How to resolve the modern care dilemma: drop the obsession with GDP

Miriam Cates in June 2023 (PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo)

9 min read12 March

Resolving the modern care dilemma means putting family at the heart of the economy, writes Miriam Cates. But the challenges to implementing this conservative plan for care come from all sides – including the ‘ultra-online right’

Despite successive governments having a laser-like focus on ‘the economy’, many Britons feel less prosperous than ever. Our preoccupation with ‘growth’ seems to have had the opposite effect – perhaps because we have failed to understand the true foundations of a strong economy.

The source of a nation’s economic wealth is its people; it is human beings who innovate, sacrifice, take risks and generate prosperity. Unlike goods or services, people are unique, and the economic contribution made by each individual depends on a wide range of complex factors, including mental and physical health and the possession of important virtues such as self-discipline, resilience and conscientiousness.

GDP growth has been achieved by increasing female labour-force participation, but at what cost?

A strong economy depends on children being raised well so that they become productive adults. And a strong economy requires sufficient numbers of productive adults to generate enough wealth to share with the young, the old and the sick, and those who care for them.

On both counts – the relative number of working-age people, and the capability of those available to work – our population is in decline. Thanks to rock-bottom birth rates, there are now just three working-aged people for each pensioner, down from four to one in 1979. And the number of adults languishing on sickness benefits has ballooned. No wonder our economy is stagnating.

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There is only one institution that produces people, nurtures them and enables them to meet their potential as adults. That institution is the family. Yet as marriage rates have plummeted, and divorces and separations have rocketed, fewer families are being formed or enduring. The number of babies born per year has declined by nearly 40 per cent since the 1960s. And those children who are born are in many cases failing to be equipped during childhood with the skills, virtues and emotional resilience that are essential for a life of success and prosperity. Mental health in young adults is in sharp decline; there has been a significant rise in ADHD and autism. Over a million young adults are now not in education, employment or training.

The weakening of the family has occurred because of – not in spite of – our narrow focus on measurable economic output. As successive governments have sought to squeeze every last drop out of GDP and labour force participation, the ‘low hanging fruit’ has been a drive to increase female participation in the workforce. This has been remarkably successful. In the 1970s, around 50 per cent of UK women aged 16 to 64 were in paid work outside the home; that has now increased to 72 per cent.

GDP growth has been achieved by increasing female labour-force participation, but at what cost? If all adults are engaged in paid work outside the home, who cares for those who are dependent – the young, the old and the sick? The answer, of course, is the state.

As more and more women have entered the formal workforce, taxpayer-funded, stranger-delivered child- and elderly care has replaced the care formerly given by families. It is debatable whether, from a purely economic viewpoint, this is cost-effective. The government now offers working parents 30 hours per week of free childcare for babies over nine months old, at an annual cost to the taxpayer of £15,000 per one-year-old, a far greater sum than will be recouped from the income tax of a woman on average wage returning to work.

But it is not just economically questionable to transfer care from family to the state. It is socially costly too. Because there is mounting evidence that long hours in institutional childcare, away from the constant reassuring presence of a mother, is associated with negative developmental outcomes for children, such as behavioural problems, cognitive difficulties, and struggles with social and emotional regulation. There is also a link between non-parental care in early life and ADHD. Perhaps it is no surprise that the emerging generation is sadder, sicker and less likely to be in work than previous generations.

Being a doctor or a barrister might feel more worthwhile than singing nursery rhymes or potty training your toddler. It’s hard to say the same for stacking shelves at Tesco

Any short-term economic boost to GDP from greater female participation in the workforce is surely eclipsed by the long-term economic, social and health consequences of depriving children of their mothers in the early years. This is an inconvenient truth for the political elite, which sees rising levels of maternal employment as both good for the economy, and a sign of social progress. Of course, women who want to work when their children are small should be supported to do so. But the idea that most women can’t wait to get back to work after giving birth is just plain wrong. Two-thirds of mothers of under-fours would like to work less if they could afford it.

Many mothers would prefer to care for their own children in the early years. But this option has become unaffordable for all but the very rich. Liberal attitudes to debt – both public and private – have driven house prices skywards, and a higher education expansion has left millions saddled with student loans. The individualisation of our tax system penalises families where one parent takes a break from paid work. For many mothers of small children, handing their infants over to strangers so they can go out to work is a resented financial necessity – not an exercise in female emancipation.

Cultural, political and educational messages aimed at encouraging women into careers have left the impression that motherhood is a second-class occupation; that caring for children is at best a form of drudgery at best, and at worst, a betrayal of feminism. Women should unequivocally have equal access to education and careers, but we must stop telling young people that fulfilment is only to be found in paid work. As US psychoanalyst Erica Komisar says to young women, “you can have it all, but not at the same time”. Being a doctor or a barrister might feel more worthwhile than singing nursery rhymes or potty training your toddler. It’s hard to say the same for stacking shelves at Tesco.

If we want to restore prosperity, if we want to produce healthy and resilient people, we must put care back at the heart of our economy. How we do this is a hot topic for the emerging new conservative movement across the West. In his book, The Care Dilemma: Caring Enough in an Age of Sex Equality, David Goodhart suggests a range of policy initiatives that would maintain gender equality but raise the status – and affordability – of care. Conservative political leaders such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are reorganising state spending around family rather than welfare. In the UK, the SDP and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party have proposed transferable tax allowances and front-loading child benefit to make it more affordable for families to look after their own children in the early years.

Yet achieving the necessary change will be difficult. Although raising birthrates and ensuring children are better cared for will reap social and economic rewards in the long term, there is a significant upfront cost to subsidising child-rearing. Hungary now spends 5.5 per cent of its GDP on family policy.

The online right risks bringing the whole movement into disrepute

The politics are even more challenging than the economics. At its heart, family policy is about choice, seeking to remove the barriers currently preventing women from having and caring for the children they say they want. Yet some on the left see the care agenda as regressive, misogynistic, even ‘far-right’.

There is certainly no agreement amongst those who call themselves conservatives. Former MP Rory Stewart and US Vice-President JD Vance recently found themselves in a viral Twitter spat about whether we have a duty to care for our own families before anyone else. But this high-profile disagreement is unlikely to derail the pro-family agenda. Commentators like Stewart are increasingly viewed not as conservatives but elite liberals who are yesterday’s men.

There is another faction of the right that does threaten to undermine attempts to put care at the heart of the new conservatism: the ultra-online right. It certainly pays lip service to the need to champion the family. But instead of promoting an agenda of human flourishing, these keyboard warriors too often stray into racism, hijacking pro-natalism to push an anti-immigrant or ethno-nationalist agenda. And in copying the tactics of the progressive left by dehumanising and bullying their political opponents, the online right risks bringing the whole movement into disrepute.

Elon Musk has become a key figure on the right and is an important voice in raising awareness of the consequences of falling birthrates. But Musk’s approach to reversing decline is hardly a good advert for flourishing families. At least two of his 14 children (by four different women) were born through surrogacy, a practice of deliberately depriving an infant of his mother from birth. And it is difficult for mainstream conservatives to raise the status of motherhood when the openly misogynistic pornographer Andrew Tate appears to have been given sanctuary by the American right in the name of ‘free speech’.

The challenge for mainstream conservatives is firstly to communicate the scale of the problem: without more and stronger families, western economies are heading into the abyss. Then we must build a broad coalition amongst those who see the care agenda as one that is ultimately a pro-human – not a political – movement. To acknowledge that the source of prosperity is the family, and that babies need their mothers, should be neither shocking nor controversial. Rather, these are observable truths that we must all recognise if we want to build prosperous and flourishing society.

Miriam Cates is a GB News presenter and former Conservative MP