Episode Thirty-One: Baby Bambi
Molly-Mae Hague is 23 years old and undeniably much smarter than you. She lives in a large house in Cheshire with lots of grey cushions (+300 points), along with her boyfriend Tommy Fury, a professional boxer and half-brother to lineal world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. The couple met on reality TV show Love Island, where they were the stars of season 5 (+10,000 points). They take holidays in Dubai (+500 points) and showcase their lives on various social media platforms, including Instagram and YouTube (but, notably, not Twitter).
Appropriately enough, she is creative director of fashion brand PrettyLittleThing. Tommy, a relatively novice boxer, recently overcame Jake Paul in a megafight in Saudi Arabia. If you only vaguely know who Jake Paul is, and thought he was a YouTuber, you were right. Most importantly of all, however, Molly-Mae and Tommy recently had a baby, Bambi Fury (+5000 points, 100 for the baby and 4900 for the name). Babies are very lovely things, and this baby is no different.
So why is Molly-Mae smarter than you? (Apart from the fact that she has an estimated net worth of around £6 million, so is clearly doing something right).
She did not worry about Net Zero before getting on the plane to Dubai.
She did not worry about climate change before having her baby.
She did not worry about getting married before having her baby: she bought a house first instead (after all, people get divorced every day, but bricks and mortar are expensive). If the average wedding costs £20,000 but the average detached house is worth half a million, what do you think is the more credible signal of commitment?
She didn’t worry too much about the fact that Tommy was scheduled to fight Jake Paul almost straight after the baby was due, and so would miss the first four weeks of Bambi’s life while he trained. Molly-Mae, rightly, knows that there’s no perfect time to have a baby.
The life of the overworked London graduate (predicted cohort fertility: 0.7) is filled with worry: climate anxiety, rental costs, career progression. Molly-Mae, by contrast, is an aristocrat of the spirit. This is very much in evidence in her lovely birth story video, which showcases a great deal of grace and wisdom. Like many first-time mothers, she didn’t have the easiest time of it, but the beauty of a baby eases the painful memories of labour. Even as God inflicted the eternal curse on Eve and her daughters, yet still he showed His mercy.
Molly-Mae and Tommy are now on holiday in France with Baby Bambi, Instagram informs us. Net Zero didn’t seem to worry them before getting on this plane either (nor should it). Molly-Mae knows that a life lived in fear is no life at all. In the meantime, a nascent pro-natalist movement has been in the news. But a movement by and for the San Francisco tech elite is no movement at all: there simply aren’t enough of them. A culture of renewed life needs all three: elite acceptance, widespread popular appeal, and financial viability. It needs Universal Baby Income and some good memes in the bargain.
What is a baby but a vote of confidence in the future, a testimony of faith that “the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former”? Would be-parents need reassurance: some prospect of economic growth, a durable state that keeps its promises, and a vision of the world that’s better than today. Some evidence suggests that fertility incentives worked far better in the Soviet Union than elsewhere because of the apparent durability of the communist regime coupled with the fact that over many decades the USSR had never made payments to mothers less generous, only more so. But the British middle-class couple of today have lived through austerity and the disappearance of much of the Blair-era state support for parents. They have seen huge upheavals such as Brexit and four Prime Ministers in No.10 in as many years.
The state, it seems, is worryingly frail, while every official organ of the state pumps out apocalyptic messages of climate doom. The drumbeat of anti-life propaganda is constant. Don’t drive your car. Don’t get on a plane. Eat less, turn the heating down. Don’t build that building, but don’t demolish it either! Embodied carbon! As elites push ever further on the cultural and economic levers of demand management, it is no surprise that the public react unexpectedly by lowering their demand for babies - things with incredibly high upfront costs (in carbon terms and otherwise) - and only long-term payoffs.
What, then, should a canny pro-natalist PM do? Some economic solutions are obvious but hard to implement. A housebuilding boom would lower rents and prices, while allowing existing homeowners to expand their current properties to fit more children (after all, everyone hates moving). An unconditional Universal Baby Income, passed with bipartisan support, would do much to undo the anti-natalist stigma created by measures such as two-child restrictions on Child Tax Credit.
On the memetic war front, however, much low-hanging fruit remains. Perhaps the King should have been asked to write to Molly-Mae on the occasion of Bambi’s birth. The language of Net Zero can be scrubbed from the public discourse, to be replaced by visions of a glorious nuclear renaissance. Noel and Sue Radford could be admitted to the House of Lords as hereditary peers. Rishi can host Downing Street seminars with the nation’s influencers on the importance of entrepreneurship, hard work, and cleaning your house well with plenty of bleach. Mental health awareness is most definitely out. Molly-Mae Mindset? It might just be in.