43%

              Kate Spicer: “Any woman who says she’s happy to be childless is a liar or a fool.”

Sometimes a bald statistic reveals how far reality has moved on from where you thought it was.

Such a statistic was reported in the Daily Mail yesterday.

One in four women in Britain in their 40s are childless and this rises to an amazing forty three per cent of the university educated.

It’s true that the latter figure is from a study of women born between 1965 and 1978, so the eventual number will be a few per cent lower.

But whether the final number turns out to be 41% or 39% the implication is the same. The country we have known is passing away before our eyes. What will follow is unknowable in detail, but this much is sure.

·        It will be dumber.

Research into identical twins has conclusively proved that intelligence is a genetic trait. If the bright have fewer kids average intelligence will fall.

·        It will be less civilized.

Cultural capital both in the sense of behavior and intellectual pursuits builds up over generations in families. Mass childlessness dissipates this inheritance of centuries.

·        It will be less British.

If recent news demonstrates one thing it is that it is possible to be born in Britain, attend 13 years of full time education and still be markedly, even aggressively anti-British. This is particularly true of Muslim immigrants who comprise less than 5% of the population but 10% of the under 25s.

·        It will be less safe.

Projecting the exploding Islamic demographic forward, it seems likely given the lack of Muslim assimilation to lead to two Britains. One older, richer and smug and the other younger, poorer and aggrieved. As any Bosnian or Rwandan will tell you, in a society comprised of two very distinct cultures it pays to keep a suitcase packed.

No Misogynist Hate-Fest

So what the hell is up with British women?

But also.

What the hell is up with British men?

For every childfree woman there’s a carefree man. This is about a large minority of men and women that simply don’t want children.

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

Just as revealing as the raw statistics from the Daily Mail article were the readers’ comments. The article itself was written by a childless woman of 44, Kate Spicer, who regretted not having children and asserted that, “Any woman who says she’s happy to be childless is a liar or a fool.”

The 1200 plus comments to the article provided the second jolt of the day to my view of the real world. The Mail is famous, at least on the left, for the crude right-wing bigotry of its readers, so I expected many of the responders to stand up for the joys of motherhood. Not a bit of it. Instead the comments, and particularly the “best rated,” were utterly dominated by the meme that being childfree was fantastic and even expressing the contrary opinion was unacceptably offensive.

What dawned on me then was that the reason for the increase in childless women at 45 from around one in nine a decade ago to one in four now was staring me in the face. The boundless enthusiasm expressed by the childfree for self-fulfillment, career, peace, plenty and the company of cats and dogs explained it.

Virginia’s Pathologies Are Now Ours

Fortunately, for the ease of understanding this change, though there are eight million stories in the naked city, in this demographic story the justifications mostly boiled down to one key change in the British mindset.

Since about the 60s the radical egomaniac individualism formally the preserve of a few self-obsessed intellectuals like Virginia Woolf has gone mainstream.

This is best illustrated by a parallel change in popular books and films.

So 70 years ago the audience of Casablanca is clearly meant to understand that Bogie’s and Bergman’s happiness is less important to them than the greater good, i.e., winning the war against Nazism.  Conversely, in this year’s Olympus Has Fallen, , the president blithely risks the horrific death of 10s of millions of Americans to save a couple of his personal colleagues who should in fact as servants of the people be first in line to take one for the team. And to most of the audience the president's sacrifice of millions of strangers on the altar of his own personal feelings clearly makes sense.

And when modern young couples weigh up the pros and cons of having children the same shift in perspective is evident. The former attitude that I am just one link in the chain of life from the distant past to the far future has given way to the idea that the thousand generations before me only make sense because of their glorious culmination in me. It would be therefore a betrayal of their sacrifice for me to waste my precious life on bringing up a couple of mewling brats.  Consequently, their own personal wants and convenience tend to take preference over their parents' desire for grandchildren or their duty to wider society.

But wider society can’t look after itself if we won’t.

And as the Britain you know and love passes away, don’t blame immigrants, the underclass, or alien religions.

They are simply filling the void we in our self-obsession are leaving.