“While other people in the office have their kids as their phone wallpaper, mine’s the dog, and my camera roll is full of pictures of him,” she says. “It would be nice to have kids, but at the time we lived in a small flat and now we can’t afford to. I do think the dog has filled that role; having him has made us realise that having a kid on top of that just isn’t possible at the moment.”
The concern of decreasing fertility is leading of the program for some political leaders, such as Conservative MP Miriam Cates, who just recently informed the National Conservatism conference that falling birth rates are “the most pressing issue of our generation”. In a speech, she said: “In recent years there has been a significant increase in the number of women who want to have children but don’t, with some analysts predicting that about 30 per cent of women may never become mothers.”
I put this to leading fertility professional Zita West. She says it’s not real that, in your mid-30s, fertility “falls off a cliff”. But she does state there’s a biological necessary and “some women are more fortunate than others regarding their egg reserves. It’s a worry for a lot of women that life is uncertain and jobs are uncertain, but the difficult thing about delaying fertility is how long it can take to actually get pregnant.”
People might mock those who happily declare to be “dog mums”, however it is not tough to see how canine buddies have actually ended up being a method to bridge the space. No Terrible Twos, no nappies to alter; and, obviously, dogs are (wo)man’s friend.
