Fertility rates in Britain are in freefall. The average number of children per woman is now 1.44, the lowest in recorded history. Among millennials, childlessness at 30 is no longer unusual but expected: half of UK women born in 1990 were still childless by that age, twice the rate of their mothers. Many couples will eventually have children, but later and fewer. We’re heading for a future without enough young people; a slow-motion societal collapse triggered by labour shortages, economic stagnation, declining public services and social isolation. It is a gloomy prospect, but a realistic one.

Children blow your old life to pieces. Your weekends are no longer yours. But when I think back to my pre-child life, it was, though easy, curiously hollow

We’re told this fertility crisis is due to

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