Baby blues

BRENDA and Paul are swithering over whether or not to have another baby.

They would like their 16-month-old daughter Rebecca to have a brother or sister to keep her company. And - as they are aged 37 and 40 respectively - they feel the clock is against them. But there are obstacles to overcome: Brenda's job, the cost of childcare and the lack of ready babysitters all mean the decision is a tough one. "I think I am more cautious about it all than Paul," says Brenda, a researcher, who lives in Glasgow's West End. "But then it will have more impact on my life.

"My work is going well just now and I worry about what taking time out will do. It's a struggle to juggle a toddler and a full-time job, and I wonder if we could cope. It already costs us £450 for a nursery place and you only get a tiny sibling discount. And there aren't really many people nearby who are able to help us with babysitting if Rebecca is ill or we want to go out. So there's a lot for us to think about."

Brenda and Paul's quandary is one shared with many in Scotland today. Last week a report by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Scottish Government showed Scotland's fertility rate is 24% below that required to stop the population falling. At 1.62 children, it is also considerably lower than England, Wales (1.86) and Northern Ireland (1.94). Although Scottish women start their families younger than their English counterpart (at an average age of 27.42 rather than 28.08), they wait longer between births - an average of 3.5 years between the first and second and 4.1 years between the second and third.

Yet it seems this is not so much a lifestyle choice, but something women feel is forced on them by circumstance. In fact, the report shows Scottish women want twice the number of children than they eventually have.

A generation ago it was very different - Scottish women had more children than women elsewhere in the UK. So what is now stopping Scottish women having large families? Is it poverty or a lack of affordable childcare? Is there a 'No Children Allowed' zeitgeist in Scotland where kids are not valued? Are women - in the words of the famous cartoon - getting to 40, and saying: "Oops, I forgot to have children"? Or, perish the thought, are libidos north of the Border simply flagging?

New research shows it now costs £186,000 to raise a child to the age of 21 - a figure likely to make any couple wondering about the virtues of parenthood reach for the prophylactics. And those who have a squad of children don't always make it sound like the most attractive proposition: all that talk about projectile vomiting and sleepless nights is not the best advertisement for procreation.

Of course, there are those who buck the trend. Celebrities such as Ulrika Jonsson (who is pregnant with her fourth), Gordon Ramsay (four) and Sadie Frost (four) give the impression large broods are all the rage in London. Robert Carlyle and Carole Smillie have three children apiece. Ordinary Scots women tend to stop at one or two.

Whether or not to have a baby is the most private of decisions - but it has wider consequences for society as a whole. Last week's report makes it clear that unless women can be persuaded back into the labour wards, Scotland will be left with an ageing population it can't look after. Attracting 20,000 immigrants a year would head off an economic crisis, says the ESRC - especially if those moving to Scotland come from a country with a tradition of producing large families. But what the country really needs is a cultural shift that will make women see having children as a more attractive proposition.

Some girls in Scotland just want to have fun, not families, it seems. For growing numbers of 20-something females the raucous sounds of pubbing and clubbing are infinitely more appealing than listening out for the faint beginnings of a biological clock ticking.

Out doing some shopping in Glasgow city centre yesterday, twenty-one-year-old Claire Buckley almost splutters on her hot chocolate at the very idea of having a child in the near future.

"It's just not going to happen," the Glasgow sales assistant insists with a firm shake of her head. "I do want kids eventually, but I have far too much living to do first. I want to travel and build up my career - and, to be honest, I'm having too much fun at the moment to even think about it. Some of my old friends from school have children and they are doing great. But it is an absolutely huge responsibility and I'm just not ready for that."

More generally, there seems to be no easy explanation of the fact that Scottish women have fewer children than elsewhere. For some, of course, the problem is medical. Infertility accounts for a proportion of childlessness in Scotland, but Scotland's record of ill-health may also contribute to keeping families smaller.

For some people the belief that more children will interfere with rather than enhance their lives weighs heavily. Scotland is not the most child-friendly of places, a contention borne out by the fact it is home to the UK's first child-free village, Firhall near Nairn. Not welcome in bars, not welcome on street corners, children are often seen as a nuisance and an impediment to a happy society rather than the driving force behind it. Those with larger families are often upbraided when their children are loud and boisterous. And all the publicity over the increased risks today's children face may make larger families seem daunting.

According to the report, though, education plays the biggest role in determining how many children a woman ends up having: those with no qualifications are most likely to have larger families - about one third of these had three or more children compared with nearer one in 10 of those with degrees. Professional women are also likely to marry later and agonise over all the possible consequences before deciding to have children. "When I was younger I didn't really spend any time thinking about whether or not I would have children," says Brenda. "I was in a long-term relationship before I met Paul, but I would never have considered having children in that context. When I came out of it, I was already 28. Even when I met Paul I wasn't sure. We took a fair amount of time to think about it, asking ourselves lots of questions such as would we be any good at it, what will we get out of it, how disappointed will we feel if it doesn't happen for us, what would we do next.

"In the end we decided to go for it, but I like to think we wouldn't have considered our lives to be unfulfilled if we had made a different choice, although obviously now we have Rebecca we realise how fulfilled it is possible to be."

The cost of childcare can be a deciding factor for families pondering whether or not to have a second child as it often makes it financially unviable for the mother to work. The UK has the most expensive childcare in Europe, with a survey last year suggesting more than a fifth of families now rely on grandparents to help pay the bills.

SNP MSP Kenny Gibson, a father of three, has been interested in fertility ever since he realised the economic impact the falling birthrates could have on Scotland's economy. He believes stability rather than prosperity is the key to encouraging women to have more children.

"When the Scottish economy was driven by heavy industries, its birthrate was higher than the rest of the UK," he says. "People worked for the same company all their lives - they might not have been wealthy, but they felt secure. Today, the job market is completely different. People don't tend to stay in the same job - they have to move elsewhere if they want to be promoted and this creates uncertainty.

"The difficulty of getting a foothold in the housing market makes this worse. Families may say: 'We'd like another baby, but we'd better wait a few months until we see how that job works out, or we'll wait until we can afford a bigger house.' But months can turn into years and then, all of a sudden, it's too late."

All these pressures, of course, apply as much south as north of the Border. Gibson believes the high proportion of young people who leave Scotland to seek work elsewhere is a factor. "The growth of multinationals has meant more people moving out of the country to seek promotion. This has led to our having a different population structure to England - with a smaller proportion of women of child-bearing age."

The larger number of immigrants in England, with their cultural tradition of big families, may also contribute to its greater procreation, but these factors only provide a partial explanation.

Less mysterious is what can be done to make having larger families a more attractive proposition to women. Other European countries have already introduced comprehensive packages with varying degrees of success.

In Germany at the tail-end of 2006, there were reports of pregnant women trying to delay labour until the New Year when they would benefit from the new 'Elterngeld' programme designed to improve the birthrate. The initiative allows an adult who stops work after a baby is born to claim two-thirds of their wages up to a maximum of around £1,200 a month for 12 months - or 14 if the husband and wife both take a turn. France and Sweden have similar maternity packages combined with an extensive network of low-cost childcare centres.

In the UK, of course, the Government has introduced the baby bond, a £250 voucher given to every child to be invested until they become adults. But this pales in comparison to the $3,000 Australian (£1,300) "baby bonus" credited with raising the Australian birthrate from 1.76 to 1.82 since it was brought in 2004; and the £9,600 paid out to Russians on the birth of a second child and every subsequent one.

Gibson believes there is plenty the Government could do to encourage Scottish women to believe that having babies isn't such a hardship after all.

"We need to improve maternity packages, crack down on employers who discriminate against women who have babies, provide more workplace crechés and subsidise nurseries," he says.

"We need to make the country more child-friendly - build more playparks in housing estates, become more tolerant of children in restaurants. And a one-off bonus like the one paid out in Australia might help persuade couples who are wondering where they are going to get the money to pay for expensive items such as a new pram."

The ideas are radical and might just convince some women to take the plunge and try for a larger family, but others are just happy with what they've got.

"I think it would be great if there was more universality in the subsidising of nursery places, but, if I'm honest, I don't think there's anything that would persuade us to have more than two children," Brenda says. When it comes to families, for some people, small will always be beautiful.