Why are birth rates declining?
We have known that Malta has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe for some time; however, a recent study carried out by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation based in the US has shown that the country’s low fertility rate is set to continue shrinking in the next few decades.
This means that by the end of the century (if trends persist and the world’s still standing because we haven’t destroyed it completely), our population will be on the older end of the age spectrum. Just to put you in the picture, countries require a fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman to maintain population levels and the aforementioned study forecasts a further decrease to 1.39 births per woman by 2050.
So, why aren’t people having more children or any children at all? Is it because, as Norman Lowell put it back in February, the “best, most intelligent, creative and beautiful” Maltese women “aren’t having children” because they have been “brainwashed” into believing they should prioritise their careers?
Or is it that Maltese women are finally freer (a few decades after most European countries) and can no longer easily be shamed by society into staying at home and having a family if they don’t want to? Couple the latter point with a constantly rising cost of living and the fact that many feel that raising children is harder than ever before and you have a recipe for disaster.
I honestly don’t know what our authorities expect from us. Nowadays, it is almost financially impossible for one partner to stay at home and raise children while the other works. And that’s if you’re even lucky enough to have a partner, to begin with. Even if you do work and have a partner, help is by no means guaranteed. Many of the men of my generation were raised doing nothing around the house, and who has the patience left to re-raise other people’s sons while raising their own?
Our working conditions remain rigid, inflexible and incompatible with school hours, which means that parents need to rely a lot on grandparents to step in and carry the can. But even this is changing as more and more grandparents are understandably saying that they have no desire or energy to raise their children’s children. And that’s just the very, very basics.
There are Instagrammable lunches that need to be packed, homework to be done, dinners to be made, baths to be drawn and extracurricular activities that need to be attended because everyone wants their children to have hobbies. Oh, and society doesn’t allow you to be fat in peace either or look rundown and tired, which means that, while all this is going on, you need to not show up at the school gates looking like a cross between Ursula the Sea Witch and Carrie from the horror film of the same name.
To go back to Lowell’s “warning”, I’m pretty sure that our rates declining have a lot less to do with “women wanting to become men” and more to do with women not wanting to go insane. If the country requires more people to give birth, perhaps it could do more to create an environment where that could actually be feasible – just a thought.
“I’m pretty sure that our rates declining have a lot less to do with ‘women wanting to become men’ and more to do with women not wanting to go insane