Can my generation afford to have kids?

Ed Miliband has said before that the “Promise of Britain” means each generation will be better off the the last. That’s clearly a promise that’s being broken at the moment. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly around the million mark. Long-term youth unemployment is rife – and is particularly severe in some of Britain’s most deprived regions. And the dream of home ownership or even secure affordable rent is further away than it has been for generations.

My generation (those born in the eighties and early nineties) are already looking down the barrel of being worse off than our parents. But will this generation be able to afford to have kids at all? How easy will any of us find to produce the next generation in that unbroken link of Britain’s promise?

It might seem like a ridiculous question – or course people will always find ways to afford having children. But consider this one statistic – a 4Children report released earlier this week showed that 40% of the disposable income of an average family will be spent on childcare costs by 2024. Already the average age at which people have kids is moving backwards, and for those who already have children, childcare is prohibitively expensive. I know couples who have emigrated due, in part, to the expense of raising a child in Britain.

The alternatives to the expense of putting children into paid for childcare are scarily alternatives at all. Flexible working is still theory rather than practice in too many firms. Remote working from home is no panacea (because then you’re trying to take care of a child and work at the same time). Childcare provision in workplaces is patchy, to say the least. And taking time off work to raise your kids? A one income household? Or a no income household? That could condemn many to choose between keeping their heads above water, or having a child and condemning that child to being raised in poverty.

Fortunately, with Lucy Powell at the helm, Labour appears to be ready to go big on Childcare. Earlier this week, responding to the 4Children report, Powell said :

“We need a childcare revolution to meet the needs of families and to help the economy grow.”

That’s the nail hit right on the head there. By failing to deal with the spiralling cost of childcare, successive governments have held back the potential growth of our economy by forcing families and parents into unenviable choices. Currently, Labour has committed to extend free nursery provision for three and four year-olds with parents in work from 15 to 25 hours and providing “wraparound” childcare for kids at Primary School. 

This is more than a good start, but Labour can still go further. Empowering Powell and others to push the envelope and produce a genuinely universal childcare offer should be front and centre of the election campaign. It speaks to the promise of a better tomorrow, empowers people to earn and grow the economy and is directly linked to the cost of living crisis.

If boldness is not shown in this area, I fear more of my friends will say to me, as one did last week, that they’d love to have kids, but they’re just not sure they can afford to…