Family politics: proposed limitation on child tax credit is more complicated than simply ‘being careful’

There is something distasteful about politicians dictating matters that really should be kept within the family, not least the bedroom. By its very nature, the proposed cuts to working tax credits for families of more the two children infer that doing more than replace yourself and your partner is really only morally acceptable if you’re rich.

There is something almost Darwinian, even slightly eugenicist about a policy that seems to link the ability to have a large family down to personal wealth and success. It smacks of being able to play the game, subsume your desires, and leaves little room for those who seek their fortune in more creative, less financially guaranteed industries, not least for those who have a tough run of it, one way or another. So far, so red blooded Tory. There is a point to be made that nature would have a similar argument in days gone by. Can’t hunt, don’t eat, don’t breed, die. There is a brutal logic in it.

By the same token, it suggests that human beings can somehow subsume their evolutionary impetus to procreate; that we can be fulfilled with doing little more than replacing ourselves unless we are in that happy category for whom additional children are, financially, no object.

This is the rub. In years gone by, the only way women could control their pregnancies was by abstaining, with social repugnance levelled at those who had not jumped the significant social hurdles of being married to someone with a reasonable income, and that almost always directed toward the women themselves and not the men who impregnated them.

In these difficult days of widely available contraception and overpopulation (not to mention environmental apocalypse), it feel as if, yet again, women are at the tap end of social judgment when it comes to reproductive control, with so-called feckless mothers who have multiple children on state handouts particularly prey to media and governmental venom. The policies now directed at discouraging them will surely fan the fires of distaste for those who go against such economic persuasion, for all that large families operate on more sustainable economies of scale.

And yet – and yet, as I ponder having another child, and anticipate the financial pain (not least of other types) of doing so, I wince, and wonder how other women, poorer than me, manage three and then four, or five.

The answer is always the same. The financial pain for me was much less having children when I was younger,  and by default, less successful, because my time was not so highly valued by the market, and so the salary I could expect was less relevant when weighed up amid other emotional, health and time factors. It’s surely much harder to love a baby when it’s costing you the best part of 50 grand a year in lost earnings. But then I wouldn’t know. I’ve stuck at two, born when I was on less than 20.

So, we should not remove money from vulnerable families in order to socially engineer them into curtailing their number, but rather to provide women with better options that encourage more selfish pursuits than parenting. Going forth and procreating becomes much less palatable when it means a choice between shopping at John Lewis or Lidl, and going on holiday in the Maldives over Butlins.

Obviously I’m not saying I enjoy these things any more than spending my children – tbh, they’ve only really just become an option for me, and only because the greater part of my salary is no longer being eaten up by wall-to-wall childcare; but I have to admit time spent with my children these days, is infinitely more enjoyable because of the freedom to do them.

Let’s not forget, reproduction isn’t always a choice, even in these days when hormones in our water are having a profound effect on human fertility in general (one could even whisper that this in itself is a covert governmental policy to rein in human reproduction, especially in this day in age when gender is recognised as a spectrum more than any other time in western history.) If sexuality, even gender is no longer seen as a lifestyle choice, perhaps we should have the maturity to recognise that the desire to parent children is perhaps just as fixed. Especially, actually, when we unpick the genetic, environmental and evolutionary impetus to reproduce, we could say, in fact, none of us has any choice at all.

As with all policies that seek to wield a stick, rather than dangling a carrot to achieve their ends, reducing income from already poverty stricken working families may have the opposing effect than that intended: by disproportionately affecting women, and therefore enabling fewer opportunities to for them to strive for much other than motherhood, it sparks an unexpected baby boom. After all, when work becomes unaffordable, and its rewards grow slimmer, what else more fulfilling are we going to do with our time than throw caution to the wind, one way or another?