The news that the recession is leading to a new baby boom is, to put it mildly, counterintuitive. Let us recap (or, in the case of women, de-cap): sales of condoms are down 10%, sales of pregnancy testing kits and folic acid are through the roof, as are other supposed aids to the wellbeing of the unborn child, such as iron supplements and cocoa butter. (Cocoa butter? That's a new one on me. Sounds fun.) Apparently, knocking up is the new going out.
Which, as I said, is all wrong. It is true that after a disaster, eg the second world war, fertility rates go up, and the fields around Lisbon were said to be full of copulating couples after the 1755 earthquake. But the original baby boom, of which I represent the exhausted, sputtering fag-end, was a result of a sustained period of optimism and economic growth. And we are not, ladies and gentlemen, in the middle, or indeed anywhere near, a sustained period of optimism and economic growth.
It is so weird that something, hidden unfathomably deep in the bowels of the imperatives of natural selection, must be going on. Having and rearing children is, these days, generally considered a vote of confidence in the future. In the past it was somewhat different: you had as many as you could in the hope that enough of them would survive to look after you in case you ever managed to make it to old age. Moving up the social ladder, the feckless second son of the aristocracy was an insurance policy against anything nasty happening to the eldest.
But nowadays we are meant to look at the economic pros and cons of having children. And not only that – to imagine the kind of planet they will be inheriting. In medieval times no-one ever said "ooh, I don't think we could bring children into a world with the plague and the hundred years' war, it wouldn't be fair on them", but we are meant to be thinking, even if only intermittently, a little more long-term now. Aren't we?
Well, let me disabuse prospective parents of the idea that having children represents a long-term saving when compared to all the other things you might be doing instead, such as travelling to exotic locations or dining in superb restaurants every other night. There are numerous, well-publicised calculations as to how much each child costs the average family from cradle to ... well, traditionally, the last time they come back with a sack of dirty laundry to the parental home, which is a date which is being continually revised upwards – as is the monetary figure. Having children is great, don't get me wrong – in fact, I liked it so much I had more than I thought was strictly necessary – but ever so often I wonder whether, if I wanted something that was cripplingly expensive, temperamental, and yet made me feel good about myself, I might not have been better off buying a Lamborghini.
