Modern parenting, for Natalie, 35, looks like family holidays with Joanie. It looks like weekday evenings hearing about her day at school and helping her with homework. But, with demanding jobs and no family living nearby to help with childcare, it also looks like an expensive childcare jigsaw.
But ultimately, deciding whether or not to have a second is a tough decision. “I think you worry you’d regret it,” she says.
The fertility rate was 1.41 children per woman in England and Wales last year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – the lowest on record for a third year running.
And the proportion of families with one child has grown since the turn of the century.
They made up 44% of all families with dependent children in England and Wales last year, up from 42% in 2000. (Though the peak was 47% in the early 2010s, which then dipped before picking up again after Covid.)
The UK’s falling birth rate is part of what the United Nations calls a “global fertility slump”, which it puts down, in part, to money worries.
People aren’t “turning their backs on parenthood”, says the UN in a summary of its Population Fund’s State of World Population report, which surveyed people across 14 countries.
Instead it says they “are being denied the freedom to start families due to skyrocketing living costs, persistent gender inequality and deepening uncertainty about the future”.