The economy has brought millennials to their knees: Now it also wants their offspring | Joel Golby

E.Everyone likes babies, don’t they, with their little toes and the fact that they don’t do anything and keep making that weird dark poop. “This is my baby,” friends will tell me, pointing to a small bundle of skin and flesh that screams for no reason, “I love it so much that I could die.”

Is the baby doing any tricks, I always ask, and they shake their head, no. “We think the baby will learn to walk in maybe 18 months,” they say. “Could make a full sentence out of it around three.” Cool, well, see you in 18 years when you can hit the pub again.

Babies are the discourse this week, with two messages that – if you screw up your eyes and look closely – are absolutely and completely connected. “Britain’s ‘baby shortage’ could lead to economic decline, says Thinktank,” says one, and there is some interesting stuff from the Social Market Foundation. The current birth rate of 1.58 in England and Wales is well below the required replacement level of 2.1, which means that by 2060 there will be nearly four over 65s for every 10 workers (assuming, of course, that the millennial generation is in retire: see how) we’ve literally met every other possible life milestone besides “living in the same age as smartphones”. This will open a support gap that will inevitably lead to economic decline.

Conversely, however, we are told: “Four out of ten young people are afraid of having children because of the climate crisis.” Which makes its own sense. Why have a baby now – loving it, taking care of it, teaching it math at the dining table even though it refuses to study math: It’s very simple math, Henry! – when you know that one day it will have to use its martial arts to fight for a liter of water jug ​​as the sun approaches the scorched desert planet? To me this seems like a nonsensical waste of the last 20 years of viable time we have on earth.

Why don’t millennials have babies? And while we’re at it, why aren’t they buying houses? Well, we’ve got to the point where Britain’s economic reality has finally overcome the original lizard-brain urge we all have to replicate ourselves. It seems like a stupid and impossible question: hey 34 year old still paying off your student loans and rent, can you hurry up and have a baby please? The future of the economy depends on it. And no, we’re not going to do anything to make things easier in any way while you are doing it. Working harder.

The Social Market Foundation has made a rather modest proposal to solve the birth problem, that is – and I paraphrase: “Stop making it so incredibly difficult and expensive to have and care for a child.” The National Childbirth Trust calculates the average Full-time care costs £ 263 per week for a child under two years of age, which is a significant part of the average family budget even if both parents work. If for any reason you want to keep your child past this age or even have another child, these costs only apply.

I know there is a viable environmental argument for not having children, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people from still having them, and it seems bizarre that we are making it so difficult for those who do. The Foundation estimates that UK working parents spend 22% of their income on full-time childcare – twice the average for other western economies; A 2019 Unicef ​​report found that the UK’s paternity leave regime is still embarrassing compared to other countries. and a survey of more than 20,000 UK parents conducted in July and August of this year found that only 16% of mothers had not affected their seniority and income from having a child (two-thirds had reduced their hours of work).

Although I don’t think any parents came out of lockdown and said, “Wow! Teaching my kid at home while juggling the infinite zoom calls of my job was very easy! I liked that very much! ”There is at least one option for more flexible home work schedules that could take childcare into account as many people now know how to do their job from home. But that doesn’t directly benefit commercial landlords, so bosses and decision-makers are not in favor. Being a parent basically just means being up all the time and spending all of your money, before you’ve bought anything like shoes or uniform or those Nerf blasters that they all go crazy about.

Still, this is at least a return to form: they know that nature really heals when millennials are blamed for failing to thrive in an economic reality that is specifically designed to destroy them. At some point – when the schoolyards are eerily empty, no one has paid stamp duty for years, and every downtown pret has had to close for inactivity – they have to admit that “Buying and Consuming Avocado Toast” wasn’t the problem they thought it was be all the time. Until then: please fuck, Millennials! The future of the economy is built on the blood of your heirs!

Joel Golby is a writer for The Guardian and Vice and the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant