Oh, the irony. The sweet, sweet irony. We live in a society saturated with sexual imagery yet adults are having less sex than 20 years ago and much of Europe is facing a fertility crisis.
Despite or perhaps because of the pornification of much of our culture, Spain, Germany and Italy all have negative fertility rates.
In fact, things are so bad in Spain, the government has appointed a sex Tsar Edelmira Barreira (real title – demographic expert) to encourage her countrymen to have more babies. I think she should start with the gay couples because remember there is absolutely no difference between couples of the same sex and opposite sex couples. None at all…
Now, I thought we had all agreed that the government should stay out of the bedroom? It seems if things get desperate enough all such qualms need to be set aside.
Still, it is bitter sweet, don’t you think, that 40 years after the sexual revolution liberated us all from our hang-ups that a Catholic country known for being very pro-family needs a government minister to encourage people to get their rocks off, to have a roll in the hay, to you know – just get down to business. I expect this to be as successful as all government campaigns are, i.e. not up to much at all.
Mind you the Danish campaign that encouraged their young people to ‘Do It For Mom’, did indeed cause a mini-baby boom. So congratulations on that.
The reason for this desperation on the part of European governments is because as entitlement programmes grow with the ageing populations and no government (especially the UK government) intends on cutting them, we will need lots of little worker ants to keep the baby boomers in the welfare state they have grown accustomed to.
Now, if you ask me encouraging couples to reproduce merely so their kids can be taxed into oblivion seems like a pretty rubbish deal and I hope most will pack their bags and emigrate.
Historically, people had children for three main reasons: because this was the natural result of marriage; economic/welfare reasons namely the kids will take care of them in their old age; and religious reasons. Today contraception means people can have lots of sex without ever having a single child; and they no longer need children to look after them in their old age as they have the welfare state in the form of their triple locked pension to take care of them. Finally there is religion. It is an obligation of Judaism and Christianity to be open to children but with the collapse of this belief structure in Europe a collapse in fertility rates was inevitable.
But do not fear dear reader. I do expect human ingenuity and immigration to save us in the end. I do not expect to see immigration numbers reduced post-Brexit. Just sayin’. I am not saying whether this is morally right or wrong but is true that not only will we need the workers, we need their kids too. I am not too sure it is morally right either to poach nurses trained in the developing world to tend to the needs of our ageing population but there it is – it is what will occur.
Failing that I reckon the robots will have a hand in our survival too.
(Image: HMRC)
