Couples having children could become ‘culturally unusual’, warns Tory MP

A Tory MP has warned that it could soon become “culturally unusual” for couples to have children.

Miriam Cates, a leading member of the New Conservative group of backbenchers, said the UK’s declining birth rate was the “elephant in the room” when it came to discussions of Britain’s economic performance.

She said increasing immigration would not solve the problem because other countries would increasingly want to keep hold of their young people.

Ms Cates made her comments in a discussion with demography researchers at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a global think tank.

She said: “My fear is that unless we reverse this decline rapidly, it will become so culturally unusual to have a child that people will just stop doing it altogether. We have got to start talking about solutions, otherwise we are going to be no better off in 2030.

“Politics is caught between the Right, who want lower taxes, and the Left, who want more spending, but the truth is that we can’t have lower taxes or more spending if we don’t have a workforce. It has nothing to do with politics or ideology. That is just the facts.”

‘Economic stagnation’

Ms Cates, the MP for Penistone and Stockbridge, warned that with global birth rates declining, immigration alone could not fix the problem.

“Although the mass migration model [of growth] is frightening in the sense of what would be the democratic outcomes, it’s actually probably unlikely because we just won’t be able to find these immigrants from anywhere because nobody will have spare [young] population,” she said.

“The economic stagnation model is the most likely if we don’t change the fertility rate, and that is extremely frightening.”

Britain’s fertility rate is now almost half the level that it was 60 years ago. In 2022, the total fertility rate was just 1.49 children per woman – down from 1.59 before the pandemic in 2019, and 1.94 in 2010.

The post-war high for the fertility rate was in 1964, when it stood at 2.93 children per woman.

The proportion of women who have no children is also increasing. Of women born in 1977, 16 per cent had not had a child before the age of 46. This is lower than the levels seen for those born in the 1960s, although still higher than their mothers’ generation (14 per cent).

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is a worldwide grouping of Right-wing politicians and activists who want to ensure that Western ideas and institutions endure into the next century.

Founded by Baroness Phillipa Stroud, a former adviser to Sir Iain Duncan Smith, it held its inaugural conference in London last year.

‘Distorted pursuit of freedom’

Speaking at that event, Ms Cates suggested there was a link between the rising number of women going out to work and an increase in infants going to school wearing nappies.

She said the “GDP-obsessed” economic climate meant that mothers of toddlers were being pushed into the workplace, where they cannot potty-train their children.

And she warned that too many parents wanted to shield their children from all physical discomfort, such as the ordeal of toilet training, saying this desire was behind the rise in childhood obesity, addiction to smartphones and children’s belief that they can change their gender.

The MP warned that falling fertility rates threatened Western society, and that family life had already been eroded with a collapse in marriage rates and a rise in relationship breakdown.

“Nowhere have the disastrous results of this distorted pursuit of freedom, prosperity and happiness been more evident than in the damage being done to our children,” she said.