Repro tech, realistic goals & getting past Elon Musk
A rundown of the Boom x Civic Future event
On 8th October, the Boom x Civic Future event, Kickstarting the next baby boom, took place! Our speakers were: me; cultural commentator, scientist, and Substack superstar, Ruxandra Teslo; and economist Dr Aveek Bhattacharya, Research Director at the SMF think tank.
We had a lively and engaged audience – including a 7-month old baby who listened attentively the whole way through – and fascinating remarks from panelists. The recording of the event is here and below is my brief write-up of some of Ruxandra and Aveek’s thoughts:
Ruxandra
“Our culture is the opposite of the grandmother that comes to you and asks, ‘When are you having a kid?’.”
Men, women, and culture. Ruxandra is concerned about lower levels of relationship formation contributing to fewer people being able to have families (Rux has written before about increasing political polarisation between the sexes, especially online, and you can read that piece here). But she also thinks a developing culture of risk aversion and increasing levels of anxiety in society might have knock-on effects on when and if people are ready or able to start families.
And, while Ruxandra doesn’t think we have an anti-child or antinatal culture, she does think that conversations about children or when people might have them are generally absent, that our culture is the “the opposite of the grandmother that comes to you and asks, ‘When are you having a kid?’”.
Valuing children. Tying into her point about culture, Ruxandra pointed out that many of us display a marked divergence between what we say is good and fulfilling and what we ultimately experience as good and fulfilling. She drew on Pew Research that tells us that 71% of Americans identify having an enjoyable job or career as very or extremely important for a fulfilling life, while only 26% say the same of having children. Yet parents themselves do identify their children as the most fulfilling aspect of their own lives.
Ruxandra added that even parents who say their children are the most fulfilling aspect of their lives seem to have a preference for their own children to find fulfilment through career. There’s a disconnect here – the role of career in our lives is being overvalued and children undervalued.
Reproductive technology. Ruxandra, a professional scientist, told us that research into female reproduction and human fertility is “incredibly understudied” and extremely underfunded. She noted that it’s a challenging area of research because we lack good animal models for human reproduction – for example, menopause is highly unusual in the animal kingdom – but that fundamentally what’s missing is money.
Ruxandra underlined that fertility technology that could help more people have the children they want isn’t about seeing women in their seventies regularly start having children, or about more people having babies with Elon Musk (as came up in one audience member’s question). Instead, it’s about helping the significant minority of women who are going to have a problem conceiving have a child. Currently, we have no way of predicting which women will struggle to conceive in their twenties or thirties.
Different types of women have different reasons for having fewer children. There are women who are materially struggling and having to delay starting a family for financial reasons who government policy could support. And there are women who want to succeed in their careers first and so come to starting a family later, who tech improvements could help - Ruxandra wondered if science can help these women to “choose timelines” that work for them, while also breaking the association between pronatalism and people who want women to stop working so they can have more children.
Aveek
“J.D. Vance is the worst messenger you could have for pronatalism.”
Realistic expectations. Aveek began by criticising the name of the event, Kickstarting the next baby boom. He argued that by talking about baby booms and replacement rate fertility of 2.1 children per woman, people who want to improve birth rates risk fatalism, pessimism, and government inaction by setting their stated goals too high.
Instead, Aveek pointed out that there’s lots of evidence – British, Australian, Austrian and more – that government policy can substantially raise birth rates and argued that the UK could achieve a birth rate that is 0.3 children per woman higher via policy, and reap many benefits as a result. He warned us that it would be a tremendous own goal to ignore policy options that can get us to that extra 0.3, but that couldn’t raise birth rates all the way to 2.1.
The reciprocal relationship between culture and policy. Aveek argued that culture can have a positive, ‘multiplier effect’ on policies introduced by governments to make having children easier, thus strengthening their impact. Policies can make it more likely for a positive culture around parenthood to develop, and that culture then reinforces the effect of the policy.
Aveek also made it clear that for maximum effect, policy solutions aimed at making things easier and better for parents should be accompanied by language that signals to parents that we value what they’re doing, and that we think it’s better for us all if people are able to have the children that they want.
Cross-ideological, cross-party, multi-decade. Aveek believes that helping more people have the children they want to have and improving the UK’s birth rate is a multi-decade, multi-government project, just as it was in France in the last century. That means building cross-party consensus that making it easier for people to have children is something government policy can and should be doing is very important. It also means preventing the issue of declining birth rates from becoming politically polarised is absolutely crucial.
Vance versus Walz. Aveek argued that J.D. Vance, with his thoughtless “childless cat ladies” comments and more, is the worst messenger that the issue of declining birth rates could have, but that his opponent Tim Walz actually has a track record of working to make it easier for people to have and raise the children they want. Aveek pointed out that as Minnesota Governor, Walz’s express goal was to make Minnesota the best place to raise a child (this included implementing America’s most generous child tax credit policy). And just last month, Walz said he wants to help more Americans have the families they want.
Do check out the YouTube link if you want more of Ruxandra and Aveek’s thoughts. Topics covered in the audience Q&A include:
Whether current pro-parent policies over-emphasise childcare
Rigid life paths in career and education and how they affect family formation
How the housing crisis affects family formation in the UK
Resource intensive parenting
Whether we need a non-political pro-child movement
Whether the policies of the last Conservative Government damaged UK birth rates
Phoebe