Why are we having fewer children?
The New Statesman | UK politics and culture
The New Statesman
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Birth rates are declining around the world.
Why? And what can - or should - be done?
Tom Gatti meets authors Madeleine Davis and Anastasia Berg, who have both written on the changing attitudes to child-rearing, to explore the reasons behind these changes.
They discuss why financial, social and romantic circumstances are leading fewer people to have children, and what governments and institutions can or should do to address the issue.
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Transcript
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| 0:57.0 | The New Statesman. |
| 1:02.8 | Hello, I'm Tom Gatti, and you're listening to Culture from the New Statesman, a weekly podcast |
| 1:08.5 | exploring the cultural moments that define our world. |
| 1:11.6 | In the first century AD, the Roman Emperor Augustus offered women who had three or more children |
| 1:16.6 | the incentive of freedom from guardianship by a male relative. |
| 1:21.6 | More than 2,000 years later, governments around the world are turning back to the Roman playbook |
| 1:26.6 | with slightly more modern incentives |
| 1:29.3 | in an attempt to address ageing populations and declining birth rates. |
| 1:33.3 | But is this an issue that can be tackled by policy alone, |
| 1:37.3 | or are there deeper cultural and philosophical factors at play? |
| 1:41.3 | I'm joined today by New Statesman contributor Madeline Davis, who has written a feature |
| 1:46.3 | titled Why Have Children in this week's magazine, and Anastasia Berg, co-author of What Are Children for |
| 1:54.1 | on Ambivalence and Choice? Hello, both, hello, Madeline and Anastasia. So in October, the Office for National Statistics here in the UK reported the fertility rate in England and Wales had fallen to its lowest level on record, |
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