The care dilemma: Caring enough in the age of sex equality By DavidGoodhart. Forum. 2024. pp. 256. £25.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978‐1800753617. £12.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978‐1800753631. £11.99 (Kobo ebk). ISBN: 978‐1800753624

By now we are all aware that global birth rates are steadily declining. Women in England and Wales are having on average just 1.44 children, far short of the 2.1 required to keep the population stable. As the implications of a worsening worker–grey ratio become apparent, policymakers across the globe are scrambling to find solutions. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is devoting close to 6 per cent of GDP on pro-natalist policies, to limited effect. In 2010 the country's fertility rate was 1.2; it is now 1.5. Many Asian nations are spending big, to little avail. South Korea, with a total fertility rate of just 0.7, could halve in size by 2,100. In a grim irony, China has a fertility rate of exactly 1. In Britain, birth rates have plunged as female labour market participation has risen. Women can ‘have it all’, but there are some things they're happy to forgo – to our societal detriment. Female autonomy is the biggest leap forward in freedom since World War II. We have empowered women, handing them choice over their fertility, careers and finances, but it has had unintended consequences for family life and the care economy. Less stable families, rising mental ill-health and “fragility” (p. 52), the falling birth rate and a recruitment crisis in face-to-face care can be traced back to undervaluing hearth and home, writes David Goodhart, head of the Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit at Policy Exchange, a London-based think tank. The aim of his book is to convince readers that the status of the domestic realm, and of public economy care work, can be raised in the age of sex equality. In 1971, around half of British women were in employment. By 2023, the figure had risen to 72 per cent. Half of mothers were stay-at-home in 1975; this has fallen to less than 20 per cent today. Given a choice, goes the pro-natalist argument, many of these women would prefer to stay at home more and work less. Some 60 per cent of mothers with children under 14 years old would prefer to work fewer hours (p. 115) – a sentiment which remained unchanged in surveys conducted between 2009 and 2022. The focus of progress has become too narrow and a paradox has emerged. By trying to enable women to work, we have lowered the status of the domestic sphere, thus limiting women's options. If we can increase the appeal of staying home, it would represent the culmination of what American economist Claudia Goldin called the “grand gender convergence” (p. 218). No more free-riding on women's domestic toil: stay-at-home mothers and working fathers would be regarded as equally important. Progress towards professional equality between the sexes has been damaging to the well-being of young people, the author suggests, which is one of the reasons we find ourselves in the grip of a mental health “epidemic” (p. 52). Further, this progress has impacted marriage rates, leading to less stable families, and triggered a crisis in social care. Though most jobs have become easier in recent years, care of the disabled and elderly is more difficult yet remains low-paid (a “political failure”, Goodhart reminds us, given social care is directly or indirectly funded by the public purse), and unattractive to the modern British woman (p. 191). It's not easy to find solutions to a problem this complex, and where ‘evidence’ is often lacking. Surveys may indicate women would like to work less and spend more time with their children, but revealed preferences – which according to the above poll remain unchanged in 13 years – tell a different story. The rise in psychological conditions – as Goodhart concedes – cannot solely be pinned on family breakdown or the loneliness that might derive from having no spouse, no children or no siblings. Successive governments have adopted a high-regulation, low-qualification childcare model which has driven up costs while lowering quality. This needs reform. Childminders are being pushed out of the market – at a rate of 3,000 per year according to research by the Institute for Public Policy Research – as bureaucratic demands become increasingly onerous. This burden needs to be eased. Extending statutory paternity leave from two weeks might have a small impact at the margins. Our tax system is unkind to families; allowances ought to be transferable between couples. A career ladder in both the childcare and social care sectors could improve retention. Many of Goodhart's proposed measures would be very costly: a Netherlands-style kraamzorg, which would see midwives visiting new mothers for several hours each day for over a week after their baby is born, might ease the shock of being plunged into an “elemental world of childbirth and breastfeeding” (p. 72). A Carer's Allowance for grandparents. Goodhart's big pitch is a Home Care Allowance, which would hand parents nearly £10,000 a year to spend as they choose, and consist of three elements: ditching childcare interventions, which are expected to cost the Exchequer around £10 billion annually once the subsidy is expanded later in 2025; front-loading child benefit; and an extra tax allowance of £5,000 each for mothers and fathers raising children together. But there is more: additional public funding of in vitro fertlisation (IVF), which currently costs between £6,000 and £12,000 per round (p. 249). A special carers' minimum wage, funded by reforming local government tax bands, which haven't been revalued since the 1990s. A single online ‘family hub’. The question remains: would it be enough to restore the status of the domestic sphere? To persuade women who are experiencing an independence their great-grandmothers couldn't conceive of to sacrifice careers and pay packets? In the opening pages, the author insists his text is not a “dog whistle”. He does not pine for the 1960s, before women entered the public realm of paid work in large numbers, and advocates for “more support for stay at home parents as well as making it easier to combine parenting and work”. And yet the impression here is not that we need to find a new model providing both parents with the ability to balance work and childcare responsibilities. Rather, it is that professional middle-class women have skewed the public policy debate, pushed for more ‘free’ childcare provision to suit their needs, and perhaps even contributed to negative perceptions of domestic life. Even if true, it is the job of politicians to resist vested interests. Research indicates that the main beneficiaries of ‘free’ childcare hours are middle-class parents who would otherwise pay for it – so why is the government endlessly offering more? When referencing the challenges working mothers face, Goodhart suggests there's an “element of ‘first-world’ problems about some of these complaints” from middle-class women who are, relatively speaking, extremely fortunate. He is dismissive of the claim that “many women who have grasped the opportunity to combine motherhood and career surely understand that it will be more stressful than doing just one or the other” (p. 72). But if we fail to grasp or empathise with these challenges, we're unlikely to solve them. Can parents be bribed with lower nursery or housing costs into having more children? I doubt it. Present women with a choice, between on the one hand achievement and remuneration in the public realm, and on the other hand a life of financial dependency on their husbands and the state, and some will decide motherhood isn't for them. Goodhart is sceptical that immigration or technology will defuse the demographic time bomb, and concedes his measures may be only “nudges against what feels like the colossal economic and cultural forces favouring the GDP economy” (p. 301). If true, it's a shame that the ways in which our economy and society might adapt – consumer priorities, living patterns, financial planning – are largely unexplored in an otherwise thorough text.