Do the Tories want us to have more babies or not? They sound confused

The Conservative party still harbours old-fashioned “family values” figures such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and his extensive Catholic brood. They even go so far as tolerating the Devizes MP Danny Kruger, who recently questioned the right of a woman to have bodily autonomy and have a choice in the termination of early pregnancy.

And now, in the light of the impending population crunch, as more women decide not to have children and the majority start a smaller family later in life, the Tories want to celebrate anyone who chooses to have multiple children by sending a telegram from the Queen on the birth of their third. As I write this, I am drinking coffee at speed as I try to focus on work after a night looking after my two ill children, in which I managed just two hours of kip myself. It would take a lot more than a note from a monarch to reconsider my view that a third would be a terrible idea.

Worse than that, there’s talk of a tax on childlessness, as if every woman who fails to procreate has let herself and the country down. It’s a regressive, chilling idea, the nanny state on steroids, that should never have seen its way out of a corner room in Westminster. Obviously it represents an unpalatable attack on women’s freedom of choice, but it’s also deeply offensive in the way it financially penalises any woman who perhaps wanted nothing more than to have a child and yet, by circumstance, that life did not materialise for her. Its cruelty reminds me of the moment Andrea Leadsom, in 2016, said being a mum gave women a “stake” in the future of our society – a flippant remark that left me in tears; at the time I had been trying to conceive for almost a year.

At a time when the right to abortion is under attack, women are listening hard for this terrifying undertone. We know where an acute focus on the sanctity and value of human life can easily end up.

And yet, it’s worth noting these ridiculous policies follow a decade of attempts by the Conservatives to link larger families to fecklessness and a lack of responsibility.

Limiting benefit rights to two children, including child tax credit and universal credit, was supposed to prevent those who “couldn’t afford it” having that golden third child. It didn’t do that, inevitably: new research has demonstrated that, rather than reduce household size, the decision simply forced larger families to live in increasing poverty.

The same is true of the Bedroom Tax, originally created to prevent the under-occupation of private and social rented housing subsidised by housing benefit. Those most likely to under-occupy are pensioners whose children have left home, but they were the least likely to struggle to cope financially despite the policy. Larger homes were not freed up. Instead the idea simply left larger families either struggling in overcrowded accommodation or facing poverty in their struggle to meet rising rents.

The cost of living crisis is being felt most acutely by those with young children, especially as food prices rise fast. It is already overwhelming single mothers, with half of children in lone parent families now living in relative poverty.

For a party apparently now fetishising fecundity, this is an odd situation. Why focus on the number of children we are producing if, as a country, we are also unwilling to support them through a comfortable, stable childhood and into a productive adult life? If children are really only the responsibility of their parents, why is there now talk of rewards for a third, or financial punishment of those who do not procreate?

There are simple things the government could do to encourage a genuinely sustainable higher birth rate, but they cost money and effort: subsidised childcare, much better quality, equally affordable and accessible wraparound care for school hours, a health-visiting service that offers real support in the earliest years of parenting.

What about universal, free of charge support for family life, including parenting classes and support groups hosted by professional facilitators? Ending the two-child limit to benefit payments is only the simplest and most immediate way of supporting families to choose more children. The government won’t even consider that.

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Perhaps this is not about the child at all, but about bald numbers: who will be the workers of the future if we don’t all breed now? It’s a fair enough question to ask – but not for a political party that has so aggressively committed to opposing working age immigration, even when that comes at a moral cost.

So which is it? Do we need more children, or not? If we need them, is there any good argument not to financially support them? It’s a grotesque vision to imagine a government promoting high birth rates but then washing its hands of any responsibility for a rising child population.

Then again, not so unimaginable within a party of government which has shed any vestige of honest and principled politics.