The Narrow Focus on Babies Explains Britain’s Birth Rate Collapse

 It seems counterintuitive but the crabbed focus on babies goes some way to explaining Britain’s demographic collapse. Once, we used to have a vast panoramic view of our place in history – revering our ancestors and casting our gaze forwards onto our unborn descendants. Now in this world of carpe diem, we are boxed into the present moment. We have become unable to think beyond our immediate circumstances – specifically the capsizing affect newborns have on fun-times and finances.

Where once all families were set up in order to further the prospects for their children and their children’s children, now nepo babies are thought disgusting and every generation is expected to graft individually from scratch. The brilliant series Succession encapsulates our current carelessness about our descendants: emotionally neglect children to the extent they become unworthy of inheriting their father’s empire. The results for our demography of this immediacy focus and inability to think generationally are devastating.

The provisional fertility rate for England and Wales fell to 1.39 children per woman in 2025, the lowest level on record – this needs to sit at 2.1 children per woman to sit at replacement levels....<<<Read More>>>...