Is having children a moral duty?

BBC-podcast on suurin edes koko koko. Oletko koko koko koko koko koko koko. Oletko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko koko. av Просто pu Fußh 1750/1960. Vosk AKP paljeet superbisza? Minura nelj reign ring miti osti. moniet volkuut edemise insists mis你好id Почему? distributing. MonietIltioidありidましょう Euroog бал ja osum earliestin hai PS. Eikcence cette aloimaisyr byre cyber.? VERAKO - gloomalainen samaan peruskittel quietomaan. Assakaan avataan avataan mediaa. James Orr, associate professor - philosophy of religion at Cambridge University. Pristan ja polemissa Jiles Fraser. Jiles, joku 5 jollain, mutta joo joo, onko? 20 centriotan generaation. Joulun muistaa. - Tämä on tullut terveys, koska se on seuraava seuraavaksi. täaltamme aspat sessionsista, sairjueut, styleimment vämen ( slow GO) ja ikä kiusotain rat quot謙spe Legion. Susanna suurisessa olen vuodelle Otto lopijailta, joo mikä �ish advancingen koombian vinssi! He on el eatيki. On camulators習 the readings kanssa. Minä seuraava pyörä Anytime. Hohee hyvägelä informausteita on tukus. se kulttu olet refreshed, kiitettäv呂什麼 ha不用ellisen droppedy Echo ylige, sulla samistetta on näyttää tämä meidän evaluatempärioseksi in what is a deeply personal decision, - whether or not to have children, whether or not to start a family, - but thankfully we don't need to force women to have children, - because we know it's not just the UN report, - a lot of other studies have shown that there is a gap - between what you might call desired fertility, - the number of children that a woman would actually like - and actual fertility. And I think you could say, although there's not - an individual duty on any single mother, as it were, - I think you might say there's a collective obligation - on us to try and close that gap. Mona, Mona, speaking. I have three children, love bringing them up, - but I never thought of having children as a social obligation - or a moral duty. And I want to explore why there seems to be this panic - that women are deciding to have fewer on their children. Panel, thanks very much indeed. First witness is Caroline Farrow, who's a Catholic journalist - and mother of five children. What do you certainly, you certainly buck the trend? Do you think the choices you've made are morally superior - to somebody who chose to have just one child - or even no children at all? I think it's apples and pears. It's not right for me to say that I'm a better person - or I've made net choices. I'm talking about your choice, not whether you're a person. Yes, but choice is never made in a vacuum, is it? Therefore, do I think that the choice I've made has been - an excellent and a very good one? Yes, I do. But is it right for me to compare my choice with somebody - who's in an entirely different set of circumstances - who perhaps hasn't got a partner to support them - who hasn't got money or a decent income? I think the debate should be about encouraging people - to grow their families and to start families. But there's a difference between encouragement - which is to support and affirm and mandating - which is about coercion. Mona. If we take the scenario where a couple - married or just living together, - or in stable relationship, they have no financial issues - they simply choose not to have children. Do you think that's selfish? I actually do on a macro level. Because I think society's having children - they're not invested in the future. They're just invested in the present. They're just invested in themselves and their own happiness. And actually, a society that doesn't want to think about the future - and doesn't care about children - is a stale dying society. It's not freedom, it's fatigue. But isn't there something about being invested in your own happiness - that's also a moral question? What's wrong with that? When we look around so many people are so unhappy - what's wrong with people wanting to invest in their own happiness? Life is about the pursuit of happiness. Of course it is, that's a big part of it. But life is all about interdependence - that we have on each other and we have on society as a whole. We shouldn't be here just to consume and take what we can. We're not takers. We're making it sound, Caroline, as if people who don't have children - are just consumers obsessed about their own happiness - not contributing society in any other way. There's all sorts of ways you can contribute to society - even if you don't have children. And maybe people are invested in the present - because the present is so awful - and they're trying to make the present better. But we can't have a future unless we think about investing in the future. Now I'm not here to judge childless couples - because there can be all sorts of reasons - we're talking about people who have chosen - but people who have chosen. You just think, okay, certainly for - and I'm low to bring my face tradition into it - but certainly from my Catholic Christian tradition - one of the whole points of marriage - not the only point, it's about bonding and about babies. And therefore when two people come together - it's about creating, being open to life. So I know quite a few Christian couples - in my work who have chosen to sacrifice their desire - to have their own children, but have either adopted - or taken on a relative's child and looked after that. Don't you think there's something deeply humbling - and also very loving that they've done? Yes, absolutely, but somebody who's chosen to adopt - or to take on caring responsibilities - is actually creating a family. They are raising the next generation. They have got that stake, they have got that involvement. Even if their child is not biologically their children. And so that can also be a deeply altruistic thing. But somebody who's saying, okay, I'm not going to have my own children - but I've decided I'm going to adopt and give a child a good home. That's fundamentally almost the same thing. And that's not necessarily pro-creation. What you're saying from your Catholic background, that you believe in pro-creation. I believe in being open to life. So that's another way of saying the same thing though? No, because actually you could decide - you could feel really morally obliged - that there are so many children out there that don't have loving homes that you want to offer one. So that's still being open to life, that's still investing in the future. That's not saying, okay, I'm just going to go out and drink lots of wine and pleasure-seek. That's not quite the same thing. But I think there's something slightly disingenuous, I-fi may say so, in saying that people who choose not to have children can't be moral citizens. They are doing all kinds - a lot of people are doing all kinds of things to make the world a better place. I'm not just going out drinking because they don't have children. No, but I think you're making a comparison that isn't there. Nobody who just said that. No, I'm not saying that not having children is 100% immoral, but it is not the best moral choice. Just. I want to broaden it out a bit from children or no children to how many children. Because one of the reasons for fewer children being born is that people are starting families later in life. So from your point of view, what would be the ideal age to start having babies? That's a massive can of worms. So I feel very strongly that society's reordered, or slightly disordered at the moment, and that women have a very small window in which they can't. So when we start popping them out? Well. You're not going to pin me down on that, Ash. But basically, women are being encouraged to follow the same linear career path as men. We do school, we do university, we get established in our work and our careers, and then we see if we can find a partner feet videotavan, kun vahaan m art학교 surfaceta canataan imiväyườiä. I would like to see a society that offers women far more choices and and and actually incentivises couples and families to start having children much earlier and then facilitates women into the workplace, you know, perhaps later because I know one of the people in my team has 10 children, right? And one of the reasons I'm employed for that. One of the reasons I'm employed for that was because I thought if you can handle raising 10 children and run your own publishing company which is done, you've got all the soft skills that we need. Sure, but just to like put an age on it, right? Like are you thinking what, like when would you want women to start thinking about it? I would like women to start thinking about it certainly in their early 20s. Early 20s. And so if, you know, I mean there's nothing I think as well, you know, for many young people we have this big stigma that you alluded to about teenage mothers. Now I'm clearly not saying that girls should, you know, go to school, get pregnant and start, you know, having babies because you need to have that stable family unit. But very often younger mothers have far more energy, far more enthusiasm and they see raising a baby as like their next big. Would you, I mean, I don't want to presume too much, but let's say you had a 19 year old daughter. And if she was having a baby with a 19 year old man, would you feel confident in both of their abilities to be good parents at that age? Well, I think, well, I've got a, I've got a 21 year old daughter. And if she decided to have children, then I certainly would, would be very confident. Would they have a 20 year old, 21 year old man? I depends who the man was. If he was a fine upstanding, you know, young man, then, then potentially, yes. I mean, all it needs is for men to be able to step up to the plate a bit. We shouldn't be writing off young men as terrible, you know, give men an opportunity to step up to the plate and be a father. And very often when you do give men an opportunity to step up to the plate, they rise to the child in their early 20s. I don't see why not. I mean, look at our parents' generations. Think about my parents. But, you know, certainly my parents did have children much, much younger. It wasn't thought, you know, back in, I don't know, 50, 60 years ago, a young man becoming a dad at 21, 22, 23. Wasn't sort of as this terrible thing, oh goodness, he's not going to be able to cope, he's not done this that and the other. But people just got on with life. I mean, there's an argument that people who are having children later in life who are making their commitments to each other later in life, it's not because they don't value having families, it's because they value them more. And so they want to be the best possible parent, the best possible partner. And so they think, well, I can't do that one in 20 or 21. I can do it when I'm 30 or 31. I'm not truly common and I'm very sympathetic to that. And that is, you know, making the, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. And I think we have brought into this idea that in order to have a baby, everything in our lives must be Instagram perfect. Everything, you know, must must be wonderful and great. We must have absolutely everything we need. And life's not like that. Life is often very messy and there are challenges. So I think very often, and I think women do particularly women who have unplanned pregnancies, they come under horrendous pressure to, you know, unless it's all absolutely 100% planned and perfect. Or maybe this isn't right for you to be continuing your pregnancy. I mean, to make it personal, my mum really, really wanted kids. And it was imperfect. Her and my dad split up. She was a single parent until I was 11. And she said to me, you know what, it was worth it. I wanted kids so much, it was worth it to do it like this. And I look at her and I just think, I don't feel that way. I do, I could not do it the way that you did it. And so do you see that maybe for some people, it is a regard for the sacrifices involved with child rearing and perhaps the self-knowledge that they can't do it and that there would be bad parents if they did that prevents them from wanting to do it. So it's not that it won't be Instagram perfect, it's a knowledge of the realities and the difficulties. Yes, and I think people underestimate themselves actually. And, you know, from my perspective, I never wanted children, okay. I never wanted children. I always thought I'd be a terrible mother and that I wasn't right for it. And, you know, my pregnancy with my eldest child was unplanned. And, you know, I was thinking, gosh, what do I do? And she was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me. She's now studying medicine. And hopefully she will be a great boon and benefit to society. But I can tell you right up until I found myself pregnant with her, I was still not sure if this was the right path for me. Caroline Paro, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Our next witness is Lisa Schipper, whose professor of developmental geography at the University of Bonn in Germany, who specialises in the effect of climate change in the poorer parts of the world. And she's on the line from there now. Mother of just one child, I think, professor Schipper, was that a deliberate decision? And would you say it was made for moral reasons? I think, yes, in a way, I have always been influenced by my child born in 1975. You know, as a young child in the '80s, there was a lot of discussion around, kind of, you know, how do we, how many people should there be on the planet? We're worried about the global population. You know, the famous wager from Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich in 1980 about, you know, the population growth is going to make the price of raw minerals or raw materials go up and we're not going to be able to survive it any longer. I mean, these are things that influenced me also because I was born close to those people. I, I, I, I, they're family friends. These are conversations that were held around me. So, I mean, yeah, for sure, I have a thing from, from the beginning, I felt very strongly that I need to think carefully about, you know, the footprint that we have on the planet. I'm having lots of children is part of having a bad footprint, basically. I understand. Charles Fraser. Um, Professor Shippert, do you think we have any moral obligation to maintain and perpetuate the human race? No, I don't think so at all. I mean, I, I mean, I don't really think that we have a, is it a problem if the human population disappears? I feel like we've already shown that we're not good stewards of the earth. So maybe we shouldn't any longer be here controlling the planet and dominating. I mean, I think it's interesting that the idea that, you know, that we, do you think it's, do you think it would be better if we disappeared? I think for the, for ecosystems, for animals, yes, I think it would be better if we disappeared. And I don't think there's any reason why we need to stay around. So, so, how do we normally, I think of most ethical systems as being based on a sense of loving our fellow human beings, caring for our human fellow human beings and so forth. But if you start from the position that you don't care if they all go, I'm not even sure where I can get to with ethics. Um, no. So I think that's a misunderstanding of what I mean. I don't, I think what I don't, of course I care if people die. And certainly I think, you know, the, I'm not trying to pretend that you're trying to kill off 8.2 billion people. I think we're probably not on the show if you did think that. But, but nonetheless, there was a sort of, there was a sort of slight callousness about the idea that, you know, the population might die off, you know, at some point in the future. And that might be a better thing for the planet. How do you build an ethics where you actually think of people as it doesn't really matter if they all go? Yeah, I mean, I guess the, the issue is really, of course I was saying that in a tongue-in-cheek way in a sense that, you know, what is our, you know, what it works, rights do we have, or what privilege do we have. I think we sort of, that privilege has expired at this point in terms of being able to say that we have a right to be here. I think that you have to also consider the discussion around, you know, overpopulation and now very much like the pressure that we're putting on the environment, which in many ways have been dismissed, but because they were very simplified and very reductionist, the issue is around who is producing more children and who is not being able to produce more children. And so it's a kind of person who is sort of on the planet. It's, it's, so the bottom line is not really the number of people. It's the kind of people who are having more kids that we need to think about. Okay, so I, I mean, I understand the problem of overpopulation. I, I, what you were saying originally sounded a bit like underpopulation to me. No, I mean, that's not the issue. We don't have an underpopulation on, if you look at it from a global perspective, but I mean, the issue that was raised in the introduction about how certain countries have declining birth rates and so on, I mean, this is mainly the rich countries, right, the global North countries. And, and to me, I think this is where the moral issue is, right, are we suggesting that we need to increase the population in the global North countries and countries are actually having the biggest impact on the environment, on climate, from my perspective, that is quite selfish to suggest that we should produce more children from, and, you know, would you be telling people from the, would you be telling people from the global South that they should have less children? No, I don't think that is certainly not, and certainly not from my perspective, but from my position, somebody who's half California and half Swedish, I do not have the right to say that. James, James, all. Well, just trying to struggle with this idea that the planet has moral claims on us that rival or indeed, supersede, the claims that humanity has on us. And just, I just want to press you a little bit further on that. I mean, look, the planet, it's just a big green and blue rock, isn't it? It doesn't care what temperature it is. It doesn't care about the climate. And the only reason we care about the climate or climate change rather than on Earth rather than Mars or Venus is because we're worried about the enabling conditions of life in particular human life, because human beings are intrinsically more valuable than the planet. Wouldn't you say that? I suppose I might be able to buy that argument. I mean, I think that the. It's very difficult to suggest that there is more value in humans than in the rock. But in the rock? This sort of far away galactic rock that just happened to get lucky, but it happened to have the conditions to bring about common-based life. But isn't the reason we value Earth more than other galactic rocks? It's got the enabling conditions for life and human life in particular, and sentience and joy and suffering and consciousness and subjectivity and art and all of that. Yeah, okay. But let me flip it this way. What do you think about the quality of life? I mean, I think that if you want to suggest that human life is so valuable, then why are we accepting that so many people on this planet are suffering? And in fact, that the behavior of a large group of us, the richest people, is causing a lot of that suffering. Fine, fine. But you mentioned Paul Early, fascinating that you. You can Paul Early. Well, but I mean, let's just go back to that because one of his predictions, namely that there would be a population bomb in that famous book of 1960, was correct. The population roughly doubled between 1917 and 2010. But on a whole host of other predictions that he made, masturbation, economic collapse, social breakdown, he was wrong. He was spectacularly wrong. We've got a lot more efficient. Why? Because, although as the population has expanded, so has our capacity to adapt technologically to have bigger and busier labor markets and we've actually managed to treat the planet actually in a little bit better. Yeah, that's correct. And I mean, I think you can also extend that to the idea of tragedy of the commons by Gerotardin or the essay that was written in 1968, or around the same year, which was specifically saying that if everyone has access to resources, things like forests or fields, we're going to overuse them and destroy them, which is also essentially disproven. But. So hold on. I mean, you said it's disproven, and yet you're drawing a causal link between expopulation increases and ecological damage, and yet you just denied the causal link. No, yes. No. So what I'm saying is that the population increase of certain groups, the richest people, is. Why do you call them the "damage" people? The richer you are, the fewer children you're having. Yeah, but I mean, a study that just came out to show that high-income groups disproportionately contribute to climate extremes worldwide, right? So that 2/3 of warming is attributable to the wealthiest 10%. So that doesn't mean. But that 10% has also got the best chances and capacity of doing something, achieving the technological breakthroughs that it's going to do something about climate change, wouldn't you say? Not necessarily. I mean, why would that be the case? Well, because that's the track record. That's just where the great innovations that have been green technology and your renewables are coming from. Yeah, but. The wealthier parts of the world that can afford to. The research, the R&D, to bring about those technological breakthroughs, wouldn't you say? Right, but that money could also be invested in the poorer parts of the world, and they could also do research. It's just that they don't have access to the same research funding, right? And so, I mean, there are structural reasons for that that we've also created. So I think the issue is really. I mean, I'm not saying that we can't have more people. It's just that we have to think about who is which populations are growing and what kind of behavior they have. And the honest about, you know, the fact that if we continue to see this, we're going to have climate change continuing. greenhouse gas emissions arising, it is the richest people who are responsible for this. And it has historically been this way also. So, you know, I think we can't. We can't ignore the reality that there is this impact. And I don't want to suggest that this is coming from the places where the big. The population is growing the most at the moment. And I think that we'll be misleading if we were suggesting that. You know, just. Let our population continue. It's okay, because that's not true. But it is who's being born. That is what matters. Professor Shipper, thank you for joining us tonight. Our next witness is Professor Anna Rotkeish, whose director of the Population Research Institute in Finland, and advisor to the Finnish government on population issues. Professor Rotkeish, the birth rate in Finland, as I understand, it is even lower than the UK, despite the Scandinavian family-friendly policies there. What's going on and how much can governments influence it either way? Yes, so as you said, we have lost almost one third of our birth rate, and also the fertility rate in just 15 years, and we are a bit perplexed. It may be leveling out right now, but we are at 1.25 last year, as a total fertility rate. Compared with the replacement level of 2.1, I think. But also compared, when I had my children in the 1990s, and my latest was born in '05, also compared to my generation of women, where we will have a kind of cohort fertility rate of almost 1.8, 1.9. And that was in many ways, well, a different word, but not such a different word. But one thing which is happening in Finland and in Nordic countries, and many other European countries, is, and you haven't mentioned this, is the kind of changing socioeconomic gradient in fertility rates. So those in Finland currently who want to have children, intend to have children, and manage to have them, and have the most children are the highly educated women. Whereas we see a very dramatic rise in childlessness among the poorest men, especially, but also the poor and even mid-income women. And I think this rate is all the questions of social inequality that's your previous context. That's an interesting reversal. That's an interesting reversal, isn't it, of the part where it was poorer people. I have more children. Asharka. Asharka. Hi, I was reading through the briefing notes, and you had something to say about a cultural shift in how people view the achievement of having a child, and how it relates to their sense of being an adult. Could you tell me a bit about it? Well, I think you already discussed it a bit, but what we see is that the cultural expectations of parenthood and the responsibilities, as I think you mentioned earlier, are kind of spiraling and are becoming higher and higher. And just to give an anecdote, for example, I just talked to a man who said he saw a picture of. No, he met a dad smoking with a baby on his arm, and then he thought, "Oh, I'm not that bad. I could also have a child." So kind of. And another thing happening is, of course, what the demographers call the low fertility trap, that once you don't see babies around, and you don't see like normal parents, you know, exhausted, happy, just normal, the kind of positive cues, the social contagion that we know just happens in childbearing, is going downwards rather than upwards. I mean, let's say, for instance, that, you know, a big family, having lots of children is something that I want, but I also want to go to university. I want to live in a few different places. I want to have a career that meets my financial and intellectual needs. And I want to pick the right guy to have a family with after I've sampled a few. Doesn't that mean automatically that I'm going to have to have kids later in life? That's going to. It's going to be sequenced last. And therefore, my window of fertile years is going to be smaller. Well, that's what's happening now, and that's why we have so much unwanted childlessness. Because if you want those things, you can have them, and some manage, is the kind of modern roulette, right? Some have to have it all. But for most, you should think that you can have it all, but not at the same time. And if you really want to kind of be sure you can have children, you shouldn't postpone it until too late. But I mean, is your position that people simply don't know that they're endangering how many children that they want? Because from my point of view, it sort of seems that people are like, "Okay, but I do. I definitely know I want this other stuff, and it's more in my power to do, and I'm willing to have fewer children so that I could have this experience of exploration." Yeah, so we lack good knowledge of this, and that's why the UN report and the survey, they are. they are now embarking on, is so important. But I cannot say how much of low fertility and unwanted primary or secondary childlessness is due to not knowing, but clearly it's a substantial part. Do I think this is the main driving force? No. I think it's an unfortunate consequence of the rising costs of parenthood and the very high expectations. And the lack of positive signals and positive examples of just ordinary, different parents around young adults. Bye! How many societies are there where women have high levels of autonomy, legal protections, good access to higher education, well paid jobs, and also have above replacement birth rates? How many societies in the world are like that? Yeah, I think currently we have the stance. Because I'm not the case, I'm not. No, when I basically have all these things, it's not that. Including sexual autonomy for women. It's actually not a modern Western liberal democracy. Yeah, basically from what I know, it's not Iran or Russia where reproductive rights have gone and it is really low. But as you say, they also seem to be going down. I wanted to visit them to just sense. Yes, so we are. I mean, I don't think we should focus on the replacement rate actually now, because I think we are so far below it. I think we should focus on stopping the decline. And on reconciling female biology with the lifestyle templates we have and support people to have the numbers of children they want while there's time. Mona, Mona Sidi. Just your last point. Why is it so important for women to have children or women and men? Because I'm curious as to the population is rising. It's just not rising in certain countries. What do you envision will happen if the current fertility rate stays at this level? There are two questions. Why one should have children? I actually don't think it's a moral obligation or lifestyle choice. I think we should support people in the reproductive choices they want to have. And I think people have deep and usually very good reasons for their aims. But currently what's happening to humanity is, as you know, we are probably already below replacement level as a species and fewer and fewer babies are born every year. So in that sense, the whole population growth is happening due to momentum and due to aging, which is another trend. And I wouldn't mix these up. I would when we talk about having children in today's society, it's a question of culture, lineage, family, and also really, I mean, different. You can absolutely not have children of your own and meaningfully contribute to the next generation, of course. But this is the discussion we need to have. So one of the criticisms about this whole debate is that really this is about ethno-nationalism, that it's the rich countries, it's European countries, North America, that seize the disparities in birth rates as a kind of existential threat to Western civilization. And actually, the African countries and various other Asian countries, the birth rate is still quite high. And is there something in that that actually it's an existential crisis for Western civilization? Well, if you look at any population projections, I mean Europe is like hardly visible. I think some EU officials got really stressed when they saw that in the population projections, the whole existence of European population was within the margin of statistical error. So I mean, in a way that's just the fact how our civilization will live on other populations are growing much faster. I don't think it's in a bad way an ethno-nationalist thing to think how will my language survive. I am myself part of this, most we just speak in community in Finland. With our birth rates, we live in our language, be quite important or not. But I don't think that's not the racist thing. No, no, no, I'm not saying it's racist at all, but I'm curious. So I don't think that at all, but the reason I'm asking is because as you know, you've done research on this, Finland and lots of other European countries have got all kinds of family friendly policies to encourage men and women to have children and to have children early. Precisely for this reason. But that's not working. Some curious as to why you think it's such an issue. I mean, do you think this is something that's going to go away in 10-20 years and then people will start having children? What's essentially wrong with a society where men and women have decided to have fewer children or no children? But they haven't. Well, they're having fewer children. Yes, and more and more people are not having the children they would like to have. And the key driver here, also not just in Finland, but everywhere, is the young adults are having more fragile partnerships. And then if they find the right partner, it's so late in life that fertility is low. And I think this loneliness epidemic, the unwanted singlehood, has enormous direct well-being effects. And it's not what people say they want. So that's kind of another relationship recession is very strongly tied to the current fertility crisis, which is really about the step to becoming a parent. So for instance, our family policies work well. And we still have quite high second, third and fourth, both in Finland. But it's the threshold to becoming a parent, which has this kind of challenged my many cultural, psychological, and also economical versus. Professor Rodkish, thanks for joining us. Our last witness is Sarah Dytum, who's a journalist and social commentator. I can't say I'd actually heard the word pro-natalism until recently. But it does seem to be more than just encouraging people to have more babies. But it returned to a more traditional gender role for men and women. What's going on in your view? What's driving it? Part of it is simply a concern that there is a drop in the birth rate that has pretty serious social and economic consequences for any country that has a birth rate that is under replacement level. But part of it as well is an anxiety about what is happening to men's and women's relationships and what is happening with women's place in the world. And I think one quite telling thing is if you look at some of the efforts that have been made to reverse the birth rates decline in, for example, Hungary, it's been a phenomenally expensive programme in Hungary. I think it's cost 5% of GDP. It has also been a spectacularly unsuccessful programme in Hungary. I think it has elevated the birth rate from 1.2 to 1.36. It's really not worth 5% of GDP. But it ties in incredibly well with Victor Orban's Conservative politics around social issues, around what a woman's place is. James, James Orban. Sarah, well, look, since you raised Hungary's pro-family policy platform, let's just look at it. I mean, you're right that it hasn't got Hungary back up to the 2.1 replacement rate. That it's aiming for by 2030. And yet it's one of the very few countries in the world in the West that has actually reversed the decline in fertility. Yes, you know, it was very, very low in 2010 when Orban came in. But it has reversed. And alongside that, interestingly, female participation in the workforce has gone up. And so one of the reasons is that he's straightforwardly incentivising James. So the question is, is it how trad is it? Can't you be a modern woman? Isn't there a feminist case for having policies that encourage motherhood and encourage female participation in the workplace? Oh, there absolutely is. I think you were being a bit pired about how successful Hungary has been. From the trend, it does look like what happened. What? The trend's going up? No, the trend, I think it peaked at 1.5 and it's now declining again. So it looks like what happened in my slightly. It's a lie in debate that it's gone up a lot since they introduced the policies. It moved some babies that were going to happen anyway forwards. And that will mean that there are more babies overall in some cases. But I would not say if the country is looking at how to spend 5% of GDP, this is the way that you want to go if you want to reverse it. To your question, I would say absolutely there's a feminist case for it. And I mean, I often find it kind of weird that I'm called on to speak against the tradwife because I got pregnant when I was 19. I had my first kid when I was 20, my second when I was 24. And I think the way in which perhaps my story is typical if some women is the. I would. I think have chosen to have more children after that point. But you have to make quite hard choices if whether you want to be. You know, poor for the rest of your life or not. Goodness, it's a very young age to be a mum, 19. But wouldn't you have appreciated at that young age to have had some pro-natalist policies in place? You know, more generous subsidies for child care. I would not use the word pro-natalist. I think I would probably use the word pro-mother or pro-child. And I was very lucky that I. Honestly, the make it easier for you to be a mum. To bang out my babies early enough that I got under the cutoff for short start. And I did get some very valuable help through that. And. Let's just. You touched on this earlier just by saying from your own personal experience, you sometimes wish you might have had more children. And this seems to be a widespread phenomenon. There's a gap between design fertility and actual fertility. So, isn't there some kind of role that state and society might have to play to try and close that gap without. telling women how many children to have or whether to have children at all, but just to make it easier for mums to become women to become mums if they want to be mum. I think it's absolutely appropriate for the social duties of the state to include looking after families and giving a good start to children. I think there's a moral imperative to do that. But there are new families to look after, because you've got incentives to have them. But there is no evidence that there's any policy that you can do in that line that is going to have a pro-natalist effect. Jarls, Jarls, please. So why are we like pandas that don't want to be sex anymore? I mean, what's going on? It's interesting, isn't it? I think there's a lot of evidence that female education is a big driver of lower fertility. And that's a positive thing, because it comes with better outcomes for the actual children who are born. And there's a lot of evidence that urbanisation and a shift away from a rural economy drives lower birth rates as well, because I mean, the really basic way to put it is if you work on a farm, you have more kids, you've got more kids, you can work on the farm. If you work in a factory, you have your more kids, you're like, oh my god, what do I do with all these kids while I'm at the factory? So those shifts are pretty foundational to having fewer children. But certainly, I think you do reach a point where society ceases to serve having families. And I think that is the point that we have got to. And it is a bad one for families. It's the wrong. I think the house is going to fall in on me for asking this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So I want to ask about the moral components of this. So I've got five kids. I love my kids, but in the middle of the night when one's got a, you know, they're foot in my nose and I can't sleep. And they're expensive and I haven't been on holiday for ages and blah, blah, blah. And I could imagine people going to be honest. I just, I can't afford it. I want to go to Greece every year. I want to do. And I'm not really judging, maybe I am. But there's a moral component to this that people are more, okay, I'm going to say, are people more selfish about this sort of thing than they used to be? I don't think, I really don't think that's it because, you know, the money that you spend on a holiday is not going to keep you in childcare even. I mean, when I got my first job, I think I spent more on childcare than I actually am from my job, which is horrifying. So no, I think you can look, you know, there are the number of consumer goods that you can buy for the cost of having a child is, it's, there really isn't an equation to have that. I think what does matter is that there is an issue with emotional maturity of people. I think that sounds very judgmental. I think there is a problem of people not feeling ready to form relationships and certainly not to be too much the feminist at the table, but certainly of men who don't feel ready to form relationships and effectively mock around with a woman's fertile years. I think you see that quite an upsetting amount of times. So there is a moral component, I mean, we're trying to, I mean, there is a moral component here and, you know, I may be, I may be just too selfish to, you know, I want my wife's attention. I, all right. Well, you know what I mean? I just, I don't want to share. There are aspects like this. I just want to, I think there is something there, even though I understand our reluctance to talk about it. I think it's a question of being reluctant to talk about it. I just think the, the morality of having children is more, is much more complicated than just saying choosing not to have children is a selfish act. I mean, I think I have, there are lots of things that I haven't done that would be very pro-social because I have been occupied with having children and that is a choice that I've made and, you know, I think it was a good choice, but I know plenty of people who haven't had children who've probably on the whole are going to have a better ledger. I mean, there's, there's, there's a argument, isn't there, for saying having more children is a selfish act, because I want more little jars, for example, running around the world. Oh, my ego. Everybody here wins. I don't know why that happened. You've got an ego jar. That's astonishing. Sarah, thank you, thank you very much indeed. Well, panel, I thought what, what witnesses agreed on was as interesting as their points of difference. On the central question, I should why this is happening. The UN report this week pinpointed money worries as the main reason for not having babies, but people were a lot poorer in the past when they had a lot more babies. And I think all of our witnesses thought it was deeper than that, a radical change in priorities, in attitude. Well, I mean, yes, people were a lot poorer in the past, but childcare was a lot cheaper when she was called darling. Right? So when you had, you know, full-time cook, cleaner, nanny, and you were married to her, well, it got a lot easier. And I think that this is the sort of crux of it, which I do think that money concerns are really important. And I can think about people in my own group of friends who had to save up for IVF, you know, those in same sex couples, those who were worried about what it would be like to have kids because they're, you know, they're renters and there's a level of instability that comes with that. And simply the cost of childcare. I've got a cousin who, he went from one child to three because they had twins and they just were like, oh, well, she can't afford to go back to work now. Childcare is simply too expensive. So that is a concern. But also so is choice. And I think that the thing that we can't get around is that anti-natalism is very easy to do. You make childcare really expensive, and you just throw, you know, scary assemblies at school children about teenage pregnancy. I mean, that's why I thought that the worst thing I could do, you know, sort of breaching the Geneva Convention was get pregnant under the age of 18 because I'm a child of the 90s. It was a moral panic. It's very easy to do anti-natalism. It's very difficult to do pronatalism without taking away choices from women over their reproductive and their sexual lives. Murdered, you think it's almost even more fundamental than that. There's something called the cornerstone and capstone effect in all this. That having babies is what we used to do when we embarked on adult life. But we now do or try to do when all our other goals have been achieved. That's a fundamental shift, isn't it? I think it's easy to look at it like that, but I'm not sure that is true of a lot of young couples that I know have had children. They haven't got all their ducks in a row before they decided. And some of them are in their 30s. And it wasn't because they wanted a certain kind of lifestyle. They just wanted children later in life. And I think this goes to the heart of what this is. Actually, there isn't one reason why men and women, but especially women, are deciding to have children later. It could simply be that they value their freedom, their value, the choice, their value, the scientific technological progress whereby you can have children later. Yes, that comes with consequences as well. But I think we're at a time when this question about whether we should continue to produce and reproduce is a really fundamental one. And I do think, as Professor Shipper said, that the real question is, it's not about not having children, it's about who is being born. And that is an inequality that we don't often talk about. That's, that's, I find that outrageous really about who is being born. I mean, Professor Shipper was saying, and we didn't get to it with her, but she's, you know, pro-nacolism as an arse de element of eugenics as part of her sort of stuff. If you start saying, we've got to be concerned who's being born. No, no, no, no, no, I think you're just in the standing-up position. No, that, I think you've misunderstood. She was talking about the question that I followed with our second speaker, which is about, well, actually, there isn't an issue of fertility in certain parts of the world. We are concerned about certain parts of the world as well as where there's a low fertility rate, largely Western civilization. So we're kind of being, we're focusing on that particular issue. And really, there is no fertility problem if you take the world as a whole. But it isn't the question here about, about resources and resource allocation. So one of the reasons we're worried about spiking fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa is that we're worried that they haven't got the resources to sustain that fertility rate. The reason we're worrying about declining fertility rates in the West is because we're worried about the fiscal pain that's going to be inflicted when we've got a taxpayer-depensioner ratio that's completely out of control. Charles, first witness, Caroline Farrow has got five children and it's the role of women that she wanted rethought or to move to a, you know, maybe back to another. They shouldn't need to feel that they had to follow the same career path as men and they should have children earlier in their lives, which makes biological sense, I think. And I thought she was just, I thought she just presented a different way of a different lifestyle choice to the one that we hear about often. And I think that's perfectly acceptable to have that. What I thought was compelling about what she was saying is the way in which she was trying to build her values about the around, what I said at the beginning, about the celebration of life. And she said it a couple of times, the idea that life is this sort of great value. It isn't just about personal happiness, individual fulfilment and so forth. It's about something bigger than that. And I think that was really commendable in the way she put it up. I wouldn't have put it in the same way and so forth. And I understand the way in which that's sort of adjacent to a sort of tread, wife anxiety and all of that sort of stuff. But I thought that was something that I'm not concerned with. People being full-time mums and taking care of domestic labour in that way. I'm also not worried about people being full-time dads either. Here's what I'm worried about. Is that if you take a 19 or 20-year-old woman you say, before you start your career, Have a kid. Be fine now. actually reliant on some 20-year-old, 19-year-old schmuck. I say that's crazy. That's such a-- Have they used schmucks now that they used to be? Well, I think that they were always schmucks. And that's why you have lots of women who are very unhappy in the past. And so I think that if you were to get what you wanted, which is women having more children and starting earlier and doing so in a way, which did not dramatically impinge on their autonomy or I think put them into unsafe partnerships. You're looking at a much wider social transformation. Well, Ash, I couldn't read more, but doesn't that militate in favor of a more pronateless policy? One of the things that struck me about Sarah Dytin at the end was that she was saying, look, I was a mum at 19. I had three before I was-- three kids before I was 25. And my thought there was, well, wouldn't you want the state to try and make life easier for you as a young mum? And we're seeing that. I mean, she was very down on hunger. You're very-- I know, it's fashionable to be down on hunger. And then you're not getting everything right. But we are seeing, yes, they're spending all our money on it. But we are seeing an improvement for the conditions of motherhood. More babies are happening. More babies are being born that was given before. And more women are involved in this. This is the issue. There was a spike for a short while in all these countries. But also, isn't there something morally reprehensible about the state trying to bribe people to have kids? I don't think it's a question of bribery. It's not a question of co-operation. What is it? I'm James. Let's just go back to the UN report and all of the other studies that show that women don't need to be bribed to have children. They want to have children. There's a huge cap. There's a gap in Britain of roughly a child. But clearly, not enough women want to have children. Or if they want to have children, they want to have one. All of them are on here. Yes, we know. They want to say that you wouldn't say that they're bribe not to have kids, because they can't ever have their kids. And educated affluent women who are choosing not to have children. It's nothing to do with money. There's something more fundamental. I couldn't agree more. And money isn't going to fix it. And it's not just going to be the state that's got that's able to fix it. It's also society. It's culture. But one of the points that our guest made was that I think the Finnish lady was saying that there's that effect where the fewer children you can see around in the parks and the playground, the fewer children, the fewer-- the less there's a sense that society and culture values new life, values the young, values children. Charles, what did you make? Well, I know what you made, because the expression on your face was-- spoke volumes-- Professor Shipper's line that actually-- there was no moral obligation to sustain the human race. In fact, it might be better in many ways if we died out. Do you know what I think of my strategy on the Moromases is to try and push people to say something that their position implies which everybody would go, oh god, that's ridiculous. She came out with it right at the beginning. I mean, she came out with it right at the beginning. But it was just-- It's just like-- Logically coherent. Logically coherent and daft. Those two things are-- No, no, no, no, no, no, come on. We're talking about the idea that we can build some ethics around the fact that we'd be better with our 8.4 billion people being on this planet. It's just there isn't such a thing. And if we're on the Moromases, that is how morality works. So Charles, as a Christian theologian, do you think that we have been good stewards of the planet? No, of course not. It wasn't that her point, really. It wasn't about the human race should just die out. We had a moral obligation. We still have a moral obligation to be good stewards. We just haven't been good stewards. Sure. So we need more stewards and better stewards. I thought it was interesting, because Professor Shipper-- had this view, had the view that it wasn't fair to bring kids into the world. And yet she did have one child. And I beg you-- No, no, no, come on. I beg you if you ask that child. I beg you if you ask that child, are you happier being born into a challenging world with climate change around the corner, et cetera? Or would you rather never have been born at all? I think we know what that child would have. No, I think children say crazy things. Well, that's OK. I just don't think that that question and way of looking at it to me makes us little sense as saying that human beings shouldn't exist. And we've got no right to exist. I think it was our last-- no, no, Professor Rodkursche was agreeing with this. UN report out this week that suggested from surveys that the people, women particularly, really wanted more children. But one way or another, they just missed out. They didn't understand that time was running out. I'm not sure that-- I think they're very patronizing to say that about women. A lot of women are very aware. And very-- a lot of women feel a lot of pressure about-- they have to go through for tele-treatments or whatever, because time has run out. I do think a lot of women do want children, but they also want stable relationships. They want freedom. They want choice. They want to live their own life. They don't necessarily want the lives that their mothers and grandmothers had. The question has that made them happier? I don't know. But I think exercising agency is an important thing for women. James, the question of what governments or anybody else can do about its rather interesting, isn't it? Because Professor Rocchus from Finland, those Scandinavians have all these family favorable policies. They've got generous, parental, leave, affordable, childcare, gender equality. And their birth rates are lower than half. Denmark, Finland, Sweden. Absolutely right. It's one of the biggest policy headaches in the Western world. It's no matter how much money you throw at it, in most of these countries, you've seen not much reversal in the fertility rate. Now, that is not true of Hungary. And you have seen a dramatic reversal. Yes, it's flattened a little bit recently. But what you've seen is something that yes, 5% GDP is an eye-watering sum. But you've got a package of policies that is not trying to resurrect the tradwife, but is trying to recognize the reality -faped -that by leavenfacing women that we want to be mums and also want to be. I want to be. I want to have successful careers. So, it's my best friend and the whole world is pregnant. She's four weeks away and it's a planned and wanted child. And I was asking her, how does it feel and she was like, Ash, all those people that say, this is the best time of your life are lying, being pregnant is so much worse than not being pregnant. And this is a baby that she really wants. So, let's also be real about, you know, the impact of pronateless policies is that the burden for women is different. Even if there's loads of gender equality once the baby comes out, it is a massive strain on your body and also still quite dangerous. And so, I think that this is where choice and autonomy does come into it. And, you know, whether you're a pronateless or whether you're a pro-child feminist like myself, you kind of have to say, well, you know, there's a reason why women make other choices. Good reasons. And if men had to do it, I think the human race would have died out long ago. -Giles, you've got 10 seconds to speak. -I speak for men. No, I'm not speaking for men, definitely not doing that. But this whole world choice that we have, this is part of the problem. The idea that it's all about our individual choices and not some sense of obligation that we have. OK, that's. We'll have to leave it there. That's it for this week from our panel, Ash Sarkar, a Giles Fraser, Mona Sadeke and James Orr. And from me, until the same time, next week, goodbye. [BLANK_AUDIO]