Anne-Laure Desclèves

"Academia and think tanks are disproportionately staffed by highly educated professionals who are more likely to be childless or have smaller families. When the people producing research don’t view child-rearing as central to their own lives, it’s less likely to become a focus of institutional attention [...] If institutional inertia explains part of the silence, social norms explain much of the rest. Fertility touches on emotionally sensitive terrain—grief, loss, and unrealised hopes. For those who are involuntarily childless, discussions about declining birth rates can feel deeply personal. If you raise fertility as a public issue in a professional setting, you risk sounding intrusive or judgmental. The whole conversation makes people uncomfortable, so they avoid it." Terrific piece from @theandrewglover on why it has taken us so long to acknowledge the global fertility crisis. Link in next tweet. 👇