About one in four women born from the late 1990s to 2012 will remain childless if current trends continue. That stark figure is a projection from a new paper, Choice or Circumstance? Rising Childlessness in Ireland, from the Iona Institute (of which I am a patron).

Gen Z, those now aged roughly between 14 and 30, are already dubbed the anxious generation. They have lived through a global pandemic, watched job security erode and seen the prospect of home ownership recede to levels far lower than that of their parents’ generation. It now looks as if a significant number of them are also facing childlessness, much of it involuntary.

The paper projects outcomes in part by charting fertility trends in previous generations. Starting with women born in the late 1950s, the so-called baby boomers, only 13.5pc were still childless at age 45. At age 30, only 30.9 per cent were childless. For those born in the early 1990s, the number who were childless at 30 had doubled to 63.6pc.

The rise in fertility treatment is an indicator that many women still want children, no matter how emotionally and physically challenging the process becomes

The rise in fertility treatment is an indicator that many women still want children, no matter how emotionally and physically challenging the process becomes

Figures released by the CSO this week confirm that the total fertility rate, that is, the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, has dropped dramatically from 1.9 in 2015, which was already below the........

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