Don’t tax the childless – 30-year-olds like me can’t afford to have kids

Having a womb, I have found, is not unlike having blue hair. I used to dye my hair blue, back in my twenties; people would often comment on it, positively or negatively, at parties or in the street. My relatives had thoughts on it and so did strangers; having blue hair was fun but I was never quite allowed to forget that it was there.

Having a womb, come to think of it, is different from having blue hair. I cannot change my mind on the ownership of a womb then decide to get rid of it in about half an hour in my bathroom, thanks to a £7 product from Superdrug.

Still, it is something that people comment on, have thoughts about, and generally stop me from forgetting it is there. I am 30, so I should have children, and I ideally should’ve had them a few years ago. If I cannot invent time travel, having them now would do; several of them, of course, the more the better, chop chop.

While having those children, I should ensure that my household earns enough to care for them adequately. You should not breed if you cannot afford to, as the two-child benefit cap so generously reminds us. Not having children is selfish but expecting the state to help you care for your children is selfish as well. Let’s not get carried away.

Because my fellow harridans and I cannot be trusted to do the right thing for Queen and country of our own volition, the Sunday Times came up with some suggestions to get us popping.

One of them was to “introduce a ‘negative child benefit’ tax”, whereby the childless get to pay extra money for the luxury of eating in restaurants that are not Giraffe. I have to confess I had not realised I was not meant to be paying tax until now; if anyone has a spare copy of Sunday’s paper, do send it to me if you can. I’ll forward the relevant clipping to HMRC and wait for my refund.

Another was to create a “pro-natal culture”, including “a national day to celebrate parenthood, and a telegram from the Queen whenever a family has a third child”. I cannot even bring myself to opine on those. What is there to say?

The most egregious suggestion, however, was to “educate people that getting pregnant becomes more difficult with age”. Stop the bloody press! Why have the powers that be hidden this from us! If only women were told, at any point in their life, that they have a biological clock that is ticking!

If the St Antony’s College, Oxford demographer who came up with these ideas is reading this, I would love to invite him to any social gathering attended by three or more women hovering around the age of 30. I trust he will hear more about fertility in that evening than he has in a lifetime so far.

Anyway, my point is  – I read that piece yesterday and it made me angry, and then I went to do some laundry, because even the barren have chores to do. As has become customary, I did a 30-minute cycle, plugged off my washing machine so it reset itself, turned it on again, did a spin and drain cycle, waited for that to finish, plugged off the washing machine, then finally took the clothes out once the door unlocked.

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They were still dripping wet, so I had to go through the whole process again this morning. This is the way I wash my clothes now, because my washing machine is ancient and half-broken, but I do not want to tell my landlord about it. The rent I am paying is absurdly low, given how quickly rental prices have gone up in the past two years, and I cannot afford to move.

If I annoy him by, say, asking him to do the bare minimum in exchange for the four-figure sum I send him every month, I worry he will evict me. That is what my life is like, at 30, with a good career in the media. It is only a snapshot but, believe me, it is a representative one. I am 30 and I still live like a student; I just go to bed earlier than I used to.

How on earth do you want me to start thinking about making, and then raising an entire other human being in these conditions? I may have a womb which, to the best of my knowledge, is well-functioning, but I do not have the life of a prospective parent. Few of my friends do, despite being more well-off than most. It will take more than a telegram from the Queen to change that.