Imagine a world without children, a world steadily depopulating like that in the dystopian novel by P.D. James, Children of Men.

Declining birthrates and a growing reluctance to marry are ringing alarm bells across the world, particularly in South Korea and Japan. The eager US vice-president J.D. Vance is scathing about “childless cat ladies” and wants to turn back time.

In the US, rates have dropped to 1.6 children per woman and a key goal of Project 2025, Donald Trump’s blueprint for government, is to restore marriage and the family as the basic unit of society. Abortion bans are one approach to be taken, and more funding is to be directed to communities with high marriage and birth rates. But resetting the agenda is not easy.

Attempts by other governments are failing to stop the lower birthrate trend amid increased resistance from women who will not continue to accept the patriarchal assumptions which lead to full-time childcare, housework and subservience to a male breadwinner.

According to a New Yorker article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (3 March), birth rates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman), will have unprecedent consequences for society.

South Korea is leading the trend, its birth rate of 0.7 the lowest in the world. That means every 100 people of child-bearing age will produce only 12 grandchildren, former childcare centres are being converted to nursing homes and children in schools can play few team games because of declining enrolments.

Japan, at 1.3, is facing a reluctance on the part of young women to marry and live under the thumb of a dominant mother-in-law, with husbands returning home drunk and bashing them up after excessive hours of work and relaxation with their male colleagues. This evidence was reported to Don Edgar as far back as 1993 at a Conference in Japan on Population Trends for the 21st Century.,

Italy fears it is “destined to disappear” because of its low birthrate, despite being a Roman Catholic country, and even India’s rate is half of what it was two decades ago. Changing the one-child policy in China has not meant more children. Globally, population will grow over the next half century but then contract, with migration becoming highly competitive, but the only solution to rejuvenation. Some countries in central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have higher birthrates, but even they are diminishing, with Nigerian accusations that the French authorities are “stealing men’s penises”.

Australia’s first Intergenerational Report (2002) had Peter Costello urging us to “have one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country”. His words made no impact. Explanations for the collapse in childbirth figures vary, but cluster round the high cost of housing, the cost of children with their education and special needs, boys falling behind their female peers in employment, work and mental health, and girls looking for someone at their own level or higher as a partner. Their career ambitions have lifted, and it has become difficult for both sexes to find a compatible mate. The question on the minds of many women who do want to marry is how the load of child raising is to be shared.

In South Korea, some 85% of children are sent to high-cost private schools, a trend we see in Australia as public-school funding has been severely cut. Single child families and the abundant advice available on child rearing leads to parents competing to put their offspring into costly extra classes, maths and foreign languages, piano, dance and taekwondo classes, to gain a competitive advantage for later higher education entry. High housing costs delay moving out of the parental home which slows down the path from adolescence to responsible adulthood. And education for employment is a much longer process than it was.

But ongoing discrimination in the workplace — meaning women are more likely to be the lower income earner — and the refusal of many men to take parental leave (as in Sweden) or share housework and child-raising seem strong reasons. Longstanding norms about male/female roles are difficult to dislodge when unequal pay and career opportunities continue to push the male-as-breadwinner model while women reject the home-maker trap that has led to so much unhappiness and divorce.

Social media is now exacerbating the conflict that the sexual revolution has fuelled. The sexes are becoming more isolated from each other. Male misogyny is inspired by pornography and women are hostile. In Australia, Jess Hill has reported evidence of an astonishing level, 28% of men aged 18 to 30, using at least one form of physical or sexual violence against a partner (Quarterly Essay April 2025).

The solutions proposed all seem reasonable ideas, but their achievement is proving intransigent. In Australia, parental leave (on part wages) needs to be equally used by men and women accepting the experience of parenting is a shared responsibility. Formal childcare subsidised by the government must recognise children are an important and necessary social good, not simply a private responsibility. Child carers must be well trained and well paid. Housing design must include space for children and their play. And the myth of maternal attachment theory (as opposed to a warm adult-child relationship) needs to be exposed beyond academic research journals.

Employers must accept a more positive approach to flexible work, with productivity measures replacing the notion that presence in the office means quality work. Peter Dutton seems to have seen the light on this issue. Free, quality, public-school education for all is essential and would reduce the cost of living for many families. Well- designed suburban housing, safer roads and public spaces could engender a return to outdoor play and activity and a broader sense of responsibility by all for children.

Rearing children is not always a joy — they can be noisy, messy, recalcitrant and exhausting — but the challenges of developing competent future social citizens is one that must be faced by the whole society. Do we want a future where you have no offspring of your own and don’t even have other children to meet and know? It will be very bleak and ultimately terminal.

As we grow old with no-one who gives a reciprocal damn, will we see old folk put on boats and sunk in the sea? Or zapped up when wrinkles show to make Soylent Green? Could pensions be denied to the childless? Will politicians in the future have no babies to kiss on the campaign trail?

What needs to be done seems obvious for a humane civilisation in which most aspire to live, to continue to exist. Are we capable of living in the future?