What would a text from Rishi Sunak need to say to convince you to have a baby? No, I am not losing my faculties just yet, nor trying to suggest the Prime Minister adds a fertility messaging drive to his election strategy. But it is a question I asked listeners of Woman’s Hour this week, because how governments deal with falling birth rates around the world is a real problem, and predominantly male-led countries are doing things in their own way.
These texts are actually being sent out in China by government officials, and it is safe to say they ain’t going down well. China turned the baby tap off brutally from 1980 until 2016 with its strict one-child policy, leading to all kinds of pain and punishment for families. Now it is learning that turning it back on is far, far harder.
China has experienced a population drop for the second year running, with a record low birth rate. This is despite the texts and public messaging campaigns to encourage women to breed – which are falling very flat indeed.
This week, France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, announced his plan to offer all French 25-year-olds a fertility check, in a bid to reverse a decline in the birth rate that he views as a national threat. Just 678,000 babies were born in France last year, the lowest number since 1945.
Macron, who doesn’t have children himself, is apparently viewing this bid to focus the minds of the country’s young on their fecundity as part of something being charmingly described as “demographic rearmament”. The chairwoman of the country’s feminist foundation replied to the fertility check offer with a curt: “Leave our uteruses alone.” It’s been reported that there has been resistance to the idea it was a national duty for women to have children. No surprises there.
To be fair, the fertility check would be for both sexes, but when it comes to bringing the next generation physically into the world, that is still a job only for women and always will be. In France, fertility challenges are only one part of a complex picture as to why women are not having any or as many children. There are many other factors, not least that they simply might not want them.
I was genuinely intrigued by what our listeners said might convince them to open their minds and bodies to the massive decision to make another human being, especially in a week with reports of difficulties surrounding the Government’s big childcare offer – the scheme was beset with IT glitches and providers not being willing to sign up to the new terms.
Unsurprisingly, no one seemed up for a Government text. I don’t much love the ones I get now from HMRC reminding me there is just one step left for me to complete my tax return. Admittedly, it’s well-punctuated and at least ends with a “thank you”, but the overall vibe isn’t great – plus I don’t remember consenting for His Majesty’s tax inspectorate to slide into my DMs.
But imagine if the unsolicited content turned to my ovaries: “Just one more step to complete your national duty to have a baby. Please do so before you are too old to ensure our pension status quo, a thriving workforce and ability to have a growing economy. If you have done it already, thank you.”
On the programme, we did receive a text from an MP who is in the party of Government – one Miriam Cates, the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge. She suggested a number of measures to increase the birth rate: “I think governments should address housing costs, legislate to give guarantees to women about returning to careers at the same level and when they want, improve fertility education, support families and the choice to care for your children how you want through the tax system, and start talking about motherhood/fatherhood/parenthood as a positive thing, not a burden.”
Cates has been campaigning on this area with a group of Conservative MPs for some time, as the number of babies born in England and Wales dropped in 2022 to the lowest levels in two decades.
Cates is a backbench MP and she is not speaking on behalf of the Government. Likewise, Labour has not yet made any policy announcements in this area. But some of Cates’s suggestions were echoed by listeners, who wanted major policy changes rather than government money spent on public messaging campaigns.
Rent freezes or discounts came up, as people can’t afford to move to a bigger place if they start a family or increase the one they have. So did affordable childcare that actually works with work. A tax system that works better for two working parents in a household – the reality for many – was also suggested by listeners.
We had messages about the environment and international wars which mean women do not feel like creating new humans. And one text written in capitals: “NOTHING THIS GOVERNMENT COULD SAY OR DO WOULD CONVINCE ME TO EVER HAVE CHILDREN.”
Now, I have no further context for that message, but what it speaks to is how intensely personal such a choice is and how any such top-down attempts to encourage procreation don’t land well with women, never mind men – who obviously also need to be brought on board. It feels Handmaid’s Tale-esque, especially when the message comes from male-dominated governments.
Government officials in China are suspicious of feminism, seeing it as a Western import and a malign influence. But call it feminism or not, it is nigh-on impossible for a government or any state machinery to get in on it – beyond force, that is. The children question is the most personal part of feminism – the deal you have with yourself and the choices you try to make as a woman.
Even in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, where financial incentives are being offered and IVF clinics are nationalised, you cannot make women breed. They have to want to. Take it from someone who had seven rounds of IVF.
What is so fascinating about the situation in China, according to the work of Dr Ye Liu, from the Department of International Development at King’s College London, is that women have also seen how pregnant women have been discriminated against at work. Some have understandably decided they don’t want that experience. Treat women badly and, shock horror, they won’t sign up for an experience that guarantees it.
Add that reality to a backdrop of astronomical property costs in China, and the need for young women and men to care for their parents, and many, many women are not sold. Plus, they want to get on in their careers, have fun and afford to be free – whatever that means.
Let me take a moment to properly acknowledge all those who would desperately like a child but cannot get pregnant, no matter what they do. Discussions around the falling birth rates may well be maddening to these people. I know – I was one, and will always remember.
But the complex reality of how we structure societies, treat women who do have babies, and the cost of living and childcare cannot easily fit into an upbeat text. I just about scratched the surface in a column. Government chatbots may have come a long way, but so have women’s rights, for some, and our eyes are wide open.