Opinion
We should stop funding IVF and pay under-25s to have children
Ramona Koval
Writer and broadcasterJim Chalmers knows that our economy won’t function without enough productive young people.
Speaking last week, the treasurer said he wants to make it easier “to make choices� about family size. He’s ruled out a baby bonus, and we are yet to hear his proposals. But for a society to survive, reproduction isn’t a choice, it’s primal.
People aged under 25 who choose to have children should get much greater government support.Credit: Istock
When did choice become a byword? The right choice, the wrong choice, unhealthy choices; things that were a given for most of human history, like having children, are now personal choices moderated by technologies and the assumption that it’s your right to have a child when you want to, where none existed before.
I married at 20 when I was pregnant with my first child. I continued doing part-time study and had another child at 23. By the time I was 25, I was divorced and found work as a TAFE teacher. It was hand to mouth but the children survived, and they’re both responsible citizens. You can muddle through.
Why are humans now having trouble with the most fundamental act of being alive – producing the next generation? What do our young adults need to know when they are considering if and when to embark on parenting?
While the data on women’s educational and work participation have continued to show improvements over the past century, the graph that is unchanged is the one that plots their fertile years. From her early 20s onwards, a woman’s fertility declines, and for most of us it is very hard to become pregnant when we reach the mid-30s and beyond.
Do the young ones seek out this data or do they get swept up in the trends of their cohort? Are all the crew flying to London and getting jobs in pubs, or heading off on European jaunts? Are they seriously dating? Are they too picky? What of the marriage gap, which describes the new educated women’s uninterest in available men who don’t match their level of education or achievement? Is she, is he, good enough?
It seems many simply start too late because in their 20s they believe they face a gauntlet of prerequisites – find the right partner, finish studying, buy a house, land a secure job with parental leave.
All this choice-talk takes up a lot of time, and many find that when they finally decide to take the plunge, it is not as easy as they had expected.
Those who run into the wall of infertility are often devastated, especially if they have blithely supposed that they are in control. They are offered a range of expensive options, with variable success rates. IVF for those with relatively simple issues. Donations of eggs if they no longer produce healthy eggs of their own, donations of sperm if they are not in a heterosexual coupling or have a partner with low healthy sperm count. These things cost society not only through taxpayer-funded rebates, but in possible psychological angst for some of the children produced by donated gametes.
When egg freezing, with all its associated costs and uncertain outcomes, looks more attractive than just getting down to it, we are in the grip of crazy collective thinking, supported by international heavy hitters in the assisted reproductive technology industry.
A 2022 report by the federal government’s Centre for Population, Impacts of Policies on Fertility Rates, suggests Australian men and women express a wish to have more children than they do eventually have. The report found personal financial concerns including the cost of raising children, job security and the cost of housing are the key factors when people consider having children.
What can we do to reverse course?
It’s time we started considering a guaranteed minimum income during the early years for those who have children while under the age of 25. During COVID lockdowns we found a way to support people through a difficult patch through JobKeeper and higher JobSeeker payments. We have to target the people who are going to save our society.
Parents aged under 25 should also be offered free tertiary education amid a broader rethink that provides quality education at a lower price. AI will make education cheaper, more efficient and more accessible by providing personalised lecture presentations, tutors, and assessments. Finishing apprenticeships and part-time qualifications while you worked used to be the norm in law, architecture, engineering, journalism, nursing and teaching. We are nearing a time when a 25-year-old with children can have a tertiary qualification and four to five years in the workforce on their CV.
The Centre for Population report talks about the importance of being in the workforce as a factor in becoming an adult and seeing yourself as a parent instead of a long-term dependent student into your 30s.
We also know that family formation is supported by home ownership and larger houses in suburban and regional city locations. Greater effort must be made to build such housing. More apartments and higher-density city living doesn’t cater for this need.
Reproductive technology used for the early detection of fertility issues would mean that they can be addressed as much as possible while there is still time to do so, rather than amid complications during the years of naturally declining fertility.
We are respectful and polite about other people’s choices in this part of the 21st century. But if we are to live in the world that emerges, and are expected to pay for it, then we need to think carefully about what we have agreed to. The money we spend supporting adults who chose to wait to have children should be spent on encouraging young people to have them early. We need to reward pro-natalist actions that will underpin our future. I’m relying on my grandchildren to look after me when I can’t do it myself. Who is going to look after the late developers who forgot to have kids?
Ramona Koval is the former host of ABC Radio National’s The Book Show and an honorary fellow in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is researching a book on the future of human reproduction.