Generation Maybe by Camilla Cavendish review – what’s really behind the fertility gap?
An evidenced-based account of the difficult choices facing couples across the world – from America to Iran ‘Don’t be weird about this,” representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughed into the camera as she prepared to jab a hormone-filled needle into her midsection, adding that she knew full well that, yes, people were definitely going to be weird about it. At 36, the congresswoman had begun freezing her eggs, and…
Key points
- Camilla Cavendish's book Generation Maybe examines falling global birthrates and the fertility gap.
- The book rejects simple explanations and focuses on barriers such as partner timing, housing costs and career-caregiving conflicts.
- Cavendish reviews pronatalist policies worldwide and outlines nearly a dozen measures to make having children a genuine choice.
A new book by Financial Times journalist Camilla Cavendish examines why birthrates are falling around the world. Generation Maybe focuses on the fertility gap, the difference between the number of children people say they want and the number they actually have.
The review cites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who at 36 publicly began freezing her eggs, as an example of how an ambitious woman's fertility has become a live concern.
Barriers to having children
Cavendish sets aside toxic gender-war narratives and the standard explanation that educated women choose freedom and autonomy over family. She argues that is not the whole story.
Drawing on reporting from America to Iran, she identifies barriers including finding the right partner in time, rising costs of raising a family, housing, and the difficulty of balancing a career with caregiving. She also lists rational pessimism about the future, stigma around motherhood, few stories glorifying fatherhood, pressure to perform intensive parenting, all-consuming greedy jobs, and exhaustion from caring for a small child.
the joyous, messy, life-giving task of raising a family has become something that feels more like a daunting, lonely, and expensive chore
— Camilla Cavendish
Government responses and solutions
The book charts how authoritarian governments in China, Russia and Iran have responded to falling birthrates with repressive pronatalist policies, including sanctioning child marriage, making divorce harder and denying abortion access. It says the Trump administration's attacks on reproductive rights and federal childcare funding follow this trend.
Cavendish examines what has worked in Singapore, Scandinavia and France and outlines just shy of a dozen ways to help people choose children, from building more housing to offering parents benefits and giving children the vote. She writes that almost all policies which may help lift birthrates could also enable human flourishing.
