Ask The Baby Makers

That fertility rates are low is a choice women and men are making, and will remain so

The trillionaire, some billionaires, religious heads and many govts want more people of “their kind” on the planet. Make babies, they say, with or without sex – via IVF, surrogacy, what have you. Problem is, no one is listening, especially women. Sensibly so. But they’re told, big families are the need of the hour – to grow one’s own tribe, to grow the laity, to grow the workforce.

Yet, fertility rates are nosing down, global janta is ignoring all missives to get onto the baby-making pasta machine. Govts asked, why? Childcare’s expensive, said potential baby-makers, too many expenses. So, seeing it as an industry in need of relief/ rescue, govts threw bewildering amounts of money at the ‘problem’. They have all incentivised pregnancy; helped with IVF, tried to import nannies (South Korea), set up support systems for early childhood care (France, Hungary), mandated paid parental leave, etc etc. Yet, nada. Why? Demographers concluded financial incentives, or care programmes, rarely reverse long-term demographic decline on their own. For instance, in Sweden, couples aren’t having babies, concerned about the impact of more kids on the planet, and impact of climate on kids’ futures. Then, migration answers the workforce question neatly. Ageing population? Bring in younger people from all over the world. But that’s not an option for a world where displacement is work-in-progress, and migration is viewed as a security threat. Then came the prolific daddies, businessmen who would single-handedly grow the population of their own: Musk’s first five were all IVF-engineered white boys.

Funnily, gender equality is where fertility rate saw a slight uptick – when men take responsibility for the child, especially the early years. OECD data then showed that men who took on caregiving quickly discovered what women know: parenthood costs time, money, ambition. Upshot: couples are finding ‘meaning’ beyond, and outside of, parenthood. In the life-work balance, Maslow’s self-actualisation is oceans away from clergy preaching ‘motherhood’, as the ultimate self-actualisation. Women, and several men, know what’s good for them. And more babies isn’t the plan.