Positioning parenthood and its full reality

Every time I see a headline about fertility and the declining birth rate I wonder if the article might be about me.. Whenever the media highlights a surge in women with one child, women who leave it ‘too late’, women who are childfree by choice, and women who are unsure about what they want and with whom, it’s then that my friends and I who sit in our thirties all know the same thing: they’re talking about us. All the other labels we might use for ourselves – runner, Swiftie, chocolate enthusiast – start to lose their significance in favour of how we relate to the concept of motherhood.

This feels particularly pertinent now because fertility and the birthrate are constantly in the news at the present. Perhaps not headline news, but just below the Strait of Hormuz and the apparently Sisyphean task of any one person remaining Prime Minister of the UK come the articles about pro-natalists, anti-natalists, one-child families, IVF and the cost of childcare. Indeed, June is World Infertility Awareness Month. 

This is not to say that this news and awareness is not important, but much like the mirror held up to me and my millennial cohort by articles about the avocado-brunch eating and prosecco-swilling generation rent about ten years ago (remember when Kirstie Allsop said the reason people couldn’t afford homes nowadays was because we had Netflix subscriptions instead?), these reflections can feel like a distortion of the facts. In this instance, it feels like a distortion based on an omission from these stories: the other parent. In all this coverage, there is very little discussion of non-birthing parents or men. That omission matters because the way an issue is framed influences whose experiences are seen as relevant, whose voices are heard and, ultimately, where responsibility is thought to lie.

If the story we tell about falling birth rates is mostly a story about women, then it is hardly surprising that women end up carrying so much of the responsibility for solving it.

Yes, there is a biological difference in female fertility and male fertility. It is pointless to pretend otherwise. However, while families and the path to parenthood can take all shapes, sizes, and numbers, children are not conceived by the genetic contributions of one person alone. 

It matters that the social and cultural conversation around fertility is framed as an issue mostly or solely for women because it gives birth to childcare being an issue that is spoken about as mostly or solely for women.

This matters beyond public policy. Employers have a stake in these conversations too. Decisions about whether and when to have children are shaped by workplace cultures, flexibility, parental leave policies and assumptions about who carries caring responsibilities. At a time when organisations continue to compete for talent, understanding the realities facing both parents is not simply a social issue but a business one. If we frame parenthood as something that primarily concerns women, we risk overlooking the ways in which workplace culture and expectations influence the choices available to families as a whole.

Former Tory cabinet minister, Gillian Keegan, recently spoke out about the private fertility journey she underwent while those in her political life assumed her lack of children was the only reason for her success. Seemingly, they even said this to her face.  Regardless of how insensitive this is, the assumption underlying these comments is that children are ultimately a woman's responsibility, whether she has them or not.

I want to be very clear that this is not intended as a diatribe, but more a petition for men to be included in the conversation around fertility and children. Men also face fertility issues that contribute to that declining birth rate. They experience financial pressures that lead families to stop at one child, wrestle with balancing careers and parenthood, and may choose not to have children at all. Men can and do face discrimination when they take paternity or shared parental leave or collect their children from nursery or school because “can’t your wife do that?”.

If declining birth rates are a societal problem, then society needs to examine the choices, constraints and expectations placed on both parents, not just the one who gives birth. The challenge for communicators and policymakers alike is to ensure that the stories we tell about parenthood reflect that reality. Too often, conversations about fertility and declining birth rates seem to focus on one half of the equation. If we want to understand why people are having fewer children, or none at all, we need to start by asking whether we are listening to everyone involved.