The pro-fertility people have come up with a novel solution to the collapsing fertility rate: Crappy parenting. Well, It’s a plan.
This piece in the Telegraph takes issue with breastfeeding, screen time and also the idea that children having to share bedrooms is “bedroom poverty” a term used by a charity called ParentKind. No one else uses that term. I agree with the writer, Phoebe Arslanagić-Little, when she says that the idea of sharing a bedroom is ‘poverty’ is ridiculous. But that’s the only thing I agree with her in her ludicrously terrible piece.
Little continues after talking about South Korea for a while:
“Brits may not be in danger of signing up to send their six-year-olds to tutoring, but it is still important to resist attempts to increase the perceived minimum standard of parenthood.”
This is what we are doing when we criticise parents who let their children play on an iPad, or imply that children who go to nursery might develop “attachment issues”, or insist every child should have their own bedroom.”
So we should “resist attempts to increase the perceived minimum standard of parenthood.” Dear God.
This is nearly as bad as the French government sending letters to all 29 year-old men and women “encouraging them to have babies before it is too late. The young adults are to receive a government letter warning them that their biological clock is ticking and telling them that help is available if they are struggling to conceive.” Good luck with that.
The crappy parenting strategy is relatively new. This is where conservatives, concerned about the dropping fertility rate, say there are too many demands and pressures put on mothers and fathers, and that we should lower standards. This would encourage them to have more children.
Heaven forfend we should want to increase the standards of parenthood. I hear her. I really do. Tomorrow I’ m just going to throw a bowl of gruel on the table and let the children fight it out. It will make them ‘resilient.’ The plan to increase the birth rate is to push formula feeding, increase use of ipads to distract children from having to learn to behave and the institutionalisation of toddlers.
I also don’t know why she is putting attachment issues in scare quotes. That’s a bit like saying, the advice that you shouldn’t leave a baby on their own on a couch in case they fall off due to “gravity” is too demanding on parents. A lot of adults do have attachment issues – it’s no joke.
And yes if you put a baby in nursery too early when they are too young, they will have attachment issues. You can lie to yourself and say it isn’t true. But it is. Or they could be killed by the nursery worker or sexually abused. Only yesterday Nathan Bennett was convicted of two counts of rape, four counts of sexual assault, and two counts of assault by penetration. The charges related to five boys at the Partou King Street Nursery in Bristol, who were two and three years old at the time.
Breastfeeding is better for infants than bottle feeding. You might not like that either, but it is true. Also, babies can’t get food poisoning from breast milk, unlike the 36 children infants in the UK who had suspected food poisoning from contaminated baby formula. It comes after specific batches made by Nestle and Danone were recalled because of contamination with the toxin, cereulide.
In 2009 in China two men were executed for their roles in the production and sale of poisoned milk that killed at least six children and made almost 300,000 sick. Nineteen others were jailed in a case which involved deliberately contaminating milk with melamine, a chemical used in manufacturing plastics and fertilisers. Or you can have your ‘unusual levels of mercury’ in formula and sometimes botulism.
As for screen time, yes it is better to read to your child than put them in front of the TV for hours on end or even worse hand them an iPad. Clearly according to Phoebe Arslanagić-Little we should be celebrating the fact that 28% of children arrived at primary school in 2025 in the UK and didn’t know how to open a book. Many just jabbed at the cover with a finger. We should all pretend that their parents are ‘doing the best they can’ and that there is no minimum standard of parenthood.
Have I used the TV as a babysitter? Absolutely. Did I feel guilty about it, yes, and that’s a good thing.
In America, they are even coming after car seats in an attempt to increase the number of children. This piece takes aim at ‘stupid’ car seats and other “safetyist regulations that make parenthood needlessly expensive.” Great stuff, just shove the kids in your car boot then and be done with it. Never mind that “proper car seat use reduces the risk of injury, hospitalization or death by greater than 70% when compared with seat belts or no restraints.”
The AI overview tells me, “Infant car seats and child restraints have saved over 13,217 lives in the U.S. between 1968 and 2019. In recent years, these devices have continued to save hundreds of children annually, with 408 lives saved in 2019 and 325 in 2017. Proper usage reduces the risk of fatal injury by up to 71% for infants.” Stupid car seats…
If the plan for the pro-natalists is to make crappy parenting fashionable you can count me out. First, it is morally wrong to lower the standards of care for infants and children who cannot speak for themselves. Secondly, it won’t work because middle-class potential parents, who are the ones not having children, are very unlikely to want to compromise on the safety and health of their potential children.
You could improve society and the support systems that make good parenting more likely. Therefore you should have secure housing, reduce the time and stress involved in the commute to work by allowing parents to work from home, and building the damn metro. We should encourage young people to live close to their natural support system of grandparents and siblings, reducing the cost of childcare and hugely increasing child benefit.
Once you have done that you make it very clear that those who do not have children will not get to rely on other people’s children for their pensions.
Encouraging parents to risk their children’s lives, health and safety is the stupidest idea I have heard in a while. Get a new plan.