Only last week, the Chancellor set out, once again, the Government’s ambition to get the economy moving. The language is familiar: growth, investment, opportunity and, of course, AI. This Government likes talking about growth, while choosing policies that make it harder to achieve. The route to economic growth is not a mystery And it is […]
A parliamentary petition calling for a Maternity Commissioner – launched just three weeks ago – hit an important milestone this week when it reached 100,000 signatures. Myself and women’s rights campaigner and TV personality Louise Thompson organised the petition because we believe an expert in charge of England’s maternity services is vital. We believe it […]
In 2018, with ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt launched a sustained attack on what they called the culture of ‘safetyism’ in American parenting and on university campuses. Their target was the belief that children and young adults are fragile beings who must be protected from uncomfortable ideas and the […]
The UK is facing a fertility crisis. Since 1979, women’s intended fertility has remained relatively stable, at around 2.2 children. In 2023, the total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.44 children per woman. There is a widening gap between the number of children women want to have, and how many they actually have. […]
After ‘Adolescence’ – the hit Netflix drama series about a young girl’s murder – questions about young men and masculinity reached a much wider audience than ever before. Conversations about masculinity are not new, but they have rarely reached this level of public attention. A broader reckoning feels overdue. Yet some of the current debate […]
1. Growth is the child of capital 2. Ownership and nationhood: the fight for economic belonging 3. The friendly giants: breaking free from our new masters 4. The unchecked and the unaccountable: seizing the economic levers 6. Trust is the precondition for economic growth 7. Out of the shadows: a Conservative tax revolution . A […]
In a 2022 column, The New York Times’ Ezra Klein wrote of the countless people he meets who ruminate about whether to have children ‘given the climate crisis they will face… [and] knowing they will contribute to the climate crisis.’ Klein’s acquaintances are not an anomaly. He cited survey data suggesting that a quarter of […]
In her Budget speech, Rachel Reeves said that the measures announced would ‘restore stability to our public finances and rebuild our public services’. Yet, despite pledging to increase state spending to a whopping £1.5 trillion by 2029/30, Labour have failed to grasp an important piece of the crumbling-public-services-puzzle: the problem of a shrinking workforce.The latest […]
The UK, as not enough people know, is the family breakdown capital of Europe and, not coincidentally, has one of the least supportive family policy offers. Indeed, family policy is mainly about maximising the employment of young mothers, despite the polling evidence suggesting that many of them would prefer help to be able to afford […]
Rachel Reeves has declared that she’s going to – well, assuming she gets elected – finally deal with the gender pay gap. Rachel Reeves has promised to close the gender pay gap ‘once and for all’ […] if she becomes Britain’s first female chancellor. This is nice of her. No, really, it is. Finally a […]
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies and the 10th of CapX, we’ve been republishing CPS pamphlets from our archive. This week, it’s the introduction to Jill Kirby’s reflection on New Labour’s ‘Every Child Matters’ policy, ‘The Nationalisation of Childhood’. You can read the entire report here. During the Blair years, […]
The fertility rate in Britain will continue to decline over the next twenty years, according to the latest projections by the Office for National Statistics. In 2022, births in the UK reached their lowest point since 2002. By mid-2045, fertility is expected to drop from 1.61 to 1.59 children per woman. Meanwhile, the percentage of […]
Tom Hollander revealed this week that he once accidentally received a payslip for a seven figure box office bonus intended for Spider-Man star Tom Holland. It raises the question, if a Hollywood super-agent can make such a huge administrative error, what hope is there for the UK government rolling out the biggest expansion of childcare […]
There exists a group of perhaps 300,000 British children who are three times more likely than their peers to develop mental health problems. These same children are more likely to miss school, get involved in antisocial behaviour, violence and even crime. They should be a priority for any government but no government department is responsible […]
Childcare, like housing, is one of those products where the shortage has got so acute that it feels weird to have reservations about any policy aimed at expanding it. Yet just as the Conservatives’ proposal to unlock the mass conversion of family homes into flats, which I wrote about last month, is a two-edged sword […]
Fertility rates are cratering around the world. Last week, South Korea recorded a historic low of 0.7 births per woman (2.1 is required for a stable native population). In just four generations, that would reduce a population of 100 to 4. The rest of the world is following suit. The UK’s fertility rate has slumped […]
Numerous research studies have suggested that children from a single-parent family are worse off than those who have two parents at home. These findings chime with decades of stigma that have painted coming from a single-parent home as undesirable. Understandably, you may find this worrying if you are a single parent – or if you’re […]
A new academic paper arguing that a declining birth rate may actually boost living standards has grabbed some attention in recent days. Professor David Miles – who happens to be the chief forecaster for the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – contends that ‘the economic impacts are likely, on balance, to be positive’ from falling populations. Miles argues […]
As an American psychotherapist, I have spent most of my professional life looking carefully at the science behind young children being put into long hours childcare. There are plenty of problems in the United States with childcare and family separation. I hardly need to start worrying about another country, but the importance of the earliest […]
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