The Observer - 04.08.2019

Section:OBS 2N PaGe:42 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 17:30 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Observer
  42 04.08.19 Comment & Analysis

Riddell’s view

Yes, children are great, but they can leave you skint

No wonder Britain’s

birth rate is at a record

low – being a working

parent is so tricky

There is a point in

parenting where you ask yourself

whether it’s all worth it. In crude

fi nancial terms, the answer is

probably no. The most well-paid of

women aside, it’s routine for couples

to fi nd that a mother’s return to

work costs almost as much in

nursery fees as her wages are worth

(and sometimes more). Childcare

becomes a patchwork thing: as

many sessions in the creche as

you can stretch to, hasty parental

handovers between shifts, a willing

grandparent to pick up the slack if

you’re lucky. Always, the low hum of

panic that this is the day it all falls

to pieces.

When this was my choice to

make, my partner and I stretched

and strained to make it work,

because hanging on until school

started would have put a fi ve-year

hole in a career that I hadn’t even

begun. But there was another option

• or there would have been, if I’d
  weighed this all up pre-pregnancy.
  Like many of my friends, I could
  have just not. No babies. No payslip
  turning to dust in your hand. No
  begging your childminder for lates
  when your offi ce needs you just a bit
  longer. No joy of parenting either,
  but how can you miss people who
  haven’t been born?
  My child-free friends are not
  exceptions. New fi gures from the
  Offi ce for National Statistics say that
  the birth rate in England and Wales
  is the lowest since records began :
  just 1.7 children per wom an, some
  way below the replacement level
  of 2.1. Nor are England and Wales
  outliers: many developed nations
  are in the same situation. One
  cause is the rise in women’s status.

Universally, the more education

women have, the fewer babies

they want. Another pressure is

urbanisation. On a farm, a new child

will soon be another pair of hands to

work. In the city, they’re just another

mouth to feed.

More nations will follow suit.

According to Darrell Bricker and

John Ibbitson in their book Empty

Planet , global population will

peak around the middle of this

century and then begin to decline.

It’s not necessarily a condition

to be mourned – after all, fewer

people will mean less consumption

of natural resources, lower CO 2

emissions, reduced competition

for land. But the population will

be disproportionately old. They

will age out of work. The economy

will shrink. They will need care,

and there will be fewer people to

provide it. It’s an unprecedented

challenge for governments, yet the

rhetoric of “we’re full” marches

on and electorates turn cold on

immigration, the only thing to

have reliably kept the working-age

population in proportion.

The alternative, beloved of

strongman populists, is natalism:

the ugly effort to compel women

into motherhood. In Poland , this

has meant restricting abortion

rights. In Hungary, women with

four or more children are exempted

from income tax. In China, state

propaganda stigmatises women

without children as “leftover” , just

as it once condemned those who

breached the old one-child policy.

The implication is the same : the

female body is a resource that the

state can appropriate to ensure its

own growth.

However, in Germany, the

emphasis is on supporting women

rather than exploiting them. There

is generous leave, designed to

encourage men to take their share so

the whole parenting burden won’t

devolve on to women, while every

child aged over one is entitled to a

nursery place (although provision

is still short). And, thanks to a few

other factors, it seems to work: the

Economist recently reported that

Germany’s birth rate rose from 1.33

to 1.57 between 2006 and 2017.

While the cost of keeping the

population going is borne by

women, they will opt out of that bad

bargain. If our government wants

to soften the coming demographic

blow, its only option is to play the

part of the supportive grandparent

and step up on the childcare front.

Sarah

Ditum

To buy this print or others by Chris Riddell for £30, go to guardianarchive.theprintspace.co.uk or email [email protected]

When parents
work, childcare
becomes a
patchwork thing.
Photograph by
Brian Lawless/PA
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