Rory FitzgeraldIt is a strange thing to realise that you have become a sort of slave – albeit a fairly happy one, at least when you are tucking your peacefully slumbering little masters in at night. Perhaps the term, “indentured servant” is more accurate, because there is the prospect of eventual freedom, allegedly. With each new child, however, comes a new 21-year indenture of servitude, for that is at typically how long modern parents remain financially responsible for their offspring.
The practice of indentured servitude was a common 19th Century punishment for petty criminals transported to Australia. However, they were usually only transported for a lenient seven years – not 21 – and modern parents don’t even get the climatic luxury of seeing out our servitude in the sunny antipodes.
New research from Britain by the Centre of Economic and Business Research has found that the costs of raising a child to the age of 21 in the UK has risen by 50% in the past decade to £230,000 (€306,000). Given that the UK has free medical care and tax relief for childcare, the real figure in Ireland must now be closer to €350,000.
A typical 1950s family of five children, therefore, would today set you back €1.75 million. It is strange that we are nowadays able to afford more things – more gadgets, cars and bigger houses – yet we have somehow in the process made ourselves unable to afford people.
In the face of such financial pressures, it’s little wonder that, like the rest of Europe, even traditionally fertile Ireland would have a collapsing birth rate were it not for the immigrant mothers now responsible for some 25% of Irish births.
Pope Francis made headlines recently saying that we don’t have to breed “like rabbits” to be good Catholics. Although that unguarded comment made the news, most of that interview was in fact focused on the worrying consequences of Europe’s failure to reproduce – in line with his recent speech to the European Parliament, where he warned that an aging Europe was “no longer fertile and vibrant”.
Across Europe, collapsing birth rates are causing catastrophic economic and social consequences.
It is strange how our times of historically unprecedented prosperity have produced a reluctance to have children. Perhaps a culture overly-centred on money will inevitably produce accountants who reduce the value of a childhood to euro and cents. My advice is to ignore them. Bury your head resolutely in the sand. Or perhaps take inspiration from heavy smokers who stoically keep at it even though their particular habit can cost them over a million euros over their lifetimes – enough to raise three kids.
Children are more important than money. They’re well worth a lifetime of indentured servitude, certainly on the good days, in any event.