It was news last week that women are having fewer children and at a later age: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that more than half of women in England and Wales don’t have children by the time they are 30. But it hardly felt surprising to me. As a woman without children, at 36, I don’t feel in a minority. Obviously, no one’s friendship circle is statistically significant, but my child-free friends still outnumber those with kids – whether by choice or circumstance.
Yet while there seem to be similar reports published almost every week – here a piece on falling global births, there another on fertility rates dropping during the pandemic – the wider reaction is still often one of dismay and unfair judgment.
