‘The Media is Misreporting Why People Aren’t Having Children’

Amid falling birth rates and ageing populations (and xenophobic Great Replacement Theory conspiracies), there’s plenty of hysteria about the ‘jaw-dropping crash’ in people having kids or at least people from our societies.

There’s also a kaleidoscope of theories as to why it’s happening. Parenting is no longer considered “meaningful” (The Atlantic), childlessness is “less stigmatised” (Time), “Men just aren’t good enough” (The Telegraph), “millennials” think they’re immortal (Washington Post — paraphrased), and feminists have ushered in their own doom (UnHerd — they never disappoint).

These articles mention maternity or parental leave just once, if at all, and some base their hot take on rejecting the “overplayed” excuse of economics entirely — because even countries with “great” parental leave still have falling birth rates (well obviously, our mums’ mums weren’t allowed to do anything but mother).

Please stop over-complicating the story. We’re two women in our early 30s (as of today, Happy 30th Birthday Mathilda!). So let us make this very plain.

Economics is the problem; careers, freedom and ‘meaningfulness’ are not. We genuinely do not understand how we’re supposed to afford children (and a place for them to live) when doing so will probably cost us the business that pays our bills.

It feels like we will soon have to choose between an identity as mothers and an identity as anything else because if we choose to be mothers with the appalling support systems in place, we will struggle to do much else for a while. And in our industry, once you’re out, you’re out (perhaps why no one’s left to write about the problem?)

So, media: it’s all very well publishing incisive, alternative analyses— if you’d ever, ever report on the very real problems facing young parents today.

The UK has the worst paternity leave in Europe (two weeks paid at £184.03 each) and is bidding for the worst–rate-maternity-leave prize in the OECD. Sure, news outlets managed to rattle off a nice, clickable headline on that. But why do they think that’s the case? Where’s the follow-up?

Two weeks’ max paternity leave—and yet if a woman has a C-section, she’s told not to drive for six weeks (insurance probably won’t cover her if she does). Please media, find and report whoever’s living that conundrum, because she’s surely out there. It would be a better use of your time than debating whether a University of Tennessee basketball coach (who just happened to love her job and could actually afford childcare) was wrong or right to return to work one week after birth.

On today’s episode of Media Storm, parenting finance guru (and pregnant mother) Katie Guild told us about the ‘motherhood penalty’. Essentially, “when you have a child, your pension suffers, your career suffers. You potentially take up a lot of debt [like 26% of women on maternity leave]. You go through a period of having really sustained low pay, into then catastrophically high childcare costs. So you don’t catch a break. There’s no chance to build up your wealth, and in that environment are you then meant to save for baby number two…?”

Marvyn Harrison, founder of Dope Black Dads, also said the “headache” of researching paternity leave wasn’t even worth the pennies it paid. “When I investigated, I was like, this is so bad!”

The combined inadequacy of paternity and maternity leave is arguably one of the biggest barriers to gender equality. It both drives and is driven by, the gender pay gap, as couples defer to patriarchal labour divisions based on patriarchal paychecks (PS working women, congratulations on reaching the first month of 2025 that you’re paid in full for your work).

Helping parents raise our next generation shouldn’t, in theory, be a point of contention. But in today’s culture war climate — well, everything is.

Harrison described his experiences of being brought onto the media to dispute the indisputable: “You end up doing this sort of debate with people who should never be discussing what parents need anyway: somebody who has never had children or is not actually present in their children’s lives.”

The ‘other side’ is the one that thinks all benefits are fraud (because having children is a clear inconvenience to the natural capitalist order of life). “Benefit fraud gets so many news headlines. Whenever I do a breakfast TV show, people will call in, and it’s like, if people aren’t literally walking through landmines to navigate life, they’re not happy.”

“We cannot listen to that part of the electorate,” Harrison insists.

People who are genuinely in their 20s and 30s aren’t considering families because of the actual logistical nightmare of trying to raise a family in this time

Marvyn Harrison, founder of Dope Black Dads

Here’s a crazy suggestion for our media. How about instead of riling us up over gender-neutral bathrooms, you educate us on the rights and policies that could tangibly improve our day-to-day lives?

At this, they are failing. Harrison “didn’t even know the concept [of paternity leave] existed” when he had his first child. It was into this deep, dark information-void that he launched his blooming digital platform.

Similarly, Katie Guild started Nugget to help new parents not just understand the infernal matrix of parental leave policies, but learn the hacks and loopholes necessary to make them liveable. She said news outlets repeatedly fail to accurately report on the policies in place. Last year’s Labour proposal to introduce ‘parental leave from day one’ was widely reported as a salvation for new mothers — yet it had nothing to do with maternity leave at all.

“People were getting really, really confused,” Guild said. “We fell for it at Nugget, and we did a video on it, and it was completely wrong. We had to retract it and it was really embarrassing.”

But here’s the thing, she said. “I checked three national newspapers!”

What does it say when we can’t rely on our media for accurate information? When even the sporadic policies taking us incrementally towards progress are misreported or made into culture war fodder?

Media, please get it together. Our clocks — as you keep telling us — are ticking.

Media Storm’s latest episode, ‘Maternity and Paternity Leave: Why parents are so angry at politics,’ is out now.