Imogen Sinclair: We must confront the anti-natalist imagination

The neo-Malthusians want to take choice away from parents

Thankfully, Malthus was wrong. The distressed English Clergyman, preoccupied by the threat of overpopulation, did not foresee that free economies would successfully achieve abundance while also regulating birth rates. Only fifty years after his thesis that production would not keep pace with population, Marx decided that overproduction was out of control.

Today, things are very different. The greatest demographic threat in the Western world is in fact population collapse. 

Earlier this year, Cambridge University students attempted to cancel the screening of a documentary by the data scientist and demographer Stephen Shaw (hardly an ideological wingnut). Branded as anti-feminist, ‘Birthgap’ highlights - with statistical analysis - the true desires of women in many Western countries and finds an epidemic of unwanted childlessness.

Shaw identified spikes in childlessness during economic shocks like in 2007, when families deferred parenthood until their finances became more manageable. But financial insecurity is now a permanent fixture for many young people who are unable to accrue capital, and starting a family feels like a bridge too far.

Shaw found that the British birthgap is 23 percent, representing the fact that while 900,000 adults celebrated their 50th birthday last year, only 700,000 births were recorded. We also know that women are not having as many children as they want; rather 2.6 than the current average of 1.6.

Unwanted childlessness may have its roots in our political economy, but our culture rubs salt in the wounds.

Many parents lament how difficult it is to navigate life outside their front door. For instance, buses only have room for one buggy. Everything else seems capped at two; child benefit, family discounts, and standard sized (and reasonably priced) cars rarely accommodate more than two child seats. Loans are harder to secure with each ‘dependent’ you have, and the ubiquitous ‘no ball games’ policy renders many outdoor spaces childless.

In fact, children are largely being erased from London. The total number of children in reception class in the capital is expected to fall by over 7,000 over the next two years, directly following a fall in the birth rate by 17 percent in under a decade.

Is it any wonder we’re not having children when it invites increased financial stress and a whole host of other cultural obstacles, not to mention the shame poured on people by climate extremists for giving birth to mini carbon creating monsters!

The neo-Malthusians are keeping the faith, now pushing a bourgeois line that baby-making is killing the planet. There are of course bigger beasts to hold accountable for carbon emissions than helpless babes. Sadly, I don’t think India or China will end their polluting exports trade because a few Islingtonians stopped after having two children. Have smaller families become a symbol of selflessness?

I hope not, because despite the desire of women to have more children (and the additional carbon) there are many benefits to having lots of children. Pro-natalist societies can grow their own labour force (and depend less on cheap labour from abroad) and massively boost their social security frontline (also known as families).

Does our obligation to build a self-sufficient society outweigh our obligation to reduce global emissions (with a laughably inadequate intervention)? 

We must recall our values before making such drastic decisions that have such serious societal implications. This is the lesson of C.S. Lewis in ‘The Abolition of Man’. He warns that “if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them.” Such hubris is man’s fatal flaw; containing the seed of his own abolition. Is this true of the anti-natalist imagination?

I’m not yet convinced that the decision is as simple - or accurate - as saving the planet or beefing up our national resilience. But I am convinced that women should have as many children as they choose to because - as poet William Blake said - ‘Sweet joy befall thee’.

Imogen Sinclair is Director of the New Conservatives and the New Social Covenant Unit.