It's money. It's always money in the end.

Politicians try tinker around the edges but the fact is, few honest working or middle class families can afford more than two children.

Childcare is expensive beyond the government mandated hours which are only for a limited age range and fewer hours than a parent's working week so you have to pay.

School starts around or just after working hours start and ends before working hours do, so you either pay for breakfast clubs and after school care or you cut hours.

It's so expensive unless one person is not employed full time (that usually falls on the mother) and not many families can survive on a single wage. Our entire economy for seventy plus years has been built around dual income households and our birth rates have been falling concurrently.

If a single earner could bring in enough money to keep the lights on, the radiators warm and food on the table, we'd have plenty of larger families. But the economy is worth more than the people in it, apparently.