The cards are stacked against motherhood (Rachel Cunliffe in the New Statesman) and Working parents’ great dilemma (Louise Perry, also in the New Statesman). The Financial Times editorial was, A rough deal for young people and Bryan Walsh in ‘Vox’ says: If we can’t get babies, let’s get immigrants. Finally, The Week’s own editorial writer, Jenny McCartney, says, ‘Many people would indeed like to have a child, or increase the number they have already, but simply cannot afford it for the reasons listed above, which combine to make reproduction a financially daunting prospect’. But she finishes by saying, ‘With the economy’s self-interest at stake, however, it will have to provide some solutions.’ Amen to that!
Maybe the last word should go to my 20-something hairdresser, when I asked her recently if she thought that marriage and motherhood were falling out of fashion. After a moment’s thought, she said, ‘No, my friends are still having fancy weddings and a couple of kids - but then they split up!’ So this is another threat to family life, which could be defined as two adults – of any gender - who support each other to raise one or more children – either natural or adopted - to maturity in a loving home.
Are we facing a future where having a family may become a luxury for the well-off, while those on moderate incomes struggle to afford it? I do hope not!
Sally Greenhill