Way past childbearing? There are ways Baby Boomers (and Gen X) can help their kids have kids

I’ve been told my idea of addressing Australia’s fertility decline - through the physical and emotional labour of grandparents - is ‘quite mad’.

There is one quick fix for the fertility crisis. Of course, it’s about love. But it’s also about money. Money – usually – fixes everything.

Here’s what you can do to help. You are still living in your multiple bedroom house, and you’ve lived in it since your own kids were babies. They’ve moved out leaving all their crap behind. Now you are complaining to your friends that your kids aren’t delivering you your rightful grandchildren.

So, invite your kids to move in. You don’t charge them rent because, with any luck, you are not paying a modern mortgage (average nearly three-quarters of a million bucks). And suddenly, the financial pressure is off. Maybe you have kids who are thinking about having kids but are wary of the financial and care hurdles in front of them, or you have kids who really want kids, this is the perfect way to help make it happen (nah, bullying them won’t work. Not everyone wants children).

And just a quick point before everyone starts jumping up and down about this not being an option for everyone. Myra Hamilton, sociologist and associate professor at the University of Sydney who focuses on gender, work and care research, says it’s not just wealthy grandparents who are pitching in. It’s also grandparents on low incomes, transferring resources of all kinds, including providing unpaid child care.

It is true that too many women around my age still have a mortgage. More Australians are entering their pre-retirement years (broadly 55 to 64) significantly mortgaged. The ABS Survey of Income and Housing shows that in 1996, about 20 per cent of that age group had a mortgage. Now it’s more than 50 per cent. Also, truckloads of women my age are still working because of that mortgage. In 2003, by the age of 64, nearly 70 per cent of women had retired. Twenty years later, it’s now just over 40 per cent, maybe because of that mortgage.

None of that means you can’t step up if you really want grandkids. Once the kids are born, you can step up again. There is nothing more delicious (and exhausting) than looking after babies and toddlers when you are in your fifties, sixties and seventies.

University of Sydney’s Hamilton tells me, politely, that my idea of addressing the fertility crisis through the physical and emotional labour of grandparents is quite mad.

She says the idea that older women can solve the nation’s fertility crisis relies way too much on the individual responsibility of women.

“In fac