Doing two jobs can provide lots of crossovers and food for thought. As part of my other job, I have been talking to someone who is based in South Korea at the moment. He has just come back from a trip to France as the Korean government is really worried about falling birth rates and how to get women to be able to balance work and family life rather than be forced to choose between the two. There has been much interest in how European countries do it, particularly those like France which don't have a falling birth rate.
The UK too has seen its birthrate rising in recent years, after fears that there would not be enough children being born to look after an increasingly ageing population. In the past, people have painted career women as a barrier to raising birthrates. The idea is that career women opt not to have children or often leave it until too late. This may have been true in a couple of decades ago when there were fewer women in the workplace. In my field, higher education, statistics certainly seem to indicate a high percentage of childless women in the upper echelons of management. However, things appear to be starting to change. Policies which focus on providing flexible working in all sorts of occupations and promote managers leading by example appear to show that you can have a career and a family - hence the rising birthrate. This is what the South Koreans want to learn from.
On the other hand are the environmental lobbyists who counsel that a rising birthrate, particularly in wealthy western countries where people consume more, is irresponsible. Do we therefore need to develop policies to discourage people in the UK from having more children?
Population planning seems to be a difficult business since trends shift rapidly. While more and more people might be living longer, there are fears, for instance, that the rise in diseases such as diabetes will see more younger people dying before their parents or certainly developing chronic illness and so needing support in the form of more tax input into the health system [and therefore more young people earning] or in terms of more manpower in the caring professions. Who is to know now whether we can reverse this trend or how long it will take to do so?
In the meantime, we are subjected to lots of apparently contradictory claims and lobbying. Sitting here, pregnant with my fourth child, I feel totally caught in the middle. The thing is people have children or don't have them for all sorts of reasons. Often they either don't have a plan or things have a habit of happening which they don't expect. There are so many conflicting emotions involved. Is there ever a clear-cut black and white answer?
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