Over the past 12 months it has become imperative for me to begin my journey towards motherhood. Just ask my Instagram algorithm, which now serves me a steady stream of “birth story” content. Or my Vinted site, which seems to think I should be browsing second-hand baby cards. That’s not to mention the targeted ads for egg freezing clinics that have quietly replaced the early bird deals on spa vacations. This is, it seems, the new normal for women in their late twenties. But now we have someone new to blame for the state of our biological clocks: “immature men.”
In the UK, the birth rate has fallen to 1.44 children per woman, according to the ONS, the lowest ever recorded in England and Wales. For years, the explanation was straightforward: women waited too long, prioritizing careers, or – as the Vice President of the United States put it – becoming “childless cat ladies.” But now, a new report has flipped the narrative.
According to research by the Center for Social Justice, three million women aged 16 to 45 are expected to become “absent mothers”. It sure sounds like an upgrade for childless cat ladies. Moreover, their male counterparts have been transformed from carefree bachelors to “immature men.” The shift offers some relief, if short-lived. For once, the problem is not women’s ambition or misplaced priorities, but men’s reluctance to grow up.
Many women will recognize some version of this. My male peers expect to spend their twenties young, wild and unhappy, only to settle down at 32 and produce a small dynasty on demand? Preferably. But even my female peers are not in line for motherhood. No one is ringing the proverbial baby market by wearing a sandwich board that reads, “Ready for a baby. Mature applicants only.”
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What exists instead is something less dramatic, but more telling: a shared delay. The feeling that the necessary conditions to create a family remain unattainable. If there is a puberty crisis, it is not limited to one gender.
However, panicked efforts to hurry us all up and fight the “demographic time bomb” are spreading across Europe and beyond, with pronatalism making a big surge as a major political issue. In France, Emmanuel Macron has called for “demographic rearmament”; in the United States, Donald Trump has thrown the idea of bonuses for children; in the UK, parties including UK Reform have proposed tax incentives for parents. Parenthood is being treated less and less as a private decision than a matter of national policy. When Miriam Cates, a senior fellow at CSJ, suggests that large numbers of women “get lost” in motherhood there will be social and economic consequences, it reveals how quickly matters of personal fulfillment become matters of state interest. It also conveys a simple caveat: choice has measurable costs.
The figure of the childless woman has long been used as a cautionary tale, a warning about what happens when femininity is not fulfilled in the “right” way. Literature is full of such characters: the cold and obsessive Mrs. Danvers RebekahDickens’ Miss Havisham rusted and decayed. Even the most modern, seemingly comic Bridget Jones nightmares hinge on the same fear: sitting next to a “Jeremy” at dinner, being told “you really should hurry up and back off, you know, old lady”. The language may have evolved, but the underlying anxiety remains. These figures share a common function: to embody the consequences of error.
Like Betty Friedan’s observations on “the problem that has no name,” the silent pressures of social expectations persist. The language of coercion has somewhat diminished, replaced by the language of choice. However, the expectation itself is still there. Motherhood is no longer a task, but an inevitable horizon. Something to anticipate, manage and, if necessary, postpone at one’s peril. It’s the same rinse-and-repeat issue that feminists have pushed back for generations.
But in 2026, the pressure to have children sits comfortably alongside the economic realities of early adulthood. It’s hard to present motherhood as an obvious next step when so many people are still struggling to secure stable housing, pay off student debt, or even establish a modicum of financial independence. From hoping our parents won’t notice they’re still paying for our phone contracts, to staying hidden on the family Netflix account, we’ve all been kids a lot longer than previous generations.
On the Internet, this is rephrased with some irony: “I’m just a 27-year-old teenager,” is plastered across reels featuring young people filling their suitcases with the contents of their parents’ pantries before returning home. The real immaturity lies not in men and women, but in a policy that refuses to face the cost of growth.
It is perhaps easier to attribute declining birthrates to individual failings—immature men or overambitious women—than to confront the structural conditions that shape people’s lives. Herein lies the issue of this generation’s demanding parenting. In London, the average cost of childcare is around £450 a week, while paternity leave in many workplaces still rarely lasts more than two weeks.
For us women in our late twenties, the result is a strange double message. On the one hand, there is constant pressure – from algorithms, politicians and cultural narratives – warning us to have children before it’s too late. On the other hand, there is the material reality of an economy that makes this action increasingly uncertain.
Before having children, a woman still needs money and a room of her own – as well as a mature man.
(Further reading: AI teddy bears should not give advice on slavery)
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