Sarah Harte: Motherhood is not the default anymore — and the reasons why are eye-opening
I would wager that while the financial burden of childcare falls on a couple, the majority of working fathers do not obsess over childcare in the same way that working mothers do, and that hasn’t changed because, generally, the disproportionate burden of childcare falls on mothers. File picture: iStock
The question of why attitudes to procreation and family size have radically altered is both fascinating and complicated.
The global fertility rate is, on average, less than half what it was in the 1960s. The fertility crisis has implications for individuals and societies, and Ireland is no different.
The falling birth rates present society with a significant challenge. Practically, we need more people of working age to support the growing number of pensioners who are living longer.
A new national women’s health survey, commissioned by the and conducted among over 1,000 women aged 18 and above, has revealed some interesting facts about the choice to have children.
The word ‘choice’ has a long, dark history in Ireland, where many battles were fought over a woman’s right to choose to procreate in a country which coercively forced women into having large families. Several older women I have met made it clear that they would rather not have had big families.
Some seem borderline bitter about it.
In the early 90s, when I was at college, the biggest concern young women had was not getting pregnant. College doctors were still delivering lectures on morality and refusing to hand out prescriptions for the pill.
How many children were born as a result of those older male GPs imposing their Catholic views on students? It’s infinitely more civilised that reproductive decisions are now the choice of women and couples.
However, can a choice not to have a child be said to be genuine if it's fettered by economics and infrastructure so that you are effectively priced out of the baby market?
The survey revealed last week that one in three women cannot afford to have a baby, or another child, with younger women in particular forced to put family plans on hold. The question asked was: "Financially, I don't feel I am in a position to have a child/another child".
You don’t need to be a deep thinker to compute that the lack of affordable housing constitutes a significant barrier to having children. With census figures showing 41% of Irish people aged 18 to 34 still live with their parents, and Eurostat figures pegging that figure even higher, at two out of three young people in that age bracket, the question arises as to how people even get pregnant.
Or develop stable emotional relationships that might lead to the desire or conditions to have a family in the first place.
The housing crisis is affecting many countries worldwide, but in Ireland, a significant ideological shift is necessary in how we perceive property ownership.
The purpose of property used to be for a family or an individual to have an independent life, not to accumulate wealth from land ownership. Sadly, young people are being prevented from reaching milestones that we once took for granted, such as flying the coop and getting on with their lives.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that a proper, high-quality, publicly funded childcare system remains elusive here. The report on the National Agency for Early Learning and Childcare may not be delivered until 2026, with no indication of when the long-awaited agency will be established.
Many parents are already paying the equivalent of a second mortgage for childcare. In many couples with two parents working, they are just about staying solvent because they’ve chosen to have a family. This directly limits family size.
I would wager that while the financial burden of childcare falls on a couple, the majority of working fathers do not obsess over childcare in the same way that working mothers do, and that hasn’t changed because, generally, the disproportionate burden of childcare falls on mothers.
The system is stacked against you. There is nothing more likely to push you into a toilet cubicle to have a quiet cry when your childminder hands in her notice, even though you believed her every wish was your command, because you were hell-bent on keeping her.
Alternatively, finding childcare places is both challenging and among the most expensive in Europe.
Suppose you have a partner who isn’t present due to their career. In that case, it’s a rollercoaster of hard choices, because it’s primarily women who fill those inevitable gaps when children are sick, something goes wrong, or when you have to frantically juggle a boss's demands with children’s needs.
One friend, whose mother did all her childminding, shopping, and cooking, was the envy of us all for years. When that arrangement ended, she gave up work, not necessarily without a significant degree of resentment.
The survey indicates that some Irish women would be willing to have children sooner or have larger families, provided there are appropriate political interventions to create conditions conducive to doing so, namely, available and affordable housing and childcare.
But it also seems plausible that the notion of motherhood as the primary placeholder for women’s desires has lost some of its cultural currency.
The last census in Ireland revealed that the number of childless families had increased to 394,052, representing a significant shift since 2016, with the birth rate dropping to its lowest point in 60 years.
No single factor likely contributes to people feeling empowered to have children at the right time, but as the Iona Institute pointed out in a paper earlier this year, a shift in values may also be behind the plummeting fertility rates.
They link this to a decline in religious affiliation. Whatever about the link between religious belief and falling fertility rates, some people are almost certainly deciding that it’s not worth the hassle.
A UN report released this month, following an extensive global survey of 14,000 people in 14 countries across five continents, exposed several uncomfortable truths.
For example, in Sweden, where public childcare is excellent, a third of the Swedes surveyed stated they still didn’t want to invest the time and energy required to have children. Like it or not, the reality is that more people live full lives without children, although parents, or what I loosely think of as the 'Baby on Board' sticker brigade, often seem to believe otherwise.
The UN report also highlighted how, in “many countries”, men have a greater desire for more children than women. It also revealed that women want more “supportive partners”. These facts are noteworthy.
Younger women who may be more financially independent and therefore more empowered than older generations may think, "Hang on a second, this isn’t a good deal for me".
Economists have highlighted the ‘child penalty’, which is the pay cut that women disproportionately suffer when they have a child, which, as Dr Dora Tuda, an ERSI research officer, commenting on the survey said is “on average experience a 20% income loss after having a child compared to men with the same experience and qualifications. This is because of maternity leave — once they return to work, it takes time to catch up. They may lose chances of promotion”.
Pouring their lives into children is riskier for women. Maybe that dampens their zeal for procreation and leaves them with a rational desire to be ‘child-free’ rather than ‘childless’.
Certainly, in Ireland, the days of lying on your back as a woman and thinking of old Ireland are thankfully long gone.
The question that both the and UN surveys leave us with is how we, as a society, can make parenthood more accessible and less burdensome while also supporting individuals who choose not to have children, so that we can all lead meaningful and full lives.
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