January 18, 2024 - 1:00pm
Emmanuel Macron has this week joined the growing number of world leaders expressing concern about declining fertility rates. In a wide-ranging press conference on Tuesday, the French President observed that his country’s previously healthy birth rate has now plummeted to its lowest point since the Second World War.
What’s notable — but predictable — about the reaction to Macron’s remarks is that he was instantly labelled “Right-wing” and lambasted by French feminists. It’s certainly true that conservative governments, led by the likes of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, have been most proactive in raising the alarm over declining birth rates, but they are far from unique in the Western world. The Danes, for example, launched a “Do it for Denmark” campaign several years ago in an effort to persuade citizens to reproduce.
Governments of all political persuasions should be deeply concerned about collapsing fertility rates. To ensure that there are enough young people entering the workforce to replace (and pay the pensions of) those who retire, average fertility must sit at roughly 2.1 children per woman.
Yet in many Western countries, this number is now well below 1.5. This means that there is a significant and growing “birthgap” with alarming consequences for the future of the economy. If in 2024 you think taxes are too high, the labour market too tight, the NHS underfunded and care workers too scarce, then buckle up because you ain’t seen nothing yet. In Japan, where low fertility has not been masked by high immigration, national debt now stands unsustainably at 250% of GDP.
Given the scale of the economic challenges now unfolding, it should be surprising that the UK Government is paying so little attention to declining fertility rates. But the hysterical reaction from some sections of the French media to Macron’s relatively minor intervention on the issue demonstrates why so few mainstream politicians dare speak out. Within the Westminster bubble there seems to be an automatic assumption that any MP like myself who expresses concern over low birth rates is somehow calling for women to be forced to have children. And while this response is mostly confected outrage, it reflects the fact that while fertility is a serious economic issue, it is more importantly a very sensitive personal issue for women in particular.
It is vital for politicians to emphasise that everyone should have free choice around how many children to have or whether to have children at all, but we cannot afford to let the controversy that accompanies this topic prevent us from discussing it. Because it’s not just the economy that will suffer if we don’t reverse declining birth rates; women are having fewer children than they desire, and this is a source of considerable sadness for many.
We must be braver in our approach to this issue. But we should avoid reaching for apparently obvious but ultimately doomed solutions. “More free childcare” is the go-to policy of the Left, but there is no evidence it increases the birth rate. Indeed, Finland, which has one of the EU’s most generous childcare offers, also has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.
Having a child is a sign of confidence in the future — and to enable young people to start the families they say they want, we must restore hope. This will certainly include economic measures like tackling house prices and tax, but it must also include a cultural shift towards seeing children as a blessing not a burden, and parenting as a privilege not a penalty. That will take a monumental effort from politicians, commentators and the whole of British society.
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SubscribeThe least discussed issue with the most profound consequences.
It is a vital issue – and so the elites have engineered the discussion to be forbidden as you must be racist, or some kind of oppressor to think this is purposefully done. The discussion is totally censored on the Media and education systems.
This is all being done to destroy society. Maybe some will fight back – lets pray they do. The thing is it needs to be the skilled working class and middle class – just causing lots of children to be born into dysfunction is not good – it just makes all worse – this is the point of welfare, to make lots of dysfunctional children wile the taxpayers funding it to support those children cannot afford their own because the tax system. Anti-eugenics….
This is why it can be portrayed as a weird right wing issue.
Those damned elites eh? If only those ‘elites’ could be dispensed with we would be so much better off – and of course if we stopped the lower orders from breeding so much, after all if you give them baths they will only keep coal in them!
Err and your answer is?
I fear some form of Gilead.
That’s a conspiracy theory JW, surely 😉
Don’t forget the elitist hyperventilations about over-population, which really only refers to those in “the global north”
All my life up to about eighteen months ago the issue was too many people,ruining the habitats of noble wild animals,raping the earth for minerals,covering the pristine landscape with glass and steel blocks and poisoning the pure,clean rivers with their copious excrement.
Less people would be better for the world and better for people as people would then all have better individual lives. No less a semi-divine being than Saint Sir Lord Attenborough endorsed this point of view but it’s odd that since it is not suburban Brits or Yanks who are carving agricultural plots out of Elephant territory or Tiger territory what does this agenda say,luckily for Sir David his standing is of such a hallowed nature no one would dare to say the R word. Now,now that all that idealism of the 1960s has worked and all the capitalist,consumerist West has plummeted in birth rate,suddenly an appalling spectre appears. Maybe not everyone is following the agenda. Are there too many of the WRONG people? !!!
“Within the Westminster bubble there seems to be an automatic assumption that any MP like myself who expresses concern over low birth rates is somehow calling for women to be forced to have children.“
Why am I not surprised by this? Any reasonably informed human being understands the issues surrounding low birth rates, yet this is taboo in political circles. Ugh.
Activist and political circles are not noted for the presence of reasonably informed human beings. These are the people who have heard of The Handmaid’s Tale but never bothered to read or understand it.
It would help enormously if marriage was made more appealing for men. The downsides are very real and readily apparent; the upsides ephemeral and sparing.
It would also help if we give up the notion that men should go to the very back of the line for university admissions, hiring, and promotions. Supporting a family is difficult when universities and corporations would just as soon admit someone else.
You raise an interesting point here, Andrew. Why is marriage no longer interesting to many men? Why are we failing to persuade men to become husbands and fathers? Costin Alamariu has argued that
“[m]en can’t be induced through shame or through praise into accepting the nominal status without the natural rewards of status, into accepting duties without commensurate rewards.” He sees the current situation as the result of depriving men of patriarchy. What are your thoughts on this?
Destruction of the family is always the mission of evil tyrants – Mao had children denouncing their parents – to their execution. For this reason. People alone, untrusting, unloved – they are animals to be herded and ruled. They are broken and cannot form a society to resist.
Strong Family produces strong moral people – they cannot have that. Single mothers in poverty – those are who the Elites of the West wish. Broken, weak, dependent, ignorant, depressed, and going to do it again. Men and women marriage broken. A million abortions a year…. This is the Postmodernist nightmare the captured education and entertainment system promote – as social programs promote welfare to cause this under the guise of being decent and kind…Wile Tax systems make having children unaffordable for the married and working.
Then the whole replacement thing……
Whilst i broadly support the views expressed in this article, i’m not sure about the claim that “Having a child is a sign of confidence in the future”.
Yes, i know that some women/couples express this view in reverse: that they’re not having children because they’re not confident about the future, but it seems to me to be a ready-made excuse which masks some other motivation (of lack of).
Let’s look at the many millennia since humans have been able to record their views, and when “the future” was often that of a life being “nasty, brutish and short”. Were couples reproducing during every previous era in a way which led to gradual but continuous population growth (unless wiped out by war or pandemics) because “they had confidence in the future”? Or were they simply fulfilling a biological urge, and trying to ensure there was someone around who might just care for them if they made it into ‘old age’, whatever that parameter might’ve been at the time?
The idea that contemporary women of childbearing age would suddenly adopt a hitherto unprecedented emotional response to something as vague as “the future” strikes me as not only very unlikely but a ready-made excuse for some other factor, such as wishing to lead a selfish lifestyle and/or not having sufficient confidence in themselves to become a good parent. I’m not writing this to moralise about the latter, but simply to point out the disingenuous use of the “confidence in the future” argument.
As a datapoint of one, my nephew and his fiancé had decided they wouldn’t bring children into the world because of climate change. To their credit, they read the competing literature and changed their minds.
This never happened.
I think we can unanimously agree on this board that your schtick has grown tiresome.
Every site should have its own idiot
I don’t like to say it to you, but if your nephew and his fiancée are deciding whether or not to have children based on the last book they read, please pass on my advice to them: get a divorce before you get married.
With covid came the phenomenon of “expert worship.” It is actually possible for people to read, understand, and assimilate without the help of nitwits who think they know better.
“The last book they read” is an insult to people whom you do not know.
Did I claim to be an “expert”? This is just my opinion based on my age and experience, and telling the truth is not an insult if you tell it to adults.
The difference is prior generations had little choice as birth control options v limited. Ditto women’s rights and freedom
Take your point that Author may not have latched onto the main driver though.
I think it would make more sense if it were “confidence in their future”. The desire to have children at a time when you are able to care for them properly makes sense. Although extremely old fashioned the best order of events is get a career, get married, get a house, then have children. With real term wages and job security reducing over recent decades, marriage getting letter and later and house buying occurring later all this leads to a situation where women are running out of time.
The reason why the issue gets shunned is that the solutions all revolve around a return to more old fashioned ways of thinking and behaving. That and promotion of the disgustingly hetero-normative nuclear family. All of which are an absolute anathema to “progressives”
You are 100% correct on all counts. Here’s the admittedly sexist answer: Men need to marry a bit later, early thirties, but women should focus on marriage in their early twenties. That means women go to college for the primary purpose of finding a good man in the workplace. Horrible thought I guess for feminism, but division of labor, financial stability, and role clarity are all ingredients for a great life. And higher education benefits wives and moms, not just employees, so the university years are not wasted.
It’s interesting that during the lockdowns, I assumed that we would experience a major global baby boom. The opposite happened. It turns out inflicting a dystopia on young people dampens their libidos. Same occurred during the world wars.
As lockdown started in March I was interested to learn what the baby birth figures would be for the following December. As I heard in,in UK here,the level of births was normal,average. I wasn’t actually expecting a baby boom but logically if everybody was following the government rules there should have been a dip,less births than usual. I know it can be said that all of these COVID time babies were born to couples living together in stable long term relationships but I still find it cheering and life affirming to know that people did resist the keep yourself to yourself,don’t trust anyone message that the poor govt people like Boris+ Matt etc were mouthing like ventriloquists dummies from the “scientists” behind them.
We had a significant dip in the birthrate in the US post-Covid. The US is experiencing a general decline overall as well. Adolescent girls, during their most self-conscious years, can’t compete with pornography and pot, and boys are losing their ability to interact with them. The average American 13-year-old boy sees more beautiful women having sex than all the kings and emperors in the combined history of the world. Girls have no chance. And if they do “hook up,” boys expectations are often not normal and healthy.
America is in a cultural decline that might be irreversible.
The answer is simple. You can only afford to have more than one or 2 children if you are on wealthy or on benefits.
Most couples are limited in number of children they have because simply cannot afford to have more
Until we fix the problem nothing is going to change. One measure we could take is to limit annual immigration (not net immigration) to, say, 20k
I would agree with you, but in small towns and villages there is less money and more children. Perhaps the big city is Universe 25. Scientists scream with hatred, trying to erase Calhoun from the history of science
Some groups have large families, others don’t.
he was instantly labelled “Right-wing” and lambasted by French feminists.
Well, of course, he was. It seems that ‘right-wing’ is the odious successor to past accusations of racist or white supremacist, applicable to anything that the left is programmed to dislike. When the population that IS reproducing is the one that you imported, the one that is hostile to the native culture as it is, that’s not a good formula. How nice of Macron to finally notice. I’m a bit surprised the list of thought crimes levied against him does not also include xenophobia.
Having a child is a sign of confidence in the future
Maybe, but….it’s also a sign of recognizing that there is more happening than just you and your whims of the moment. Concern over ‘the future’ seems like a way of disguising selfishness. Child raising is not easy, nor is it cheap. Kids are demanding, they need and want things, and they are dependent on the adults who raise them for some time.
The feminist antipathy to Macron’s pronouncement is as amusing as it is self-defeating. In creating this idea of a superwoman who needs neither a man nor children, they have essentially planned their own eventual demise.
Statement 1: dismissal of their criticism of it being “right-wing”
Statement 2: very right-wing.
damn feminists
Sure. Only “right-wingers” think having a family is worthwhile. And only “left-wingers” use the confidence excuse.
“It seems that ‘right-wing’ is the odious successor to past accusations of racist or white supremacist”
Successor? No, you are ALL of those things.
You surfaced again… Well, just like in that Russian proverb “sh.t doesn’t sink” 🙂
Every school in Britain should show Birthgap to their 15 year old girls. They should know the consequences of putting off pregnancy – that you may find it doesn’t happen at all. I am convinced they don’t know this or at least don’t appreciate the heartache it will cause them if they don’t get a move on. Once the girls decide they want to have kids in their twenties, the boys that fancy them will fall in line.
I suspect your naive idea might generate a few unwanted teenage pregnancies squeezed into house of Mum & Dad (if indeed the young girl lives with both parents).
How about we focus on getting Men to grow up more and be good husbands/parent with a solid job and sufficient housing so young families can have space of their own. Whilst in meantime, as this shift will take a while, change our immigration policy to ensure more assimilation requirements. Whatever we do on birth rate it ain’t going to be enough, so best prepare much better.
I’m not sure why you think this is naive. Showing girls the consequence of leaving it too late to start a family when they are young enough to do something about it seems wise to me. Ignorance about the biological reality that women’s chances of conceiving drop like a stone after 30 is widespread. I know, because my wife and I fell into the same trap. Ideally people would get married and start families in their mid-20s as was the norm well into the 1990s.
Do you think they don’t know that?
Create the circumstances where they can more easily have a family, and a fufilling life and we’ll see.
Yes I absolutely think they don’t know that. But even if I am wrong, mandating a couple of sessions on this subject in PHSE classes in schools is a low-cost experiment.
I am all for reducing the cost of a family starter home – I have been advocating sensible immigration policies to ease the pressure on housing in this comments section since UnHerd began.
I’m also a member of the SDP and our headline policies are:
1.Pause mass immigration for a generation
We will reduce net migration to 50,000 per annum and promote a generation long ‘mass immigration pause’ in the interests of integration and social cohesion.
We will withdraw from the 1951 UN refugee convention, the ECHR and all other international instruments which deny UK border sovereignty.
2.Make a decent home available for everyone
We will establish a British Housing Corporation (BHC) to oversee and fund the construction of 100,000 social homes per year.
If you feel strongly about these things, join us for £2 a month and help shape the debate.
Agree with some of that – ‘mass immigration’ somewhat undefined but agree with the generalism. Don’t with withdrawing from 51 Convention. Our mass immigration growth nothing to do with refugees and more to do with how many ‘legals’ we let in and things like our lack of ID cards.
But some common ground for sure.
How about we focus on getting Men to grow up more and be good husbands/parent with a solid job and sufficient housing so young families can have space of their own.
So, you mean we can dispense with the ‘toxic masculinity’ bilge, the phantom of rape culture, and the zero sum privileging of girls over boys in schools? That would be nice but it would first require a stop to current practice that treats maleness as some sort of societal malignancy.
While new doors have been opened to women – and for clarity, that’s wonderful – it has come at the expense of males. Men are disproportionately drugged at young ages, are less likely to have post high school education, and more likely to overdose, commit suicide, die violently, be homeless, or whatever other pathology you like.
When half the population is treated as, at best, an inconvenience, don’t act shocked when those within it fail to live up to expectations no one has of them.
No it hasn’t come at the expense of Men. It’s pathetic snowflakey wining.
Now what there is is an economic issue about secure, worthy jobs for many men that build self-esteem. Blaming women somehow for this actually stops many Men growing up. Real Men don’t blame Women.
oh dear! deeply out of touch j watson. You could start here: https://bettinaarndt.substack.com/p/lynching-of-men-is-our-national-sport
Had a look – further confirmed my point. A load of wining, pathetic-ism.
Everyone has agency.
Sadly, girls are sold the fantasy that going to college and pursuing a career is the pathway to happiness and freedom. The truth is that most women (and men) will graduate from college and get a JOB not a career. Women are disadvantaged because they can’t wait until thirty to figure all this out, and men find purpose in their jobs — women do not. AT 30, women are age critical for having the first child and a second one might be impossible, especially if they are only starting the search for the forever relationship. Also, men who are in the league of educated high-income women often won’t date 30-year-olds until they are 40-45, and many of them already have children and don’t want more. Unfair perhaps, but that’s the reality.
If you’re a young woman, and you buy into the myth, get used to emptying a litter box.
Enjoyed affairs, trips and a career, went on to have 3 children between 33 and 39 (not with the same man, so also single mother, guilty as charged) while working until retirement age.
My children are not dysfunctional, are productive members of society, live fulfilling lives and I am a happy grandmother.
So please stop blaming single mothers, and start looking for education (or its absence) as the source of many ills.
And yes, a measure of confidence in the future, and love, of course, are essential for the endeavor.
It’s not blaming single mothers to criticise absent fathers.
Fair enough. I also know women who have had similar outcomes. However, you are an outlier. The single characteristic that most disadvantages children is the absence of fathers in the household. That is statistically a fact.
Suggesting to young women that your life can be their life is not virtuous just as promising young black males they will make it in the NFL isn’t virtuous. Women are age critical for pregnancy at age 34. Many older moms require IVF to become pregnant — at $60k per attempt in the states.
You’re fortunate — I applaud you — but not typical.
She wrote a novel in a cafe.
Just a terrible take. Kudos to you for your claimed life satisfaction but you are an extreme outlier. The data do not lie: single parenting is bad for children and parents.
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That there won’t be enough resources around to support an aging population may be true if we continue with the same massively skewed distribution of resources as we have in these neofeudal times. The politics that got us here and will keep us here though are definitely right-wing.
Oh and the Japanese ‘debt’ is perfectly sustainable – they’ve ‘borrowed’ it in Yen – the currency they issue.
Its not resources that will be scarce. Its money. Taxing a declining worker base to support an increasing retiree base isnt self sustaining. Developed nations need to reduce their retirees and increase their workers. Hmmm.
One odd and corrolary phenomenon has been the rise of the “dog parent” in recent years, where couples forgo having human children, but raise pets as some kind of family. It is as if some kind of residual parental instinct is still there, but it has become somehow atrophied or deformed. Now, I am sure that these “dog parents”are all perfectly nice people – nevertheless, when I reflect on the whole phenomenon, I can’t help but be filled with a strange mixture of foreboding and sadness.
I hope she enjoys that MP status while it lasts because she will be gone in the upcoming election and will never be heard of again except on GB News and the far right lunatic circuit.
Her hate based politics won’t be missed.
What do you actually object to in the article?
I think you’re probably just mentally ill aren’t you? Lay off the sauce and the cocaine for a while anyway
I’d recommend the opposite. Step away from the keyboard and go out into the real world for a while. A skinful of booze and nose of Columbias finest might do them the world of good.
Always worked for me anyway
Since about Christmas, I think the champagne has overtaken the socialism.
The main issue is a lack of financial stability amongst the young. Most understandably would like to be in a steady job and their own home before adding some ruinously expensive children into the mix, but due to house prices this is now happening later and later in life leaving less time (or none at all) to churn out some rugrats. Reduce house prices and I believe you’ll see more kids.
We also spent decades telling young girls and boys that having kids young is a bad thing (I remember the hysteria around teen pregnancy when I was younger), probably because having more mums out of the workforce reduced GDP which governments love to spout on about. It will probably take a while to undo this pressure
Imagine: parents looking after their own children rather than being out in the workforce “helping the economy” or ‘”increasing GDP”.
I always liked Miriam – she is the sort of sensible politician we need more of. It is such a shame she stand virtually no chance of retaining her seat at the next election.
Let’s hope that she’s replaced by someone with a better grasp of population genetics than she has.
It’s not surprising a leftist politician would focus on birth rates–its impossible to keep the social services pyramid scheme going without new bodies. It’s why they’ve opened the immigration floodgates. The dream scenario for pols is some sort of virus that kills off old people combined with an influx of young people. Oh wait…
What’s wrong with being right wing? Progressives don’t talk about birth rates. Because they are kind of stupid
On the contrary, progressives, like the late great Hans Rosling (look him up) talk a great deal about birth rates. But they use facts and numbers to make their arguments. That doesn’t appeal to the average saloon bar ‘expert’.
Quality not quantity.
Rather than fretting about declining fertility rates in western European democracies, the focus of principal concern ought to be on the alarming fertility and birth rates in Africa, which are propelling that continent to be the most populous in the world within next 100+ years; and that on top of a global population that already exceeds 8 billion in 2024. The source of most, if not all, environmental problems is simple: human over-population – the issue that is politically forbidden as an item of discussion.
Ironically, the declining birth rates in the same western European countries would effectively be resolved if migration (legal and illegal) into these nations is not checked in the next decade or so. The high fertility rates of migrant citizens will exponentially enhance birth rates in successive generations in their adopted countries and fill the sort of gaps that appear to trouble the likes of President Macron so deeply.
High house prices – caused by excess lending- causes both parents to have to work and not have children. Limit house lending to three times the main income-(as it used to be) house prices will be more sensible and there will be far more children. Bankers will be poorer (shame).
Preaching constant eco-doom yet also pushing for more children? Not possible. If you want more children around preach hope and cheer.
I love the way Miriam Cates dismisses childcare, but is a working mother herself. Jobs are just for rich ladies.
Cue the chorus response: “parenthood is a choice”. Indeed it is, which is why women are not choosing it. Spending a lifetime keeping house for some goon with a mind as shrivelled as his other bits is a grim prospect.